1,677 research outputs found
An assessment of local participation within the decentralised framework: a case of Lilongwe District Council
The research analyses local participation as it is implemented within the Lilongwe District Council. The study explores decentralisation in the council by examining important facets that contribute to good local governance with a special interest in local participation. The study finds that while local participation is a recognized feature in the decentralisation policy, lack of proper involvement and integration has limited the efficacy of local participation. The neglect of government in conducting local government elections to have ward councillors in place is brought to the fore as a major setback to the implementation of decentralisation reforms. The study therefore notes that decentralisation must not be seen as just a policy goal, with the aim of shifting development to the communities, but as a policy instrument which aims to improve local democracy, efficiency and effectiveness in the provision of social services. In order to achieve this, the study proposes five key recommendations and a proposed model for the attainment of good governance in the Council
One- and two-axis squeezing of atomic ensembles in optical cavities
The strong light-matter coupling attainable in optical cavities enables the
generation of highly squeezed states of atomic ensembles. It was shown in
[Phys. Rev. A 66, 022314 (2002)] how an effective one-axis twisting Hamiltonian
can be realized in a cavity setup. Here, we extend this work and show how an
effective two-axis twisting Hamiltonian can be realized in a similar cavity
setup. We compare the two schemes in order to characterize their advantages. In
the absence of decoherence, the two-axis Hamiltonian leads to more squeezing
than the one-axis Hamiltonian. If limited by decoherence from spontaneous
emission and cavity decay, we find roughly the same level of squeezing for the
two schemes scaling as (NC)^(1/2) where C is the single atom cooperativity and
N is the total number of atoms. When compared to an ideal squeezing operation,
we find that for specific initial states, a dissipative version of the one-axis
scheme attains higher fidelity than the unitary one-axis scheme or the two-axis
scheme. However, the unitary one-axis and two-axis schemes perform better for
general initial states.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure
Brightening Afghanistan
Researchers study renewable energy to power electricity-scarce country
\u27Texas Maroon’ Bluebonnet
The Texas state flower, the bluebonnet, encompasses all six of the Lupinus species native to Texas. The most widespread and popular bluebonnet, Lupinus texensis Hook., is a winter annual that produces violet-blue [violet-blue group 96A, Royal Horticultural
Society (RHS), 1982] racemes in early to midspring and is predominately self-pollinating.
The Texas Dept. of Transportation uses this species widely for floral displays along roadsides throughout much of the state (Andrews, 1986). Rare white and even rarer pink variants exist in native populations, and a breeding project was initiated in 1985 to develop bluebonnets with novel flower colors for use as bedding plants. ‘Abbott Pink’ was the first seed-propagated cultivar to be developed from this program (Parsons and Davis, 1993). The second cultivar, ‘Barbara Bush’ with novel lavender shade flowers, was developed more recently (Parsons et al., 1994). As with the cultivars previously developed, we used recurrent phenotypic selection to develop ‘Texas Maroon’. This cultivar is intended for use as a bedding plant for maroon flower color
The Y-STR Genetic Diversity of an Idaho Basque Population, with Comparison to European Basques and US Caucasians
Fifty unrelated Basque males from southwest Idaho were typed for the 17 Y-STR loci in the Yfiler multiplex kit (DYS19, DYS389I, DYS389II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393, DYS437, DYS438, DYS439, DYS448, DYS456, DYS458, DYS635, YGATA_H4.1 and DYS385a/b). A total of 42 haplotypes were identified, with no more than two individuals sharing a single haplotype. The haplotype diversity (HD) was 0.9935, and gene diversity (D) over loci was 0.457 ± 0.137. The Idaho Basque population was compared to the source population from the Basque autonomous region of Northern Spain and Southern France, as well as a US Caucasian population. The haplotype diversity for the immigrant Basque sample is within 0.4% of the haplotype diversity of the European Basques (0.9903); thus the power of discrimination is similar for each population. The Idaho Basque population has less diversity in 9 out of 16 loci (considering DYS385a/b together) and 3% less diversity across all loci, compared to the European Basque population. A multi-dimensional scaling analysis (MDS) was created using pairwise RST values to compare the Idaho Basques to other populations. Based upon RST and FST measures, no significant differentiation was found between the Idaho and source European Basque population
- …