Analytical strategies for the early quality and safety assurance in the global feed chain. Approaches for nitrogen adulterants in soybean meal and mineral and transformer oils in vegetable oils.

In the past decade, several major food safety crises originated from problems with feed. Consequently, there is an urgent need for early detection of fraudulent adulteration and contamination in the feed chain. Strategies are presented for two specific cases, viz. adulterations of (i) soybean meal with melamine and other types of adulterants/contaminants and (ii) vegetable oils with mineral oil, transformer oil or other oils. These strategies comprise screening at the feed mill or port of entry with non-destructive spectroscopic methods (NIRS and Raman), followed by post-screening and confirmation in the laboratory with MS-based methods. The spectroscopic techniques are suitable for on-site and on-line applications. Currently they are suited to detect fraudulent adulteration at relatively high levels but not to detect low level contamination. The potential use of the strategies for non-targeted analysis is demonstrated.

New Organizational Leadership: Nonstate Actors in Global Economic Governance

States and international organizations have found irresistible cause in a globalizing world to coopt nonstate actors (NGOs, private standard setters and so forth) to manage the manifold problems arising under their stretched mandates and resources. The pooling of capacities in the pursuit of common goals seems perfectly sensible. Yet although the strategy of cooptation has become a policy of choice, policy makers often lack full knowledge of its implications. As Philip Selznick first showed, cooptation can have unintended consequences, shifting leadership from one organization to another. We place this fertile insight in a better specified analytical framework. That is, one capable of explaining when and how leadership shifts occur and where the status quo leaders will remain at the helm. Using original interview data and structured focused comparisons to test the framework, we reveal dramatic variation in leadership changes following the cooptation of outside actors in global financial and environmental governance.

Two problems from the Polishchuk and Positselski book on Quadratic algebras

In the book ’Quadratic algebras’ by Polishchuk and Positselski [23] algebras with a small number of generators (n = 2, 3) are considered. For some number r of relations possible Hilbert series are listed, and those appearing as series of Koszul algebras are specified. The first case, where it was not possible to do, namely the case of three generators n = 3 and six relations r = 6 is formulated as an open problem. We give here a complete answer to this question, namely for quadratic algebras with dimA_1 = dimA_2 = 3, we list all possible Hilbert series, and find out which of them can come from Koszul algebras, and which can not. As a consequence of this classification, we found an algebra, which serves as a counterexample to another problem from the same book [23] (Chapter 7, Sec. 1, Conjecture 2), saying that Koszul algebra of finite global homological dimension d has dimA_1 > d. Namely, the 3-generated algebra A given by relations xx + yx = xz = zy = 0 is Koszul and its Koszul dual algebra A^! has Hilbert series of degree 4: HA! (t) = 1 + 3t + 3t^2 + 2t^3 + t^4, hence A has global homological dimension 4.