FARMER STORAGE OF IRRIGATION WATER IN FEDERAL PROJECTS

This study estimates some of the economic impacts of a program that would allow farmers to save a part of their annual surface irrigation water allocation. The objective would be to save water in full allocation years to be used in water short years. The study area consisted of the El Paso County Water Improvement District. Results indicate that optimal temporal water use would increase district net farm revenue by three percent or less above actual water use. For the study area vegetables were the most profitable crop while laser leveling was not economically feasible.Farm Management, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Development of an Integrated Governance Strategy for the Voluntary and Community Sector

This report on governance provides a framework for thinking about how policy makers, funders,regulators and advisers can all work with Board members and staff to enhance the effectiveness of nonprofit organisations. It was commissioned by the Active Community Unit (ACU) of the Home Office, in parallel with other reviews designed to improve the capacity of the voluntary and community sector, at a time when the sector plays an increasingly important role in the delivery of services using public funds. That role has recently been investigated in two Government reports, the Cross Cutting Review carried out by the Treasury, and the Strategy Unit review of charities and nonprofits. Our report proposes actions of three types: some that can be taken immediately, some that require further discussion with key interests, and some integration with the other ACU reviews. Taken together they provide the starting point for an evolving strategy to improve governance across the sector. We recommend ACU chairs a group charged with the responsibility for planning and implementing this. Our focus is on governance as 'the systems and processes concerned with ensuring the overall direction, supervision and accountability of an organisation'. This is often taken to mean the way that a Board, management committee or other governing body steers the overall development of an organisation, where day-to-day management is in the hands of staff or volunteers. Sometimes, of course, the committee and volunteers are the same. They – like all governing bodies – have to balance the interests of the organisation and those they are trying to serve, while being conscious of financial and legal responsibilities, and the requirements of funders and other supporters

The integrated database for African policymakers

The Integrated Database for African Policymakers (IDAPs; http://www.walker.ac.uk/projects/idaps-integrated-database-for-african-policy-makers/), is a technological initiative to intended to provide valuable insight and quantitative evidence to policy makers, planners and doers, at international, national and local levels to inform scenario planning and support investment interventions for early action and adaptation. It also provides a rich source of data for researchers exploring the impacts of climate change in rural African communities, and potentially beyond. IDAPS is jointly led by the Walker Institute and Evidence for Development, our embedded NGO partner

Estimating the conditions for polariton condensation in organic thin-film microcavities

We examine the possibility of observing Bose condensation of a confined two-dimensional polariton gas in an organic quantum well. We deduce a suitable parameterization of a model Hamiltonian based upon the cavity geometry, the biexciton binding energy, and similar spectroscopic and structural data. By converting the sum-over-states to a semiclassical integration over $d$-dimensional phase space, we show that while an ideal 2-D Bose gas will not undergo condensation, an interacting gas with the Bogoliubov dispersion $H(p)\approx s p$ close to $p=0$ will undergo Bose condensation at a given critical density and temperature. We show that $T_c/\sqrt{\rho_c}$ is sensitive to both the cavity geometry and to the biexciton binding energy. In particular, for strongly bound biexcitons, the non-linear interaction term appearing in the Gross-Pitaevskii equation becomes negative and the resulting ground state will be a localized soliton state rather than a delocalized Bose condensate.Comment: 2 figure

Detection of antibody-dependent complement mediated inactivation of both autologous and heterologous virus in primary HIV-1 infection

Specific CD8 T-cell responses to human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) are induced in primary infection and make an important contribution to the control of early viral replication. The importance of neutralizing antibodies in containing primary viremia is questioned because they usually arise much later. Nevertheless antienvelope antibodies develop simultaneously with, or even before, peak viremia. We determined whether such antibodies might control viremia by complement-mediated inactivation (CMI). In each of seven patients studied, antibodies capable of CMI appeared at or shortly after the peak in viremia, concomitantly with detection of virus-specific T-cell responses. The CMI was effective on both autologous and heterologous HIV-1 isolates. Activation of the classical pathway and direct viral lysis were at least partly responsible. Since immunoglobulin G (IgG)-antibodies triggered the CMI, specific memory B cells could also be induced by vaccination. Thus, consideration should be given to vaccination strategies that induce IgG antibodies capable of CMI

A comparison of model ensembles for attributing 2012 West African rainfall

In 2012, heavy rainfall resulted in flooding and devastating impacts across West Africa. With many people highly vulnerable to such events in this region, this study investigates whether anthropogenic climate change has influenced such heavy precipitation events. We use a probabilistic event attribution approach to assess the contribution of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, by comparing the probability of such an event occurring in climate model simulations with all known climate forcings to those where natural forcings only are simulated. An ensemble of simulations from 10 models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) is compared to two much larger ensembles of atmosphere-only simulations, from the Met Office model HadGEM3-A and from weather@home with a regional version of HadAM3P. These are used to assess whether the choice of model ensemble influences the attribution statement that can be made. Results show that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have decreased the probability of high precipitation across most of the model ensembles. However, the magnitude and confidence intervals of the decrease depend on the ensemble used, with more certainty in the magnitude in the atmosphere-only model ensembles due to larger ensemble sizes from single models with more constrained simulations. Certainty is greatly decreased when considering a CMIP5 ensemble that can represent the relevant teleconnections due to a decrease in ensemble members. An increase in probability of high precipitation in HadGEM3-A using the observed trend in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) for natural simulations highlights the need to ensure that estimates of natural SSTs are consistent with observed trends in order for results to be robust. Further work is needed to establish how anthropogenic forcings are affecting the rainfall processes in these simulations in order to better understand the differences in the overall effect

