Goodbye to Projects? Briefing Paper 1: An Overview: Projects and Principles.

YesThis briefing paper reports on research exploring ten detailed case studies of livelihoods-oriented interventions operating in Tanzania, Lesotho, South Africa and Uganda. Analysing these interventions through an audit of sustainable livelihood `principles¿ (as a proxy for best practice) revealed general lessons both about the practical opportunities and challenges for employing sustainable livelihoods approaches to the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of development interventions and also about the changing format of development interventions.Department for International Developmen

Goodbye to Projects? - Briefing Paper 3: The changing format of development interventions.

yesThis briefing paper reports on research exploring ten detailed case studies of livelihoods-oriented interventions operating in Tanzania, South Africa, Uganda and Lesotho. As a proxy for best practice, these interventions were analysed through an audit of sustainable livelihood `principles¿. This revealed general lessons about both the practical opportunities and challenges for employing sustainable livelihoods approaches to the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of development interventions and also about the changing format of development interventions.Department for International Development

Goodbye to Projects? Briefing Paper 2: The Application of the SL Principles.

YesThis briefing paper reports on research exploring ten detailed case studies of livelihoods-oriented interventions operating in Tanzania, South Africa, Uganda and Lesotho. As a proxy for best practice, these interventions were analysed through an audit of sustainable livelihood `principles¿. This revealed general lessons about both the practical opportunities and challenges for employing sustainable livelihoods approaches to the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of development interventions and also about the changing format of development interventions.Department for International Development

Goodbye to Projects? - Briefing Paper 4: Lessons for the community-based planning interventions.

YesThis briefing paper compares two approaches to community-based planning in Tanzania, South Africa and Uganda. Analysing these interventions through an audit of sustainable livelihood `principles¿ (as a proxy for best practice) reveals general lessons about both the practical opportunities and challenges for employing sustainable livelihoods approaches to the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of development interventions and also about the changing format of development interventions.Department for International Developmen

Office of Regulatory Affairs Strategies for Building an Integrated National Laboratory Network for Food and Feed

An interconnected network of accredited federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial laboratories is critical to ensuring the safety of the U.S. food supply and the development of the Integrated Food Safety System (IFSS). In 2004, as part of a national policy to defend the U.S. food supply against terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies, the Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) was created to integrate the nation’s multilevel (i.e., federal, state, local, tribal, territorial) food-testing laboratories to detect, identify, respond to, and recover from a bioterrorism act affecting the safety of the food supply, or a public health emergency/outbreak involving the food supply. Since 2004, federal agencies have invested an estimated $200 million in FERN. The majority of this investment has been in the FERN cooperative agreements with FDA and USDA-FSIS investing$95.8 million and $69 million, respectively. FDA has promoted the accreditation of state laboratories through cooperative agreement funding, investing more than$50 million to fund these grants. On November 11, 2014, the Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA) requested that the FDA Science Board establish a subcommittee to evaluate current investments in: (1) the FERN cooperative agreement funding program (CAP), and (2) funding for state laboratories to achieve International Organization for Standardization (ISO) accreditation. The goal was to ascertain how ORA can advance and establish an effective integrated laboratory network among ORA, FDA Center, and state public health and food- and feed-testing laboratories. In response to this request, the Science Board created the ORA FERN Cooperative Agreement Evaluation Subcommittee on July 1, 2015. This report summarizes the results of the Subcommittee’s review

EUPHORIA: End-User Construction of Direct Manipulation User Interfaces for Distributed Applications

The Programmers\u27 Playground is a software library and run-time system for creating distributed multimedia applications from collections of reusable software moduels. This paper presents the design and implementation of EUPHORIA, Playground\u27s user interface management system. Implemented as a Playground module, EUPHORIA allows end-users to create direct manipulation graphical user interfaces (GUIs) exclusively through the use of a graphics editor. No programming is required. At run-time, attributes of the GUI state can be exposed and connected to external Playground modules, allowing the user to vosualize and directly manipulate state information in remote Playground modules. Features of EUPHORIA include real-time direct manipulation graphics, constraint-based editing and visualization, imaginary alignment objects, user-definable types, and user-definable widgets with alternative representations

