39 research outputs found
Combining multi-dimensional scaling and cluster analysis to describe the diversity of rural households
Capturing agricultural heterogeneity through the analysis of farm typologies is key with regard to the design of sustainable policies and to the adoptability of new technologies. An optimal balance needs to be found between, on the one hand, the requirement to consider local stakeholder and expert knowledge for typology identification, and on the other hand, the need to identify typologies that transcend the local boundaries of single studies and can be used for comparisons. In this paper, we propose a method that supports expert-driven identification of farm typologies, while at the same time keeping the characteristics of objectivity and reproducibility of statistical tools. The method uses a range of multivariate analysis techniques and it is based on a protocol that favours the use of stakeholder and expert knowledge in the process of typology identification by means of visualization of farm groups and relevant statistics. Results of two studies in Zimbabwe and Kenya are shown. Findings obtained with the method proposed are contrasted with those obtained through a parametric method based on latent class analysis. The method is compared to alternative approaches with regard to stakeholder-orientation and statistical reliability. (Résumé d'auteur
Calcium confusion--is the variability in calcium response by Sertoli cells to specific hormones meaningful or simply redundant?
When results of more than ten different studies on hormone-induced calcium
signals in Sertoli cells are taken together, a wide variety of responses
emerges. The reported changes range from increased concentrations, via no
response at all, to decreased calcium concentrations. Minor variations in
cell isolation techniques, culture conditions, or techniques for measuring
the intracellular calcium could explain some of these differences.
However, erratic variations in response are also observed within research
groups under very similar experimental conditions. Such 'negative'
findings are mainly reported orally and do not further penetrate the
scientific community. As hormone-dependent calcium responses evidently may
depend very much on the context of the cells, calcium transients would
appear to be unreliable bioassay principles with which to detect the
primary actions of FSH and effectors such as androgens on Sertoli cells. A
more important biological question is whether these sometimes opposed
calcium transients are connected with a particular cellular response. To
date there is no evidence for such a tight coupling in Sertoli cells,
implying that, at least under in vitro conditions, calcium signals might
even be redundant altogether. Such calcium variability is probably not
unique to Sertoli cells, and the aim of this commentary is to promote an
open debate that may help to transform the current state of 'calcium
confusion' into a better understanding of the intracellular calcium
language
Anisotropic flow of charged hadrons, pions and (anti-)protons measured at high transverse momentum in Pb-Pb collisions at TeV
The elliptic, , triangular, , and quadrangular, , azimuthal
anisotropic flow coefficients are measured for unidentified charged particles,
pions and (anti-)protons in Pb-Pb collisions at TeV
with the ALICE detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Results obtained with the
event plane and four-particle cumulant methods are reported for the
pseudo-rapidity range at different collision centralities and as a
function of transverse momentum, , out to GeV/.
The observed non-zero elliptic and triangular flow depends only weakly on
transverse momentum for GeV/. The small dependence
of the difference between elliptic flow results obtained from the event plane
and four-particle cumulant methods suggests a common origin of flow
fluctuations up to GeV/. The magnitude of the (anti-)proton
elliptic and triangular flow is larger than that of pions out to at least
GeV/ indicating that the particle type dependence persists out
to high .Comment: 16 pages, 5 captioned figures, authors from page 11, published
version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/186
Suppression of charged particle production at large transverse momentum in central Pb-Pb collisions at TeV
Inclusive transverse momentum spectra of primary charged particles in Pb-Pb
collisions at = 2.76 TeV have been measured by the ALICE
Collaboration at the LHC. The data are presented for central and peripheral
collisions, corresponding to 0-5% and 70-80% of the hadronic Pb-Pb cross
section. The measured charged particle spectra in and GeV/ are compared to the expectation in pp collisions at the same
, scaled by the number of underlying nucleon-nucleon
collisions. The comparison is expressed in terms of the nuclear modification
factor . The result indicates only weak medium effects ( 0.7) in peripheral collisions. In central collisions,
reaches a minimum of about 0.14 at -7GeV/ and increases
significantly at larger . The measured suppression of high- particles is stronger than that observed at lower collision energies,
indicating that a very dense medium is formed in central Pb-Pb collisions at
the LHC.Comment: 15 pages, 5 captioned figures, 3 tables, authors from page 10,
published version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/98
Two-pion Bose-Einstein correlations in central Pb-Pb collisions at = 2.76 TeV
The first measurement of two-pion Bose-Einstein correlations in central Pb-Pb
collisions at TeV at the Large Hadron Collider is
presented. We observe a growing trend with energy now not only for the
longitudinal and the outward but also for the sideward pion source radius. The
pion homogeneity volume and the decoupling time are significantly larger than
those measured at RHIC.Comment: 17 pages, 5 captioned figures, 1 table, authors from page 12,
published version, figures at
http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/388
Transverse momentum spectra of charged particles in proton-proton collisions at GeV with ALICE at the LHC
The inclusive charged particle transverse momentum distribution is measured
in proton-proton collisions at GeV at the LHC using the ALICE
detector. The measurement is performed in the central pseudorapidity region
over the transverse momentum range GeV/.
