Women farmers and Andean seeds

In rural areas, the conservation and use of plant genetic resources begins with women. As smallholder farmers, women are involved in all areas of the crop cycle from seed selection to planting, harvest, storage and processing. Within the household, women are responsible for food needs and welfare, including the gathering and utilization of food, fodder, fuel, medicinal plants and fibre. In these roles, women often determine which plant resources to conserve and use, which crop varieties to grow, which food products to keep for home consumption and which to sell at the local market. As illustrated by this case study of women farmers and seed in the Andes, rural women have a special interest in the diverse and multiple uses of plants and other biological resources, given their varied and complex responsibilities in rural households. The knowledge acquired as managers of these resources for livelihood, health and food security constitutes a knowledge system that both ensures subsistence and community needs, and contributes to the conservation and use of local varietie

Defeasible Logic: Agency, Intention and Obligation

We propose a computationally oriented non-monotonic multi-modal logic arising from the combination of agency, intention and obligation. We argue about the defeasible nature of these notions and then we show how to represent and reason with them in the setting of defeasible logic

Precocidad y productividad según número de ramas por planta en tomate (Solanum lycopersicum) injertado y sin injertar

El tomate sin injertar se conduce normalmente a un tallo, aunque existen antecedentes de buenas respuestas productivas con conducción a dos ramas. Las plantas injertadas, por su vigor, pueden sostener más fácilmente la conducción a más tallos; reduciéndose la densidad de plantación, y consecuentemente, los costos de implantación, condición favorable dado el mayor precio de los plantines injertados. Sin embargo, en plantas injertadas puede producirse un retraso en las fases reproductivas, repercutiendo en la precocidad, mientras que a mayor número de ramas, el aumento en cantidad de frutos formados puede generar competencia y reducción de su tamaño. En tomate, la producción puede ser modificada por el cultivar, la práctica del injerto, el portainjerto y el número de ramas por planta. Sin embargo, en general, el planteo de los trabajos no permite diferenciar respuestas atribuibles al uso de injertos, la forma de conducción o a la interacción de estos factores. Este trabajo tuvo como objetivo estudiar el efecto del injerto y número de ramas por planta sobre la precocidad y productividad en tomate.Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias y Forestale

Renormalization and asymptotic safety in truncated quantum Einstein gravity

A perturbative quantum theory of the 2-Killing vector reduction of general relativity is constructed. Although non-renormalizable in the standard sense, we show that to all orders of the loop expansion strict cut-off independence can be achieved in a space of Lagrangians differing only by a field dependent conformal factor. In particular the Noether currents and the quantum constraints can be defined as finite composite operators. The form of the field dependence in the conformal factor changes with the renormalization scale and a closed formula is obtained for the beta functional governing its flow. The flow possesses a unique fixed point at which the trace anomaly is shown to vanish. The approach to the fixed point adheres to Weinberg's ``asymptotic safety'' scenario, both in the gravitational wave/cosmological sector and in the stationary sector.Comment: 67 pages, Latex; v3: improved discussion of stationary sector; agrees with published versio

Spin asymmetry A_1^d and the spin-dependent structure function g_1^d of the deuteron at low values of x and Q^2

We present a precise measurement of the deuteron longitudinal spin asymmetry A_1^d and of the deuteron spin-dependent structure function g_1^d at Q^2 < 1 GeV^2 and 4*10^-5 < x < 2.5*10^-2 based on the data collected by the COMPASS experiment at CERN during the years 2002 and 2003. The statistical precision is tenfold better than that of the previous measurement in this region. The measured A_1^d and g_1^d are found to be consistent with zero in the whole range of x.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figure

Gluon polarization in the nucleon from quasi-real photoproduction of high-pT hadron pairs

We present a determination of the gluon polarization Delta G/G in the nucleon, based on the helicity asymmetry of quasi-real photoproduction events, Q^2<1(GeV/c)^2, with a pair of large transverse-momentum hadrons in the final state. The data were obtained by the COMPASS experiment at CERN using a 160 GeV polarized muon beam scattered on a polarized 6-LiD target. The helicity asymmetry for the selected events is = 0.002 +- 0.019(stat.) +- 0.003(syst.). From this value, we obtain in a leading-order QCD analysis Delta G/G=0.024 +- 0.089(stat.) +- 0.057(syst.) at x_g = 0.095 and mu^2 =~ 3 (GeV}/c)^2.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

The Deuteron Spin-dependent Structure Function g1d and its First Moment

We present a measurement of the deuteron spin-dependent structure function g1d based on the data collected by the COMPASS experiment at CERN during the years 2002-2004. The data provide an accurate evaluation for Gamma_1^d, the first moment of g1d(x), and for the matrix element of the singlet axial current, a0. The results of QCD fits in the next to leading order (NLO) on all g1 deep inelastic scattering data are also presented. They provide two solutions with the gluon spin distribution function Delta G positive or negative, which describe the data equally well. In both cases, at Q^2 = 3 (GeV/c)^2 the first moment of Delta G is found to be of the order of 0.2 - 0.3 in absolute value.Comment: fits redone using MRST2004 instead of MRSV1998 for G(x), correlation matrix adde

A new measurement of the Collins and Sivers asymmetries on a transversely polarised deuteron target

New high precision measurements of the Collins and Sivers asymmetries of charged hadrons produced in deep-inelastic scattering of muons on a transversely polarised 6LiD target are presented. The data were taken in 2003 and 2004 with the COMPASS spectrometer using the muon beam of the CERN SPS at 160 GeV/c. Both the Collins and Sivers asymmetries turn out to be compatible with zero, within the present statistical errors, which are more than a factor of 2 smaller than those of the published COMPASS results from the 2002 data. The final results from the 2002, 2003 and 2004 runs are compared with naive expectations and with existing model calculations.Comment: 40 pages, 28 figure

Measurement of the Spin Structure of the Deuteron in the DIS Region

We present a new measurement of the longitudinal spin asymmetry A_1^d and the spin-dependent structure function g_1^d of the deuteron in the range 1 GeV^2 < Q^2 < 100 GeV^2 and 0.004< x <0.7. The data were obtained by the COMPASS experiment at CERN using a 160 GeV polarised muon beam and a large polarised 6-LiD target. The results are in agreement with those from previous experiments and improve considerably the statistical accuracy in the region 0.004 < x < 0.03.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, subm. to PLB, revised: author list, Fig. 4, details adde