Understanding the Dynamics and Diversity of Smallholder Farmers’ Innovation Processes and Agricultural Innovation Systems in Uganda

Smallholder farmers’ innovations are very important for economic development and poverty alleviation in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where the majority of the population relies on smallholding subsistence agriculture. Fuller understanding of smallholders’ innovation systems and processes is a means to improve low innovation uptake and to address the mismatch that exists between innovation support and farmers’ needs. This research was conducted to explore the innovation systems and processes employed by smallholders with a diverse range of socioeconomic and environmental characteristics in Uganda. The study used a wide range of research tools including household and individual questionnaire surveys to 531 farmers, Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with 166 farmers, in-depth interviews with 90 randomly selected farmers and participatory workshops. Smallholders’ AISs have been found to be highly complex and intertwined with various factors, knowledge and information systems, intra-household dynamics in decision-making authority, and social networks all of which are involved in innovation processes. The knowledge and information systems are influenced by the farmers’ access to and perceptions of AIS actors, which then affects the utilisation of the knowledge. The intrahousehold decision-making authority is determined by gendered roles and responsibilities, reflected in gendered enterprises, and intra-household production asset allocation. Furthermore, low levels of innovation uptake were found to be related to unequal access to innovation networks and exclusive innovation systems. The original contribution of this study includes empirical evidence that innovation is not only a technical but a social process, and socioeconomically and environmentally different farmers have different innovation systems and different experiences in their innovation processes. This provides a process-based view of AIS with “soft systems thinking” and can enhance the existing AIS framework with pro-poor and inclusive insights

Gendered intra‐household decision‐making dynamics in agricultural innovation processes: assets, norms and bargaining power

This article explores intra‐household decision‐making in smallholder farmers' innovation uptake and use of outputs within a bargaining framework. Research was conducted in selected locations representing contrasting economic, social and agroclimatic environments in Uganda using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods (including a survey of 531 farmers). Decision‐making in innovation processes was highly gendered and shaped by intra‐household allocation of production assets as well as social norms. The findings highlight the male capture of decision‐making regarding innovation uptake and use of outputs, especially for income‐generating crops, and that this can both reflect and reinforce gender inequalities in asset ownership

Multiple Myeloma Presenting Symptoms in the Oral and Maxillofacial Region

Four cases of multiple myeloma presenting symptoms in the oral and maxillofacial region are reported. The main complaints in 2 patients were macroglossia and dysphagia. We doubted these cases were amyloidosis, but examinations performed for possible amyloidosis led us to a diagnosis of multiple myeloma. The other 2 patients presented signs in the mandible. One of them had a mass-type lesion in the gingiva which upon X-ray revealed an osteolytic lesion in the mandible and multiple "punched-out" osteolytic lesions in the cranial bones. The other showed only a diffuse non-homogeneous radiolucent lesion and dental ankylosis. Medical history and biochemical and hematologic findings would be helpful in diagnosing multiple myeloma. Here, we report our summarization of these 4 cases

Transcript Annotation in FANTOM3: Mouse Gene Catalog Based on Physical cDNAs

The international FANTOM consortium aims to produce a comprehensive picture of the mammalian transcriptome, based upon an extensive cDNA collection and functional annotation of full-length enriched cDNAs. The previous dataset, FANTOM2, comprised 60,770 full-length enriched cDNAs. Functional annotation revealed that this cDNA dataset contained only about half of the estimated number of mouse protein-coding genes, indicating that a number of cDNAs still remained to be collected and identified. To pursue the complete gene catalog that covers all predicted mouse genes, cloning and sequencing of full-length enriched cDNAs has been continued since FANTOM2. In FANTOM3, 42,031 newly isolated cDNAs were subjected to functional annotation, and the annotation of 4,347 FANTOM2 cDNAs was updated. To accomplish accurate functional annotation, we improved our automated annotation pipeline by introducing new coding sequence prediction programs and developed a Web-based annotation interface for simplifying the annotation procedures to reduce manual annotation errors. Automated coding sequence and function prediction was followed with manual curation and review by expert curators. A total of 102,801 full-length enriched mouse cDNAs were annotated. Out of 102,801 transcripts, 56,722 were functionally annotated as protein coding (including partial or truncated transcripts), providing to our knowledge the greatest current coverage of the mouse proteome by full-length cDNAs. The total number of distinct non-protein-coding transcripts increased to 34,030. The FANTOM3 annotation system, consisting of automated computational prediction, manual curation, and final expert curation, facilitated the comprehensive characterization of the mouse transcriptome, and could be applied to the transcriptomes of other species

DECIGO pathfinder

DECIGO pathfinder (DPF) is a milestone satellite mission for DECIGO (DECi-hertz Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory) which is a future space gravitational wave antenna. DECIGO is expected to provide us fruitful insights into the universe, in particular about dark energy, a formation mechanism of supermassive black holes, and the inflation of the universe. Since DECIGO will be an extremely large mission which will formed by three drag-free spacecraft with 1000m separation, it is significant to gain the technical feasibility of DECIGO before its planned launch in 2024. Thus, we are planning to launch two milestone missions: DPF and pre-DECIGO. The conceptual design and current status of the first milestone mission, DPF, are reviewed in this article

The status of DECIGO

DECIGO (DECi-hertz Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory) is the planned Japanese space gravitational wave antenna, aiming to detect gravitational waves from astrophysically and cosmologically significant sources mainly between 0.1 Hz and 10 Hz and thus to open a new window for gravitational wave astronomy and for the universe. DECIGO will consists of three drag-free spacecraft arranged in an equilateral triangle with 1000 km arm lengths whose relative displacements are measured by a differential Fabry-Perot interferometer, and four units of triangular Fabry-Perot interferometers are arranged on heliocentric orbit around the sun. DECIGO is vary ambitious mission, we plan to launch DECIGO in era of 2030s after precursor satellite mission, B-DECIGO. B-DECIGO is essentially smaller version of DECIGO: B-DECIGO consists of three spacecraft arranged in an triangle with 100 km arm lengths orbiting 2000 km above the surface of the earth. It is hoped that the launch date will be late 2020s for the present

Preliminaray study of amalgam extracting method for production of multitracer

The multitracer method is a new tracer technique which makes it possible to trace the physical and chemical behavior of many elements simultaneously in the same environment,by using the radioactive nuclear species of various elements manufactured simultaneously. While the various studies using this technique are advancing at a rapid pace, many developments in the nultitracer solution is obtained quickly and simply by making mercury amalgam in the case of a gold target, without using strong acids