Gender and innovation processes in maize-based systems

This MAIZE report offers a panorama of the gender dimensions of local agricultural innovation processes in the context of maize-based farming systems and livelihoods

Women as moral pioneers? Experiences of first trimester antenatal screening

Copyright @ 2005 Elsevier Ltd.The implementation of innovative medical technologies can raise unprecedented ethical, legal and social dilemmas. This is particularly so in the area of antenatal screening, which is dominated by the language of risk and probabilities. Second trimester serum screening for Down's syndrome and neural tube defects has a well-established place in antenatal care. Increasingly, first trimester screening with biochemical and ultrasound markers is being proposed as advance on this, yielding higher detection rates of Down's syndrome at an earlier gestational age. This article explores the experiences of 14 women offered innovative first trimester screening, which takes place within the context of a detailed ultrasound scan. The study is set within the UK, where recent policy changes mean that the offer of screening for fetal anomalies, particularly Down's syndrome, will become a routine part of antenatal care and offered to all pregnant women. This paper focuses on the significance of the scan in first trimester screening, and some of the potential dilemmas for women that can result from this. It then discusses the ways in which women made their decisions about screening, in particular, their work as ‘moral pioneers’. We found that the part played by the ultrasound scan in first trimester screening, particularly in relation to the higher-quality images now being obtained, has the potential to introduce new and novel ethical dilemmas for pregnant women. Although concerns have been raised about pregnant women viewing ultrasound scans as benign, many of the women reported having thought carefully through their own moral beliefs and values prior to screening. It seems that whatever other implications they may have, first trimester screening technologies will continue the tradition of pregnant women acting as ‘moral pioneers’ in increasingly complex settings.ESRC/MRC Innovative Health Technologies Programme for funding the project (grant no: L218252042). CW acknowledges the support of The Wellcome Trust Biomedical Ethics Programme in funding her postdoctoral fellowship, which enabled her to work on this project

Scaling Behavior of the Landau Gauge Overlap Quark Propagator

The properties of the momentum space quark propagator in Landau gauge are examined for the overlap quark action in quenched lattice QCD. Numerical calculations are done on three lattices with different lattice spacings and similar physical volumes to explore the approach of the quark propagator towards the continuum limit. We have calculated the nonperturbative momentum-dependent wavefunction renormalization function $Z(p^2)$ and the nonperturbative mass function $M(p^2)$ for a variety of bare quark masses and extrapolate to the chiral limit. We find the behavior of $Z(p^2)$ and $M(p^2)$ are in good agreement for the two finer lattices in the chiral limit. The quark condensate is also calculated.Comment: 3 pages, Lattice2003(Chiral fermions

Improved Smoothing Algorithms for Lattice Gauge Theory

The relative smoothing rates of various gauge field smoothing algorithms are investigated on ${\cal O}(a^2)$-improved \suthree Yang--Mills gauge field configurations. In particular, an ${\cal O}(a^2)$-improved version of APE smearing is motivated by considerations of smeared link projection and cooling. The extent to which the established benefits of improved cooling carry over to improved smearing is critically examined. We consider representative gauge field configurations generated with an ${\cal O}(a^2)$-improved gauge field action on \1 lattices at $\beta=4.38$ and \2 lattices at $\beta=5.00$ having lattice spacings of 0.165(2) fm and 0.077(1) fm respectively. While the merits of improved algorithms are clearly displayed for the coarse lattice spacing, the fine lattice results put the various algorithms on a more equal footing and allow a quantitative calibration of the smoothing rates for the various algorithms. We find the relative rate of variation in the action may be succinctly described in terms of simple calibration formulae which accurately describe the relative smoothness of the gauge field configurations at a microscopic level

Quark propagator in a covariant gauge

Using mean--field improved gauge field configurations, we compare the results obtained for the quark propagator from Wilson fermions and Overlap fermions on a \3 lattice at a spacing of $a=0.125(2)$ fm.Comment: 5 pages, 8 figures, talk given by F.D.R. Bonnet at LHP 2001 workshop, Cairns, Australi

