Summery and conclusion of the market possibility for Danish organic trout

The last part of WP 6 Market Possibilities, are dealing with the market aspects of organic rainbow trout. There has been used three different approaches: 1. The position of the organic trout compared to other options of organic fat fish species in Denmark and Germany 2. The consumers perception of organic fish – especially organic trout 3. A market analysis of the future potential of organic trout in selected European countries. The first approach looked into the possibility for organic trout to achieve a price premium over conventional farmed trout. Because it is too premature to be able to find valid results, salmon is used as an example. Both if the amount of produced organic trout is growing and if eco-labeled trout is introduced, such as ASC – label. This last part illustrated by the introduction of MSC – labels in the wild fish from marine areas. An interesting survey has been done with Germans consumers, comparing the impact of Animal Welfare and Environmental Information. The second approach looked into the consumer’s perception of organic trout. This has been done by comparing surveys and conducting focus groups studies in Germany. Among the results are a general perception that farmed fish can be compared with farmed agriculture animals. This gives a negative perception. There is a variety of organic labels used in Germany and these have a high degree of trustworthiness and are used promoting the organic trout products. Denmark is regarded as a country with high standards in sustainability and esthetical issues. The third approach has been a market analyses in selected European countries. The analysis has been based on interviews, visits to shops and exhibitions/trade shows, literature and statistics. Germany is the biggest market for Danish produced organic trout. One of the main results is that there is an increasing demand on organic fish products in Europe. And that at present there is a 30 % higher price for organic fish products, than on non-organic products. The overall conclusion: • Positive market potentials for Danish produced organic trout at the European market place • Price premiums on organic trout will sustain in the short run • Specific segments of the consumers prefer organic salmonids • Organic labels and information of animal welfare has a positive effect on the consumers preference • German consumers have a positive attitude towards Danish production of organic trout and consider it trustworthy. Comments to the overall conclusion All three approaches towards the possible future market for Danish produced organic trout are positive. Denmark is highly regarded as a reliable producer of organic products and among them organic trout. Besides the home market, the German and Austrian markets are the most promising market places. The price premium for organic trout is between 25 % to 35% higher than the non-organic products. The Danish production of organic trout have over the last decade been growing from nearly nothing to more than 1200 tons, but have the last year dropped back again - below 1.000 tons. There are several reasons for this drop, but with a production that low, the annual production is very exposed to change in production sites and substitutes to help conventional fish farmers to change to organic production

Scenarios for the future Lithuanian State forest sector

Three alternative scenarios to the much debated present organisation of the Lithuanian State forest sector are examined: (i) the integrated, where all functions are delegated to one central administrative authority – the Danish prototype, (ii) the commercialised, where State forests are managed by a commercial State company – the Irish prototype, and (iii) the minimalistic, where only negligible forest areas of special importance remain in State ownership – the Swedish prototype. The scenarios are assessed according to six imperatives: (i) sort out the ambiguity of the present structure, (ii) increase the profitability, (iii) reduce the level of public spending, (iv) accommodate changes in ownership structure, (v) rely on a holistic approach, and (vi) comply with the national forest policy. If adopted, any of the scenarios would most likely improve the various elements of State forestry, although in substantially different ways. Politicians will take the final decision that may be supported by the findings of this study

The galaxy counterpart of the high-metallicity and 16 kpc impact parameter DLA towards Q0918+1636 - a challenge to galaxy formation models?

The quasar Q0918+1636 (z=3.07) has an intervening high-metallicity Damped Lyman-alpha Absorber (DLA) along the line of sight, at a redshift of z=2.58. The DLA is located at a large impact parameter of 16.2 kpc, and has an almost solar metallicity. It is shown, that a novel type of cosmological galaxy formation models, invoking a new SNII feedback prescription, the Haardt & Madau (2012) UVB field and explicit treatment of UVB self-shielding, can reproduce the observed characteristics of the DLA. UV radiation from young stellar populations in the galaxy, in particular in the photon energy range 10.36-13.61 eV (relating to Sulfur II abundance), are also considered in the analysis. It is found that a) for L~L* galaxies (at z=2.58), about 10% of the sight-lines through the galaxies at impact parameter 16.2 kpc will display a Sulfur II column density N(SII)$>$ 10$^{15.82}$ cm$^{-2}$ (the observed value for the DLA), and b) considering only cases where a near-solar metallicity will be detected at 16.2 kpc impact parameter, the probability distribution of galaxy SFR peaks near the value observed for the DLA galaxy counterpart of ~27 Msun/yr. It is argued, that the bulk of the alpha-elements, like Sulfur, traced by the high metal column density, b=16.2 kpc absorption lines, were produced by evolving young stars in the inner galaxy, and later transported outward by galactic winds.Comment: 22 pages, 24 figures, MNRAS in pres

Developing a closed-form cost expression for an (R,s,nQ) policy where the demand process is compound generalized Erlang.

