Rural livelihoods in a highland-lowland context and the role of forest resources (NWFP, Pakistan)

The present paper assesses the access to livelihood assets in rural areas of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Considering the highland-lowland context, it subsequently analyses the market and non-market importance of forest resources for rural households. The analysis is based on data from three selected study locations in the province, collected through a field survey carried out from April to August 2004. Results show that access to various assets widely differs between the high- and lowland context. Forest resources, i.e. fuelwood, are of utmost importance for subsistence-oriented strategies especially in the highland areas, where affordable alternatives are missing. The role of forests in income-oriented strategies, however, is negligible both in the high- and lowland context

A Simply Numbered Lambda Calculus

While programming languages traditionally lean towards functions, query languages are often relational in character. Taking the relations language of Harkes and Visser as a starting point, I explore how the functional paradigm, represented by the lambda calculus, can be extended to form the basis of a relational language. It turns out that a straightforward extension with strings of terms not only supports surprisingly many features of the relations language, but also opens it up for higher-order relations, one prominent feature the relations language does not offer

Multitudes of Objects: First Implementation and Case Study for Java

In object-oriented programs, the relationship of an object to many objects is usually implemented using indirection through a collection. This is in contrast to a relationship to one object, which is usually implemented directly. However, using collections for relationships to many objects does not only mean that accessing the related objects always requires accessing the collection first, it also presents a lurking maintenance problem that manifests itself when a relationship needs to be changed from to-one to to-many or vice versa. Continuing our prior work on fixing this problem, we show how we have extended the Java 7 programming language with multiplicities, that is, with expressions that evaluate to a number of objects not wrapped in a container, and report on the experience we have gathered using these multiplicities in a case study

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

10152 Abstracts Collection -- Relationships, Objects, Roles, and Queries in Modern Languages

From 11/04/10 to 16/04/10, the Dagstuhl Seminar 10152 ``Relationships, Objects, Roles, and Queries in Modern Programming Languages\u27\u27 was held in Schloss Dagstuhl~--~Leibniz Center for Informatics. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available

Comparative birth weights of singletons born after assisted reproduction and natural conception in previously infertile women

BACKGROUND: The possible interference of assisted reproduction techniques (ART) with epigenetic reprogramming during early embryo development has recently sparked renewed interest about the reported lower birth weight among infants born as a consequence of infertility treatments. However, the latter finding so far has relied on the comparison of the birth weight of infants conceived with ART to general population data. A more appropriate comparison group should involve pregnancies in infertile women after natural conception. Therefore, we compared neonatal birth weight data of infants born after various ART treatments, including intrauterine insemination (IUI), with those of previously infertile women achieving pregnancy after sexual intercourse. METHODS: Between August 1996 and March 2004 the data of all infertile women presenting in the infertility unit of the University Women's Hospital of Basel, Switzerland, were collected prospectively, adding up to 995 intact pregnancies and deliveries. The birth weight of all infants resulting from 741 singleton pregnancies were analysed with regard to the patients' characteristics, the occurrence of complications during pregnancy and the type of infertility treatment with which the pregnancies were achieved. RESULTS: Comparison of duration of pregnancy and birth weight of infants born after infertility treatment confirms a shorter pregnancy span and a lower mean birth weight in infants born after IVF and ICSI. If women with pregnancies after ART deliver before term, neonatal birth weight is significantly lower. CONCLUSIONS: There is a specific effect of ART, mainly IVF and ICSI, on both shortening the duration of pregnancy and lowering neonatal birth weight. Both these parameters seem to be interrelated consequences of some modification in the gestational process induced by the infertility treatment. Freezing and thawing of oocytes in the pronucleate stage had a lesser impact on pregnancy span and on neonatal birth weigh

Clinical monitoring with fuzzy automata

Abstract: In this paper, a framework for an intelligent bedside monitor is presented. The monitor derives an abstraction of the current status of a patient by performing fuzzy state transitions on pre-processed input continuously supplied by clinical instrumentation. So far, an implementation called DiaMon-1 has been used for off-line evaluation of data of patients suffering from the adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)

1,3-Diisopropyl-4,5-dimethyl­imidazolium benzene­sulfonate

In the title salt, C11H21N2 +·C6H5O3S−, which has two cation–anion pairs in the asymmetric unit, the two imidazolium cations are linked to two separate acceptor O atoms of one of the benzene­sulfonate anions through aromatic C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, while the second anion is unassociated