18,692 research outputs found
Baseline report on the evaluation of Familias en Acción
This report describes the survey that was carried out in 122 communities in rural Colombia by the consortium formed by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Econometria and SEI as the baseline for the impact evaluation of Familias en Acción, a programme to foster the accumulation of human capital in rural Colombia, run by the Colombian government.
In this report, we will not describe in detail the programme or the methodology of the proposed evaluation, as this was done in IFS-Econometria-SEI (2003a). The main aim of the document is to discuss the first, baseline survey that was collected for this evaluation. While the baseline survey cannot, by definition, be used to perform impact evaluation, towards the end of the report we exploit the slightly peculiar way in which the programme was started and
have a first very preliminary glance at some of the impacts that the programme might have.
The methodological caveats on interpreting these results should be taken very seriously.
This report does not contain an extensive ‘fieldwork’ report. This is included in SEI (2003).
Analogously, we do not discuss extensively the operation of the programme and the evidence that emerged on related issues and on targeting. These issues are covered in IFS-Econometria- SEI (2003b, 2003c). We will be referring to some of the issues raised in those reports, however.
This report is divided into five chapters. In Chapter 1, we briefly summarise the main features of the programme and its proposed evaluation. A more detailed description of both of these aspects is contained in IFS-Econometria-SEI (2003a). Here, however, we give some details on the expansion of the programme and on the features of this expansion that allow a first and preliminary analysis of the impact of the programme. In Chapter 2, we describe the statistical methodology that will be used in the report. This includes the methodology for the data description that constitutes the largest part of the report and for the preliminary impact evaluation. Chapter 3 describes the baseline survey. This chapter is divided into several
sections, each referring to a particular module. In each section, we first describe the ‘treatment’ population – that is, the households eligible for the programme that were living in villages targeted by the programme. We then move on to the population living in ‘control’ villages –
that is, in villages that were not targeted by the programme and yet are, nonetheless, reasonably similar to the treatment villages. Chapter 4 presents the preliminary impact evaluation
Intestinal Microbial Ecology of Broilers Vaccinated and Challenged With Mixed Eimeria Species, and Supplemented with Essential Oil Blends
Intestinal microbiota is an important component in the development of defense mechanisms in the gut mucosa. This project determined the dynamics of intestinal microbial communities (MC) of broilers vaccinated at first day of age with live oocysts of Eimeria species and fed diets supplemented with 2 specific essential oil (EO) blends, Crina Poultry (CP) and Crina Alternate (CA). Five treatments were analyzed: 1) unmedicated-uninfected (UU) control; 2) unmedicated-infected (UI) control; 3) vaccinated with Advent cocci-vaccine and without feed additive (COV) supplements; 4) vaccinated with Advent and supplemented with CP; and 5) vaccinated with Advent and supplemented with CA. The EO blends were added at 100 ppm to the same basal diets. Chicks were gavage-infected at 19 d of age with Eimeria acervulina, Eimeria maxima, and Eimeria tenella. Duodenal, ileal, and cecal samples were taken from 12 birds per treatment just before the infection and 7 d after the challenge, pooled in 6 samples, and frozen. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis was used to examine PCR-amplified fragments of the bacterial 16S ribosomal DNA variable region. Results are presented as percentages of similarity coefficients (SC). Dendrograms of amplicon patterns indicated MC differences due to intestinal location, feed additives, and cocci infection. The EO blends CP and CA did affect MC in all gut sections. The cocci-infection caused drastic MC population shifts in duodenal, ileal, and cecal sections (36.7, 55.4, and 36.2% SC, respectively). The CP-supplemented birds had higher SC between pre- and postchallenge MC in duodenal and ileal (73.3, 81.8%) than COV (66.4, 66.5%). However, COV broilers had the smallest changes in cecal MC after infection (79.5% SC). We concluded that cocci-vaccination causes small changes in intestinal MC, but challenge causes drastic shifts. The EO blend supplementation modulates MC in cocci-vaccinated broilers, avoiding drastic shifts after a mixed coccidia infection. Correlations between MC dynamics and host responses are discussed
BhaBAR: Big Halpha kinematical sample of BARred spiral galaxies - I. Fabry-Perot Observations of 21 galaxies
The Halpha gas kinematics of twenty-one representative barred spiral galaxies
belonging to the BHaBAR sample is presented. The galaxies were observed with
FaNTOmM, a Fabry-Perot integral-field spectrometer, on three different
telescopes. The 3D data cubes were processed through a robust pipeline with the
aim of providing the most homogeneous and accurate dataset possible useful for
further analysis. The data cubes were spatially binned to a constant
signal-to-noise ratio, typically around 7. Maps of the monochromatic Halpha
emission line and of the velocity field were generated and the kinematical
