Transforming aquatic agricultural systems towards gender equality: a five country review

Aquatic agricultural systems (AAS) are systems in which the annual production dynamics of freshwater and/or coastal ecosystems contribute significantly to total household income. Improving the livelihood security and wellbeing of the estimated 250 million poor people dependent on AAS in Bangladesh, Cambodia, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands and Zambia is the goal of the Worldfish Center-led Consortium Research Program (CRP), “Harnessing the development potential of aquatic agricultural systems for development.” One component expected to contribute to sustainably achieving this goal is enhancing the gender and wider social equity of the social, economic and political systems within which the AAS function. The CRP’s focus on social equity, and particularly gender equity, responds to the limited progress to date in enhancing the inclusiveness of development outcomes through interventions that offer improved availability of resources and technologies without addressing the wider social constraints that marginalized populations face in making use of them. The CRP aims to both offer improved availability and address the wider social constraints in order to determine whether a multi-level approach that engages with individuals, households and communities, as well as the wider social, economic and political contexts in which they function, is more successful in extending development’s benefits to women and other excluded groups. Designing the research in development initiatives to test this hypothesis requires a solid understanding of each CRP country’s social, cultural and economic contexts and of the variations across them. This paper provides an initial input into developing this knowledge, based on a review of literature on agriculture, aquaculture and gender relations within the five focal countries. Before delving into the findings of the literature review, the paper first justifies the expectation that successfully achieving lasting wellbeing improvements for poor women and men dependent on AAS rests in part on advances in gender equity, and in light of this justification, presents the AAS CRP’s conceptual frame

Angular redistribution of near-infrared emission from quantum dots in 3D photonic crystals

We study the angle-resolved spontaneous emission of near-infrared light sources in 3D photonic crystals over a wavelength range from 1200 to 1550 nm. To this end PbSe quantum dots are used as light sources inside titania inverse opal photonic crystals. Strong deviations from the Lambertian emission profile are observed. An attenuation of 60 % is observed in the angle dependent radiant flux emitted from the samples due to photonic stop bands. At angles that correspond to the edges of the stop band the emitted flux is increased by up to 34 %. This increase is explained by the redistribution of Bragg-diffracted light over the available escape angles. The results are quantitatively explained by an expanded escape-function model. This model is based on diffusion theory and adapted to photonic crystals using band structure calculations. Our results are the first angular redistributions and escape functions measured at near-infrared, including telecom, wavelengths. In addition, this is the first time for this model to be applied to describe emission from samples that are optically thick for the excitation light and relatively thin for the photoluminesence light.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures (current format = single column, double spaced

C1 compounds as auxiliary substrate for engineered Pseudomonas putida S12

The solvent-tolerant bacterium Pseudomonas putida S12 was engineered to efficiently utilize the C1 compounds methanol and formaldehyde as auxiliary substrate. The hps and phi genes of Bacillus brevis, encoding two key steps of the ribulose monophosphate (RuMP) pathway, were introduced to construct a pathway for the metabolism of the toxic methanol oxidation intermediate formaldehyde. This approach resulted in a remarkably increased biomass yield on the primary substrate glucose when cultured in C-limited chemostats fed with a mixture of glucose and formaldehyde. With increasing relative formaldehyde feed concentrations, the biomass yield increased from 35% (C-mol biomass/C-mol glucose) without formaldehyde to 91% at 60% relative formaldehyde concentration. The RuMP-pathway expressing strain was also capable of growing to higher relative formaldehyde concentrations than the control strain. The presence of an endogenous methanol oxidizing enzyme activity in P. putida S12 allowed the replacement of formaldehyde with the less toxic methanol, resulting in an 84% (C-mol/C-mol) biomass yield. Thus, by introducing two enzymes of the RuMP pathway, co-utilization of the cheap and renewable substrate methanol was achieved, making an important contribution to the efficient use of P. putida S12 as a bioconversion platform host

Feasibility studies for the measurement of time-like proton electromagnetic form factors from p¯ p→ μ+μ- at P ¯ ANDA at FAIR

