Disseminating agricultural research information: a case study of farmers in Mlolo, Lupalama and Wenda villages in Iringa district, Tanzania

This study investigated the extent to which agricultural research information is disseminated to farmers. It was conducted in 2015 at Mlolo, Lupalama and Wenda  villages of Iringa district. Data were collected from 90 farmers using questionnaires, indepth interviews and focus group discussions. The study established that the extent of disseminating agricultural research information to farmers was low. The main types of agricultural research information disseminated to farmers included information on improved seed varieties, information on the use of fertilisers, information on crop management and information on pest management. On the hand, the barriers to farmers’ access to agricultural research information included inadequate numbers of extension officers, inadequate funding, inadequate sources of information, nonavailability of electricity, political interference and the absence of information centres. On the basis of these findings, the study calls for joint efforts aimed to increase the timely dissemination of agro-information to the farmers. In addition, there is a need to use researchers, religious leaders, and community-based organisations as key dissemination pathways to disseminate such information. The study further recommends for the need to repackage agricultural research information tailored towards meeting the farmers’ needs. Furthermore, the study urges the government to recruit more extension officers and station them in rural areas. Also, improving access to electricity in villages, allocation of more funds to agro-sector, prohibiting political interference in professional jobs and establishment of community based information centres could improve the availability, access to and use of agricultural research information

Pertimbangan Hakim dalam Pemidanaan dengan Perintah Rehabilitasi Sosial bagi Anak sebagai Pelaku Tindak Pidana Penyalahgunaan Narkotika (Studi Kasus Putusan Nomor: 4/Pid.Sus-Anak/2021/PN Kdr)

Penelitian yang dilakukan Penulis ialah menganalisis dan menjelaskan mengenai apa saja Pertimbangan Hakim dalam Putusan Nomor: 4/Pid.Sus-Anak/2021/PN Kdr sehingga Hakim menjatuhkan pemidanaan dengan perintah rehabilitasi sosial. Isu hukum dalam penelitian adalah perbedaan das sollen dengan das sein, yaitu sesuai SEMA No. 4 Tahun 2010 seharusnya Anak tidak bisa diberikan Rehabilitasi Sosial, namun Hakim menjatuhkan pemidanaan dengan perintah rehabilitasi sosial. Bahwa ternyata Anak layak diberikan Rehabilitasi Sosial didasarkan atas pertimbangan Hakim, Pertama, Anak terbukti melakukan tindak pidana penyalahgunaan narkotika. Kedua, anak wajib diberikan rehabilitasi sosial, Hakim mengacu pada UU Narkotika, meskipun SEMA No. 4 Tahun 2010 menyatakan sebaliknya, karena kedudukan UU Narkotika lebih tinggi daripada SEMA No. 4 Tahun 2010. Ketiga, proses peradilan Anak terikat UU Sistem Peradilan Pidana Anak

A new rod model for the folding and deployment of tape springs with highly deformable cross-sections

International audienceThis work is focused on the modeling of rod-like elastic bodies with thin-walled curved cross-sections such as tape springs, which develop localized folds due to a flattening of the cross-section. Starting from a complete nonlinear elastic shell model, a rod model with highly deformable cross-section is derived for large displacements, large rotations and dynamics, by introducing an elastica kinematics to describe the in-plane changes of the cross-section shape. This model is able to handle the formation of localized folds which can move along the rod line, merge or split, allowing simulation of complex scenarios of coiling, folding and deployment

From Head to Head: An Emergy Analysis of a War Rifle Bullet

Emergy (spelled with an “m”) analysis is a method for environmental and systemic accounting in terms of sustainability and quality of resources used for a product, service or process. In this paper, it is applied to the assault rifles projectiles used in war battlefields. The specific emergy is evaluated in terms of sej/bullet, pointing out the upstream investment made by both the environment and the human society to produce the bullet in its operating war conditions. Comparison is made with alternative uses of the same resources when addressed to the support of development and wellbeing

Generalized Lévy walks and the role of chemokines in migration of effector CD8+ T cells.

