Measuring the Impact of Microfinance on Child Health Outcomes in Indonesia

Microfinance has become a staple of modern development policy as a means to facilitate anything from gender equality to growth. It can facilitate the sharing of health-related information among parents, promote the bargaining power of women in the household, aid in the development of important health-related infrastructure, and help households smooth consumption in the wake of unexpected economic shocks. Using data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey (1993-2000), we find that the presence of microfinance institutions in communities significantly improves the health of children.Microfinance, child health, nutrition, Indonesia

pi-pi and pi-K scatterings in three-flavour resummed chiral perturbation theory

The (light but not-so-light) strange quark may play a special role in the low-energy dynamics of QCD. The presence of strange quark pairs in the sea may have a significant impact of the pattern of chiral symmetry breaking : in particular large differences can occur between the chiral limits of two and three massless flavours (i.e., whether m_s is kept at its physical value or sent to zero). This may induce problems of convergence in three-flavour chiral expansions. To cope with such difficulties, we introduce a new framework, called Resummed Chiral Perturbation Theory. We exploit it to analyse pi-pi and pi-K scatterings and match them with dispersive results in a frequentist framework. Constraints on three-flavour chiral order parameters are derived.Comment: Proceedings of the EPS-HEP 2007 Conference, Manchester (UK). 3 pages, 1 figur

OGSA/Globus Evaluation for Data Intensive Applications

We present an architecture of Globus Toolkit 3 based testbed intended for evaluation of applicability of the Open Grid Service Architecture (OGSA) for Data Intensive Applications.Comment: To be published in the proceedings of the XIX International Symposium on Nuclear Electronics and Computing (NEC'2003), Bulgaria, Varna, 15-20 September, 200

What is the scientific basis for climate-smart agriculture?

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is a systematic approach to agricultural development. It intends to address climate change and food security challenges simultaneously across levels, from field management to national policy, with goals to 1) improve food security and agricultural productivity, 2) increase the resilience of farming systems to climate change, and 3) mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or sequester carbon. After the introduction of the CSA concept in 2010, development organizations, national governments, and donors have quickly adopted a “climate-smart” agenda

Improved sensitivity of H.E.S.S.-II through the fifth telescope focus system

The Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope (IACT) works by imaging the very short flash of Cherenkov radiation generated by the cascade of relativistic charged particles produced when a TeV gamma ray strikes the atmosphere. This energetic air shower is initiated at an altitude of 10-30 km depending on the energy and the arrival direction of the primary gamma ray. Whether the best image of the shower is obtained by focusing the telescope at infinity and measuring the Cherenkov photon angles or focusing on the central region of the shower is a not obvious question. This is particularly true for large size IACT for which the depth of the field is much smaller. We address this issue in particular with the fifth telescope (CT5) of the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.); a 28 m dish large size telescope recently entered in operation and sensitive to an energy threshold of tens of GeVs. CT5 is equipped with a focus system, its working principle and the expected effect of focusing depth on the telescope sensitivity at low energies (50-200 GeV) is discussed.Comment: In Proceedings of the 33rd International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2013), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil

Preliminary analysis of the drive system of the CTA LST Telescope and its integration in the whole PLC architecture

This work aims to present a preliminary analysis of the drive system configuration for the CTA telescopes array and more specifically a possible architecture for the sub-array of Large Size Telescopes - LSTs. The first part of this document is focused on the control command architecture of the drive system dedicated to the LST including a view on some mechanical aspects concerning the telescopes of this class. In particular the current investigation on the interfaces between the drive system and the automatic system in charge of the camera mast control system (e.g. the arch damping) is presented. In the second part of this work the issue of the integration of the telescope drive system within a global PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) architecture for the CTA array is addressed with the corresponding links to the control software layer

Impacts of Aspen and Conifer Vegetation on Predation Risk and Distributions of Bird Species

Aspen forests are in decline around the globe and are largely being replaced by conifers.  Associated with this shift in forest composition, we document an increase in nest predation risk and decrease in abundance of bird species that breed in aspens.  These observational data from 5 years across 19 forest stands in western Montana were verified with an adaptive management experiment removing all conifers from three large aspen stands in the Mt. Haggin WMA.  This landscape-scale approach strongly supports the active management of aspen stands, by such methods as removing conifers, to improve breeding bird habitat.  Our results also suggest that vegetation-mediated effects of predation are associated with avian distributions and species turnover