The correlation between transverse momentum and particle multiplicity is also
studied. Results are presented for inelastic (INEL) and non-single-diffractive
(NSD) events. The average transverse momentum for is (stat.) (syst.) GeV/ and
\left_{\rm NSD}=0.489\pm0.001 (stat.) (syst.)
GeV/, respectively. The data exhibit a slightly larger than measurements in wider pseudorapidity intervals. The results are
compared to simulations with the Monte Carlo event generators PYTHIA and
PHOJET.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables, published version, figures at
http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/390
Inclusive J/psi production in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV
The ALICE Collaboration has measured inclusive J/psi production in pp
collisions at a center of mass energy sqrt(s)=2.76 TeV at the LHC. The results
presented in this Letter refer to the rapidity ranges |y|<0.9 and 2.5<y<4 and
have been obtained by measuring the electron and muon pair decay channels,
respectively. The integrated luminosities for the two channels are L^e_int=1.1
nb^-1 and L^mu_int=19.9 nb^-1, and the corresponding signal statistics are
N_J/psi^e+e-=59 +/- 14 and N_J/psi^mu+mu-=1364 +/- 53. We present
dsigma_J/psi/dy for the two rapidity regions under study and, for the forward-y
range, d^2sigma_J/psi/dydp_t in the transverse momentum domain 0<p_t<8 GeV/c.
The results are compared with previously published results at sqrt(s)=7 TeV and
with theoretical calculations.Comment: 7 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in Phys. Lett.
Neutral pion and meson production in proton-proton collisions at TeV and TeV
The first measurements of the invariant differential cross sections of
inclusive and meson production at mid-rapidity in proton-proton
collisions at TeV and TeV are reported. The
measurement covers the ranges GeV/ and GeV/ for
these two energies, respectively. The production of mesons was measured
at TeV in the range GeV/. Next-to-Leading Order
perturbative QCD calculations, which are consistent with the spectrum
at TeV, overestimate those of and mesons at
TeV, but agree with the measured ratio at
TeV.Comment: 17 pages, 5 captioned figures, 2 tables, authors from page 12,
published version, figures at
http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/310
J/psi Production as a Function of Charged Particle Multiplicity in pp Collisions at sqrt{s} = 7 TeV
The ALICE collaboration reports the measurement of the inclusive J/psi yield
as a function of charged particle pseudorapidity density dN_{ch}/deta in pp
collisions at sqrt{s} = 7 TeV at the LHC. J/psi particles are detected for p_t
> 0, in the rapidity interval |y| < 0.9 via decay into e+e-, and in the
interval 2.5 < y < 4.0 via decay into mu+mu- pairs. An approximately linear
increase of the J/psi yields normalized to their event average
(dN_{J/psi}/dy)/ with (dN_{ch}/deta)/ is observed
in both rapidity ranges, where dN_{ch}/deta is measured within |eta| < 1 and
p_t > 0. In the highest multiplicity interval with = 24.1,
corresponding to four times the minimum bias multiplicity density, an
enhancement relative to the minimum bias J/psi yield by a factor of about 5 at
2.5 < y < 4 (8 at |y| < 0.9) is observed.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Lett.
Face Recognition Based on 2D and 3D Features
This paper presents a completly automated face recognition system integrating both two dimensional (texture) and three dimensional (shape) features. We introduce a novel fusion strategy that allows to automatically select, for each face, the most relevant features from each modality. The performance is evaluated on the largest public data corpus for face recognition currently available, the Face Recognition Grand Challenge version 2.0