Role of International Fund for Agricultural Development/ Community Based Agricultural and Rural Development Programme (IFAD/CBARDP) in Improving the Livelihood of Rural Women: A Case Study of Aliero Local Government Area, Kebbi State, Nigeria

This study examined the role of IFAD/CBARDP on improving rural women’s livelihood in Kebbi State, Nigeria. Multistage sampling technique was adopted to select 80 IFAD participating women. Structured questionnaire was used in data collection. Descriptive statistics was used to present the data obtained. Majority of the women were married, and at active productive ages. Qur’anic education was the common educational status of the participants. The findings also reveal that all the IFAD participating women were provided with assistance based on needs and interest and the common assistance provided was the training on tailoring, knitting, soap and cream making and later the participants were provided with such machines. In addition, the participants were also provided cash loan. The programme has lead to improvement of the living standards of the participants after programme participation. Attitudinal dispositional test using 3 points Likert’s scale reveal that the participating women strongly agreed that the programme has improved their living standard, the loan was adequate, and all the assistance provided was based on their needs and interest. It is concluded that the participating women were involved in decision making, most especially on the assistance provided, and the management of the assistance. It’s recommended that effort should be geared towards increasing women participation in any intervention programme that could uplift the livelihood of the rural communities.Keywords: Role, IFAD/CBARDP, Poverty Reduction, participating women, Kebbi Stat

Risk Identification And Analysis Of Precast Concrete Structure Based On Work Breakdown Structure-Risk Breakdown Structure

Because the prefabricated building started late in China, and subject to management and technical restrictions, the safety problems during the construction of the prefabricated building have not been solved effectively. In view of the problems of complex environments in precast concrete structure and many influencing factors which makes the construction risks are difficult to identify. The work breakdown structure (WBS) - risk breakdown structure (RBS) method is introduced to solve the problem. By means of analyzing the investigation data of the prefabricated building accidents, its risks during construction are identified and coupled. Then the judgment matrix is obtained and the corresponding risk factors can be established. In the meanwhile, the fault tree analysis method has been being used to analyze the sensitivity of three kinds of accidents, such as falling, striking by object and electrocution. The sensitive coefficients of risk factors are calculated and sorted. The result shows that the main risk factors of falling accident are verticality deviation of component installation, deviation of component position and unsecured mechanics. The main risk factors of striking by object/equipment are insufficient strength of components supporting, overturning components and unreasonable of suspension point. The main risk factors of electrocution are improper welding operation and short circuit. Finally, corresponding control measures are put forward according to the risk accidents. The research results provided a good theoretical basis for the risk identification of prefabricated building construction

Needle Tip Force Estimation using an OCT Fiber and a Fused convGRU-CNN Architecture

Needle insertion is common during minimally invasive interventions such as biopsy or brachytherapy. During soft tissue needle insertion, forces acting at the needle tip cause tissue deformation and needle deflection. Accurate needle tip force measurement provides information on needle-tissue interaction and helps detecting and compensating potential misplacement. For this purpose we introduce an image-based needle tip force estimation method using an optical fiber imaging the deformation of an epoxy layer below the needle tip over time. For calibration and force estimation, we introduce a novel deep learning-based fused convolutional GRU-CNN model which effectively exploits the spatio-temporal data structure. The needle is easy to manufacture and our model achieves a mean absolute error of 1.76 +- 1.5 mN with a cross-correlation coefficient of 0.9996, clearly outperforming other methods. We test needles with different materials to demonstrate that the approach can be adapted for different sensitivities and force ranges. Furthermore, we validate our approach in an ex-vivo prostate needle insertion scenario.Comment: Accepted for Publication at MICCAI 201

Vibration analysis of a beam on a moving vehicle under the road excitation with different contact models

Dynamic analysis of a beam on a moving vehicle is presented in this paper. The vehicle is simulated by a four degrees-of-freedom mass-spring system and the beam on top is supported by spring-damping systems. Two contact models named the ‘point contact’ and the ‘patch contact’ respectively, are adopted to simulate the interaction between road surface and vehicular tyres. The equation of motion of the beam-vehicle system is formulated and the dynamic response on the beam under the excitation of the irregular road surface is derived. Numerical simulations are conducted to demonstrate the influence of different factors, such as the length of the contact, the velocity of vehicle, the road condition and the bracing stiffness, etc. on the vibration level of the beam structure, which aims to provide references on the vibration problem in transporting a beam-shaped package

