932 research outputs found

    The World Bank, the Grant Program, and the CGIAR: A Retrospective Review

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    A paper published as OED Working Paper Series No. 1 by the Operations Evaluation Department of the World Bank. It was prepared by Jock Anderson of the Bank and Dana Dalrymple of USAID as background for an OED study of the Bank's Special Grant Program, which is the source of the World Bank contribution to the CGIAR. The paper describes the CGIAR, its role in development, and the involvement of the World Bank in the CGIAR. A chapter analyzes the planning, review and evaluation process of the CGIAR, and others assess the Group's achievements and the constraints and challenges that it faces. There is an assessment both of the performance of the CGIAR and its centers, and of the World Bank and other donors. The authors conclude that the CGIAR System cannot be taken for granted and requires close attention.There are annexes on World Bank contributions to agricultural research centers not affiliated with the CGIAR and to the Special Program on African Agricultural Research (SPAAR)

    A Compact Microchip-Based Atomic Clock Based on Ultracold Trapped Rb Atoms

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    We propose a compact atomic clock based on ultracold Rb atoms that are magnetically trapped near the surface of an atom microchip. An interrogation scheme that combines electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT) with Ramsey's method of separated oscillatory fields can achieve atomic shot-noise level performance of 10^{-13}/sqrt(tau) for 10^6 atoms. The EIT signal can be detected with a heterodyne technique that provides noiseless gain; with this technique the optical phase shift of a 100 pW probe beam can be detected at the photon shot-noise level. Numerical calculations of the density matrix equations are used to identify realistic operating parameters at which AC Stark shifts are eliminated. By considering fluctuations in these parameters, we estimate that AC Stark shifts can be canceled to a level better than 2*10^{-14}. An overview of the apparatus is presented with estimates of duty cycle and power consumption.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, 5 table

    Unlocking CO Depletion in Protoplanetary Disks II. Primordial C/H Predictions Inside the CO Snowline

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    CO is thought to be the main reservoir of volatile carbon in protoplanetary disks, and thus the primary initial source of carbon in the atmospheres of forming giant planets. However, recent observations of protoplanetary disks point towards low volatile carbon abundances in many systems, including at radii interior to the CO snowline. One potential explanation is that gas phase carbon is chemically reprocessed into less volatile species, which are frozen on dust grain surfaces as ice. This mechanism has the potential to change the primordial C/H ratio in the gas. However, current observations primarily probe the upper layers of the disk. It is not clear if the low volatile carbon abundances extend to the midplane, where planets form. We have run a grid of 198 chemical models, exploring how the chemical reprocessing of CO depends on disk mass, dust grain size distribution, temperature, cosmic ray and X-ray ionization rate, and initial water abundance. Building on our previous work focusing on the warm molecular layer, here we analyze the results for our grid of models in the disk midplane at 12 au. We find that either an ISM level cosmic ray ionization rate or the presence of UV photons due to a low dust surface density are needed to chemically reduce the midplane CO gas abundance by at least an order of magnitude within 1 Myr. In the majority of our models CO does not undergo substantial reprocessing by in situ chemistry and there is little change in the gas phase C/H and C/O ratios over the lifetime of the typical disk. However, in the small sub-set of disks where the disk midplane is subject to a source of ionization or photolysis, the gas phase C/O ratio increases by up to nearly 9 orders of magnitude due to conversion of CO into volatile hydrocarbons.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ, 15 pages, 10 figures, 3 table

    Herschel observations of EXtra-Ordinary Sources: Analysis of the HIFI 1.2 THz Wide Spectral Survey Toward Orion KL II. Chemical Implications

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    We present chemical implications arising from spectral models fit to the Herschel/HIFI spectral survey toward the Orion Kleinmann-Low nebula (Orion KL). We focus our discussion on the eight complex organics detected within the HIFI survey utilizing a novel technique to identify those molecules emitting in the hottest gas. In particular, we find the complex nitrogen bearing species CH3_{3}CN, C2_{2}H3_{3}CN, C2_{2}H5_{5}CN, and NH2_{2}CHO systematically trace hotter gas than the oxygen bearing organics CH3_{3}OH, C2_{2}H5_{5}OH, CH3_{3}OCH3_{3}, and CH3_{3}OCHO, which do not contain nitrogen. If these complex species form predominantly on grain surfaces, this may indicate N-bearing organics are more difficult to remove from grain surfaces than O-bearing species. Another possibility is that hot (Tkin_{\rm kin}∼\sim300 K) gas phase chemistry naturally produces higher complex cyanide abundances while suppressing the formation of O-bearing complex organics. We compare our derived rotation temperatures and molecular abundances to chemical models, which include gas-phase and grain surface pathways. Abundances for a majority of the detected complex organics can be reproduced over timescales ≳\gtrsim 105^{5} years, with several species being under predicted by less than 3σ\sigma. Derived rotation temperatures for most organics, furthermore, agree reasonably well with the predicted temperatures at peak abundance. We also find that sulfur bearing molecules which also contain oxygen (i.e. SO, SO2_{2}, and OCS) tend to probe the hottest gas toward Orion KL indicating the formation pathways for these species are most efficient at high temperatures.Comment: 31 pages, 6 figures, 1 Table, accepted to the Astrophysical Journa