This paper reports on Monte Carlo simulation results for future measurements of the moduli of time-like proton electromagnetic form factors, | GE| and | GM| , using the p¯ p→ μ+μ- reaction at P ¯ ANDA (FAIR). The electromagnetic form factors are fundamental quantities parameterizing the electric and magnetic structure of hadrons. This work estimates the statistical and total accuracy with which the form factors can be measured at P ¯ ANDA , using an analysis of simulated data within the PandaRoot software framework. The most crucial background channel is p¯ p→ π+π-, due to the very similar behavior of muons and pions in the detector. The suppression factors are evaluated for this and all other relevant background channels at different values of antiproton beam momentum. The signal/background separation is based on a multivariate analysis, using the Boosted Decision Trees method. An expected background subtraction is included in this study, based on realistic angular distributions of the background contribution. Systematic uncertainties are considered and the relative total uncertainties of the form factor measurements are presented

Measurement of the inclusive branching fraction for ψ(3686)→KS 0+anything

Using 5.9 pb−1 of e+e− annihilation data collected at center-of-mass energies from 3.640 to 3.701 GeV with the BESIII detector at the BEPCII Collider, we measure the observed cross sections of e+e−→KS0X (where X=anything). From a fit to these observed cross sections with the sum of continuum and ψ(3686) and J/ψ Breit-Wigner functions and considering initial state radiation and the BEPCII beam energy spread, we obtain for the first time the product of ψ(3686) leptonic width and inclusive decay branching fraction Γψ(3686)eeB(ψ(3686)→KS0X)=(373.8±6.7±20.0) eV, and assuming Γψ(3686)ee is (2.33±0.04) keV from PDG value, we measure B(ψ(3686)→KS0X)=(16.04±0.29±0.90)%, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic

Observation of Ξ−\Xi^{-} Hyperon Transverse Polarization in ψ(3686)→Ξ−Ξˉ+\psi(3686)\rightarrow\Xi^{-}\bar\Xi^{+}

Using a sample of $(448.1~\pm~2.9)$ $\times 10^{6}$ $\psi(3686)$ decays collected with the BESIII detector at BEPCII, we report an observation of $\Xi^{-}$ transverse polarization with a significance of $7.3 \sigma$ in the decay $\psi(3686)\rightarrow\Xi^{-}\bar\Xi^{+}$ ($\Xi^{-}\rightarrow\pi^{-}\Lambda$, $\bar\Xi^{+}\rightarrow\pi^{+}\bar\Lambda$, $\Lambda\to p\pi^{-}$, $\bar\Lambda\to\bar{p}\pi^{+}$). The relative phase of the electric and magnetic form factors is determined to be $\Delta\Phi = (0.667 \pm 0.111 \pm 0.058)$ rad. This is the first measurement of the relative phase for a $\psi(3686)$ decay into a pair of $\Xi^{-}\bar\Xi^{+}$ hyperons. The $\Xi^{-}$ decay parameters ($\alpha_{\Xi^{-}}$, $\phi_{\Xi^-}$) and their conjugates ($\alpha_{\bar\Xi^{+}}$, $\phi_{\bar{\Xi}^{+}}$), the angular-distribution parameter $\alpha_{\psi}$, and the strong-phase difference $\delta_{p}-\delta_{s}$ for $\Lambda$-$\pi^-$ scattering are measured to be consistent with previous BESIII results.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, consistent with paper published in Phys. Rev. D (Letter) 106, L091101 (2022

Evidence for ηc\eta_c(2S)\to\pipieta decay

The decay \eta_c(2S)\to\pipieta is searched for through the radiative transition $\psi(3686) \to\gamma\eta_c(2S)$ using 448 million $\psi$(3686) events accumulated at the BESIII detector. The first evidence of $\eta_c(2S)\to\pi^+\pi^-\eta$ is found with a statistical significance of 3.5$\sigma$. The product of the branching fractions of $\psi(3686)\to\gamma\eta_c(2S)$ and \eta_c(2S)\to\pipieta is measured to be Br(\psi(3686)\to\gamma\eta_c(2S))\times Br(\eta_c(2S)\to\pipieta)=(2.97\pm0.81\pm0.26)\times10^{-6}, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second one is systematic. The branching fraction of the decay \eta_c(2S)\to\pipieta is determined to be Br(\eta_c(2S)\to\pipieta)=(42.4\pm11.6\pm3.8\pm30.3)\times10^{-4}, where the third uncertainty is transferred from the uncertainty of the branching fraction of $\psi(3686)\to\gamma\eta_c(2S)$