7,491 research outputs found
Increasing Protection of GIS at the WTO: Clawbacks, Greenfields and Monopoly Rents
Currently there are proposals and negotiations regarding the strengthening of protection for geographic indicators (GIs) in the WTO. A major proponent of stronger protection for GIs has been the European Union. One of the arguments it has put forward for stronger protection has been that it will provide an avenue for economic development for agricultural producers in developing countries – a way to capture rents in the markets of developed countries. This paper first outlines the proposed changes to the international protection of geographic indicators. Second, the potential for groups of producers to generate and capture rents in foreign markets is assessed under differing assumptions pertaining to industry structure, product differentiation in the short and long run, barriers to entry reputation and the form of legal protection in importing countries. A discussion of the resource requirements to establish and maintain a GI is also provided.Agricultural and Food Policy, International Development, International Relations/Trade, WTO, GIS,
Post-Moratorium EU Regulation of Generically Modified Products: Trade Concerns
EU, GMO, trade, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, International Relations/Trade,
Post-Moratorium EU Regulation of Genetically Modified Products: Trade Concerns
Trade in genetically modified (GM) products remains a major issue in agricultural trade policy. In particular, the European Union has sought to deny market access to GM-products. In the wake of a WTO case brought by Canada and the US, among others, against an import ban imposed on genetically modified agricultural products by the European Union (EU) – which the EU lost – the import ban was dropped and the EU put in place a new regulatory regime for GM-products. The EU suggests that the post-moratorium regulatory regime is compliant with its WTO obligations. As of June 2011, the operation of this new import regime has not been formally assessed. The first GM-crops are just now working their way through the post-moratorium regulatory system and an assessment of the operation of the regime is timely. The results of this assessment suggest that the EU’s approval system is only partially based in science and thus is not in conformity with its SPS obligations under the WTO. Hence, the new EU regulatory regime could be challenged through a WTO Disputes panel.EU regulatory regime, Genetically Modified (GM) products, Science, SPS, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, International Relations/Trade,
Post-Moratorium EU Regulation of Genetically Modified Products: Triffid Flax
The regulatory regime for contamination permits the imposition of import bans with neither a scientific justification nor a risk assessment. No scientific assessment of Triffid flax was done prior to the import ban. The import regime put in place to deal with the contamination of flax with the GM-flax CDC Triffid provides no rationale for the thresholds of safety established for the testing regime. The EU is consistently pushing for commercial, economic and social considerations to be included, along with science, in decision-making. Such considerations are often perceived as avenues for economic protection to creep into EU decision-making. Such considerations can, however, cut both ways. The Canada-EU testing regime for Triffid makes provision for, but does not necessarily require, the testing of cargoes when they reach European ports (Western Producer, 2010). The risks associated with inspection upon arrival made exports to Europe too risky. By only requiring the passing of the tests prior to product leaving Canada, flexibility to find alternative markets for contaminated cargoes has been gained. Thus, while costly, the testing regime for flax exports to the EU has allowed for the resumption of Canadian flax exports to the EU. Of course, the import Protocol negotiated between the EU and Canada was a one off. In a future case, economic and commercial considerations could be used to bolster economic protection. This is why science was agreed upon as the arbitrator of SPS-based trade barriers by the Member States of the WTO, including the EU. Thus, the EU regulatory regime for GM-products would seem open to a new challenge at the WTO. Of course, the political consequences of such a challenge would have to be carefully weighed.GMO, food, EU, Triffid Flax, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, International Relations/Trade,
Effect of a magnetic flux on the critical behavior of a system with long range hopping
We study the effect of a magnetic flux in a 1D disordered wire with long
range hopping.
