Dormancy and Revitalization: The fate of ethnobotanical knowledge of camel forage among Sahrawi nomads and refugees of Western Sahara

Knowledge about forage is fundamental to the survival of pastoral populations around the world. In this paper, we address the knowledge of camel forage of Sahrawi nomads and refugees of Western Sahara. We analyze the distribution of this knowledge through cultural consensus analysis and develop an explanation for intra-cultural variation based on changing processes of knowledge transmission. In total, 100 plant species were free-listed by informants, with five species (i.e., Acacia tortilis (Forssk.) Hayne, Nucularia perrinii Batt., Astragalus vogelii (Webb) Bornm., Panicum turgidum Forssk., and Stipagrostis plumosa Munro ex T.Anderson) found to be culturally highly salient. These five represent five local categories of forage that are necessary for camel management in the Western Sahara desert. The Sahrawi listed 25 forage plants that influence the taste and properties of camel milk, demonstrating that cultural values, as much as survival functions, underpin local knowledge systems. Perhaps unsurprisingly, age and nomadic experience are positively correlated with forage knowledge. Forced displacement and sedentarization are hypothesized as causes of progressive non-use of this knowledge and the lack of its transmission to younger generations of refugees. Nonetheless, across the study area, refugees are re-engaging with pastoralism and nomadism, which is leading to a revitalization of forage knowledge and its transmission. This should be regarded as an adaptation pathway for refugees

Competition Fosters Trust

We study the effects of reputation and competition in a stylized market for experience goods. If interaction is anonymous, such markets perform poorly: sellers are not trustworthy, and buyers do not trust sellers. If sellers are identifiable and can, hence, build a reputation, efficiency quadruples but is still at only a third of the first best. Adding more information by granting buyers access to all sellers’ complete history has, somewhat surprisingly, no effect. On the other hand, we find that competition, coupled with some minimal information, eliminates the trust problem almost completely.experience goods; competition; reputation; trust; moral hazard; information conditions

Pricing and Trust

We experimentally examine the effects of flexible and fixed prices in markets for experience goods in which demand is driven by trust. With flexible prices, we observe low prices and high quality in competitive (oligopolistic) markets, and high prices coupled with low quality in non-competitive (monopolistic) markets. We then introduce a regulated intermediate price above the oligopoly price and below the monopoly price. The effect in monopolies is more or less in line with standard intuition. As price falls volume increases and so does quality, such that overall efficiency is raised by 50%. However, quite in contrast to standard intuition, we also observe an efficiency rise in response to regulation in oligopolies. Both, transaction volume and traded quality are, in fact, maximal in regulated oligopolies.markets; price competition; price regulation; reputation; trust; moral hazard; experience goods

Consumer Networks and Firm Reputation: A First Experimental Investigation

Arguing that consumers are the carriers of firms’ reputations, we examine the role of consumer networks for trust in markets that suffer from moral hazard. When consumers are embedded in a network, they can exchange information with their neighbours about their private experiences with different sellers. We find that such information exchange fosters firms' incentives for reputation building and, thus, enhances trust and efficiency in markets. This efficiency-enhancing effect is already achieved with a rather low level of network density.trust; consumer networks; moral hazard; information conditions; reputation

Charmed Hadrons from Coalescence plus Fragmentation in relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions at RHIC and LHC

In a coalescence plus fragmentation approach we calculate the heavy baryon/meson ratio and the $p_T$ spectra of charmed hadrons $D^{0}$, $D_{s}$ and $\Lambda_{c}^{+}$ in a wide range of transverse momentum from low $p_T$ up to about 10 GeV and discuss their ratios from RHIC to LHC energies without any change of the coalescence parameters. We have included the contribution from decays of heavy hadron resonances and also the one due to fragmentation of heavy quarks which do not undergo the coalescence process. The coalescence process is tuned to have all charm quarks hadronizing in the $p_T\rightarrow 0$ limit and at finite $p_T$ charm quarks not undergoing coalescence are hadronized by independent fragmentation. The $p_T$ dependence of the baryon/meson ratios are found to be sensitive to the masses of coalescing quarks, in particular the $\Lambda_{c}/D^{0}$ can reach values of about $\rm 1\div 1.5$ at $p_T \approx \, 3$ \mbox{GeV}, or larger, similarly to the light baryon/meson ratio like $p/\pi$ and $\Lambda/K$, however a marked difference is a quite weak $p_T$ dependence with respect to the light case, such that a larger value at intermediate $p_T$ implies a relatively large value also for the integrated yields. A comparison with other coalescence model and with the prediction of thermal model is discussed.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures. Fig. 5 updated and some minor changes in the tex

Response of Root Properties to Tripartite Symbiosis between Lucerne (Medicago sativa L.), Rhizobia and Mycorrhiza Under Dry Organic Farming Conditions

It is generally considered that root turnover is a major contributor to organic matter and mineral nutrient cycles in organic managed agroecosystems. Approach: This study designed to investigate whether microbial activity could affect on root properties of lucerne in an organically managed field under dry weather conditions. The trial was laid out as a factorial experiment in the fields of the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna-Austria at Raasdorf in 2007. The experimental factors of Sinorhizobium meliloti and arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) including Glomus etunicatum, G. intraradices and G. claroideum and irrigation levels were tested. Results: Results showed that increasing water deficit affected root dry weigh, specific root mass and root length significantly at 1% level and co-inoculation of rhizobium and mycorrhiza with irrigation could increase all root parameters. Data’s of variance analysis for mycorrhizal colonization showed that main effect of using mycorrhiza had significant effects on root parameters at 5% and 1% probability level in first and second harvest, respectively. Results of mean comparisons by Duncan’s multiple range test showed that mycorrhizal colonization was higher in the inoculated treatments by rhizobium , mycorrhiza and irrigated plots in both harvests. Double interaction of mycorrhiza and irrigation was higher in both harvests (37.05% and 65.73%, respectively). Conclusion: Hence, it can be suggested that the tripartite symbiosis of S. meliloti, AM and lucerne can improve the performance of lucerne in organic farming and under dry conditions. Such traits could be incorporated into breeding programs to improve drought tolerance especially in organic fields

Genetic diversity and distance among Iranian and European alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) genotypes

Alfalfa is the best known fodder crop with high ability of biological nitrogen fixation and drought tolerance in dry, Pannonian region of east Austria. Different morphological and physiological characteristics of 18 alfalfa genotypes from different geographical origins, 8 Iranian ecotypes and 10 European cultivars were evaluated under irrigated and rainfed conditions during 2006-08 cropping seasons. The objectives of this study were to measure genetic distance and divergence among genotypes and to classify them based on morphological and physiological characters. Cluster analysis differentiated Iranian ecotypes and European cultivars from each other under irrigated condition, and when data averaged across two environments (irrigated and rainfed). However, under rainfed conditions small changes occurred in grouping of genotypes due mainly to differential responses of the genotypes to rainfed condition. Considerable genetic distance observed between Iranian and European genotypes. Different crossing programs are recommended between Iranian and European genotypes to develop new alfalfa cultivars