Orchestrating governmental corporate social responsibility interventions through financial markets: The case of French socially responsible investment

Although a growing stream of research investigates the role of government in corporate social responsibility (CSR), little is known about how governmental CSR interventions interact in financial markets. This article addresses this gap through a longitudinal study of the socially responsible investment (SRI) market in France. Building on the ‘CSR and government’ and ‘regulative capitalism’ literature, we identify three modes of governmental CSR intervention – regulatory steering, delegated rowing, and microsteering – and show how they interact through the two mechanisms of layering (the accumulation of interventions), and catalyzing (the alignment of interventions). Our findings 1) challenge the notion that, in the neoliberal order, governments are confined to steering market actors – leading and guiding their behavior – while private actors are in charge of rowing – providing products and services; 2) show how governmental CSR interventions interact and are orchestrated; and 3) provide evidence that governments can mobilize financial markets to promote CSR

Model studies toward the synthesis of the bioactive diterpenoid, harringtonolide

In model studies towards the synthesis of harringtonolide, the construction of the tropone moiety via arene cyclopropanation was investigated. The installation of the lactone ring was accomplished by way of a Diels-Alder cycloaddition of various indenones and \u1d6fc-pyones. The incorporation of the key bridge methyl group and subsequent control of its stereochemistry is also outlined

Rapid descriptive consumer analysis using simultaneous and monadic sample presentation for coffee

The objective of this study was to investigate how rapid descriptive consumer analysis using simultaneous presentation of samples compared with monadic presentation of samples, using both affective and descriptive sensory evaluation methods. Simultaneous presentation of coffee samples for sensory acceptance testing, using ranking analysis, was conducted using naïve assessors. In a separate session, assessors evaluated the same coffee samples, using monadic presentation and employing the same scales. Similarly, descriptive consumer analysis, using simultaneous and monadic sample presentation, was conducted using descriptive attributes chosen by the panel. For RDA (Ranking descriptive analysis), coffee samples were presented simultaneously (randomised) to assessors and subsequently ranked. The process was then repeated using the same assessors; however, samples were presented in monadic and randomised presentation order. Data accumulated from the study were analysed by Analysis of Variance (APLSR-ANOVA Partial Least Squares Regression). Results obtained indicate that simultaneous presentation of samples was more effective than monadic presentation, as a larger amount of attributes with significant (P < 0.05) intensity differences were observed using RDA. Thus, simultaneous presentation of samples also allows ranking in SAT evaluation and proved a useful tool in establishing the hedonic attributes of products. We propose to call this method Ranking Acceptance Analysis (RAA)

Particle Impact Analysis of Bulk Powder During Pneumatic Conveyance

Fragmentation of powders during transportation is a common problem for manufacturers of food and pharmaceutical products. We illustrate that the primary cause of breakage is due to inter-particle collisions, rather than particle-wall impacts, and provide a statistical mechanics model giving the number of collisions resulting in fragmentation

Formaldehyde over the central Pacific during PEM-Tropics B

Formaldehyde, CH2O, mixing ratios are reported for the central Pacific troposphere from a series of 41 flights, which took place in March-April 1999 as part of the NASA Pacific Exploratory Mission (PEM) -Tropics B mission. Ambient CH2O was collected in aqueous media and quantified using an enzyme-derivatization fluorescence technique. Primary calibration was performed using aqueous standards and known flow rates. Occasionally, CH2O gas standard additions to ambient air were performed as a secondary calibration. Analytical blanks were determined by replacing ambient air with pure air. The estimated precision was ±30 pptv and the estimated accuracy was the sum of ±30 parts per trillion by volume (pptv) ±15% of the measured value. Approximately 25% of the observations were less than the instrumental detection limit of 50 pptv, and 85% of these occurred above 6 km. CH2O mixing ratios decreased with altitude; for example, near the equator the median value in the lowest 2 km was 275 pptv, decreased to 150 pptv by 6 km and was below 100 pptv above 8 km. Between 130 and 170 W and below 1km, a small variation of CH2O mixing ratio with latitude was noted as near-surface median mixing ratios decreased near the equator (275 pptv) and were greater on either side (375 pptv). A marked decrease in near-surface CH2O (200 pptv) was noted south of 23° S on two flights. Between 3° and 23° S, median CH2O mixing ratios were lower in the eastern tropical Pacific than in the western or central Pacific; nominal differences were &gt;100 pptv near the surface to ∼100 pptv at midaltitude to ∼50 pptv at high altitude. Off the coast of Central America and Mexico, mixing ratios as high as 1200 pptv were observed in plumes that originated to the east over land. CH2O observations were consistently higher than the results from a point model constrained by other photochemical species and meteorological parameters. Regardless of latitude or longitude, agreement was best at altitudes above 4 km where the difference between measured and modeled CH2O medians was less than 50 pptv. Below 2 km the model median was approximately 150 pptv less than the measured median. Copyright 2001 by the American Geophysical Union

Conscious coupling: The challenges and opportunities of cascading enzymatic microreactors

The continuous production of high value or difficult to synthesize products is of increasing interest to the pharmaceutical industry. Cascading reaction systems have already been employed for chemical synthesis with great success, allowing a quick change in reaction conditions and addition of new reactants as well as removal of side products. A cascading system can remove the need for isolating unstable intermediates, increasing the yield of a synthetic pathway. Based on the success for chemical synthesis, the question arises how cascading systems could be beneficial to chemo-enzymatic or biocatalytic synthesis. Microreactors, with their rapid mass and heat transfer, small reaction volumes and short diffusion pathways, are promising tools for the development of such processes. In this mini-review, the authors provide an overview of recent examples of cascaded microreactors. Special attention will be paid to how microreactors are combined and the challenges as well as opportunities that arise from such combinations. Selected chemical reaction cascades will be used to illustrate this concept, before the discussion is widened to include chemo-enzymatic and multi-enzyme cascades. The authors also present the state of the art of online and at-line monitoring for enzymatic microreactor cascades. Finally, the authors review work-up and purification steps and their integration with microreactor cascades, highlighting the potential and the challenges of integrated cascades

Generalized Hermite-Gauss decomposition of the two-photon state produced by spontaneous parametric down-conversion

We provide a general decomposition of the two-photon state produced by spontaneous parametric down-conversion in Hermite-Gaussian modes, in the case that the pump beam is described by a Hermite-Gaussian beam of any order. We show that the spatial correlations depend explicitly on the order of the pump beam, as well as other experimental parameters. We use the decomposition to demonstrate a few interesting cases. Our results are applicable to the engineering of two-photon spatial entanglement, in particular for non-Gaussian states.Comment: 14 page draft, 5 figure

High-dimensional quantum cryptography with twisted light

Quantum key distributions (QKD) systems often rely on polarization of light for encoding, thus limiting the amount of information that can be sent per photon and placing tight bounds on the error that such a system can tolerate. Here we describe a proof-of-principle experiment that indicates the feasibility of high-dimensional QKD based on the transverse structure of the light field, allowing for the transfer of more than 1 bit per photon. Our implementation uses the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of photons and the corresponding mutually unbiased basis of angular position (ANG). Our experiment uses a digital micro-mirror device for the rapid generation of OAM and ANG modes at 4 kHz, and a mode sorter capable of sorting single photons based on their OAM and ANG content with a separation efficiency of 93\%. Through the use of a 7-dimensional alphabet encoded in the OAM and ANG bases, we achieve a channel capacity of 2.05 bits per sifted photon. Our experiment shows that, in addition to having an increased information capacity, QKD systems based on spatial-mode encoding will be more tolerant to errors and thus more robust against eavesdropping attacks