Checklist: Gender-inclusive actionable agro-advisories

This checklist aims to assist producers and translators in developing agro-advisories (forecast and forecast-based advice) that are gender-inclusive and useful for both men and women farmers. It presents five indicators to determine the actionability of such agro-advisories:(1) What information is available?(2) If it is available, is it accessible?(3) If available and accessible, is it on time?(4) If available, accessible, and on time, can end-users understand it?(5) If available, accessible, timely, and understandable, is it useful

Identifiability and consistent estimation of nonparametric translation hidden Markov models with general state space

This paper considers hidden Markov models where the observations are given as the sum of a latent state which lies in a general state space and some independent noise with unknown distribution. It is shown that these fully nonparametric translation models are identifiable with respect to both the distribution of the latent variables and the distribution of the noise, under mostly a light tail assumption on the latent variables. Two nonparametric estimation methods are proposed and we prove that the corresponding estimators are consistent for the weak convergence topology. These results are illustrated with numerical experiments

Consistent estimation of the filtering and marginal smoothing distributions in nonparametric hidden Markov models

In this paper, we consider the filtering and smoothing recursions in nonparametric finite state space hidden Markov models (HMMs) when the parameters of the model are unknown and replaced by estimators. We provide an explicit and time uniform control of the filtering and smoothing errors in total variation norm as a function of the parameter estimation errors. We prove that the risk for the filtering and smoothing errors may be uniformly upper bounded by the risk of the estimators. It has been proved very recently that statistical inference for finite state space nonparametric HMMs is possible. We study how the recent spectral methods developed in the parametric setting may be extended to the nonparametric framework and we give explicit upper bounds for the L2-risk of the nonparametric spectral estimators. When the observation space is compact, this provides explicit rates for the filtering and smoothing errors in total variation norm. The performance of the spectral method is assessed with simulated data for both the estimation of the (nonparametric) conditional distribution of the observations and the estimation of the marginal smoothing distributions.Comment: 27 pages, 2 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1501.0478

Pour une analyse critique du discours dans l'étude des relations internationales. Exemple d'application à des éditoriaux américains sur la guerre en Tchétchénie (Note)

L'étude des relations internationales peut être envisagée sous différentes perspectives disciplinaires (historique, politique, juridique, économique, sociologique), et si ces disciplines disposent chacune de leurs propres traditions méthodologiques, elles doivent toutes tenir compte d'un même élément fondamental, le discours, qu'il soit la langue écrite ou orale, ou une autre forme sémiotique. Dans cet article, nous présentons les grandes lignes d'une méthode d'analyse discursive qui se situe dans le cadre de la théorie intradisciplinaire intitulée, Analyse critique du discours. Sur la base d'un corpus de quatre éditoriaux américains portant sur la guerre en Tchétchénie, nous en donnons un exemple d'application, et montrons comment l'analyse textuelle présentée, par son intégration de recherches en linguistique et psychologie cognitive, permet de dépasser une simple compréhension intuitive des textes en en révélant leur sous-texte. Nous avançons que cette méthodologie fournit ainsi une hase fiable pour la poursuite de l'étude du phénomène concerné en d'autres branches des sciences sociales.The study of international relations can be tackled form different disciplinary angles (historical, political, juridical, economical, sociological). Each of these disciplines has its own methodological tradition, but all of them have to take into account the same fundamental element, discourse, be it oral or written language or another semiotic form. This article presents a method of discursive analysis, that fits into the intradisciplinary theory, Critical Discourse Analysis. An example of its application is provided with four American editorials on the war in Chechnya. It is shown how the integration of linguistic and cognitive psychology research into a model of textual analysis allows for an interpretation that goes beyond the intuitive reading of the text by underlining the text sub-text. It is suggested that this methodology provides reliable starting points for studies of the research object in question in other branches of social sciences

9 steps to scale climate-smart agriculture: Lessons and experiences from the climate-smart villages in My Loi, Vietnam and Guinayangan, Philippines

The Climate-Smart Village approach is a CCAFS agricultural research for development (AR4D) strategy for stimulating the scaling of climate-smart agriculture. CSVs are established in Southeast Asia through the CCAFS program to serve as sites for “testing, through participatory methods, technological and institutional options for generating evidence of CSA effectiveness as well as drawing out scaling lessons for policy makers from local to global levels (CCAFS, 2016). The CSVs in My Loi in Vietnam and Guinayangan in the Philippines were established following this strategy starting 2014 by the World Agroforestry (ICRAF) Vietnam and the International Institute for Rural Reconstruction, respectively. This guidebook showcases the common experiences of the IIRR and ICRAF in the Philippine and Vietnam CSVs, which are outlined in 5 major stages and broken into 9 steps

Participatory agro-climate information services: A key component in climate resilient agriculture

The brief promotes participatory agro-climate information services as a key component in achieving climate-smart agriculture. The brief emphasizes that actionable agro-climate information starts with—and responds to—gender-based needs of farmers, integrated at all stages of the value chain. Timely forecasts and accurate agroclimate advisories have been proven to provide farmers with production, adaptation, and mitigation benefits