Hydro-political assessment of water governance from the top-down and review of literature on local level institutions and practices in the Volta Basin

Water resource management / Governance / River basin development / Water law / Colonialism / Institutions / Social participation / Women / Water use

Guide methodologique: Méthode communautaire participative d’inventaire et de priorisation des technologies / pratiques d’agriculture élevage-agroforesterie climato-intelligentes

Ce guide traite des questions d’identification des interventions prioritaires pour les communautés dans le contexte du changement climatique. Il s’agit d’une approche participative d’inventaire et de priorisation des technologies / pratiques d’agriculture-élevage-agroforesterie et sociales climato-intelligentes. Le guide fournit aux agents de terrain un accompagnement et́ape par et́ape pour travailler avec les acteurs clédans les sites cibles, pour identifier les pratiques prometteuses qui aideraient ces derniers às’adapter aux variabilités climatiques dans leurs activités de production. Le guide a étéproduit dans le cadre d’un projet “Building resilient agro-sylvopastoral systems in West Africa through participatory action research” (BRASPAR)” qui est l’un des projets de la Composante 2 financée par le programme de recherche du CGIAR sur les Changements Climatiques, l’Agriculture etla Seć urité Alimentaire (CCAFS). La composante 2 du CCAFS, quitraite des pratiques ettechnologies climato-intelligentes, s’attaque aux défis de comment passer àune agriculture climato-intelligente (ACI) àplus grande échelle pour permettre aux system̀ es agricoles d’et̂re transformeś et reó rienteś pour soutenir la seć uritéalimentaire dans le contexte actuel de changement climatique. Pilotépar l’ICRAFWCA/Sahel, le projet BRAS- PAR est mis en œuvre au Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger et Seń eǵ al par un consortium d’institutions nationales de recherche (INERA, SARI, INRAN et ISRA), IUCN et ILRI

Methodological guide: Community participatory inventory and prioritization of climate-smart crop-livestock agroforestry technologies / practices

This guide addresses the issue of identifying priority interventions for communities in the face of climate change. The manual is about participatory approach of inventorizing and prioritizing climate-smart crop-livestock-agroforestry and social technologies / practices. The guide provides a step by step guidance on how project/extension workers can work with communities and other development stakeholders in the target sites to identify practices that can help local communities to better adapt to climate variability in production. The guide was developed within the framework of a project “Building resilient agro-sylvo-pastoral systems in West Africa through participatory action research” (BRAS-PAR)” which is one ofthe flagship 2 projects funded by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). The flagship 2 of CCAFS, which is about climate-smart technologies and practices, addresses the challenge of how to transition to a climate-smart agriculture (CSA) at a large scale for enabling agricultural systems to be transformed and reoriented to support food security under the new realities of climate change. Led by ICRAF-WCA/Sahel, the BRAS-PAR project is being implemented by a consortium of National research institutes in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger and Senegal, IUCN, and ILRI

SMART: Unique splitting-while-merging framework for gene clustering

Copyright @ 2014 Fa et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Successful clustering algorithms are highly dependent on parameter settings. The clustering performance degrades significantly unless parameters are properly set, and yet, it is difficult to set these parameters a priori. To address this issue, in this paper, we propose a unique splitting-while-merging clustering framework, named “splitting merging awareness tactics” (SMART), which does not require any a priori knowledge of either the number of clusters or even the possible range of this number. Unlike existing self-splitting algorithms, which over-cluster the dataset to a large number of clusters and then merge some similar clusters, our framework has the ability to split and merge clusters automatically during the process and produces the the most reliable clustering results, by intrinsically integrating many clustering techniques and tasks. The SMART framework is implemented with two distinct clustering paradigms in two algorithms: competitive learning and finite mixture model. Nevertheless, within the proposed SMART framework, many other algorithms can be derived for different clustering paradigms. The minimum message length algorithm is integrated into the framework as the clustering selection criterion. The usefulness of the SMART framework and its algorithms is tested in demonstration datasets and simulated gene expression datasets. Moreover, two real microarray gene expression datasets are studied using this approach. Based on the performance of many metrics, all numerical results show that SMART is superior to compared existing self-splitting algorithms and traditional algorithms. Three main properties of the proposed SMART framework are summarized as: (1) needing no parameters dependent on the respective dataset or a priori knowledge about the datasets, (2) extendible to many different applications, (3) offering superior performance compared with counterpart algorithms.National Institute for Health Researc

Enhancement of magnetocaloric effect in the Gd2Al phase by Co alloying

To understand the effect of Co doping on the magnetic entropy changes in Gd2 Al phase, a series of Gd2AlCox alloys with 0 ≤ x ≤ 0.6 were synthesized by arc-melting and the crystal structure was analyzed by XRD. The magnetic properties were investigated, and the entropychanges were calculated for a magnetic field change of 50 kOe. All the as-cast alloys dopedwith Co exhibited greater magnetic entropy changes than the original binary Gd2 Al phase. The main reasons attributed to this are the increase of ferromagnetic interaction indicated by the disappearance of cusp and sharp drop in magnetization and the reduction of the critical field required to trigger the field-induced transition below 50 K in Gd2 Al phase after Co alloying

Mise en place d’un Village Intelligent face au Climat pour la réduction des risques climatiques et de l’insécurité alimentaire à Daga-Birame, Sénégal. Guide de visite de terrain pour la Réunion du Comité Scientifique Indépendant du CCAFS

À Daga Birame, au Sénégal, CCAFS et ses partenaires ont mis en place un village climato-intelligent (CSV) dans lequel plusieurs activités sont menées. Sur la base de la vision du village et de son avenir, un ensemble d'actions ont été identifiées par la communauté afin d'atteindre les changements souhaités dans la productivité agricole et la sécurité alimentaire tels que les activités génératrices de revenus, l'amélioration de la résilience et la gestion durable des ressources naturelles du village. Ces actions ont été structurées autour de quatre composantes: Les services d'information climatologique (SIC); le développement des technologies / pratiques agricoles adaptées au climat; le renforcement de capacités des villageois et celle des connaissances et des institutions locales

Dynamics of antigenemia and transmission intensity of Wuchereria bancrofti following cessation of mass drug administration in a formerly highly endemic region of Mali

Background After seven annual rounds of mass drug administration (MDA) in six Malian villages highly endemic for Wuchereria bancrofti (overall prevalence rate of 42.7%), treatment was discontinued in 2008. Surveillance was performed over the ensuing 5 years to detect recrudescence. Methods Circulating filarial antigen (CFA) was measured using immunochromatographic card tests (ICT) and Og4C3 ELISA in 6–7 year-olds. Antibody to the W. bancrofti infective larval stage (L3) antigen, Wb123, was tested in the same population in 2012. Microfilaraemia was assessed in ICT-positive subjects. Anopheles gambiae complex specimens were collected monthly using human landing catch (HLC) and pyrethrum spray catch (PSC). Anopheles gambiae complex infection with W. bancrofti was determined by dissection and reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) of mosquito pools. Results Annual CFA prevalence rates using ICT in children increased over time from 0% (0/289) in 2009 to 2.7% (8/301) in 2011, 3.9% (11/285) in 2012 and 4.5% (14/309) in 2013 (trend χ 2  = 11.85, df =3, P = 0.0006). Wb123 antibody positivity rates in 2013 were similar to the CFA prevalence by ELISA (5/285). Although two W. bancrofti-infected Anopheles were observed by dissection among 12,951 mosquitoes collected by HLC, none had L3 larvae when tested by L3-specific RT-PCR. No positive pools were detected among the mosquitoes collected by pyrethrum spray catch. Whereas ICT in 6–7 year-olds was the major surveillance tool, ICT positivity was also assessed in older children and adults (8–65 years old). CFA prevalence decreased in this group from 4.9% (39/800) to 3.5% (28/795) and 2.8% (50/1,812) in 2009, 2011 and 2012, respectively (trend χ 2  = 7.361, df =2, P = 0.0067). Some ICT-positive individuals were microfilaraemic in 2009 [2.6% (1/39)] and 2011 [8.3% (3/36)], but none were positive in 2012 or 2013. Conclusion Although ICT rates in children increased over the 5-year surveillance period, the decrease in ICT prevalence in the older group suggests a reduction in transmission intensity. This was consistent with the failure to detect infective mosquitoes or microfilaraemia. The threshold of ICT positivity in children may need to be re-assessed and other adjunct surveillance tools considered

The Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI): rationale, development and implementation from 2002-2008

Schistosomiasis remains one of the most prevalent parasitic diseases in developing countries. After malaria, schistosomiasis is the most important tropical disease in terms of human morbidity with significant economic and public health consequences. Although schistosomiasis has recently attracted increased focus and funding for control, it has been estimated that less than 20% of the funding needed to control the disease in Africa is currently available. In this article the following issues are discussed: the rationale, development and objectives of the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI)-supported programmes; the management approaches followed to achieve implementation by each country; mapping, monitoring and evaluation activities with quantifiable impact of control programmes; monitoring for any potential drug resistance; and finally exit strategies within each country. The results have demonstrated that morbidity due to schistosomiasis has been reduced by the control programmes. While challenges remain, the case for the control of schistosomiasis has been strengthened by research by SCI teams and the principle that a national programme using ‘preventive chemotherapy' can be successfully implemented in sub-Saharan Africa, whenever the resources are available. SCI and partners are now actively striving to raise further funds to expand the coverage of integrated control of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in sub-Saharan Afric