School feeding or general food distribution? Quasi-experimental evidence on the educational impacts of emergency food assistance during conflict in Mali

This study relies on a unique precrisis baseline and five-year follow-up to investigate the effects of emergency school feeding and generalised food distribution (GFD) on children’s schooling during conflict in Mali. It estimates programme impact on child enrolment, absenteeism, and attainment by using a difference in differences weighted estimator. School feeding led to increases in enrolment by 10 percentage points and to around an additional half-year of completed schooling. Attendance among boys in households receiving GFD, however, declined by about 20 per cent relative to the comparison group. Disaggregating by conflict intensity showed that receipt of any food assistance led to a rise in enrolment mostly in high-intensity conflict areas and that the negative effects of GFD on attendance were also concentrated in the most affected areas. School feeding mostly raised attainment among children in areas not in the immediate vicinity of conflict. Programme receipt triggered adjustments in child labour. School feeding led to lower participation and time spent in work among girls, while GFD raised children’s labour, particularly among boys. The educational implications of food assistance should be considered in planning humanitarian responses to bridge the gap between emergency assistance and development by promoting children’s education

Development and testing of the propulsion system of MARTA AUV

This work deals with the design of the propulsion system of a modular AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle). The authors describe the design methodologies and the testing devices used for the fast prototyping of MARTA (MARine Tool for Archaeology) AUV actuation system, including drivers, motors and propellers. In particular, the authors introduce the design criteria followed for the preliminary testing activities and the methodologies adopted for fast testing and prototyping of the proposed solutions. This is a quite important topic considering the high customization and the reliability required by this kind of applications

An IMU and USBL-aided buoy for underwater localization

Autonomous underwater navigation remains, as of today, a challenging task. The marine environment limits the number of sensors available for precise localization, hence Au- tonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) usually rely on inertial and velocity sensors to obtain an estimate of their position either through dead reckoning or by means of more sophisticated navigation filters (such as Kalman filters and its extensions [1]). On the other hand, acoustic localization makes possible the determination of a reliable vehicles pose estimate exploiting suit- able acoustic modems [3]; such estimate can even be integrated within the navigation filter of the vehicle in order to increase its accuracy. In this paper, the authors discuss the development and the performance of an Ultra-Short BaseLine (USBL)-aided buoy to improve the localization of underwater vehicles. At first, the components and the physical realization of the buoy will be discussed; then, the procedure to compute the position of the target will be analyzed. The following part of the paper will be focused on the development of a recursive state estimation algorithm to process the measurements computed by the buoy; specifically, Extended Kalman Filter [4] has been adopted to deal with the nonlinearities of the sensors housed on the buoy. A validation of the measurement filtering through experimental tests is also proposed

An IMU and USBL-aided buoy for underwater localization

Autonomous underwater navigation remains, as of today, a challenging task. The marine environment limits the number of sensors available for precise localization, hence Au- tonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) usually rely on inertial and velocity sensors to obtain an estimate of their position either through dead reckoning or by means of more sophisticated navigation filters (such as Kalman filters and its extensions [1]). On the other hand, acoustic localization makes possible the determination of a reliable vehicles pose estimate exploiting suit- able acoustic modems [3]; such estimate can even be integrated within the navigation filter of the vehicle in order to increase its accuracy. In this paper, the authors discuss the development and the performance of an Ultra-Short BaseLine (USBL)-aided buoy to improve the localization of underwater vehicles. At first, the components and the physical realization of the buoy will be discussed; then, the procedure to compute the position of the target will be analyzed. The following part of the paper will be focused on the development of a recursive state estimation algorithm to process the measurements computed by the buoy; specifically, Extended Kalman Filter [4] has been adopted to deal with the nonlinearities of the sensors housed on the buoy. A validation of the measurement filtering through experimental tests is also proposed

Trends and Factors Associated with the Nutritional Status of Adolescent Girls in Ghana:A Secondary Analysis of the 2003-2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey (GDHS) Data

