11 research outputs found
Linkages between health and agriculture sectors in Ethiopia: a formative research study exploring barriers, facilitators and opportunities for local level coordination to deliver nutritional programmes and services.
BACKGROUND: In Ethiopia, poor infant and young child feeding practices and low household dietary diversity remain widespread. The Government has adopted the National Nutrition Programme that emphasizes the need for multi-sectoral collaboration to effectively deliver nutrition-sensitive and nutrition-specific interventions. The Sustainable Undernutrition Reduction in Ethiopia (SURE) programme is one such Government-led initiative that will be implemented jointly by the health and agriculture sectors across 150 districts in Ethiopia. Prior to the design of the SURE programme, this formative research study was conducted to understand how the governance structure and linkages between health and agriculture sectors at local levels can support implementation of programme activities. METHODS: Data were collected from eight districts in Ethiopia using 16 key informant interviews and eight focus group discussions conducted with district and community-level focal persons for nutrition including health and agriculture extension workers. A framework analysis approach was used to analyze data. RESULTS: Few respondents were aware of the National Nutrition Programme or of their own roles within the multi-sectoral coordination mechanism outlined by the government to deliver nutritional programmes and services. Lack of knowledge or commitment to nutrition, lack of resources and presence of competing priorities within individual sectors were identified as barriers to effective coordination between health and agriculture sectors. Strong central commitment to nutrition, increased involvement of other partners in nutrition and the presence of community development workers such as health and agriculture extension workers were identified as facilitators of effective coordination. CONCLUSIONS: Federal guidelines to implement the Ethiopian National Nutrition Programme have yet to be translated to district or community level administrative structures. Sustained political commitment and provision of resources will be necessary to achieve effective inter-sectoral collaboration to deliver nutritional services. The health and agriculture extension platforms may be used to link interventions for sustained nutrition impact
Detection of strongly processed ice in the central starburst of NGC4945
The composition of ice grains provides an important tool for the study of the
molecular environment of star forming regions. Using ISAAC at the VLT to obtain
spectra around 4.65 microns we have detected for the first time `XCN' and CO
ice in an extragalactic environment: the nuclear region of the nearby dusty
starburst/AGN galaxy NGC4945. The profile of the solid CO band reveals the
importance of thermal processing of the ice while the prominence of the XCN
band attests to the importance of energetic processing of the ice by FUV
radiation and/or energetic particles. In analogy to the processing of ices by
embedded protostars in our Galaxy, we attribute the processing of the ices in
the center of NGC4945 to ongoing massive star formation. Our M-band spectrum
also shows strong HI Pfund-beta and H2 0-0 S(9) line emission and gas phase CO
absorption lines. The HI, H2, PAH, gas phase CO and the ices seem to be
embedded in a rotating molecular disk which is undergoing vigorous star
formation. Recently, strong OCN- absorption has been detected in the spectrum
of the Galactic center star GC:IRS19. The most likely environment for the OCN-
absorption is the strongly UV-exposed GC molecular ring. The presence of
processed ice in the center of NGC4945 and our Galactic center leads us to
believe that processed ice may be a common characteristic of dense molecular
material in star forming galactic nuclei.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication in A&A. Also available
at this http://www.astro.rug.nl/~spoon/publications.htm
Gas-phase H2O and CO2 toward massive protostars
We present a study of gas-phase H2O and CO2 toward a sample of 14 massive
protostars with the Short Wavelength Spectrometer (SWS) on board the Infrared
Space Observatory (ISO). Modeling of the H2O spectra using a homogeneous model
with a constant excitation temperature T_ex shows that the H2O abundances
increase with temperature, up to a few times 10^-5 with respect to H2 for the
hottest sources (T_ex ~500 K). This is still a factor of 10 lower than the H2O
ice abundances observed toward cold sources in which evaporation is not
significant (Keane et al. 2001). Gas-phase CO2 is not abundant in our sources.
The abundances are nearly constant for T_ex>~100 K at a value of a few times
10^-7, much lower than the solid-state abundances of ~1--3 times 10^-6
(Gerakines et al. 1999). For both H2O and CO2 the gas/solid ratio increases
with temperature, but the increase is much stronger for H2O than for CO2,
suggesting a different type of chemistry. In addition to the homogeneous
models, a power law model has been developed for one of our sources, based on
the physical structure of this region as determined from submillimeter data by
van der Tak et al. (1999). The resulting H2O model spectrum gives a good fit to
the data.Comment: Published in the Proceedings of the `ISO beyond the Peaks' Workshop,
eds. A. Salama, M.F. Kessler, K. Leech & B. Schulz. ESA-SP 456, p67 (2000), 4
pages including 6 figure
Grain Surface Models and Data for Astrochemistry
AbstractThe cross-disciplinary field of astrochemistry exists to understand the formation, destruction, and survival of molecules in astrophysical environments. Molecules in space are synthesized via a large variety of gas-phase reactions, and reactions on dust-grain surfaces, where the surface acts as a catalyst. A broad consensus has been reached in the astrochemistry community on how to suitably treat gas-phase processes in models, and also on how to present the necessary reaction data in databases; however, no such consensus has yet been reached for grain-surface processes. A team of âŒ25 experts covering observational, laboratory and theoretical (astro)chemistry met in summer of 2014 at the Lorentz Center in Leiden with the aim to provide solutions for this problem and to review the current state-of-the-art of grain surface models, both in terms of technical implementation into models as well as the most up-to-date information available from experiments and chemical computations. This review builds on the results of this workshop and gives an outlook for future directions
The Astropy Problem
The Astropy Project (http://astropy.org) is, in its own words, "a community
effort to develop a single core package for Astronomy in Python and foster
interoperability between Python astronomy packages." For five years this
project has been managed, written, and operated as a grassroots,
self-organized, almost entirely volunteer effort while the software is used by
the majority of the astronomical community. Despite this, the project has
always been and remains to this day effectively unfunded. Further, contributors
receive little or no formal recognition for creating and supporting what is now
critical software. This paper explores the problem in detail, outlines possible
solutions to correct this, and presents a few suggestions on how to address the
sustainability of general purpose astronomical software
The feedback of massive stars on interstellar astrochemical processes
Astrochemistry is a discipline that studies physico-chemical processes in astrophysical environments. Such environments are characterized by conditions that are substantially different from those existing in usual chemical laboratories. Models which aim to explain the formation of molecular species in interstellar environments must take into account various factors, including many that are directly, or indirectly related to the populations of massive stars in galaxies. The aim of this paper is to review the influence of massive stars, whatever their evolution stage, on the physico-chemical processes at work in interstellar environments. These influences include the ultraviolet radiation field, the production of high energy particles, the synthesis of radionuclides and the formation of shocks that permeate the interstellar medium
MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy Using Low Doses in a Small Sample of Women with Chronic Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Surface formation routes of interstellar molecules: Hydrogenation reactions in simple ices
Item does not contain fulltext5 p