We derive a closed-form cost expression for an (R,s,nQ) inventory control policy where all replenishment orders have a constant lead-time, unfilled demand is backlogged and inter-arrival times of order requests are generalized Erlang distributedInventory control; Compound renewal process; Generalized Erlang distribution;

Globular Clusters in NGC 4365: New K-band Imaging and a Reassessment of the Case for Intermediate-age Clusters

We study the globular cluster (GC) system of the Virgo giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4365, using new wide-field VIK imaging. The GC colour distribution has (at least) two peaks, but the colours of the red GCs appear more strongly weighted towards intermediate colours compared to most other large ellipticals and the integrated galaxy light. The intermediate-color/red peak may itself be composed of two sub-populations, with clusters of intermediate colours more concentrated towards the centre of the galaxy than both the blue and red GCs. Nearly all intermediate-colour and red GCs in our sample show an offset towards red V-K and/or blue V-I colours compared to SSP models for old ages in a (V-K,V-I) diagram. This has in the past been interpreted as evidence for intermediate ages. We also combine our VIK data with previously published spectroscopy. The differences between observed and model colour-metallicity relations are consistent with the offsets observed in the two-colour diagram, with the metal-rich GCs being too red (by about 0.2 mag) in V-K and too blue (by about 0.05 mag) in V-I compared to the models at a given metallicity. These offsets cannot easily be explained as an effect of younger ages. We conclude that, while intermediate GC ages cannot be definitively ruled out, an alternative scenario is more likely whereby all the GCs are old but the relative number of intermediate-metallicity GCs is greater than typical for giant ellipticals. The main obstacle to reaching a definitive conclusion is the lack of robust calibrations of integrated spectral and photometric properties for stellar populations with near-solar metallicity. In any case, it is puzzling that the intermediate-colour GCs in NGC 4365 are not accompanied by a corresponding shift of the integrated galaxy light towards bluer colours.Comment: 23 pages, including 20 figures and 5 tables. Accepted for publication in A&

Detailed abundances from integrated-light spectroscopy: Milky Way globular clusters

We test the performance of our analysis technique for integrated-light spectra by applying it to seven well-studied Galactic GCs that span a wide range of metallicities. Integrated-light spectra were obtained by scanning the slit of the UVES spectrograph on the ESO Very Large Telescope across the half-light diameters of the clusters. We modelled the spectra using resolved HST colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs), as well as theoretical isochrones, in combination with standard stellar atmosphere and spectral synthesis codes. The abundances of Fe, Na, Mg, Ca, Ti, Cr, and Ba were compared with literature data for individual stars in the clusters. The typical differences between iron abundances derived from our integrated-light spectra and those compiled from the literature are less than 0.1 dex. A larger difference is found for one cluster (NGC 6752), and is most likely caused primarily by stochastic fluctuations in the numbers of bright red giants within the scanned area. As expected, the alpha-elements (Ca, Ti) are enhanced by about 0.3 dex compared to the Solar-scaled composition, while the [Cr/Fe] ratios are close to Solar. When using up-to-date line lists, our [Mg/Fe] ratios also agree well with literature data. Our [Na/Fe] ratios are, on average, 0.08-0.14 dex lower than average values quoted in the literature, and our [Ba/Fe] ratios may be overestimated by 0.20-0.35 dex at the lowest metallicities. We find that analyses based on theoretical isochrones give very similar results to those based on resolved CMDs. Overall, the agreement between our integrated-light abundance measurements and the literature data is satisfactory. Refinements of the modelling procedure, such as corrections for stellar evolutionary and non-LTE effects, might further reduce some of the remaining offsets.Comment: 35 pages, 16 figures, accepted for A&

CDM, Feedback and the Hubble Sequence

We have performed TreeSPH simulations of galaxy formation in a standard LCDM cosmology, including effects of star formation, energetic stellar feedback processes and a meta-galactic UV field, and obtain a mix of disk, lenticular and elliptical galaxies. The disk galaxies are deficient in angular momentum by only about a factor of two compared to observed disk galaxies. The stellar disks have approximately exponential surface density profiles, and those of the bulges range from exponential to r^{1/4}, as observed. The bulge-to-disk ratios of the disk galaxies are consistent with observations and likewise are their integrated B-V colours, which have been calculated using stellar population synthesis techniques. Furthermore, we can match the observed I-band Tully-Fisher (TF) relation, provided that the mass-to-light ratio of disk galaxies, (M/L_I), is about 0.8. The ellipticals and lenticulars have approximately r^{1/4} stellar surface density profiles, are dominated by non-disklike kinematics and flattened due to non-isotropic stellar velocity distributions, again consistent with observations.Comment: 6 pages, incl. 4 figs. To appear in the proceedings of the EuroConference "The Evolution of Galaxies: II - Basic Building Blocks", Ile de La Reunion (France), 16-21 October 2001 (Slightly updated version). A much more comprehensive paper about this work with links to pictures of some of the galaxies can be found at http://babbage.sissa.it/abs/astro-ph/020436