Precision Electromagnetic Structure of Octet Baryons in the Chiral Regime

The electromagnetic properties of the baryon octet are calculated in quenched QCD on a 20^3 x 40 lattice with a lattice spacing of 0.128 fm using the fat-link irrelevant clover (FLIC) fermion action. FLIC fermions enable simulations to be performed efficiently at quark masses as low as 300 MeV. By combining FLIC fermions with an improved-conserved vector current, we ensure that discretisation errors occur only at O(a^2) while maintaining current conservation. Magnetic moments and electric and magnetic radii are extracted from the electric and magnetic form factors for each individual quark sector. From these, the corresponding baryon properties are constructed. Our results are compared extensively with the predictions of quenched chiral perturbation theory. We detect substantial curvature and environment sensitivity of the quark contributions to electric charge radii and magnetic moments in the low quark mass region. Furthermore, our quenched QCD simulation results are in accord with the leading non-analytic behaviour of quenched chiral perturbation theory, suggesting that the sum of higher-order terms makes only a small contribution to chiral curvature.Comment: 29 pages, 33 figures, 20 table

Scaling behavior of quark propagator in full QCD

We study the scaling behavior of the quark propagator on two lattices with similar physical volume in Landau gauge with 2+1 flavors of dynamical quarks in order to test whether we are close to the continuum limit for these lattices. We use configurations generated with an improved staggered (``Asqtad'') action by the MILC collaboration. The calculations are performed on $28^3\times 96$ lattices with lattice spacing $a = 0.09$ fm and on $20^3\times 64$ lattices with lattice spacing $a = 0.12$ fm. We calculate the quark mass function, $M(q^2)$, and the wave-function renormalization function, $Z(q^2)$, for a variety of bare quark masses. Comparing the behavior of these functions on the two sets of lattices we find that both $Z(q^2)$ and $M(q^2)$ show little sensitivity to the ultraviolet cutoff.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Harvardiana : March Song

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/4967/thumbnail.jp

Momentum space properties from coordinate space electron density

Electron density and electron momentum density, while independently tractable experimentally, bear no direct connection without going through the many-electron wave function. However, invoking a variant of the constrained-search formulation of density functional theory, we develop a general scheme (valid for arbitrary external potentials) yielding decent momentum space properties, starting exclusively from the coordinate space electron density. Numerical illustration of the scheme is provided for the closed-shell atomic systems He, Be and Ne and for $1s^1~2s^1$ singlet electronic excited state for Helium by calculating the Compton profiles and the $$ expectation values derived from given coordinate space electron densities.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Nonlinear cellular instabilities of planar premixed flames: numerical simulations of the Reactive Navier-Stokes equations

Two-dimensional compressible Reactive Navier-Stokes numerical simulations of intrinsic planar, premixed flame instabilities are performed. The initial growth of a sinusoidally perturbed planar flame is first compared with the predictions of a recent exact linear stability analysis, and it is shown the analysis provides a necessary but not sufficient test problem for validating numerical schemes intended for flame simulations. The long-time nonlinear evolution up to the final nonlinear stationary cellular flame is then examined for numerical domains of increasing width. It is shown that for routinely computationally affordable domain widths, the evolution and final state is, in general, entirely dependent on the width of the domain and choice of numerical boundary conditions. It is also shown that the linear analysis has no relevance to the final nonlinear cell size. When both hydrodynamic and thermal-diffusive effects are important, the evolution consists of a number of symmetry breaking cell splitting and re-merging processes which results in a stationary state of a single very asymmetric cell in the domain, a flame shape which is not predicted by weakly nonlinear evolution equations. Resolution studies are performed and it is found that lower numerical resolutions, typical of those used in previous works, do not give even the qualitatively correct solution in wide domains. We also show that the long-time evolution, including whether or not a stationary state is ever achieved, depends on the choice of the numerical boundary conditions at the inflow and outflow boundaries, and on the numerical domain length and flame Mach number for the types of boundary conditions used in some previous works