parameters were derived for the whole sample using tilted-ring models. The
photometrical and kinematical parameters (position angle of the major axis,
inclination, systemic velocity and kinematical centre) are in relative good
agreement, except maybe for the later-type spirals.Comment: 34 pages, 25 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. To obtain a
higher resolution version, go to
ftp://ftp.astro.umontreal.ca/outgoing/olivier/bhabar.pdf or to
http://www.astro.umontreal.ca/fantomm/bhabar
Synchronization of Chaotic Systems by Common Random Forcing
We show two examples of noise--induced synchronization. We study a 1-d map
and the Lorenz systems, both in the chaotic region. For each system we give
numerical evidence that the addition of a (common) random noise, of large
enough intensity, to different trajectories which start from different initial
conditions, leads eventually to the perfect synchronization of the
trajectories. The largest Lyapunov exponent becomes negative due to the
presence of the noise terms.Comment: 5 pages, uses aipproc.cls and aipproc.sty (included). Five double
figures are provided as ten separate gif files. Version with (large)
postscript figures included available from
http://www.imedea.uib.es/PhysDept/publicationsDB/date.htm
Experiences in porting mini-applications to OpenACC and OpenMP on heterogeneous systems
This article studies mini-applications—Minisweep, GenASiS, GPP, and FF—that use computational methods commonly encountered in HPC. We have ported these applications to develop OpenACC and OpenMP versions, and evaluated their performance on Titan (Cray XK7 with K20x GPUs), Cori (Cray XC40 with Intel KNL), Summit (IBM AC922 with Volta GPUs), and Cori-GPU (Cray CS-Storm 500NX with Intel Skylake and Volta GPUs). Our goals are for these new ports to be useful to both application and compiler developers, to document and describe the lessons learned and the methodology to create optimized OpenMP and OpenACC versions, and to provide a description of possible migration paths between the two specifications. Cases where specific directives or code patterns result in improved performance for a given architecture are highlighted. We also include discussions of the functionality and maturity of the latest compilers available on the above platforms with respect to OpenACC or OpenMP implementations
Kinematics of Current Region Fragmentation in Semi-Inclusive Deeply Inelastic Scattering
Different kinematical regimes of semi-inclusive deeply inelastic scattering
(SIDIS) processes correspond to different underlying partonic pictures, and it
is important to understand the transition between them. This is particularly
the case when there is sensitivity to intrinsic transverse momentum, in which
case kinematical details can become especially important. We address the
question of how to identify the current fragmentation region --- the
kinematical regime where a factorization picture with fragmentation functions
is appropriate. We distinguish this from soft and target fragmentation regimes.
Our criteria are based on the kinematic regions used in derivations of
factorization theorems. We argue that, when hard scales are of order a few
GeVs, there is likely significant overlap between different rapidity regions
that are normally understood to be distinct. We thus comment on the need to
take this into account with more unified descriptions of SIDIS, which should
span all rapidities for the produced hadron. Finally, we propose general
criteria for estimating the proximity to the current region at large Q.Comment: 9 Pages, 5 figures; minor clarifications and corrections, version
appearing in Physics Letters
Mapping the Kinematical Regimes of Semi-Inclusive Deep Inelastic Scattering
We construct a language for identifying kinematical regions of transversely
differential semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering cross sections with
particular underlying partonic pictures, especially in regions of moderate to
low where sensitivity to kinematical effects outside the usual very high
energy limit becomes non-trivial. The partonic pictures map to power law
expansions whose leading contributions ultimately lead to well-known QCD
factorization theorems. We propose methods for estimating the consistency of
any particular region of overall hadronic kinematics with the kinematics of a
given underlying partonic picture. The basic setup of kinematics of
semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering is also reviewed in some detail.Comment: 37 pages, 11 Figure
H-alpha Kinematics of the SINGS Nearby Galaxies Survey. I
This is the first part of an Halpha kinematics follow-up survey of the SINGS
sample. The data for 28 galaxies are presented. The observations were done on
three different telescopes with FaNTOmM, an integral field photon counting
spectrometer, installed in the respective focal reducer of each telescope. The
data reduction was done through a newly built pipeline with the aim of
producing the most homogenous data set possible. Adaptive spatial binning was
applied to the data cubes in order to get a constant signal-to-noise ratio
across the field of view. Radial velocity and monochromatic maps were generated
using a new algorithm and the kinematical parameters were derived using
tilted-ring models.Comment: 47 pages, 37 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. All
high-res. figures are available at
http://www.astro.umontreal.ca/fantomm/sings . An high-res. version of the
article is available at http://www.astro.umontreal.ca/~odaigle/SINGS.pd
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