Objective: We examined the trends over time and the factors associated with malnutrition among adolescent girls in Ghana. Design: Cross-sectional analysis from 3 nationwide Ghana Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in 2003 (n 983), 2008 (n 955) and 2014 (n 857). We used Cox proportional hazard models with sample weighting to model the prevalence ratio (PR) of malnutrition. Setting: Countrywide, covering rural and urban areas in Ghana. Participants: Non-pregnant adolescent girls aged 15–19 years. Results: Compared with 2003, thinness declined marginally (PR 0·88 (95 % CI 0·45, 1·73)) in 2008 and in 2014 (PR 0·71 (95 % CI 0·38, 1·56)). Stunting declined marginally by 19 % in 2008 (PR 0·81 (95 % CI 0·59, 1·12)), flattening out in 2014 (PR 0·81 (95 % CI 0·57, 1·17)). We found an increasing trend of overweight/obesity with the PR peaking in 2014 (PR 1·39 (95 % CI 1·02, 1·88)) compared to 2003. The anaemia prevalence remained severe without a clear trend. A low level of education of the adolescent girl was positively associated with stunting. Increasing age was positively associated with stunting but inversely associated with thinness and anaemia. Girls who ever bore a child were more likely to be anaemic compared to those who never did. A lower level of household wealth and a unit increase in household size was negatively associated with overweight/obesity. Urban dwelling girls were less likely to be stunted. Conclusions: The stagnant burden of under-nutrition and rising over-nutrition emphasise the need for double-duty actions to tackle malnutrition in all its forms in Ghanaian adolescent girls

School Feeding Programs in Middle Childhood and Adolescence

Almost every country in the world has a national school feeding program to provide daily snacks or meals to school-attending children and adolescents. The interven- tions reach an estimated 368 million children and ado- lescents globally. The total investment in the intervention is projected to be as much as US$75 billion annually (WFP 2013), largely from government budgets. School feeding may contribute to multiple objectives, including social safety nets, education, nutrition, health, and local agriculture. Its contribution to education objectives is well recognized and documented, while its role as a social safety net was underscored following the food and fuel crises of 2007 and 2008 (Bundy and others 2009). In terms of health and nutrition, school feeding contributes to the continuum of development by build- ing on investments made earlier in the life course, including maternal and infant health interventions and early child development interventions (see chapter 7 in this volume, Alderman and others 2017). School feeding may also help leverage global efforts to enhance the inclusiveness of education for out-of-school children, adolescent girls, and disabled persons, as called for in the Sustainable Development Goals (see chapter 17 in this volume, Graham and others 2017). Although the Disease Control Priorities series focuses on low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), evidence from high-income countries (HICs) is included because of the near universality of school feeding and the insights that inclusion can provide as economies develop. For example, the design of school feeding in countries under- going the nutrition transition 1 may provide some lessons on how to shift from providing access to sufficient calo- ries to promoting healthful diets and dietary behaviors for children and adolescents (WFP 2013). Agricultural development has increasingly gained attention. It is clear that to enable the transition to sus- tainable, scalable government-run programs, the inclu- sion of the agricultural sector is essential (Bundy and others 2009; Drake and others 2016). Accounting for the full benefits of school feeding through cost- effectiveness and benefit-cost analysis is challenging, similar to other complex interventions, but undertaking this accounting is critical for assessing the tradeoffs with competing investments. This chapter reviews the evidence about how school feeding meets these objectives and provides some indi- cation of costs in relation to benefits. The costs of the intervention are well established; estimates that encompass all the benefits of school feeding are more challenging. The benefits must be quantified and translated to the same unit to allow for aggregation. Moreover, how school feeding interventions are designed and implemented varies significantly across countries. Given that delivery of school feeding often involves multiple sectors, common policy frameworks and cross-sectoral coordination are required to achieve maximum benefit (Bundy and others 2009). Several other chapters in the volume highlight school feeding. These include chapter 11 (Lassi, Moin, and Bhutta 2017), chapter 20 (Bundy and others 2017), chapter 22 (Plaut and others 2017), and chapter 25 (Fernandes and Aurino 2017)

