Les 25 Résolutions de Konni

Niger is the largest exporter of onions in West Africa. More than 100.000 Nigerian peasants cultivate onions. For them and all the other operators within the chain (intermediaries, tradesmen, shipping agents), the onion is an important source of income. SNV Niger, and Wageningen UR Centre for Development Innovation in the Netherlands, in collaboration with FCMN Niya and Agri-Bilan, initiated an action research titled “Peeling the onion”. The goal of this action-research is to identify possibilities of collective action for all the actors in the value chain of the onion. The research focusses on ‘leverages’ to induce changes which make the onion subsector in one time more competitive, inclusive and sustainable. After this first phase, we shared our results during this participative workshop in Birni Konni in the area of Tahoua. Moreover one stimulated the dialogue between the various actors within the value chain of the onion resulting in the 25 resolutions of Konni! This report is the result of this workshop and dialogues

Eplucher l'Oignon : Pour une filière oignon nigérienne compétitive et inclusive

Perceptual learning is associated with experience-based changes in stimulus salience. Here, we use a novel procedure to show that learning a new association between a self-label and a neutral stimulus produces fast alterations in social salience measured by interference when targets associated with other people have to be selected in the presence of self-associated distractors. Participants associated neutral shapes with either themselves or a friend, over a short run of training trials. Subsequently, the shapes had to be identified in hierarchical (global-local) forms. The data show that giving a shape greater personal significance by associating it with the self had effects on visual selection equivalent to altering perceptual salience. Similar to previously observed effects linked to when perceptually salient distractors are ignored, effects of a self-associated distractor also increased activation in the left intraparietal cortex sulcus. The results show that self-associations to sensory stimuli rapidly modulate neural responses in a manner similar to changes in perceptual saliency. The self-association procedure provides a new way to understand how personal significance affects behavior

To wet or not to wet: that is the question

Wetting transitions have been predicted and observed to occur for various combinations of fluids and surfaces. This paper describes the origin of such transitions, for liquid films on solid surfaces, in terms of the gas-surface interaction potentials V(r), which depend on the specific adsorption system. The transitions of light inert gases and H2 molecules on alkali metal surfaces have been explored extensively and are relatively well understood in terms of the least attractive adsorption interactions in nature. Much less thoroughly investigated are wetting transitions of Hg, water, heavy inert gases and other molecular films. The basic idea is that nonwetting occurs, for energetic reasons, if the adsorption potential's well-depth D is smaller than, or comparable to, the well-depth of the adsorbate-adsorbate mutual interaction. At the wetting temperature, Tw, the transition to wetting occurs, for entropic reasons, when the liquid's surface tension is sufficiently small that the free energy cost in forming a thick film is sufficiently compensated by the fluid- surface interaction energy. Guidelines useful for exploring wetting transitions of other systems are analyzed, in terms of generic criteria involving the "simple model", which yields results in terms of gas-surface interaction parameters and thermodynamic properties of the bulk adsorbate.Comment: Article accepted for publication in J. Low Temp. Phy

Configuration-interaction calculations of positron binding to group-II elements

The configuration-interaction (CI) method is applied to the study of positronic magnesium (e+Mg), positronic calcium (e+Ca), and positronic strontium (e+Sr). The CI expansion was seen to converge slowly with respect to Lmax, the maximum angular momentum of any orbital used to construct the CI basis. Despite doing explicit calculations with Lmax=10, extrapolation corrections to the binding energies for the Lmax→∞ limit were substantial in the case of e+Ca (25%) and e+Sr (50%). The extrapolated binding energies were 0.0162 hartree for e+Mg, 0.0165 hartree for e+Ca, and 0.0101 hartree for e+Sr. The static-dipole polarizabilities for the neutral parent atoms were computed as a by-product, giving 71.7a03, 162a03, and 204a03 for Mg, Ca, and Sr, respectively

Les 25 Résolutions de Konni

Niger is the largest exporter of onions in West Africa. More than 100.000 Nigerian peasants cultivate onions. For them and all the other operators within the chain (intermediaries, tradesmen, shipping agents), the onion is an important source of income. SNV Niger, and Wageningen UR Centre for Development Innovation in the Netherlands, in collaboration with FCMN Niya and Agri-Bilan, initiated an action research titled “Peeling the onion”. The goal of this action-research is to identify possibilities of collective action for all the actors in the value chain of the onion. The research focusses on ‘leverages’ to induce changes which make the onion subsector in one time more competitive, inclusive and sustainable. After this first phase, we shared our results during this participative workshop in Birni Konni in the area of Tahoua. Moreover one stimulated the dialogue between the various actors within the value chain of the onion resulting in the 25 resolutions of Konni! This report is the result of this workshop and dialogues

miR-193a-3p interaction with HMGB1 downregulates human endothelial cell proliferation and migration

Circulating endothelial colony forming cells (ECFCs) contribute to vascular repair where they are a target for therapy. Since ECFC proliferative potential is increased in cord versus peripheral blood and to define regulatory factors controlling this proliferation, we compared the miRNA profiles of cord blood and peripheral blood ECFC-derived cells. Of the top 25 differentially regulated miRNAs selected, 22 were more highly expressed in peripheral blood ECFC-derived cells. After validating candidate miRNAs by q-RT-PCR, we selected miR-193a-3p for further investigation. The miR-193a-3p mimic reduced cord blood ECFC-derived cell proliferation, migration and vascular tubule formation, while the miR-193a-3p inhibitor significantly enhanced these parameters in peripheral blood ECFC-derived cells. Using in silico miRNA target database analyses combined with proteome arrays and luciferase reporter assays of miR-193a-3p mimic treated cord blood ECFC-derived cells, we identified 2 novel miR-193a-3p targets, the high mobility group box-1 (HMGB1) and the hypoxia upregulated-1 (HYOU1) gene products. HMGB1 silencing in cord blood ECFC-derived cells confirmed its role in regulating vascular function. Thus, we show, for the first time, that miR-193a-3p negatively regulates human ECFC vasculo/angiogenesis and propose that antagonising miR-193a-3p in less proliferative and less angiogenic ECFC-derived cells will enhance their vasculo/angiogenic function. © The Author(s) 2017