    An Atom Michelson Interferometer on a Chip Using a Bose-Einstein Condensate

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    An atom Michelson interferometer is implemented on an "atom chip." The chip uses lithographically patterned conductors and external magnetic fields to produce and guide a Bose-Einstein condensate. Splitting, reflecting, and recombining of condensate atoms are achieved by a standing-wave light field having a wave vector aligned along the atom waveguide. A differential phase shift between the two arms of the interferometer is introduced by either a magnetic-field gradient or with an initial condensate velocity. Interference contrast is still observable at 20% with atom propagation time of 10 ms

    Application of Shaken Lattice Interferometry Based Sensors to Space Navigation

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    High-sensitivity shaken lattice interferometry (SLI) based sensors have the potential to provide deep space missions with the ability to precisely measure non-gravitational perturbing forces. This work considers the simulation of the OSIRIS-REx mission navigation in the vicinity of Bennu with the addition of measurements from onboard SLI-based accelerometers. The simulation is performed in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Mission Analysis, Operations and Navigation Toolkit (MONTE) and incorporates OSIRIS-REx reconstructed trajectory and attitude data from the Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility (NAIF) database. The use of the reconstructed data from NAIF provides realistic true dynamical errors and JPL's MONTE software allows for a high-fidelity simulation of a nominal reference for the filter. The navigation performance and reduction of tracking and complex modeling enabled by the onboard SLI-based sensor are presented for two orbital phases of the OSIRIS-REx mission. Overall, the results show that the addition of SLI-based accelerometer measurements improves navigation performance, when compared to a radiometric tracking only configuration. In addition, results demonstrate that highly-precise accelerometer measurements can effectively replace at least one day of DSN passes over a three-day period, thereby reducing tracking requirements. Furthermore, it is shown that lower-fidelity surface force modeling and parameter estimation is required when using onboard SLI-based accelerometers.Comment: 30 pages, 8 figure

    Revealing buried information: Statistical processing techniques for ultracold gas image analysis

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    The techniques of principal and independent component analysis are applied to images of ultracold atoms. As an illustrative example, we present the use of these model-independent methods to rapidly determine the differential phase of a BEC interferometer from large sets of images of interference patterns. These techniques have been useful in the calibration of the experiment and in the investigation of phase randomization. The details of the algorithms are provided.Comment: v2: Many changes made to answer reviewer comments and improve clarity. 29 pages, 9 figures v3: Small change to emphasize role of models in result interpretation. 29 pages, 9 figure

    Probing the Gas Content of Late-stage Protoplanetary Disks with N_2H^+

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    The lifetime of gas in circumstellar disks is a fundamental quantity that informs our understanding of planet formation. Studying disk gas evolution requires measurements of disk masses around stars of various ages. Because H_2 gas is unobservable under most disk conditions, total disk masses are based on indirect tracers such as sub-mm dust and CO emission. The uncertainty in the relation between these tracers and the disk mass increases as the disk evolves. In a few well-studied disks, CO exhibits depletions of up to 100× below the assumed interstellar value. Thus, additional tracers are required to accurately determine the total gas mass. The relative lack of nitrogen found in solid solar system bodies may indicate that it persists in volatile form, making nitrogen-bearing species more robust tracers of gas in more evolved disks. Here we present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array detections of N_2H^+ in two mature, ~5–11 Myr old disks in the Upper Scorpius OB Association. Such detections imply the presence of H_2-rich gas and sources of ionization, both required for N_2H^+ formation. The Upper Sco disks also show elevated N_2H^+/CO flux ratios when compared to previously observed disks with ≳10× higher CO fluxes. Based on line ratio predictions from a grid of thermochemical disk models, a significantly reduced CO/H_2 abundance of <10^(−6) for a gas-to-dust ratio of ≳100 is required to produce the observed N_2H^+ fluxes. These systems appear to maintain H_2 gas reservoirs and indicate that carbon- and nitrogen-bearing species follow distinct physical or chemical pathways as disks evolve
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