Mitigating Malicious Packets Attack via Vulnerability-aware Heterogeneous Network Devices Assignment

Due to high homogeneity of current network devices, a network is compromised if one node in the network is compromised by exploiting its vulnerability (e.g., malicious packets attack). Many existing works adopt heterogeneity philosophy to improve network survivability. For example, “diverse variants” are assigned to nodes in the network. However, these works assume that diverse variants do not have common vulnerabilities, which deem an invalid assumption in real networks. Therefore, existing diverse variants deployment schemes could not achieve optimal performance. This paper considers that some variants have common vulnerabilities, and proposes a novel solution called Vulnerability-aware Heterogeneous Network Devices Assignment (VHNDA). Firstly, we introduce a new metric named Expected Infected Ratio (EIR) to measure the impact of malicious packets’ attacks spread on the network. Secondly, we use EIR to model the vulnerability-aware diverse variants deployment problem as an integer-programming optimization problem with NP-hard complexity. Considering NP-hardness, we then design a heuristic algorithm named Simulated Annealing Vulnerability-aware Diverse Variants Deployment (SA-VDVD) to address the problem. Finally, we present a low complexity algorithm named Graph Segmentation-based Simulated Annealing Vulnerability-aware Diverse Variants Deployment (GSSA-VDVD) for large-scale networks named graph segmentation-based simulated annealing. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms restrain effectively the spread of malicious packets attack with a reasonable computation cost when compared with baseline algorithms

Strategy evaluation and optimization with an artificial society toward a Pareto optimum

Strategy evaluation and optimization in response to troubling urban issues has become a challenging issue due to increasing social uncertainty, unreliable predictions, and poor decision-making. To address this problem, we propose a universal computational experiment framework with a fine-grained artificial society that is integrated with data-based models. The purpose of the framework is to evaluate the consequences of various combinations of strategies geared towards reaching a Pareto optimum with regards to efficacy versus costs. As an example, by modeling coronavirus 2019 mitigation, we show that Pareto frontier nations could achieve better economic growth and more effective epidemic control through the analysis of real-world data. Our work suggests that a nation’s intervention strategy could be optimized based on the measures adopted by Pareto frontier nations through large-scale computational experiments. Our solution has been validated for epidemic control, and it can be generalized to other urban issues as well

Influence of slope aspect on the microbial properties of rhizospheric and non-rhizospheric soils on the Loess Plateau, China

Slope aspect is an important topographic factor in the micro-ecosystem environment, but its effect on the microbial properties of grassland rhizospheric soil (RS) and non-rhizospheric soil (NRS) remain unclear. A field experiment was conducted at the Ansai Research Station on the Loess Plateau in China to test the influence of slope aspects (south-facing, north-facing, and northwest-facing slopes, all with Artemisia sacrorum as the dominant species) on RS and NRS microbial biomass carbon (MBC) contents, phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) contents, and the rhizospheric effect (RE) of various microbial indices. Soil samples were collected from the three slope aspects, including rhizospheric and non-rhizospheric region, and analyzed to determine the various related microbial indices. The results showed that MBC content differed significantly among the slope aspects in RS but not in NRS, and the RE for MBC content in the south-facing slope was larger than that in the north-facing slope. RS total, bacterial, and Gram-positive bacterial PLFA contents in the south-facing slope were significantly lower than those in the north- and northwest-facing slopes, and RS Gram-negative bacterial (G−) and actinomycete PLFA contents in the south-facing slope were significantly lower than those in the north-facing slope. In contrast, NRS total, bacterial, and G− PLFA contents in the north-facing slope were significantly higher than those in the south- and northwest-facing slopes, and NRS fungal and actinomycete PLFA contents in the north- and south-facing slopes were significantly higher than those in the northwest-facing slope. RE for all PLFA contents except fungal in the northwest-facing slope were higher than those in the south-facing slope. Slope aspect significantly but differentially affected the microbial properties in RS and NRS, and the variable influence was due to an evident RE for most microbial properties.</p

Higgs for Graviton: Simple and Elegant Solution

A Higgs mechanism for gravity is presented, where four scalars with global Lorentz symmetry are employed. We show that in the broken symmetry phase a graviton absorbs all scalars and become massive spin 2 particle with five degrees of freedom. The resulting theory is unitary and free of ghosts.Comment: 8 pages, References added. The decoupling of ghost state is analyzed in detail