Migration and animal husbandry: Competing or complementary livelihood strategies. Evidence from Kyrgyzstan

Animal husbandry and labour migration are important livelihood strategies for a large proportion of the rural population in developing countries. Up to now, the two strategies have usually been studied by looking at either one or the other; their interlinkages have rarely been examined. Based on a case study in rural Kyrgyzstan, the aim of this paper is to explore the links between animal husbandry and labour migration. Results show that for most rural households, livestock is crucial yet not sufficient to make a living. Therefore, many people diversify their income sources by migrating to work elsewhere. This generates cash for daily expenses and the acquisition of new livestock, but also leads to an absence of workforce in households. Yet since remittances usually exceed the expenses for hiring additional workforce, most people consider migration profitable. From a socio-economic point of view, migration and animal husbandry can thus be considered important complementary livelihood strategies for the rural Kyrgyz population, at least for the time being. In the long term, however, the failure of young migrants to return to rural places and their settlement in urban areas might also cause remittance dependency and lead to an increasing lack of qualified labour. From an environmental point of view, the investment of remittances into animal husbandry poses challenges to sustainable pasture management. Increasing livestock numbers in rural areas raise pressure on pasture resources. Since most people consider animal husbandry their main future prospect while continuing to use pastures in a fairly unsustainable way, this may further exacerbate the over-utilization of pastures in future

Investigating well-being, work limitations and preferences for self-management education and peer support among younger people with hip and knee osteoarthritis: protocol for a cross-sectional study

Introduction:&nbsp;Osteoarthritis (OA) has traditionally&nbsp;been considered a condition of older age. However,&nbsp;younger people are also affected by hip and knee OA,&nbsp;often as a result of sporting and work-related injuries.&nbsp;As OA studies have generally focused on older&nbsp;individuals, little is known about the experience of&nbsp;younger adults with hip or knee OA who can face a&nbsp;distinct set of pressures including work responsibilities&nbsp;and parenting roles. This study aims to investigate&nbsp;well-being and work participation among younger&nbsp;people with hip or knee OA, as well as preferences for&nbsp;OA education and support.Methods and analysis: 200 people aged 20&ndash;55 years with a diagnosis of hip and/or knee OA will be&nbsp;recruited for this cross-sectional study. Participants will&nbsp;be recruited from three major public hospitals in the&nbsp;state of Victoria, Australia following screening of&nbsp;orthopaedic outpatient clinic lists and referrals, and&nbsp;through community-based advertisements. A study&nbsp;questionnaire will be mailed to all participants and&nbsp;written informed consent obtained. Validated measures&nbsp;of Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL), health status,&nbsp;psychological distress and work limitations will be used. Information on health services use will be collected,&nbsp;in addition to information on the perceived utility and&nbsp;accessibility of a range of existing and proposed&nbsp;education and peer support models. HRQoL data will be&nbsp;compared with Australian population norms using&nbsp;independent t tests, and associations between HRQoL,&nbsp;health status, psychological distress, work limitations&nbsp;and demographic factors will be evaluated using&nbsp;univariate and multivariate analyses. Data on the&nbsp;perceived utility and accessibility of education and peer&nbsp;support models will be analysed descriptively.&nbsp;Ethics and dissemination: Ethics approval for the&nbsp;study has been obtained. The study findings will be&nbsp;submitted to peer-reviewed journals and arthritis&nbsp;consumer organisations for broader dissemination, and&nbsp;presented at national and international scientific meetings.</div

Chiral Dynamics and the S11(1535)S_{11}(1535) Nucleon Resonance

The $SU(3)$ chiral effective lagrangian at next-to-leading order is applied to the S-wave meson-baryon interaction in the energy range around the $\eta N$ threshold. Potentials are derived from this lagrangian and used in a coupled channel calculation of the $\pi N$, $\eta N$, $K \Lambda$, $K \Sigma$ system in the isospin-$1/2$, $l=0$ partial wave. Using the same parameters as obtained from a fit to the low energy $\overline{K} N$ data it is found that a quasi-bound $K \Sigma$-state is formed, with properties remarkably similar to the $S_{11}(1535)$ nucleon resonance. In particular, we find a large partial decay width into $\eta N$ consistent with the empirical data.Comment: 9 pages, 6 postscript figures, e-mail: [email protected] ; [email protected] [email protected]

Calculation of gπNS11g_{\pi NS_{11}} and gηNS11g_{\eta NS_{11}} Couplings in QCD Sum Rules

We calculate the coupling constants, $g_{\pi NS_{11}}$ and $g_{\eta NS_{11}}, using QCD sum rules in the presence of an external meson field. A covariant derivative is introduced within the S_{11} interpolating field so that in the nonrelativistic limit the field dominantly reduces to two quarks in the s-wave state and one quark in the p-wave state. Our result for the couplings obtained by further making use of the soft-meson theorem qualitatively agrees with its phenomenological value extracted from the S_{11}(1535) decay width. The prediction for the couplings however depend on the value of quark-gluon condensate,$$, which is also important in the calculation of the S_{11}(1535) mass itself within the sum rule approach.Comment: 8 pages (no figure), revte

