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The paper focuses on key success factors of startups in the European Union. Startup companies have a massive potential to boost the level of innovation and competitiveness of national economies. They are also uniquely equipped to provide extremely effective and flexible ways of meeting both existing and emerging market needs. However, the development of these microventures differs from country to country. Hence, we put forth a hypothesis that strategic success factors in the development of startups vary in highly developed and catching-up countries. Our main goal was to determine the key success factors of startups in the EU, and to classify the gap between developed and lagging Member States. For this purpose, we applied the method of component analysis on startup data available for selected the EU states. We managed to isolate 5 components explaining 72% of data variability, all of which can be linked to human capital as well as to formal and informal economic institutions. The results confirmed the validity of our hypothesis. We established that more developed countries offer an institutional competitive advantage to startups, while the gap in success factors between highly developed and catching-up countries can be attributed to human capital and to institutions. Based on our findings, we offer suggestions how to reduce this gap by improving formal and informal institutions via innovative public policy and by supporting education.

Temperature fluctuation and abuse in the food cold chain (FCC) is becoming an increasingly crucial factor in the process of food production and for the logistic business, especially in COVID-19 pandemic. The quality of perishable food products depends largely on accurate transport and maintenance temperature. The evidence for temperature-related food waste and loss is extensive. The research problem is thus: how to decrease and control food losses caused by temperature abuse in the FCC and restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The primary objective is to propose a framework for real-time temperature measurement protocols supported by passive RFID, IoT and Statistical Process Control (SPC) charts. This method allows not only the signaling of temperature abuse alerts but, in addition to hitherto methods, investigation and mitigation of the causes of process instability of individual FCC links in the future. The secondary objective is to delineate the necessary data sources and ways of their collection and utilization in order to decrease food losses and waste via process stabilization of temperature in transport and storage. As contribution to current literature and practice, we offer an in-depth analysis of threats in the FCC in food transport and storage infrastructure and a solution supplemented by SPC charts and tested in controlled experiments that is practicable from economic and technical standpoints.

Summary The following paper explores circular economy as a model of management within the framework of sustainable development. Its structure comprises 4 parts. The first part illustrates the role of sustainable development as an emerging paradigm in the theory of modern economics and in the recent policy of the European Union. In the second part, the authors demonstrate the applicability of sustainable development based on the relevant management models on the micro, meso and macro levels of economy. The third part discusses the concept of circular economy, in particular the various definitions of the phenomenon, its advantages over the linear economy, the role of innovations in its development and how to overcome barriers to its application. The fourth part outlines the current state of implementation of the circular economy in the EU in regard to its normative implications for the member countries. The conclusions close the exploration. The paper is theoretical, based on the review of the international literature on the subject. The unique contribution of the authors consists of the systematic analysis of the term circular economy as a holistic model of sustainable development and of illustrating the benefits of its promotion in the management practice.

The protonation of a number of aromatic and a#-unsaturated aliphatic aldehydes, ketones, and carb~xylic~acids in sulfuric acid has been found to obey the HA acidity function, rather than Ho.