Extracellular ATP-induced NO production and its dependence on membrane Ca2+ flux in Salvia miltiorrhiza hairy roots

Extracellular ATP (eATP) is a novel signalling agent, and nitric oxide (NO) is a well-established signal molecule with diverse functions in plant growth and development. This study characterizes NO production induced by exogenous ATP and examines its relationship with other important signalling agents, Ca2+ and H2O2 in Salvia miltiorrhiza hairy root culture. Exogenous ATP was applied at 10–500 μM to the hairy root cultures and stimulated NO production was detectable within 30 min. The NO level increased with ATP dose from 10–100 μM but decreased from 100–200 μM or higher. The ATP-induced NO production was mimicked by a non-hydrolysable ATP analogue ATPγS, but only weakly by ADP, AMP or adenosine. The ATP-induced NO production was blocked by Ca2+ antagonists, but not affected by a protein kinase inhibitor. ATP also induced H2O2 production, which was dependent on both Ca2+ and protein kinases, and also on NO biosynthesis. On the other hand, ATP induced a rapid increase in the intracellular Ca2+ level, which was dependent on NO but not H2O2. The results suggest that NO is implicated in ATP-induced responses and signal transduction in plant cells, and ATP signalling is closely related to Ca2+ and ROS signalling

Typhoon at CommsNet13: Experimental experience on AUV navigation and localization

This paper presents two acoustic-based techniques for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) navigation within an underwater network of fixed sensors. The proposed algorithms exploit the positioning measurements provided by an Ultra-Short Base Line (USBL) transducer on-board the vehicle to aid the navigation task. In the considered framework the acoustic measurements are embedded in the communication network scheme, causing time-varying delays in ranging with the fixed nodes. The results presented are obtained with post-processing elaborations of the raw experimental data collected during the CommsNet13 campaign, organized and scientifically led by the NATO Science and Technology Organization Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE). The experiment involved several research institutions and included among its objectives the evaluation of on-board acoustic USBL systems for navigation and localization of AUVs. The ISME groups of the Universities of Florence and Pisa jointly participated to the experiment with one Typhoon class vehicle. This is a 300 m depth rated AUV with acoustic communication capabilities originally developed by the two groups for archaeological search in the framework of the THESAURUS project. The CommsNet13 Typhoon, equipped with an acoustic modem/USBL head, navigated within the fixed nodes acoustic network deployed by CMRE. This allows the comparison between inertial navigation, acoustic self-localization and ground truth represented by GPS signals (when the vehicle was at the surface)

High intensity neutrino oscillation facilities in Europe

The EUROnu project has studied three possible options for future, high intensity neutrino oscillation facilities in Europe. The first is a Super Beam, in which the neutrinos come from the decay of pions created by bombarding targets with a 4 MW proton beam from the CERN High Power Superconducting Proton Linac. The far detector for this facility is the 500 kt MEMPHYS water Cherenkov, located in the Fréjus tunnel. The second facility is the Neutrino Factory, in which the neutrinos come from the decay of μ+ and μ− beams in a storage ring. The far detector in this case is a 100 kt magnetized iron neutrino detector at a baseline of 2000 km. The third option is a Beta Beam, in which the neutrinos come from the decay of beta emitting isotopes, in particular He6 and Ne18, also stored in a ring. The far detector is also the MEMPHYS detector in the Fréjus tunnel. EUROnu has undertaken conceptual designs of these facilities and studied the performance of the detectors. Based on this, it has determined the physics reach of each facility, in particular for the measurement of CP violation in the lepton sector, and estimated the cost of construction. These have demonstrated that the best facility to build is the Neutrino Factory. However, if a powerful proton driver is constructed for another purpose or if the MEMPHYS detector is built for astroparticle physics, the Super Beam also becomes very attractive