The Liege-balloon program

The Liege-balloon program is intended to make high-spectral resolution observations of the sun in the near- and intermediate infrared regions not accessible from the ground. A description of the equipment, followed by a summary of the data obtained till now is presented. Except for ozone whose maximum of concentration lies near 25 Km altitude, the residual mass distribution of the other mentioned molecules decreases with altitude. This is a self-explanatory argument for carrying out spectroscopic observations from platforms transcending the densest layers of the earth's atmosphere. The Liege balloon equipment is primarily intended for very high-resolution solar observations from about 27-30 Km altitude, in all spectral regions between 1.5 and 15.0 microns, not accessible from the ground

Bio-Blumen in kleinen Strukturen

Im ökologischen Zierpflanzenbau besteht Informationsbedarf. Viele Betriebe kombinieren aus Unsicherheit heraus den Zierpflanzenbau mit dem Anbau von Obst und Gemüse. Dies ergab eine Umfrage, die die Uni Hannover bei ökologisch geführten Zierpflanzenbetrieben durchgeführt hatte. (zitiert aus: Zander, K und Panschow, I (2001) Bio-Blumen in kleinen Strukturen, bioland 5/2001, 22

Farmer Consumer Partnerships: Information search and decision making - the case of ethical values of organic products

The CORE Organic pilot project ‘Farmer Consumer Partnerships’ aims at analysing and testing innovative communication strategies of organic companies with respect to ethical values as a means of reconnecting organic farmers and consumers against the varying cultural and behavioural backgrounds of consumers in five European countries (AT, CH, DE, IT UK). The previous work packages (WP1 and WP2) provided a selection of the most promising communication arguments with respect to ethical values of organic food based on literature review and on the farmers’ or farmers’ initiatives point of view. Based on this, the task is to narrow down the wide range of existing arguments related to ethical values in organic food production. Therefore, the arguments were categorised in a pragmatic way, taking into consideration the likely beneficiaries of these ethical activities and the expert rating of research partners. The final selection included the three major categories of economic, social and environmental concerns and, additionally, animal welfare as well as cultural issues. Finally, 14 ethical arguments belonging to the following sub-dimensions were chosen: biodiversity, animal welfare, regional production, fairness in relation to the farmer, care farming, social aspects of production, and the preservation of cultural features. The aim of this work package was to confront consumers with these ethical concerns and to identify the most promising communication attributes for further analyses within the next work packages. It was to be determined which ethical information is most interesting for consumers in the partner countries with respect to the purchase decision on organic food. Chapter 2 concentrates on the theoretical perspective of information search within consumer behaviour. Factors influencing extensiveness and content of information search are presented. Chapter 3 is dedicated to the description of the methodological approach of the research within this research step. For the analyses within this research, it was decided to use the Information Display Matrix (IDM). The IDM is a process tracing method aiming at monitoring the cognitive processes underlying information search, judgement and choice. The IDM was used to analyse the depth of information search regarding ethical values of organic food and to identify those ethical attributes most relevant for decision making. The two-dimensional matrix lists alternative product stimuli in columns, while product attributes are listed in rows. Each cell contains concealed information about a product-related attribute, which has to be accessed one after another by the subject in order to obtain the information (Jacoby et al. 1987, Mühlbacher and Kirchler 2003). The ethical attributes were tested with the product organic milk. The IDM was accompanied by a questionnaire aiming at the validation of the results obtained by the IDM, at an explanation of the information acquisition behaviour and at giving answers on the ‘real life’ information behaviour concerning organic food. 240 organic milk buyers were interviewed face-to-face, in a computer assisted manner in the five study countries. Subject of chapter 4 is the description of the sample regarding socio-demographic indicators of participants and ‘real life’ information and purchasing behaviour. Concerning the sources of information on organic food, the results show that ‘articles in newspapers etc.’ are preferred, followed by ‘conversation with family and friends’ and ‘product packaging’. ‘Information by sales personnel’ was frequently mentioned in Italy but rarely in Switzerland and in the UK. ‘Reports on radio or TV’ seem to be less important in Italy than in all other countries. When asked for the kind of information they had actively been looking for within the last two months, ‘product origin’ was mentioned most often, followed by information on ‘ingredients’. In Switzerland and Germany, on the other hand, information on ‘organic certification’ and ‘production and processing methods’ was ranked higher than information on ‘ingredients’. In Italy, information on ‘product quality’ was more frequently asked for than on ‘ingredients’ whereas in the UK, information on ‘food miles’ is more important. Information on ‘prices’ seems to be much more important in Austria than in all the other countries. Chapter 5 concentrates on the depth and content of information search for ethical values of organic food obtained by means of the IDM. On average, respondents spent 4:28 minutes for information search and opened 34 information fields within the IDM. There are marked differences between the countries. Besides socio-demographic factors like age and the level of education, attitudes regarding organic food consumption could be identified to have an impact on the amount of information looked for preceding the product choice. The importance of different attributes for the choice of the organic product was analysed via the share that each attribute has in all firstly accessed attributes and via the frequency of accession of each attribute. According to these indicators, the most important attributes are ‘animal welfare’, ‘regional production’ and ‘fair prices for farmers‘. These attributes were followed by ‘product price’, indicating that consumers tend to prefer cheaper products over ethical products with attributes like ‘care farming’, ‘social criteria of production’, ‘protection of biodiversity’ and ‘cultural aspects’. There are only minor differences between the countries in the order of the most important attributes. Only in Italy ‘product price’ seems to be more important than ‘fair prices’ and ‘animal welfare’. Factors impacting on the preferred ethical concern are age, gender, level of education and motives for organic consumption. Expected relationships between attitudes towards organic consumption and the preferred ethical concern proved to be weak. The choice decision shows that the cheaper organic product without any additional ethical values was preferred by 6% of the respondents only. While in Germany 3% decided in favour of the cheaper product, 9% of the Austrian respondents chose the cheaper one. This result allows the conclusion that a large share of consumers of organic food would be willing to pay a price premium for ethical products. The report is completed by some concluding remarks (Chapter 6) pointing at the appropriateness of the IDM for the task fulfilled but also its methodological limitations. The central result of the analyses of work package 3 for the whole project is the identification of the most important ethical values from the consumers’ point of view. However, there are still some open research questions, particularly as for the joint effect of different variables on the respondents’ information behaviour. The corresponding analyses will take place during the next months and will be published in scientific journals

Communication of ethical values in organic farming

Due to globalisation and growing anonymity of trade with organic products, farmers in Europe are under pressure to lower their production standards in order to keep up with world-wide competition. On the other hand consumers increasingly criticise food products which were produced under unsatisfactory social and environmental conditions. A literature review indicates that consumers are willing to pay an additional premium for ethical values in organic production regarding social, environmental and economic concerns. This creates possibilities to differentiate from the organic mass markets by providing and communicating ethical values. So far, not much is known about which ethical values and arguments are comprehensible and important to organic consumers and how to communicate them most effectively. This contribution discusses some hypotheses on the communication of additional ethical values in the organic market and points at existing research deficits

Regional production’ and ‘Fairness’ in organic farming: Evidence from a CORE Organic project

The CORE Organic pilot project ‘Farmer Consumer Partnerships’ aims to strengthen the partnership between producers and consumers through better communication. To achieve this the project first mapped concerns of organic stakeholders in relation to a broad range of ethical values and then compared them with the European regulations for organic food before testing a limited number of communication arguments related to those concerns with consumers. Stakeholders of organic supply chains refer to a broad range of values that include concerns about systems integrity, regional origin, fairness issues as well as impact on the environment, on animals and other social impact. Several concerns including regional origin of products and fairness issues are not directly covered by the European Regulation for organic food. Seven different ethical attributes were tested with about 1200 consumers in relation to product prices and additional premiums by means of an Information‐Display‐Matrix (IDM) in five European countries. In all countries the most important ethical attributes to consumers turned out to be 'animal welfare', 'regional production' and 'fair prices for farmers'. It is concluded that communicating ethical quality of organic products that are produced in ways that go beyond the requirements of the European Regulation represents an opportunity for differentiation in an increasingly competitive market. Increasing transparency could be the first step in facing the difficulties in defining mandatory standards, particularly regarding ‘fairness’ and ‘local/regional production’

Communicating with customers

The growth in demand for organic and Fairtrade products is a clear example of the emerging importance of ‘ethical consumerism’ in the food sector. But as the popularity of organic food grows, so too does the range of mass produced organic products. Indeed, competition between many organic products is now predominantly a question of price. As a result, there are concerns that the ethical values and objectives of the organic movement are no longer central to large sections of organic production. The article summarises results of the Farmer Consumer Partnership (CORE FCP) project

A Very Large Area Network (VLAN) knowledge-base applied to space communication problems

This paper first describes a hierarchical model for very large area networks (VLAN). Space communication problems whose solution could profit by the model are discussed and then an enhanced version of this model incorporating the knowledge needed for the missile detection-destruction problem is presented. A satellite network or VLAN is a network which includes at least one satellite. Due to the complexity, a compromise between fully centralized and fully distributed network management has been adopted. Network nodes are assigned to a physically localized group, called a partition. Partitions consist of groups of cell nodes with one cell node acting as the organizer or master, called the Group Master (GM). Coordinating the group masters is a Partition Master (PM). Knowledge is also distributed hierarchically existing in at least two nodes. Each satellite node has a back-up earth node. Knowledge must be distributed in such a way so as to minimize information loss when a node fails. Thus the model is hierarchical both physically and informationally

Revisiting entanglement within the Bohmian approach to quantum mechanics

We revisit the concept of entanglement within the Bohmian approach to quantum mechanics. Inspired by Bohmian dynamics, we introduce two partial measures for the amount of entanglement corresponding to a pure state of a pair of quantum particles. One of these measures is associated with the statistical correlations exhibited by the joint probability density of the two Bohmian particles in configuration space. The other partial measure corresponds to the correlations associated with the phase of the joint wave function, and describes the non-separability of the Bohmian velocity field. The sum of these two components is equal to the total entanglement of the joint quantum state, as measured by the linear entropy of the single-particle reduced density matrix.Fil: Zander, Claudia. University of Pretoria; SudáfricaFil: Plastino, Ángel Ricardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Noroeste de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. Centro de Bioinvestigaciones (Sede Junín); Argentin