Regional Products, Regions' Reputation and Commercial Strategies: A Tale of Two Cheese Suppliers

Networks of firms producing and selling regional products to domestic and foreign markets are influencing the direction and options of local development. Regional products are embedded in historical tradition and geographic, cultural and social specificity. Most of the local activities are performed by clustered SME's in well defined geographical areas. To study the mechanisms and factors which favour spontaneous development in specific areas and make SME's competitive through cluster development we used case study methodology. An evolutionary perspective of "Casa Matias" and "Casa dos Queijos", two portuguese SME's, is expected to illustrate which key factors triggered the firm's cheese business and, simultaneously, examine organisational practices with particular emphasis on cluster formation and internationalisation process. From this analysis we expected to conceptualise a specific policy scheme to help developing spontaneous entrepreneurship, cooperation between clustered SME's and local collective development.

Quark condensate for various heavy flavors

The quark condensate is calculated within the world-line effective-action formalism, by using for the Wilson loop an ansatz provided by the stochastic vacuum model. Starting with the relation between the quark and the gluon condensates in the heavy-quark limit, we diminish the current quark mass down to the value of the inverse vacuum correlation length, finding in this way a 64%-decrease in the absolute value of the quark condensate. In particular, we find that the conventional formula for the heavy-quark condensate cannot be applied to the c-quark, and that the corrections to this formula can reach 23% even in the case of the b-quark. We also demonstrate that, for an exponential parametrization of the two-point correlation function of gluonic field strengths, the quark condensate does not depend on the non-confining non-perturbative interactions of the stochastic background Yang-Mills fields.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Eur. Phys. J.

Homological properties of transitive Lie algebroids via Sullivan models

The aim of the present work is to prove Mishchenko's conjecture. For this purpose, we have used a structure called a complex of Lie algebroids. This structure commences by xing a smooth triangulation of the base of a transitive Lie algebroid by a simplicial complex and taking the restriction of the Lie algebroid to all simplices of the triangulation. Since the Lie algebroid is transitive, the restriction of the Lie algebroid to each simplex always exists. When a complex of Lie algebroids is given, we de ne the notion of piecewise smooth form in a similar way to Whitney forms on a simplicial complex and the set of all piecewise smooth forms de ned on a complex of Lie algebroids is naturally equipped with a di erential, yielding a commutative di erential graded algebra. Its cohomology is, by de nition, the piecewise smooth cohomology of the Lie algebroid. Each smooth form de ned on the Lie algebroid gives a piecewise smooth form de ned on the corresponding complex of Lie algebroids by taking the restriction of the form to each simplex. This correspondence is a natural map from the usual algebra of the smooth forms of the Lie algebroid to the algebra of the piecewise smooth forms of the corresponding complex of Lie algebroids. Based on three crucial results, namely the triviality of a transitive Lie algebroid over a contractible smooth manifold (Mackenzie, Weinstein), the K unneth theorem for Lie algebroids (Kubarski) and the de Rham-Sullivan theorem for smooth manifolds, we show that this map is an isomorphism in cohomology

Consumers Willingness to Pay to Avoid Transgenic Products

The debate on transgenic, which is embebed in asymmetrical information, has as a focal point, the risks and uncertainties to them associated. Many are the concerns and questions about the risks for the human health and the environment. Considering the interests of the productive sector in the transgenic technology, the matter sets itself in terms of how fast it wants to be settled taking into consideration the incapability of establishing certainties about the damages or benefits within the process. With the recent liberation by the Brazilian government for its production the sector starts showing segmentation. Therefore, this issue reflects in the market itself. The question is: are the consumers willing to buy transgenic? As an attempt to answer this question, this paper used a Contingent Valuation procedure, with an exploratory character, estimating consumer willingness to pay (WTP) to avoid the consumption of transgenic. This variable (WTP) was measured as a monetary estimate benefits.Transgenic, Contingent Valuation, measure of Well-being, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Uloga kiralne simetrije u hadronskim procesima

The role of chiral symmetry in hadronic processes is discussed. Emphasis is given to the cancellation of diagrams in π −π scattering induced by chiral symmetry and its consequences in the scalar sector.Raspravljamo ulogu kiralne simetrije u hadronskim procesima. Naglašavamo poništenje dijagrama u ππ raspršenju uzrokovano kiralnom simetrijom i njene posljedice u skalarnom sektoru

Uloga kiralne simetrije u hadronskim procesima

The role of chiral symmetry in hadronic processes is discussed. Emphasis is given to the cancellation of diagrams in π −π scattering induced by chiral symmetry and its consequences in the scalar sector.Raspravljamo ulogu kiralne simetrije u hadronskim procesima. Naglašavamo poništenje dijagrama u ππ raspršenju uzrokovano kiralnom simetrijom i njene posljedice u skalarnom sektoru