An understanding of the nature of soils in natural and human influence ecosystems is essential if progress is to be made in the determination and monitoring of soil quality. This paper briefly discuss the changing circumstances which have resulted in the increased awareness of the importance of soil as a key component of both natural and human influenced environmental systems. These changed cir...

This chapter presents the first attempt at analyzing the relationship between strategies to protect intellectual property rights and their impact on the likelihood of joining formal standardization processes, based on a small sample of European companies. On the one hand, theory suggests that the stronger the protection of one’s own technological know-how, the higher the likelihood to join form...