Missing the target: Lessons from enabling innovation in South Asia

This paper reflects on the experience of the Research Into Use (RIU) projects in Asia. It reconfirms much of what has been known for many years about the way innovation takes place and finds that many of the shortcomings of RIU in Asia were precisely because lessons from previous research on agricultural innovation were "not put into use" in the programme's implementation. However, the experience provides three important lessons for donors and governments to make use of agricultural research: (i) Promoting research into use requires enabling innovation. This goes beyond fostering collaboration, and includes a range of other innovation management tasks (ii) The starting point for making use of research need not necessarily be the promising research products and quite often identifying the promising innovation trajectories is more rewarding (iii) Strengthening the innovation enabling environment of policies and institutions is critical if research use is to lead to long-term and large-scale impacts. It is in respect of this third point that RIU Asia missed its target, as it failed to make explicit efforts to address policy and institutional change, despite its innovation systems rhetoric. This severely restricted its ability to achieve wide-scale social and economic impact that was the original rationale for the programme.Research Into Use, Innovation Management, Agricultural Research, Innovation, Development, Policy, Value Chain Development, South Asia, Innovation Trajectory

Mathematical modelling of chemical agent removal by reaction with an immiscible cleanser

When a hazardous chemical agent has soaked into a porous medium, such as concrete, it can be difficult to neutralise. One removal method is chemical decontamination, where a cleanser is applied to react with and neutralise the agent, forming less harmful reaction products. There are often several cleansers that could be used to neutralise the same agent, so it is important to identify the cleanser features associated with fast and effective decontamination. As many cleansers are aqueous solutions while many agents are immiscible with water, the decontamination reaction often takes place at the interface between two phases. In this paper, we develop and analyse a mathematical model of a decontamination reaction between a neat agent and an immiscible cleanser solution. We assume that the reaction product is soluble in both the cleanser phase and the agent phase. At the moving boundary between the two phases, we obtain coupling conditions from mass conservation arguments and the oil–water partition coefficient of the product. We analyse our model using both asymptotic and numerical methods, and investigate how different features of a cleanser affect the time taken to remove the agent. Our results reveal the existence of two regimes characterised by different rate-limiting transport processes, and we identify the key parameters that control the removal time in each regime. In particular, we find that the oil–water partition coefficient of the reaction product is significantly more important in determining the removal time than the effective reaction rate

Mathematical modelling of chemical agent removal by reaction with an immiscible cleanser

When a hazardous chemical agent has soaked into a porous medium, such as concrete, it can be difficult to neutralise. One removal method is chemical decontamination, where a cleanser is applied to react with and neutralise the agent, forming less harmful reaction products. There are often several cleansers that could be used to neutralise the same agent, so it is important to identify the cleanser features associated with fast and effective decontamination. As many cleansers are aqueous solutions while many agents are immiscible with water, the decontamination reaction often takes place at the interface between two phases. In this paper, we develop and analyse a mathematical model of a decontamination reaction between a neat agent and an immiscible cleanser solution. We assume that the reaction product is soluble in both the cleanser phase and the agent phase. At the moving boundary between the two phases, we obtain coupling conditions from mass conservation arguments and the oil–water partition coefficient of the product. We analyse our model using both asymptotic and numerical methods, and investigate how different features of a cleanser affect the time taken to remove the agent. Our results reveal the existence of two regimes characterised by different rate-limiting transport processes, and we identify the key parameters that control the removal time in each regime. In particular, we find that the oil–water partition coefficient of the reaction product is significantly more important in determining the removal time than the effective reaction rate

Exile Vol. XXXI No. 2

Plenty of Space by Carol Contiguglia (cover) Dénouement by Jeff Masten 3 The Ballad of Old Bill Brown by Amy Becker 4-5 Elegy by Ann Townsend 6 Untitled by Karen Koch 7 Dénouement by Carol Mason 9-14 Untitled by N. R. B. III 15 A Lot in Common We Two, by David Zivan 17 The Sidewalk Taken, Kate Anthony 18 Upon Hearing Two Male Poets Read by Karen J. Hall 19 Leaves by Amy Becker 20 To Dad by Carrie Jordan 21 Attie Mae by Theresa Copeland 23-25 Oh, Henry by T. S. Elliott 26-38 Solitude; Normandy, France by Margie Boll 39 In Edgartown, Drunk, Stranded in the A.M. by Karen Kearney 41 Pink Feet by Catherine DuBois 42 Ensign in the Naval Corps of Engineers by Betsy Oster 43 Morning Haze by Stephanie Athey 44-45 Just Thought You\u27d Like to Know by Joan DeWitt 46-53 Art Class, A Study of Still-Lifes by Margie Boll 55 Contributor Notes 57 Editorial decision is shared equally among the Editorial Board members -cover page (credited here as editors ) PRINTING BY / PRINTING ARTS PRESS / MOUNT VERNON, OHIO -back cove

What do young athletes implicitly understand about psychological skills?