It is shown that this model is at the metal-insulator transition (MIT) for
all disorder values and the spectral correlations are given by critical
statistics. In the weak disorder regime a smooth transition between orthogonal
and unitary symmetry is observed as the flux strength increases. By contrast,
in the strong disorder regime the spectral correlations are almost flux
independent. It is also conjectured that the two level correlation function for
arbitrary flux is given by the dynamical density-density correlations of the
Calogero-Sutherland (CS) model at finite temperature. Finally we describe the
classical dynamics of the model and its relevance to quantum chaos.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Coarsening Dynamics of a One-Dimensional Driven Cahn-Hilliard System
We study the one-dimensional Cahn-Hilliard equation with an additional
driving term representing, say, the effect of gravity. We find that the driving
field has an asymmetric effect on the solution for a single stationary
domain wall (or `kink'), the direction of the field determining whether the
analytic solutions found by Leung [J.Stat.Phys.{\bf 61}, 345 (1990)] are
unique. The dynamics of a kink-antikink pair (`bubble') is then studied. The
behaviour of a bubble is dependent on the relative sizes of a characteristic
length scale , where is the driving field, and the separation, ,
of the interfaces. For the velocities of the interfaces are
negligible, while in the opposite limit a travelling-wave solution is found
with a velocity . For this latter case () a set of
reduced equations, describing the evolution of the domain lengths, is obtained
for a system with a large number of interfaces, and implies a characteristic
length scale growing as . Numerical results for the domain-size
distribution and structure factor confirm this behavior, and show that the
system exhibits dynamical scaling from very early times.Comment: 20 pages, revtex, 10 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Spinodal Decomposition and the Tomita Sum Rule
The scaling properties of a phase-ordering system with a conserved order
parameter are studied. The theory developed leads to scaling functions
satisfying certain general properties including the Tomita sum rule. The theory
also gives good agreement with numerical results for the order parameter
scaling function in three dimensions. The values of the associated
nonequilibrium decay exponents are given by the known lower bounds.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure
Phase Separation Kinetics in a Model with Order-Parameter Dependent Mobility
We present extensive results from 2-dimensional simulations of phase
separation kinetics in a model with order-parameter dependent mobility. We find
that the time-dependent structure factor exhibits dynamical scaling and the
scaling function is numerically indistinguishable from that for the
Cahn-Hilliard (CH) equation, even in the limit where surface diffusion is the
mechanism for domain growth. This supports the view that the scaling form of
the structure factor is "universal" and leads us to question the conventional
wisdom that an accurate representation of the scaled structure factor for the
CH equation can only be obtained from a theory which correctly models bulk
diffusion.Comment: To appear in PRE, figures available on reques
Kolmogorov's refined similarity hypothesis: consequences from an exact two-point equation for isotropic turbulence
In order to describe intermittency and anomalous scaling in turbulence,
Kolmogorov's second refined similarity hypothesis (KRSH) connects statistics of
velocity increments to those of the rate of dissipation , averaged
in a sphere at a scale in the inertial range. We explore this classic
hypothesis in light of the generalized Kolmogorov-Hill equation (GKHE) derived
exactly from the Navier-Stokes equations, and in which appears
explicitly. When evaluated using conditional averaging based on ,
analysis of Direct Numerical Simulations data at various Reynolds numbers shows
that the energy cascade rate indeed equals . Conditional
higher-order moments also support KRSH, while an ``inverse KRSH'' is not
supported by data. Finally, results confirm KRSH even when applied separately
to positive (forward) and negative (inverse) cascade regions of the flow
Evolution of speckle during spinodal decomposition
Time-dependent properties of the speckled intensity patterns created by
scattering coherent radiation from materials undergoing spinodal decomposition
are investigated by numerical integration of the Cahn-Hilliard-Cook equation.
For binary systems which obey a local conservation law, the characteristic
domain size is known to grow in time as with n=1/3,
where B is a constant. The intensities of individual speckles are found to be
nonstationary, persistent time series. The two-time intensity covariance at
wave vector can be collapsed onto a scaling function , where and . Both analytically and numerically, the covariance
is found to depend on only through in the
small- limit and in the large-
limit, consistent with a simple theory of moving interfaces that applies to any
universality class described by a scalar order parameter. The speckle-intensity
covariance is numerically demonstrated to be equal to the square of the
two-time structure factor of the scattering material, for which an analytic
scaling function is obtained for large In addition, the two-time,
two-point order-parameter correlation function is found to scale as
, even for quite large
distances . The asymptotic power-law exponent for the autocorrelation
function is found to be , violating an upper bound
conjectured by Fisher and Huse.Comment: RevTex: 11 pages + 12 figures, submitted to PR
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