Analysis of Participatory Research Projects in the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center

Through a survey of scientists from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in 2004, this study assessed the extent to which participatory methods had been used by the center, how they were perceived by the scientists, and how participatory research could be applied more effectively by CIMMYT and partners. Results for 19 CIMMYT projects suggest among other things that participatory approaches at the center were largely “functional”—that is, aimed at improving the efficiency and relevance of research—and had in fact added value to the research efforts. The authors suggest that CIMMYT should (1) create a more conducive environment for scientists to share experiences on such approaches and (2) better document their impacts on farmers’ livelihoods and well-being.Economic analysis, Research projects, Research methods, Quantitative analysis, Surveys, Statistics, Evaluation, Scientists, Research institutions, Mexico., Crop Production/Industries, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, E10, A50,

Uncertainty Analysis and Order-by-Order Optimization of Chiral Nuclear Interactions

Chiral effective field theory (chi EFT) provides a systematic approach to describe low-energy nuclear forces. Moreover, chi EFT is able to provide well-founded estimates of statistical and systematic uncertainties-although this unique advantage has not yet been fully exploited. We fill this gap by performing an optimization and statistical analysis of all the low-energy constants (LECs) up to next-to-next-to-leading order. Our optimization protocol corresponds to a simultaneous fit to scattering and bound-state observables in the pion-nucleon, nucleon-nucleon, and few-nucleon sectors, thereby utilizing the full model capabilities of chi EFT. Finally, we study the effect on other observables by demonstrating forward-error-propagation methods that can easily be adopted by future works. We employ mathematical optimization and implement automatic differentiation to attain efficient and machine-precise first-and second-order derivatives of the objective function with respect to the LECs. This is also vital for the regression analysis. We use power-counting arguments to estimate the systematic uncertainty that is inherent to chi EFT, and we construct chiral interactions at different orders with quantified uncertainties. Statistical error propagation is compared with Monte Carlo sampling, showing that statistical errors are, in general, small compared to systematic ones. In conclusion, we find that a simultaneous fit to different sets of data is critical to (i) identify the optimal set of LECs, (ii) capture all relevant correlations, (iii) reduce the statistical uncertainty, and (iv) attain order-by-order convergence in chi EFT. Furthermore, certain systematic uncertainties in the few-nucleon sector are shown to get substantially magnified in the many-body sector, in particular when varying the cutoff in the chiral potentials. The methodology and results presented in this paper open a new frontier for uncertainty quantification in ab initio nuclear theory

A measurement of the differential cross section for the two-body photodisintegration of 3He at theta_LAB = 90deg using tagged photons in the energy range 14 -- 31 MeV

The two-body photodisintegration of 3He has been investigated using tagged photons with energies from 14 -- 31 MeV at MAX-lab in Lund, Sweden. The two-body breakup channel was unambiguously identified by the (nonsimultaneous) detection of both protons and deuterons. This approach was made feasible by the over-determined kinematic situation afforded by the tagged-photon technique. Proton- and deuteron-energy spectra were measured using four silicon surface-barrier detector telescopes located at a laboratory angle of 90deg with respect to the incident photon-beam direction. Average statistical and systematic uncertainties of 5.7% and 6.6% in the differential cross section were obtained for 11 photon-energy bins with an average width of 1.2 MeV. The results are compared to previous experimental data measured at comparable photon energies as well as to the results of two recent Faddeev calculations which employ realistic potential models and take into account three-nucleon forces and final-state interactions. Both the accuracy and precision of the present data are improved over the previous measurements. The data are in good agreement with most of the previous results, and favor the inclusion of three-nucleon forces in the calculations.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figures; further Referee comments addresse

ArrayExpress—a public database of microarray experiments and gene expression profiles

ArrayExpress is a public database for high throughput functional genomics data. ArrayExpress consists of two parts—the ArrayExpress Repository, which is a MIAME supportive public archive of microarray data, and the ArrayExpress Data Warehouse, which is a database of gene expression profiles selected from the repository and consistently re-annotated. Archived experiments can be queried by experiment attributes, such as keywords, species, array platform, authors, journals or accession numbers. Gene expression profiles can be queried by gene names and properties, such as Gene Ontology terms and gene expression profiles can be visualized. ArrayExpress is a rapidly growing database, currently it contains data from >50 000 hybridizations and >1 500 000 individual expression profiles. ArrayExpress supports community standards, including MIAME, MAGE-ML and more recently the proposal for a spreadsheet based data exchange format: MAGE-TAB. Availability:

Moving from information and collaboration to action: report from the 3rd International Dog Health Workshop, Paris in April 2017

Abstract Background Breed-related health problems in dogs have received increased focus over the last decade. Responsibility for causing and/or solving these problems has been variously directed towards dog breeders and kennel clubs, the veterinary profession, welfare scientists, owners, regulators, insurance companies and the media. In reality, all these stakeholders are likely to share some responsibility and optimal progress on resolving these challenges requires all key stakeholders to work together. The International Partnership for Dogs (IPFD), together with an alternating host organization, holds biennial meetings called the International Dog Health Workshops (IDHW). The Société Centrale Canine (French Kennel Club) hosted the 3rd IDHW, in Paris, in April, 2017. These meetings bring together a wide range of stakeholders in dog health, science and welfare to improve international sharing of information and resources, to provide a forum for ongoing collaboration, and to identify specific needs and actions to improve health, well-being and welfare in dogs. Results The workshop included 140 participants from 23 countries and was structured around six important issues facing those who work to improve dog health. These included individualized breed-specific strategies for health and breeding, extreme conformations, education and communication in relation to antimicrobial resistance, behavior and welfare, genetic testing and population-based evidence. A number of exciting actions were agreed during the meeting. These included setting up working groups to create tools to help breed clubs accelerate the implementation of breed-health strategies, review aspects of extreme conformation and share useful information on behavior. The meeting also heralded the development of an online resource of relevant information describing quality measures for DNA testing. A demand for more and better data and evidence was a recurring message stressed across all themes. Conclusions The meeting confirmed the benefits from inclusion of a diverse range of stakeholders who all play relevant and collaborative parts to improve future canine health. Firm actions were set for progress towards improving breed-related welfare. The next international workshop will be in the UK in 2019 and will be organized by the UK Kennel Club