Hemodynamic benefits of the Toronto stentless valve

AbstractWe report on 254 consecutive patients (170 male, 84 female) undergoing aortic valve replacement with the Toronto SPV Stentless Valve (St. Jude Medical, Inc., St. Paul, Minn.). Mean age (± standard deviation) was 62.1 ± 11.6 years. Three patients (1%) received sizes 21 or 22 mm, 24 (9%) received size 23 mm, and 227 patients (89%) received sizes 25, 27, or 29 mm. Serial echocardiography was used to assess valve performance during a 3-year follow-up. Mean gradient decreased by 35.8% ( p < 0.0001; 95% confidence interval -39.6%, -31.7%) from postoperative values to the 3- to 6-month follow-up and by 6.1% ( p = 0.004; 95% confidence interval -10.1%, -2%) at each subsequent interval; effective orifice area increased by 17.2% ( p = 0.0001; 95% confidence interval 12.0%, 22.6%) initially and by 4.4% ( p < 0.001; 95% confidence interval 1.8%, 7.0%) thereafter. At 2 years of follow-up, mean gradient was 3.3 ± 2.1 mm Hg and mean effective orifice area was 2.2 ± 0.8 cm 2 . Studies on left ventricular mass were carried out on 84 patients. Left ventricular mass decreased by 14.3% (37.8 ± 57.9 gm; p < 0.0001; 95% confidence interval -53.7, -21.9 gm) and left ventricular mass index decreased by 15.2% (21.1 ± 30.5 gm/m 2; p < 0.0001; 95% confidence interval -29.5, -12.7 gm/m 2) from postoperative values to the 3- to 6-month follow-up interval. The reduction in residual gradient and potential regression in left ventricular hypertrophy may have a beneficial prognostic implication. We believe that the unique stentless design of the Toronto SPV Stentless Valve allows this to occur. (J T horac C ardiovasc S urg 1996;112:431-46

Collecting, analyzing and archiving of ground based infrared solar spectra obtained from several locations

The infrared solar spectrum as observed from the ground under high resolution contains thousands of absorption lines. The majority of these lines are due to compounds that are present in the Earth's atmosphere. Ground based infrared solar spectra contain information concerning the composition of the atmosphere at the time the spectra were obtained. The objective of this program is to record solar spectra from various ground locations, and to analyze and archive these spectra. The analysis consists of determining, for as many of the absorption lines as possible, the molecular species responsible for the absorption, and to verify that current models of infrared transmission match the observed spectra. Archiving is an important part of the program, since a number of the features in the spectra have not been identified. At some later time, when the features are identified, it will be possible to determine the amount of that compound that was present in the atmosphere at the time the spectrum was taken

Bistable states of quantum dot array junctions for high-density memory

We demonstrate that two-dimensional (2D) arrays of coupled quantum dots (QDs) with six-fold degenerate p orbitals can display bistable states, suitable for application in high-density memory device with low power consumption. Due to the inter-dot coupling of $p_x$ and $p_y$ orbitals in these QD arrays, two dimensional conduction bands can be formed in the x-y plane, while the $p_z$ orbitals remain localized in the x-y plane such that the inter-dot coupling between them can be neglected. We model such systems by taking into account the on-site repulsive interactions between electrons in $p_z$ orbitals and the coupling of the localized $p_z$ orbitals with the 2D conduction bands formed by $p_x$ and $p_y$ orbitals. The Green's function method within an extended Anderson model is used to calculate the tunneling current through the QDs. We find that bistable tunneling current can exist for such systems due to the interplay of the on-site Coulomb interactions (U) between the $p_z$ orbitals and the delocalized nature of conduction band states derived from the hybridization of $p_x$ / $p_y$ orbitals. This bistable current is not sensitive to the detailed band structure of the two dimensional band, but depends critically on the strength of $U$ and the ratio of the left and right tunneling rates. The behavior of the electrical bistability can be sustained when the 2D QD array reduces to a one-dimensional QD array, indicating the feasibility for high-density packing of these bistable nanoscale structures

Testing the Unitarity of the CKM Matrix with a Space-Based Neutron Decay Experiment

If the Standard Model is correct, and fundamental fermions exist only in the three generations, then the CKM matrix should be unitary. However, there remains a question over a deviation from unitarity from the value of the neutron lifetime. We discuss a simple space-based experiment that, at an orbit height of 500 km above Earth, would measure the kinetic-energy, solid-angle, flux spectrum of gravitationally bound neutrons (kinetic energy K<0.606 eV at this altitude). The difference between the energy spectrum of neutrons that come up from the Earth's atmosphere and that of the undecayed neutrons that return back down to the Earth would yield a measurement of the neutron lifetime. This measurement would be free of the systematics of laboratory experiments. A package of mass $<25$ kg could provide a 10^{-3} precision in two years.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures. Revised and updated for publicatio