360 research outputs found
The Women’s Empowerment in Livestock Index
The empowerment of women in the livestock sector is fundamental to achieve gender equality. It also is instrumental for increased household productivity and improved household health and nutrition. Diverse strategies exist to empower women, yet these strategies are difficult to prioritize without a reliable and adapted means to measure women’s empowerment. One quantitative measure is the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI). Despite its reliability in certain agricultural contexts, the WEAI requires adaptation in settings where livestock farming is the dominant form of livelihood. Using the WEAI as a starting point, a multidisciplinary team of researchers developed the Women’s Empowerment in Livestock Index (WELI), a new index to assess the empowerment of women in the livestock sector. This paper presents the WELI and the dimensions of empowerment it includes: (1) decisions about agricultural production; (2) decisions related to nutrition; (3) access to and control over resources; (4) control and use of income; (5) access to and control of opportunities; and (6) workload and control over own time. The paper illustrates the use of the WELI by introducing pilot findings from dairy smallholders in four districts of northern Tanzania. The paper addresses considerations for the appropriate use and adaptation of the WELI to balance the needs for context specificity and cross-cultural comparisons; it also discusses its limitations. The paper recommends participatory and qualitative methods that are complementary to the WELI to provide context-specific insights on the processes of women’s empowerment in the livestock sector
Planning an integrated agriculture and health program and designing its evaluation: Experience from Western Kenya.
AbstractMulti-sectoral programs that involve stakeholders in agriculture, nutrition and health care are essential for responding to nutrition problems such as vitamin A deficiency among pregnant and lactating women and their infants in many poor areas of lower income countries. Yet planning such multi-sectoral programs and designing appropriate evaluations, to respond to different disciplinary cultures of evidence, remain a challenge. We describe the context, program development process, and evaluation design of the Mama SASHA project (Sweetpotato Action for Security and Health in Africa) which promoted production and consumption of a bio-fortified, orange-fleshed sweetpotato (OFSP). In planning the program we drew upon information from needs assessments, stakeholder consultations, and a first round of the implementation evaluation of a pilot project. The multi-disciplinary team worked with partner organizations to develop a program theory of change and an impact pathway which identified aspects of the program that would be monitored and established evaluation methods. Responding to the growing demand for greater rigour in impact evaluations, we carried out quasi-experimental allocation by health facility catchment area, repeat village surveys for assessment of change in intervention and control areas, and longitudinal tracking of individual mother-child pairs. Mid-course corrections in program implementation were informed by program monitoring, regular feedback from implementers and partners’ meetings. To assess economic efficiency and provide evidence for scaling we collected data on resources used and project expenses. Managing the multi-sectoral program and the mixed methods evaluation involved bargaining and trade-offs that were deemed essential to respond to the array of stakeholders, program funders and disciplines involved
The effect of participation in a pro-poor dairy development project on milk consumption among reproductive age women in rural Tanzania
Animal milk is an important contributor to women’s dietary diversity, especially among pastoral communities where access to diverse diets is limited. While there have been numerous large-scale milk development projects in East Africa, few examples of propoor milk collective action projects exist that focus on expanding milk production and consumption by women. This study reports cross-sectional findings on the association between participation in a pro-poor dairy development project and women’s milk consumption in rural Tanzania. Socio-demographic and health-related characteristics associated with milk consumption were assessed as well. The study utilized data from a sample of 272 women who participated in two surveys conducted in the Morogoro and Tanga regions of Tanzania in 2015. Chi-square and Cochran–Mantel–Haenszel analyses identified factors associated with whether milk was consumed in the previous 24-hour period. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) identified factors associated with frequency of milk consumption. Multivariable logistic regression was applied to estimate associations between program participation, socio-demographic, health characteristics, milk consumption behavior. Seventy-six percent of women reported drinking milk in the previous 24-hour period. The mean frequency of milk intake among the control group was 1.61 times 2.15 times among the intervention group. The adjusted odds of consuming any milk in the previous 24 hours were 16.1 (95% CI 1.72-150.44) times greater for Maasai than other tribes. Among Maasai, the adjusted odds of consuming milk 3-4 times per day compared to 1-2 times per day were 9.96 (95% CI 1.03 - 96.09) times greater for those in the dairy development group compared to the control. Among non-Maasai, the adjusted odds of consuming any milk in the prior 24 hours was 3.45 (95% CI 1.07- 11.05) times greater for those in the dairy development group compared to the control. Milk consumption was greatest among Maasai and communities with propoor dairy development programs. Findings suggest that participation in a Pro-poor agricultural intervention to improve milk production may improve women’s milk consumption and ultimately help to address rural poverty and improve household nutrition