Chemokines have a central role in regulating processes essential to the immune function of T cells, such as their migration within lymphoid tissues and targeting of pathogens in sites of inflammation. Here we track T cells using multi-photon microscopy to demonstrate that the chemokine CXCL10 enhances the ability of CD8+ T cells to control the pathogen Toxoplasma gondii in the brains of chronically infected mice. This chemokine boosts T-cell function in two different ways: it maintains the effector T-cell population in the brain and speeds up the average migration speed without changing the nature of the walk statistics. Notably, these statistics are not Brownian; rather, CD8+ T-cell motility in the brain is well described by a generalized Lévy walk. According to our model, this unexpected feature enables T cells to find rare targets with more than an order of magnitude more efficiency than Brownian random walkers. Thus, CD8+ T-cell behaviour is similar to Lévy strategies reported in organisms ranging from mussels to marine predators and monkeys, and CXCL10 aids T cells in shortening the average time taken to find rare targets

Decoding Reed-Muller Codes Using Minimum- Weight Parity Checks

Reed-Muller (RM) codes exhibit good performance under maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding due to their highly-symmetric structure. In this paper, we explore the question of whether the code symmetry of RM codes can also be exploited to achieve near-ML performance in practice. The main idea is to apply iterative decoding to a highly-redundant parity-check (PC) matrix that contains only the minimum-weight dual codewords as rows. As examples, we consider the peeling decoder for the binary erasure channel, linear-programming and belief propagation (BP) decoding for the binary-input additive white Gaussian noise channel, and bit-flipping and BP decoding for the binary symmetric channel. For short block lengths, it is shown that near-ML performance can indeed be achieved in many cases. We also propose a method to tailor the PC matrix to the received observation by selecting only a small fraction of useful minimum-weight PCs before decoding begins. This allows one to both improve performance and significantly reduce complexity compared to using the full set of minimum-weight PCs

Post-rift uplift of the Dhofar margin (Gulf of Aden)

International audienceAn investigation of the sedimentation pattern along the Dhofar margin allows us to describe its late-stage evolution. After the accumulation of a thick post-rift sedimentary succession, two debris flow events occurred at the foot of the slope. The first event, affecting a wide area of the margin, marks a major change in sedimentation. The second event is associated with a shift of sedimentary deposition from the slope toward the basin. This latter debris flow was caused by an uplift phase, and highlights two distinct deformational styles in the eastern and western part of the Dhofar margin. Both events occurred very late in the history of the margin, at least 7.6 Ma after the end of the rifting phase (35-17.6 Ma)

Un modèle de poutre à section fortement déformable pour l'étude du déploiement de mètres rubans

Dans le contexte des structures déployables de type mètre ruban, un modèle de poutre à section fortement déformable est développé. Dérivé d'un modèle de coque, il utilise une cinématique originale pour décrire avec peu de paramètres les changements de forme de la section. Le modèle permet de simuler en grands déplacements et en dynamique l'apparition de pliages localisés dus à un aplatissement de la section ainsi que des scénarios complexes de pliage et de déploiement. Une comparaison avec un modèle coque Abaqus est réalisée afin de valider le modèle

A novel function of the key nitrogen-fixation activator NifA in beta-rhizobia: Repression of bacterial auxin synthesis during symbiosis

Rhizobia fix nitrogen within root nodules of host plants where nitrogenase expression is strictly controlled by its key regulator NifA. We recently discovered that in nodules infected by the beta-rhizobial strain Paraburkholderia phymatum STM815, NifA controls expression of two bacterial auxin synthesis genes. Both the iaaM and iaaH transcripts, as well as the metabolites indole-acetamide (IAM) and indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) showed increased abundance in nodules occupied by a nifA mutant compared to wild-type nodules. Here, we document the structural changes that a P. phymatum nifA mutant induces in common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) nodules, eventually leading to hypernodulation. To investigate the role of the P. phymatum iaaMH genes during symbiosis, we monitored their expression in presence and absence of NifA over different stages of the symbiosis. The iaaMH genes were found to be under negative control of NifA in all symbiotic stages. While a P. phymatum iaaMH mutant produced the same number of nodules and nitrogenase activity as the wild-type strain, the nifA mutant produced more nodules than the wild-type that clustered into regularly-patterned root zones. Mutation of the iaaMH genes in a nifA mutant background reduced the presence of these nodule clusters on the root. We further show that the P. phymatum iaaMH genes are located in a region of the symbiotic plasmid with a significantly lower GC content and exhibit high similarity to two genes of the IAM pathway often used by bacterial phytopathogens to deploy IAA as a virulence factor. Overall, our data suggest that the increased abundance of rhizobial auxin in the non-fixing nifA mutant strain enables greater root infection rates and a role for bacterial auxin production in the control of early stage symbiotic interactions