Chiral SU(3) Dynamics with Coupled Channels: Inclusion of P-Wave Multipoles

We extend our recent non-perturbative chiral SU(3) coupled channel approach to pion- and photon-induced $\eta$- and $K$-meson production off protons by including all strong and electromagnetic p-wave multipoles. We identify the p-wave amplitudes of the next-to-leading order SU(3) chiral meson-baryon Lagrangian with a coupled channel potential which is iterated to infinite orders in a separable Lippmann-Schwinger equation. Our approach to $\eta$- and $K$-photoproduction introduces no additional free parameters. By adjusting a few finite range parameters and the unknown parameters in the Lagrangian, we are able to simultaneously describe a very large amount of low-energy data. These include the total and differential cross sections of the $\pi$-induced reactions $\pi^- p \to \eta n, K^0 \Lambda, K^0 \Sigma^0, K^+ \Sigma^-$ and $\pi^+ p \to K^+ \Sigma^+$ as well as those of photoproduction $\gamma p \to \eta p, K^+\Lambda, K^+ \Sigma^0, K^0 \Sigma^+$. The polarization observables measured in $\eta$- and $K$-photoproduction are particularly sensitive to interference terms between the s- and p-wave multipoles. The total cross section data are remarkably well reproduced in all channels. There remain, however, some open questions concerning details of angular distributions and polarization observables.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Nucl. Phys.

Analysis of resonance multipoles from polarization observables in eta photoproduction

A combined analysis of new eta photoproduction data for total and differential cross sections, target asymmetry and photon asymmetry is presented. Using a few reasonable assumptions we perform the first model-independent analysis of the E0+, E2- and M2- eta photoproduction multipoles. Making use of the well-known A3/2 helicity amplitude of the D13(1520) state we extract its branching ratio to the eta-N channel, Gamma(eta,N)/Gamma = (0.08 +- 0.01)%. At higher energies, we show that the photon asymmetry is extremely sensitive to small multipoles that are excited by photons in the helicity 3/2 state. The new GRAAL photon asymmetry data at higher energy show a clear signal of the F15(1680) excitation which permits extracting an F15(1680)->eta,N branching ratio of (0.15 +0.35 -0.10)%.Comment: 14 pages of LATEX including 7 postscript figure

Development and RF-Performance of AlGaN/GaN and InAlN/GaN HEMTs on Large-Diameter High-Resistivity Silicon Substrates

A CMOS-compatible industrial processing and RF analysis of 150 mm GaN-on-HR-Si substrates with AlGaN and InAlN barrier is presented. Process development along with transfer to large-wafer scale is shown and some HEMT calibration devices produced on AlGaN/GaN following the aforementioned procedure are characterized in terms of RF-performance by using a set of measured multi-bias S-parameters. An automatic small-signal equivalent circuit extraction strategy for these AlGaN/GaN DUTs is validated and some de-embedded figures of merit are drawn out in order to initially evaluate this promising technology.This work is supported by the I Plan Propio de la Univ. de Málaga (PhD Grant-401), and the European Microwave Association™ by the EuMA Internship Award 2021 edition. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Regional but not global temperature variability underestimated by climate models at supradecadal timescales

Knowledge of the characteristics of natural climate variability is vital when assessing the range of plausible future climate trajectories in the next decades to centuries. The reliable detection of climate fluctuations on multidecadal to centennial timescales depends on proxy reconstructions and model simulations, as the instrumental record extends back only a few decades in most parts of the world. Systematic comparisons between model-simulated and proxy-based inferences of natural variability, however, often seem contradictory. Locally, simulated temperature variability is consistently smaller on multidecadal and longer timescales than is indicated by proxy-based reconstructions, implying that climate models or proxy interpretations might have deficiencies. In contrast, at global scales, studies found agreement between simulated and proxy reconstructed temperature variations. Here we review the evidence regarding the scale of natural temperature variability during recent millennia. We identify systematic reconstruction deficiencies that may contribute to differing local and global model–proxy agreement but conclude that they are probably insufficient to resolve such discrepancies. Instead, we argue that regional climate variations persisted for longer timescales than climate models simulating past climate states are able to reproduce. This would imply an underestimation of the regional variability on multidecadal and longer timescales and would bias climate projections and attribution studies. Thus, efforts are needed to improve the simulation of natural variability in climate models accompanied by further refining proxy-based inferences of variability.This study was undertaken by members of CVAS and 2k Network, working groups of the Past Global Changes (PAGES) Global Research association. This is a contribution to the SPACE ERC, STACY and PALMOD projects. The SPACE ERC project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 716092). STACY has been funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation, project no. 395588486). This work has also been supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), through the PalMod project (subprojects 01LP1926B (O.B.), 01LP1926D (M.C.) and 01LP1926C (B.E., P.S. and N.W.)) from the Research for Sustainability initiative (FONA). B.E. is supported by the Heinrich Böll Foundation. E.M.-C. was supported by the PARAMOUR project, funded by the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique–FNRS and the FWO under the Excellence of Science (EOS) programme (grant no. O0100718F, EOS ID no. 30454083). A.H. was supported by a Legacy Grant from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage. B.M. was supported by LINKA20102 and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation project CEX2018‐000794‐S. The work originated from discussions at the CVAS working group of PAGES at a workshop at the Internationales Wissenschaftsforum Heidelberg, which was funded by a Hengstberger Prize. We thank N. Beech, C. Brierley, F. Gonzalez-Rouco and M. MacPartland for comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript. This manuscript uses data provided by the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP and PMIP. We thank the research groups for producing and kindly making their model outputs, measurements and palaeoclimate reconstructions available to us. Editorial assistance, in the form of language editing and correction, was provided by XpertScientific Editing and Consulting Services. We acknowledge support by the Open Access Publication Funds of Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft