Improving the Effectiveness of Evaluation in Rural Development Projects

SUMMARY Built?in project evaluation units can do much to improve the design and implementation of rural development projects if types of information required are unambiguously specified by aid agencies, governments and project managements and if adequate resources are provided in support of evaluation efforts. Experience suggests that the evaluation role has not in the past been carefully examined and that the true costs have been underestimated. Possible roles for evaluation units are spelled out in relation to projects operational structure, and two types of monitoring capability—one for conventional and one for innovative projects—are identified and discussed. RESUME Comment améliorer l'Efficacité de l'Evaluation dans les Projets de Développement Rural Des unités d'évaluation intégrées au Projet lui?même peuvent améliorer de façon substantielle le plan et l'exécution des projets de développement rural si toutefois les informations recueillies sont précisées sans aucune ambiguité par les bureaux d'aide, les gouvernements et les directions de projet et si on pourvoit à des ressources adéquates capables de supporter les efforts apportés à cette évaluation. L'expérience semble suggérer que, par le passé, son rôle n'a pas été examiné à sa juste mesure, et que les coûts réels ont été sousestimés. Le rôle possible de ces unités d'évaluation est explicité en relation avec la structure opérationnelle des projets, et on identifie et discute deux systèmes possibles de contrôle—l'un pour les projets conventionnels et l'autre pour ceux qui innovent. RESUMEN Mejorando la Efectividad de la Evaluación en Proyectos de Desarrollo Rural La inclusión de unidades de evaluación en proyectos de desarrollo rural puede hacer mucho por mejorar el diseño y la ejecución de los mismos si los organismos de ayuda, los gobiernos y la dirección de los proyectos especifican de manera inequívoca los tipos de información que se requieren, y si se proveen recursos adecuados para apoyar los esfuerzos de evaluación. La experiencia indica que el papel de la evaluación no ha sido examinado con cuidado en el pasado y que los verdaderos costos han sido subestimados. El artículo especifica las funciones posibles de las unidades de evaluación en relación con la estructura operativa de los proyectos, e identifica y discute dos tipos de capacidad de observación, una para proyectos ‘convencionales’ y otra para proyectos innovadores

The Lantern Vol. 7, No. 3, June 1939

• Commencement Sonnet • Largo Appassionato • More Sonnets to Earth • Vladimir • Abe Lincoln in Illinois • Dark Lives • Enter Mr. Smithingham II • A Character is Sketched • Sonnet • Out of the Dawn • Wistaria • Poem Without a Name • You Have Loved the Nighthttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/lantern/1018/thumbnail.jp

The Lantern Vol. 7, No. 2, March 1939

• Editorial • Easter Eggs • Fever • Sonnets to the Planet We Call Earth • Asking Her Father • New Hampshire Ghost Story • Mary • On Approaching Death • On Turning Over a New Leaf • In Defense of Americanism • What is this Love? • Martyrs of Progress • Recurring • Splintershttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/lantern/1013/thumbnail.jp

The Lantern Vol. 7, No. 2, March 1939

• Editorial • Easter Eggs • Fever • Sonnets to the Planet We Call Earth • Asking Her Father • New Hampshire Ghost Story • Mary • On Approaching Death • On Turning Over a New Leaf • In Defense of Americanism • What is this Love? • Martyrs of Progress • Recurring • Splintershttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/lantern/1013/thumbnail.jp

Modal Logics of Topological Relations

Logical formalisms for reasoning about relations between spatial regions play a fundamental role in geographical information systems, spatial and constraint databases, and spatial reasoning in AI. In analogy with Halpern and Shoham's modal logic of time intervals based on the Allen relations, we introduce a family of modal logics equipped with eight modal operators that are interpreted by the Egenhofer-Franzosa (or RCC8) relations between regions in topological spaces such as the real plane. We investigate the expressive power and computational complexity of logics obtained in this way. It turns out that our modal logics have the same expressive power as the two-variable fragment of first-order logic, but are exponentially less succinct. The complexity ranges from (undecidable and) recursively enumerable to highly undecidable, where the recursively enumerable logics are obtained by considering substructures of structures induced by topological spaces. As our undecidability results also capture logics based on the real line, they improve upon undecidability results for interval temporal logics by Halpern and Shoham. We also analyze modal logics based on the five RCC5 relations, with similar results regarding the expressive power, but weaker results regarding the complexity

Cross-sections for nuclide production in 56Fe target irradiated by 300, 500,750, 1000, 1500, and 2600 MeV protons compared with data on hydrogen target irradiation by 300, 500, 750, 1000, and 1500 MeV/nucleon 56Fe ions

Cross-sections for radioactive nuclide production in 56Fe(p,x) reactions at 300, 500, 750, 1000, 1500, and 2600 MeV were measured using the ITEP U-10 proton accelerator. In total, 221 independent and cumulative yields of products of half-lives from 6.6 min to 312 days have been obtained via the direct-spectrometry method. The measured data have been compared with the experimental data obtained elsewhere by the direct and inverse kinematics methods and with calculations by 15 codes, namely: MCNPX (INCL, CEM2k, BERTINI, ISABEL), LAHET (BERTINI, ISABEL), CEM03 (.01, .G1, .S1), LAQGSM03 (.01, .G1, >.S1), CASCADE-2004, LAHETO, and BRIEFF. Most of our data are in a good agreement with the inverse kinematics results and disprove the results of some earlier activation measurements that were quite different from the inverse kinematics measurements. The most significant calculation-to-experiment differences are observed in the yields of the A<30 light nuclei, indicating that further improvements in nuclear reaction models are needed, and pointing out as well to a necessity of more complete measurements of such reactions.Comment: 53 pages, 9 figures, 6 tables, only pdf file, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Atomic Resonance and Scattering

Contains reports on four research projects.U.S. Air Force - Office of Scientific Research (Grant AFOSR-76-2972)National Science Foundation (Grant CHE79-02967)National Science Foundation (Grant PHY79-09743)Joint Services Electronics Program (Contract DAAG29-78-C-0020)Joint Services Electronics Program (Contract DAAG29-80-C-0104

Search for Gravitational Waves from Low Mass Compact Binary Coalescence in LIGO's Sixth Science Run and Virgo's Science Runs 2 and 3

We report on a search for gravitational waves from coalescing compact binaries using LIGO and Virgo observations between July 7, 2009 and October 20, 2010. We searched for signals from binaries with total mass between 2 and 25 solar masses; this includes binary neutron stars, binary black holes, and binaries consisting of a black hole and neutron star. The detectors were sensitive to systems up to 40 Mpc distant for binary neutron stars, and further for higher mass systems. No gravitational-wave signals were detected. We report upper limits on the rate of compact binary coalescence as a function of total mass, including the results from previous LIGO and Virgo observations. The cumulative 90%-confidence rate upper limits of the binary coalescence of binary neutron star, neutron star- black hole and binary black hole systems are 1.3 x 10^{-4}, 3.1 x 10^{-5} and 6.4 x 10^{-6} Mpc^{-3}yr^{-1}, respectively. These upper limits are up to a factor 1.4 lower than previously derived limits. We also report on results from a blind injection challenge.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures. For a repository of data used in the publication, go to: . Also see the announcement for this paper on ligo.org at: <http://www.ligo.org/science/Publication-S6CBCLowMass/index.php