One reason sport psychologists teach psychological skills is to enhance performance in sport; but the value of psychological skills for young athletes is questionable because of the qualitative and quantitative differences between children and adults in their understanding of abstract concepts such as mental skills. To teach these skills effectively to young athletes, sport psychologists need to appreciate what young athletes implicitly understand about such skills because maturational (e.g., cognitive, social) and environmental (e.g., coaches) factors can influence the progressive development of children and youth. In the present qualitative study, we explored young athletes’ (aged 10–15 years) understanding of four basic psychological skills: goal setting, mental imagery, self-talk, and relaxation. Young athletes (n = 118: 75 males and 43 females) completed an open-ended questionnaire to report their understanding of these four basic psychological skills. Compared with the older youth athletes, the younger youth athletes were less able to explain the meaning of each psychological skill. Goal setting and mental imagery were better understood than self-talk and relaxation. Based on these findings, sport psychologists should consider adapting interventions and psychoeducational programs to match young athletes’ age and developmental level

Einstein's quantum theory of the monatomic ideal gas: non-statistical arguments for a new statistics

In this article, we analyze the third of three papers, in which Einstein presented his quantum theory of the ideal gas of 1924-1925. Although it failed to attract the attention of Einstein's contemporaries and although also today very few commentators refer to it, we argue for its significance in the context of Einstein's quantum researches. It contains an attempt to extend and exhaust the characterization of the monatomic ideal gas without appealing to combinatorics. Its ambiguities illustrate Einstein's confusion with his initial success in extending Bose's results and in realizing the consequences of what later became to be called Bose-Einstein statistics. We discuss Einstein's motivation for writing a non-combinatorial paper, partly in response to criticism by his friend Ehrenfest, and we paraphrase its content. Its arguments are based on Einstein's belief in the complete analogy between the thermodynamics of light quanta and of material particles and invoke considerations of adiabatic transformations as well as of dimensional analysis. These techniques were well-known to Einstein from earlier work on Wien's displacement law, Planck's radiation theory, and the specific heat of solids. We also investigate the possible role of Ehrenfest in the gestation of the theory.Comment: 57 pp

A Comparison of the Technical Communications Practices of Japanese and U.S. Aerospace Engineers and Scientists

To understand the diffusion of aerospace knowledge, it is necessary to understand the communications practices and the information-seeking behaviors of those involved in the production, transfer, and use of aerospace knowledge at the individual, organizational, national, and international levels. In this paper, we report selected results from a survey of Japanese and U.S. aerospace engineers and scientists that focused on communications practices and information-seeking behaviors in the workplace. Data are presented for the following topics: importance of and time spent communicating information, collaborative writing, need for an undergraduate course in technical communications, use of libraries, the use and importance of electronic (computer) networks, and the use and importance of foreign and domestically produced technical reports. The responses of the survey respondents are placed within the context of the Japanese culture. We assume that differences in Japanese and U.S. cultures influence the communications practices and information-seeking behaviors of Japanese and U.S. aerospace engineers and scientists

Lepton Flavour Violating Leptonic/Semileptonic Decays of Charged Leptons in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model

We consider the leptonic and semileptonic (SL) lepton flavour violating (LFV) decays of the charged leptons in the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM). The formalism for evaluation of branching fractions for the SL LFV charged-lepton decays with one or two pseudoscalar mesons, or one vector meson in the final state, is given. Previous amplitudes for the SL LFV charged-lepton decays in MSSM are improved, for instance the $\gamma$-penguin amplitude is corrected to assure the gauge invariance. The decays are studied not only in the model-independent formulation of the theory in the frame of MSSM, but also within the frame of the minimal supersymmetric SO(10) model within which the parameters of the MSSM are determined. The latter model gives predictions for the neutrino-Dirac Yukawa coupling matrix, once free parameters in the model are appropriately fixed to accommodate the recent neutrino oscillation data. Using this unambiguous neutrino-Dirac Yukawa couplings, we calculate the LFV leptonic and SL decay processes assuming the minimal supergravity scenario. A very detailed numerical analysis is done to constrain the MSSM parameters. Numerical results for SL LFV processes are given, for instance for tau -> e (mu) pi0, tau -> e (mu) eta, tau -> e (mu) eta', tau -> e (mu) rho0, tau -> e (mu) phi, tau -> e (mu) omega, etc.Comment: 36 pages, 3 tables, 5 .eps figure