Promoting the adoption of innovations through participatory approaches: example from northern Nigeria

Open Access JournalParticipatory research and development approaches involving all stakeholders along the value chain have recently been hypothesized to produce quicker outcomes than the linear technology transfer model. This paper analyzed the crop yield obtained by farmers and their uptake of improved technologies in a 2009 survey, one year after the completion of project field activities. It was a multi-stakeholder project involving research, extension, farmer groups, marketers and policymakers, that operated for 4 years (2005-2008) in Borno state of Nigeria. Survey results indicated that farmers who participated in project activities’ have been successful in increasing crop yields. Both yields and per capita production of major crops were statistically significantly higher (ρ≤ 0.05) in project communities compared to non-project ones. It is also estimated that there was a decline in percentage of households in food insecurity situation in project communities. Probit regression revealed that participation in project activities had a positive and significant effect on household food security (ρ≤ 0.05). It is then concluded that development interventions that involve multiple stakeholder partnership, use of participatory research and extension approach can help increase technology uptake among resourcepoor farmers as well as increase food production and food security in a region

Design and Characterization of a Neutron Calibration Facility for the Study of sub-keV Nuclear Recoils

As part of an experimental effort to demonstrate sensitivity in a large-mass detector to the ultra-low energy recoils expected from coherent neutrino-nucleus elastic scattering, we have designed and built a highly monochromatic 24 keV neutron beam at the Kansas State University Triga Mark-II reactor. The beam characteristics were chosen so as to mimic the soft recoil energies expected from reactor antineutrinos in a variety of targets, allowing to understand the response of dedicated detector technologies in this yet unexplored sub-keV recoil range. A full characterization of the beam properties (intensity, monochromaticity, contaminations, beam profile) is presented, together with first tests of the calibration setup using proton recoils in organic scintillator.Comment: submitted to Nucl. Instr. Meth.

An On Body Accelerometer System for streaming therapy data using COTS UHF RFID

This paper details the use of an on body Accelerometer COTS RFID system for use in determining specific therapeutic movements, and the performance of said movements. Conventional methodologies rely on power intensive Bluetooth or Wi-Fi technologies for live communications, but this paper outlines the use of ultra-low power battery assistive passive modes on UHF RFID chips to harness sub-2mW continuous streaming of Accelerometer data

Higher-Order Termination: from Kruskal to Computability

Termination is a major question in both logic and computer science. In logic, termination is at the heart of proof theory where it is usually called strong normalization (of cut elimination). In computer science, termination has always been an important issue for showing programs correct. In the early days of logic, strong normalization was usually shown by assigning ordinals to expressions in such a way that eliminating a cut would yield an expression with a smaller ordinal. In the early days of verification, computer scientists used similar ideas, interpreting the arguments of a program call by a natural number, such as their size. Showing the size of the arguments to decrease for each recursive call gives a termination proof of the program, which is however rather weak since it can only yield quite small ordinals. In the sixties, Tait invented a new method for showing cut elimination of natural deduction, based on a predicate over the set of terms, such that the membership of an expression to the predicate implied the strong normalization property for that expression. The predicate being defined by induction on types, or even as a fixpoint, this method could yield much larger ordinals. Later generalized by Girard under the name of reducibility or computability candidates, it showed very effective in proving the strong normalization property of typed lambda-calculi..

Interactions between fine-grained sediment delivery, river bed deposition and salmonid spawning success

Salmonids clean river bed gravels to lay their eggs. However, during the incubation period fine sediment infiltrates the bed. This has been found to limit the success of salmonid spawning, as fine sediment reduces gravel permeability resulting in intra-gravel flow velocities and O2 concentrations decreasing. The success of salmonid spawning is therefore a function of the coincidence of fine sediment delivery and the development of the salmonid eggs. The presence of fine sediment also exerts sub-lethal effects on the rate of egg development with a negative feedback slowing and extending the incubation process meaning the eggs are in the gravels for longer and susceptible to more potential sediment delivery events. The SIDO (Sediment Intrusion and Dissolved Oxygen)- UK model is a physically-based numerical model which simulates the effect of fine sediment deposition on the abiotic characteristics of the salmonid redd, along with the consequences for egg development and survival. This model is used to investigate the interactions and feedbacks between the timing and concentrations of suspended sediment delivery events, and the deposition of fine sediment within the gravel bed, and the consequences of this on the rate of egg development and survival. The model simulations suggest that egg survival is highly sensitive to suspended sediment concentrations, particularly to changes in the supply rate of sand particles. The magnitude, frequency and specific timing of sediment delivery events effects egg survival rates. The modelling framework is also used to investigate the impact of the rate of gravel infilling by sediment. The hypotheses of continual, discrete event and non-linear decline in the rate of infilling are investigated

Pulmicort® turbohaler® once daily as initial prophylactic therapy for asthma

AbstractIn a double-blind, randomized, parallel-group clinical trial, 340 asthmatic patients aged 12–70 years received budesonide 400 μg once daily in the morning, budesonide 400 μg once daily in the evening, budesonide 200 μg twice daily or placebo, for 12 weeks in addition to inhaled short-acting β2-agonists used as required (p.r.n.). Budesonide was given as Pulmicort Turbohaler.Peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) increased by 20 to 30 1 min−1 in each of the active treatment groups, significantly more than in the placebo group (P<0·01). There were no significant differences between the active treatment groups. Symptom improvement and decreased β2-agonist use reflected the PEFR data. Incidences of adverse events in the active treatment groups were similar to those observed in the placebo group.Budesonide 400 μg given once daily morning or evening is equieffective with the same total daily dose given twice daily in the treatment of mild to moderate stable asthmatics

Ecohydrological studies of dune slack vegetation at Kenfig dunes, South Wales, UK

Dune slacks are important coastal sand dune habitats and seasonal changes in water levels within dune aquifers control both their formation and the specific hydrological conditions which then govern the floristic composition of their characteristic plant communities. Kenfig Dunes National Nature Reserve is one of the largest dune sites in South Wales and Southern Britain. It supports an exceptional range of dune slack communities, including most of those recognised in the British National Vegetation Classification scheme. Detailed studies of the vegetation ecology and hydrology of dune slacks reveal the important influence of hydrological variables in controlling the composition of dune slack vegetation and also valuable information on water table profile and the key factors governing the annual hydrological budget of the dune system aquifer

Superconformal Ward Identities and N=2 Yang-Mills Theory

A reformulation of the superconformal Ward identities that combines all the superconformal currents and the associated parameters in one multiplet is given for theories with rigid N=1 or N=2 supersymmetry. This form of the Ward Identities is applied to spontaneously broken N=2 Yang-Mills theory and used to derive a condition on the low energy effective action. This condition is satisfied by the solution proposed by Seiberg and Witten.Comment: 25 pages, plain Te

Merthyr Mawr: a case study for the assessment of nitrate at humid dunes in England and Wales

Humid dunes in the UK are at risk from nutrient pressures from multiple sources. The Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC (WFD) requires assessment and identification of these pressures with appropriate measures defined to mitigate against further damage. We discuss the application of nitrate threshold values for the WFD classification, illustrating this with a case study at Merthyr Mawr, South Wales, where ephemeral groundwater discharge from a spring (‘Burrows Well’) sourced within the Carboniferous Limestone, creates a large dune slack. Ecological surveys suggest that the vegetation in this slack was in unfavourable condition, due to high levels of nitrate. Applying the source-pathway-receptor model an investigation was undertaken to improve the conceptual model and assess the significance of damage from groundwater derived nutrients. Results show groundwater nitrate concentrations ~ 10 mg/l as NO3-N feeding the main slack waters. The vegetation survey data shows clear evidence of ecological damage, and the hydrogeological data traces the source of this back to the Carboniferous Limestone aquifer and not the overlying blown sands. Discharging groundwater is the source of the enrichment. Isotopic analysis suggests that the N is derived from inorganic fertilizer and/or atmospheric N. During the first cycle WFD characterisation the unfavourable status of the dunes due to chemical groundwater pressure resulted in a failure of the surrounding groundwater body, which was designated as poor status. The site has been re assessed for the 2nd Cycle WFD characterisation where recently developed nitrate ‘threshold’ values have been applied to assess the significance of damage for groundwater derived nutrients. The surrounding Carboniferous Limestone catchment is complex and could not be sufficiently constrained, thus land management changes could not be targeted. The paucity of historical or repeat vegetation surveys limits our ability to measure change within the dune vegetation and causes difficulties in understanding the impact of multiple pressures