Centrality and transverse momentum dependence of elliptic flow of multi-strange hadrons and meson in Au+Au collisions at = 200 GeV
We present high precision measurements of elliptic flow near midrapidity
() for multi-strange hadrons and meson as a function of
centrality and transverse momentum in Au+Au collisions at center of mass energy
200 GeV. We observe that the transverse momentum dependence of
and is similar to that of and , respectively,
which may indicate that the heavier strange quark flows as strongly as the
lighter up and down quarks. This observation constitutes a clear piece of
evidence for the development of partonic collectivity in heavy-ion collisions
at the top RHIC energy. Number of constituent quark scaling is found to hold
within statistical uncertainty for both 0-30 and 30-80 collision
centrality. There is an indication of the breakdown of previously observed mass
ordering between and proton at low transverse momentum in the
0-30 centrality range, possibly indicating late hadronic interactions
affecting the proton .Comment: 7 pages and 4 figures, Accepted for publication in Physical Review
Letter
Azimuthal anisotropy in U+U and Au+Au collisions at RHIC
Collisions between prolate uranium nuclei are used to study how particle
production and azimuthal anisotropies depend on initial geometry in heavy-ion
collisions. We report the two- and four-particle cumulants, and
, for charged hadrons from U+U collisions at =
193 GeV and Au+Au collisions at = 200 GeV. Nearly fully
overlapping collisions are selected based on the amount of energy deposited by
spectators in the STAR Zero Degree Calorimeters (ZDCs). Within this sample, the
observed dependence of on multiplicity demonstrates that ZDC
information combined with multiplicity can preferentially select different
overlap configurations in U+U collisions. An initial-state model with gluon
saturation describes the slope of as a function of multiplicity in
central collisions better than one based on Glauber with a two-component
multiplicity model.Comment: Final paper version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett. New
version includes comparisons to a constituent quark glauber mode
Observation of charge asymmetry dependence of pion elliptic flow and the possible chiral magnetic wave in heavy-ion collisions
We present measurements of and elliptic flow, , at
midrapidity in Au+Au collisions at 200, 62.4, 39, 27,
19.6, 11.5 and 7.7 GeV, as a function of event-by-event charge asymmetry,
, based on data from the STAR experiment at RHIC. We find that
() elliptic flow linearly increases (decreases) with charge asymmetry
for most centrality bins at and higher.
At , the slope of the difference of
between and as a function of exhibits a
centrality dependence, which is qualitatively similar to calculations that
incorporate a chiral magnetic wave effect. Similar centrality dependence is
also observed at lower energies.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure
Energy dependence of acceptance-corrected dielectron excess mass spectrum at mid-rapidity in Au+Au collisions at and 200 GeV
The acceptance-corrected dielectron excess mass spectra, where the known
hadronic sources have been subtracted from the inclusive dielectron mass
spectra, are reported for the first time at mid-rapidity in
minimum-bias Au+Au collisions at = 19.6 and 200 GeV. The excess
mass spectra are consistently described by a model calculation with a broadened
spectral function for GeV/. The integrated
dielectron excess yield at = 19.6 GeV for
GeV/, normalized to the charged particle multiplicity at mid-rapidity, has
a value similar to that in In+In collisions at = 17.3 GeV. For
= 200 GeV, the normalized excess yield in central collisions is
higher than that at = 17.3 GeV and increases from peripheral to
central collisions. These measurements indicate that the lifetime of the hot,
dense medium created in central Au+Au collisions at = 200 GeV
is longer than those in peripheral collisions and at lower energies.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure
Isolation of Flow and Nonflow Correlations by Two- and Four-Particle Cumulant Measurements of Azimuthal Harmonics in 200 GeV Au+Au Collisions
A data-driven method was applied to measurements of Au+Au collisions at
200 GeV made with the STAR detector at RHIC to isolate
pseudorapidity distance -dependent and -independent
correlations by using two- and four-particle azimuthal cumulant measurements.
We identified a component of the correlation that is -independent,
which is likely dominated by anisotropic flow and flow fluctuations. It was
also found to be independent of within the measured range of
pseudorapidity . The relative flow fluctuation was found to be for particles of transverse momentum
less than GeV/. The -dependent part may be attributed to
nonflow correlations, and is found to be relative to the
flow of the measured second harmonic cumulant at
Observation of Transverse Spin-Dependent Azimuthal Correlations of Charged Pion Pairs in at GeV
We report the observation of transverse polarization-dependent azimuthal
correlations in charged pion pair production with the STAR experiment in
collisions at RHIC. These correlations directly probe quark
transversity distributions. We measure signals in excess of five standard
deviations at high transverse momenta, at high pseudorapidities eta>0.5, and
for pair masses around the mass of the rho-meson. This is the first direct
transversity measurement in p+p collisions. Comparing the results to data from
lepton-nucleon scattering will test the universality of these spin-dependent
quantities.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, 15 tables. Submitted to PR
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