The resilience of indigenous knowledge in small-scale African agriculture: key drivers

The successful use of indigenous knowledge (IK) in development practice in rural Africa over the last couple of decades has proved to be elusive and disappointing. Using empirical field data from northern Malawi, this study suggests that the two key drivers for farmers in this area are household food security and the maintenance of soil fertility. Indigenous ways of knowing underpin the agricultural system which has been developed, rather than the adoption of more modern, ‘scientific’ ways, to deliver against these drivers. Such IKs, however, are deeply embedded in the economic, social and cultural environments in which they operate

Analytic Behaviour of Competition among Three Species

We analyse the classical model of competition between three species studied by May and Leonard ({\it SIAM J Appl Math} \textbf{29} (1975) 243-256) with the approaches of singularity analysis and symmetry analysis to identify values of the parameters for which the system is integrable. We observe some striking relations between critical values arising from the approach of dynamical systems and the singularity and symmetry analyses.Comment: 14 pages, to appear in Journal of Nonlinear Mathematical Physic

Unitary relations in time-dependent harmonic oscillators

For a harmonic oscillator with time-dependent (positive) mass and frequency, an unitary operator is shown to transform the quantum states of the system to those of a harmonic oscillator system of unit mass and time-dependent frequency, as well as operators. For a driven harmonic oscillator, it is also shown that, there are unitary transformations which give the driven system from the system of same mass and frequency without driving force. The transformation for a driven oscillator depends on the solution of classical equation of motion of the driven system. These transformations, thus, give a simple way of finding exact wave functions of a driven harmonic oscillator system, provided the quantum states of the corresponding system of unit mass are given.Comment: Submitted to J. Phys.

Local political leadership and the modernisation of local government

Political leadership has been a key element of central government’s attempts to ‘modernise’ local government over the past decade, within a discourse that emphasised ‘strong’ and ‘visible’ leadership and the role of leaders and leadership in driving change within local authorities. In the context of such an approach, and also taking account of academic discourse, this article draws upon interviews with nearly thirty individuals in leadership positions in local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales to assess their experiences of leadership and their views of some aspects of the role and work of councils. It suggests that whilst there is broad convergence between the aspirations of government and the narratives that emerge from these leaders on some aspects of local political leadership, there are also differences, perhaps most notably over the relationship between changes to decision making structures and the loci of political power

Topological Properties of Spatial Coherence Function

Topology of the spatial coherence function is considered in details. The phase singularity (coherence vortices) structures of coherence function are classified by Hopf index and Brouwer degree in topology. The coherence flux quantization and the linking of the closed coherence vortices are also studied from the topological properties of the spatial coherence function.Comment: 9 page

Lie symmetries for two-dimensional charged particle motion

We find the Lie point symmetries for non-relativistic two-dimensional charged particle motion. These symmetries comprise a quasi-invariance transformation, a time-dependent rotation, a time-dependent spatial translation and a dilation. The associated electromagnetic fields satisfy a system of first-order linear partial differential equations. This system is solved exactly, yielding four classes of electromagnetic fields compatible with Lie point symmetries

Symmetry, singularities and integrability in complex dynamics III: approximate symmetries and invariants

The different natures of approximate symmetries and their corresponding first integrals/invariants are delineated in the contexts of both Lie symmetries of ordinary differential equations and Noether symmetries of the Action Integral. Particular note is taken of the effect of taking higher orders of the perturbation parameter. Approximate symmetries of approximate first integrals/invariants and the problems of calculating them using the Lie method are considered

Detection of new point-sources in WMAP Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) maps at high Galactic latitude. A new technique to extract point sources from CMB maps

In experimental microwave maps, point-sources can strongly affect the estimation of the power-spectrum and/or the test of Gaussianity of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) component. As a consequence, their removal from the sky maps represents a critical step in the analysis of the CMB data. Before removing a source, however, it is necessary to detect it and source extraction consists of a delicate preliminary operation. In the literature, various techniques have been presented to detect point-sources in the sky maps. The most sophisticated ones exploit the multi-frequency nature of the observations that is typical of the CMB experiments. These techniques have "optimal" theoretical properties and, at least in principle, are capable of remarkable performances. Actually, they are rather difficult to use and this deteriorates the quality of the obtainable results. In this paper, we present a new technique, the "weighted matched filter" (WMF), that is quite simple to use and hence more robust in practical applications. Such technique shows particular efficiency in the detection of sources whose spectra have a slope different from zero. We apply this method to three Southern Hemisphere sky regions - each with an area of 400 square degrees - of the seven years Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) maps and compare the resulting sources with those of the two seven-year WMAP point-sources catalogues. In these selected regions we find seven additional sources not previously listed in WMAP catalogues and discuss their most likely identification and spectral properties.Comment: Astronomy and Astrophysics, 2011, in pres