A Roadmap for HEP Software and Computing R&D for the 2020s

Particle physics has an ambitious and broad experimental programme for the coming decades. This programme requires large investments in detector hardware, either to build new facilities and experiments, or to upgrade existing ones. Similarly, it requires commensurate investment in the R&D of software to acquire, manage, process, and analyse the shear amounts of data to be recorded. In planning for the HL-LHC in particular, it is critical that all of the collaborating stakeholders agree on the software goals and priorities, and that the efforts complement each other. In this spirit, this white paper describes the R&D activities required to prepare for this software upgrade.Peer reviewe

New genetic loci link adipose and insulin biology to body fat distribution.

Body fat distribution is a heritable trait and a well-established predictor of adverse metabolic outcomes, independent of overall adiposity. To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of body fat distribution and its molecular links to cardiometabolic traits, here we conduct genome-wide association meta-analyses of traits related to waist and hip circumferences in up to 224,459 individuals. We identify 49 loci (33 new) associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index (BMI), and an additional 19 loci newly associated with related waist and hip circumference measures (P < 5 × 10(-8)). In total, 20 of the 49 waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for BMI loci show significant sexual dimorphism, 19 of which display a stronger effect in women. The identified loci were enriched for genes expressed in adipose tissue and for putative regulatory elements in adipocytes. Pathway analyses implicated adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution, providing insight into potential pathophysiological mechanisms

Some factors in the historical development of field cultivation practices in two villages in South Central Niger

In this article, I describe field cultivation work in two villages in South Central Niger. Furthermore, I ponder on the historical factors that have shaped these working practices in this area. In doing so, I pursue three objectives. First, my intention is to develop further the anthropology of work in Africa, which has focused heretofore on the synchronic and systematic aspect of work by investigating the complex and multidimensional history of work practices in a specific African setting. Second, I want to show that the history of work practices in these villages should be conceived in Weberian terms, i.e., as the product of a criss-crossing of material bases, forms of social organization, political factors and culture. Third, my findings allow me to argue that the writing of the history of agricultural production systems in South Central Niger has not yet sufficiently recognised the role of cultural and religious elements that shape the development of field-cultivation practices

Reflections on the Influence of Religion on Field Cultivation in Southern Central Niger

Anthropologists have addressed the question as to if and how religious beliefs and practices influence work processes and this has also been a persistent undercurrent in the ethnographic literature on Niger and on the Hausa people. In this article, I will review the contributions to this topic. Studies show that religion might influence other societal fields, among them work practices, in several ways. This provides the background for my own case study. I will discuss this topic with respect to field cultivation in southern central Niger. My case study suggests that religion indeed influences work processes in our region of interest, even though in subtle ways. My case study also makes the discussion of the influence of magic and religion on work processes more differentiated. As I will show, the peasants hold beliefs in the intervention of supernatural entities and forces, these beliefs provide them with a variety of perspectives onto the work process and we could expect each of these perspectives to have different consequences for the work process. This flexibility of perspectives, it seems to me, has not been addressed in earlier studies. At the same time, the way religion influences field cultivation in our region of interest proves to be very different from the way Luther and Calvin were thought to have shaped work processes in Western society

Musa | An essay (or experiment) in the anthropology of the individual

Anthropology does not usually select a person and try to empirically research, describe, analyse and explain their present life. However, this is the main objective pursued in this book. The field subject who becomes a theme in it is Musa, a Hausa peasant from Niger. This study thus provides an account of his present life and tries to explain it by drawing on the literature on peasants and on Islam in the region. This book also tries to show that the study of individuals »as such« is a topic for anthropology which deserves more attention. It argues that anthropology could benefit from an explicit discussion of the notion of the individual by providing more differentiated accounts of individuals as it tries to contribute to a development of an appropriate notion of the individual for anthropology. Furthermore, it makes the point that the study of individuals contributes to a better understanding of the interrelationship between different social fields, e.g. religion and economy

A Hausa man makes a decision: a contribution to the anthropological perspective on decision-making

In anthropology, decision-making has mainly been studied from two perspectives: rationalist and ethnographic. These approaches lack a theoretical basis which would integrate their findings in a coherent manner. Taking inspiration from Tugendhat and Berthoz, this article argues that a way out of this impasse is to conceptualise decisionmaking as an action. At the same time, this conceptualisation allows us to establish a continuum of decision-making processes from simple through complex to fundamental, and to understand these processes as malleable across milieux, societies and cultures.This article also goes beyond this by discussing the decisionmaking process that led a Hausa villager from Niger to decide not to migrate. This discussion shows that the anthropological literature has largely overlooked a type of decision that could be called a ‘maturing decision’. It also sheds light on the role of emotions in decision-making and on the constitutive role of emic ideas about decision-making in these processes

How to explain access to the field. Lessons from fieldwork among the Yedina (or Buduma) of Lake Chad

In their articles, researchers describe how the identity that is assigned to them by the social group they are studying is the key criterion for determining a researcher’s ability to gain access to the field. They often explain this identity in relation to the historical external relations of the society being investigated. In this article, I will also attempt to portray the identity that the Yedina assigned to me during my field research, and which fundamentally determined my possibilities of gaining access to the field. However, at the same time, I wish to explain this identity not only in the context of the historical external relations but also in the light of the social, economic, and political structures of this ethnic group. In this way, I hope to show that the reasons for assigning identities to anthropologists require a much more in-depth discussion than has so far been the case in the aforementioned discours