Scaling up orange-fleshed sweetpotato through agriculture and nutrition (SUSTAIN) in Mozambique

SUSTAIN is a 5-year partnership (2013-2018), coordinated by CIP and financed by the UK Department for International Development, to scale up the nutrition benefits of biofortified orange-fleshed sweetpotato (OFSP). The goal is to reach 1.2 million households with under-5 year old children in Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, and Rwanda. SUSTAIN supports integrated interventions in agriculture, nutrition, utilization, and marketing to strengthen production and consumption of OFSP. This flyer captures the work in Mozambique during the period June 2014 - July 2015

Localization in the Rindler Wedge

One of the striking features of QED is that charged particles create a coherent cloud of photons. The resultant coherent state vectors of photons generate a non-trivial representation of the localized algebra of observables that do not support a representation of the Lorentz group: Lorentz symmetry is spontaneously broken. We show in particular that Lorentz boost generators diverge in this representation, a result shown also in [1] (See also [2]). Localization of observables, for example in the Rindler wedge, uses Poincar\'e invariance in an essential way [3]. Hence in the presence of charged fields, the photon observables cannot be localized in the Rindler wedge. These observations may have a bearing on the black hole information loss paradox, as the physics in the exterior of the black hole has points of resemblance to that in the Rindler wedge.Comment: 11 page

Connectivity-dependent properties of diluted sytems in a transfer-matrix description

We introduce a new approach to connectivity-dependent properties of diluted systems, which is based on the transfer-matrix formulation of the percolation problem. It simultaneously incorporates the connective properties reflected in non-zero matrix elements and allows one to use standard random-matrix multiplication techniques. Thus it is possible to investigate physical processes on the percolation structure with the high efficiency and precision characteristic of transfer-matrix methods, while avoiding disconnections. The method is illustrated for two-dimensional site percolation by calculating (i) the critical correlation length along the strip, and the finite-size longitudinal DC conductivity: (ii) at the percolation threshold, and (iii) very near the pure-system limit.Comment: 4 pages, no figures, RevTeX, Phys. Rev. E Rapid Communications (to be published

Coleta e caracterização de germoplasma de cucurbitáceas no Estado do Piauí.

No Piauí há uma grande diversidade genética de espécies de cucurbitaceas, especialmente melancia (Citrullus), melão (Cucumis) e abóboras e jerimuns (Cucurbita), plantadas por pequenos agricultores em consórcio com culturas anuais. Com o desenvolvimento de variedades melhoradas, porém de base genética estreita e alta suscetibilidade às doenças e pragas, estes acessos locais estão sendo substituidos, ocasionando um risco de erosão genética e possível extinção de grande parte desse germoplasma. Objetivou-se nesse trabalho, a coleta de cucurbitáceas e sua conservação em câmara fria, para futuros trabalhos de melhoramento genético, visando principalmente a resistência às doenças e pragas. A coleta foi realizada em março de 1992 e no período de março a setembro de 1997, nos municípios de Altos, União, São Pedro do Piauí, Regeneração, Monsenhor Gil, José de Freitas, Piripiri, Batalha e Miguel Alves e Agricolândia. Verificou-se, características dos frutos, tais como: tamanho, formato, peso médio, coloração da casca, presença ou ausência de gomos nos frutos, formato de pedúnculo (Cucurbita), coloração de polpa e densidade da polpa. Foram também consideradas o nível de resistência à doenças e pragas através de observação em campo

Lepton Flavor Violation and Collider Searches in a Type I + II Seesaw Model

Neutrino are massless in the Standard Model. The most popular mechanism to generate neutrino masses are the type I and type II seesaw, where right-handed neutrinos and a scalar triplet are augmented to the Standard Model, respectively. In this work, we discuss a model where a type I + II seesaw mechanism naturally arises via spontaneous symmetry breaking of an enlarged gauge group. Lepton flavor violation is a common feature in such setup and for this reason, we compute the model contribution to the $\mu \rightarrow e\gamma$ and $\mu \rightarrow 3e$ decays. Moreover, we explore the connection between the neutrino mass ordering and lepton flavor violation in perspective with the LHC, HL-LHC and HE-LHC sensitivities to the doubly charged scalar stemming from the Higgs triplet. Our results explicitly show the importance of searching for signs of lepton flavor violation in collider and muon decays. The conclusion about which probe yields stronger bounds depends strongly on the mass ordering adopted, the absolute neutrino masses and which much decay one considers. In the 1-5 TeV mass region of the doubly charged scalar, lepton flavor violation experiments and colliders offer orthogonal and complementary probes. Thus if a signal is observed in one of the two new physics searches, the other will be able to assess whether it stems from a seesaw framework.Comment: 41 pages, 1 figure, 2 table

Surface crossover exponent for branched polymers in two dimensions

Transfer-matrix methods on finite-width strips with free boundary conditions are applied to lattice site animals, which provide a model for randomly branched polymers in a good solvent. By assigning a distinct fugacity to sites along the strip edges, critical properties at the special (adsorption) and ordinary transitions are assessed. The crossover exponent at the adsorption point is estimated as $\phi = 0.505 \pm 0.015$, consistent with recent predictions that $\phi = 1/2$ exactly for all space dimensionalities.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX with Institute of Physics macros, to appear in Journal of Physics