A low-cost open-source SNP genotyping platform for association mapping applications

Association mapping aimed at identifying DNA polymorphisms that contribute to variation in complex traits entails genotyping a large number of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in a very large panel of individuals. Few technologies, however, provide inexpensive high-throughput genotyping. Here, we present an efficient approach developed specifically for genotyping large fixed panels of diploid individuals. The cost-effective, open-source nature of our methodology may make it particularly attractive to those working in nonmodel systems

Economic Implications of Farmer Storage of Surface Irrigation Water in Federal Projects: El Paso County, Texas

The Bureau of Reclamation has approved a program for farmer storage of surface irrigation water in Elephant Butte Reservoir, New Mexico. This program would allow individual farmers to store part of their annual surface water allotment in the reservoir subject to evaporation loss to be drawn at a future date upon request. The purpose of this study is to ascertain the economic implications of such a program for farmers in the El Paso County Water Improvement District No. 1. The economic analysis was based on results from a linear programming model developed for crop production in E1 Paso County. The model was designed to maximize net farm revenue. Twelve crops were included in the analysis. The effects of soil type and salinity level of irrigation water on crop yields for all twelve crops were estimated. Input requirements by crop and yield level were identified. Input categories included seed, chemical, water, machinery, labor, harvest, other and fixed costs. Irrigation alternatives included both surface and ground sources. In addition, the water saving technology of laser leveling was incorporated into the model. The model was restricted by acreage of a soil group with a specified level of salinity in the underlying groundwater. Also, the quantity of surface irrigation water available was limited. This static linear programming model was applied for various surface irrigation water allocations ranging from zero to three acre feet per acre of cropland with groundwater assumed available. This procedure produced a schedule of net farm revenues for alternative surface irrigation water allocations for use in conjunction with groundwater. The procedure was repeated with groundwater availability limited to zero. These two schedules of net farm revenues were then used (1) to form the basis of two temporal linear programming models which maximized the real value in 1980 dollars of a stream of net farm revenues, and (23 to evaluate a specified annual surface irrigation water use scenario of two acre feet per acre per year. The temporal models maximized the 1980 real value of net farm revenues. This revenue stream was generated by optimal temporal use of the actual annual surface irrigation water allotments for 1963 to 1980. This optimal use includes the opportunity to store water in Elephant Butte Reservoir subject to evaporation. Results were obtained both with and without groundwater pumping over three surface water use scenarios (actual, optimal temporal and two acre feet per year). The results of this study indicated that, with the ability to store surface water, temporally optimizing surface water use would have increased the real value of net farm revenue $0.84 per acre per year or 0.4 percent above the real value of net farm returns implied by the actual use rates for the groundwater pumping case. For the no groundwater pumping case, the real value of net farm returns increased by$3.56 per acre per year or 2 percent above the net farm returns indicated by the actual use rates. Also, storing surface water for future use, or accumulation, tends to decrease the year to year variability of net farm revenues. Groundwater pumping is also known to decrease this variability. The target surface water allocation of the project administrators is three acre feet per year. The optimal temporal solutions tended to be between this three acre feet allocation and the two acre feet allocation as specified in the two acre feet per year scenario. An optimal temporal allotment of three acre feet appears too high while two acre feet appears too low. Without a system of farmer-held surface water storage, optimizing temporal use of surface irrigation water would not be possible. Thus, this water storage opportunity is an important irrigation management tool for individual farmers in the El Paso County Water Improvement District No. 1

Overview of NASARTI (NASA Radiation Track Image) Program: Highlights of the Model Improvement and the New Results

This presentation summarizes several years of research done by the co-authors developing the NASARTI (NASA Radiation Track Image) program and supporting it with scientific data. The goal of the program is to support NASA mission to achieve a safe space travel for humans despite the perils of space radiation. The program focuses on selected topics in radiation biology that were deemed important throughout this period of time, both for the NASA human space flight program and to academic radiation research. Besides scientific support to develop strategies protecting humans against an exposure to deep space radiation during space missions, and understanding health effects from space radiation on astronauts, other important ramifications of the ionizing radiation were studied with the applicability to greater human needs: understanding the origins of cancer, the impact on human genome, and the application of computer technology to biological research addressing the health of general population. The models under NASARTI project include: the general properties of ionizing radiation, such as particular track structure, the effects of radiation on human DNA, visualization and the statistical properties of DSBs (DNA double-strand breaks), DNA damage and repair pathways models and cell phenotypes, chromosomal aberrations, microscopy data analysis and the application to human tissue damage and cancer models. The development of the GUI and the interactive website, as deliverables to NASA operations teams and tools for a broader research community, is discussed. Most recent findings in the area of chromosomal aberrations and the application of the stochastic track structure are also presented

Synergy and group size in microbial cooperation

Microbes produce many molecules that are important for their growth and development, and the consumption of these secretions by nonproducers has recently become an important paradigm in microbial social evolution. Though the production of these public goods molecules has been studied intensely, little is known of how the benefits accrued and costs incurred depend on the quantity of public good molecules produced. We focus here on the relationship between the shape of the benefit curve and cellular density with a model assuming three types of benefit functions: diminishing, accelerating, and sigmoidal (accelerating then diminishing). We classify the latter two as being synergistic and argue that sigmoidal curves are common in microbial systems. Synergistic benefit curves interact with group sizes to give very different expected evolutionary dynamics. In particular, we show that whether or not and to what extent microbes evolve to produce public goods depends strongly on group size. We show that synergy can create an 'evolutionary trap' which can stymie the establishment and maintenance of cooperation. By allowing density dependent regulation of production (quorum sensing) we show how this trap may be avoided. We discuss the implications of our results for experimental desgn