MUSIC - Multisimulation Coordinator: Request For Comments

MUSIC is an API allowing large scale neuron simulators using MPI internally to exchange data during runtime. MUSIC provides mechanisms to transfer massive amounts of event information and continuous values from one parallel application to another. Special care has been taken to ensure that existing simulators can be adapted to MUSIC. In particular, MUSIC handles data transfer between applications that use different time steps and different data allocation strategies. This RFC - Request For Comments - document invites comments on the proposed design and prototype specifications. 
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Closed loop interactions between spiking neural network and robotic simulators based on MUSIC and ROS

In order to properly assess the function and computational properties of simulated neural systems, it is necessary to account for the nature of the stimuli that drive the system. However, providing stimuli that are rich and yet both reproducible and amenable to experimental manipulations is technically challenging, and even more so if a closed-loop scenario is required. In this work, we present a novel approach to solve this problem, connecting robotics and neural network simulators. We implement a middleware solution that bridges the Robotic Operating System (ROS) to the Multi-Simulator Coordinator (MUSIC). This enables any robotic and neural simulators that implement the corresponding interfaces to be efficiently coupled, allowing real-time performance for a wide range of configurations. This work extends the toolset available for researchers in both neurorobotics and computational neuroscience, and creates the opportunity to perform closed-loop experiments of arbitrary complexity to address questions in multiple areas, including embodiment, agency, and reinforcement learning

African farm trajectories and the sub-continental food crisis

This is a study of farm dynamics in eight African countries, drawing on a sample of more than 3000 farm households. It deals mainly with food crops and in detail with maize and makes a longitudinal analysis by systematically comparing current conditions with those obtaining when the farm was set up under its present management. From the study emerges an overall picture of inadequately exploited production potentials where farmers’ commercial energies are driven towards other food crops than grains, especially vegetables for urban markets. Commercial incentives in food grain production favour small groups of well-placed and usually male farmers, while, the lack of seed-fertiliser technology and commercial incentives means that smallholders devote their energies to other crops or to non-farm sources of income

Working Paper 2

While macro-level data as well as sub-sector studies across a number of African countries suggest improvements in agricultural production over the past couple of decades, the extent to which such growth has been based on smallholder production and, as such, has affected smallholder food security and commercialisation is unknown (Wiggins, Keats and Sumberg 2015). The potential for evaluating the possibilities for pro-poor agricultural growth and the commercialisation pathways tied to such growth is hampered by a lack of longitudinal data that traces the evolution of smallholder consumption, food security, nutritional diversity and commercialisation over time. Moreover, while the regional (and sometimes even local) prospects for production as well as commercialisation are reported to vary widely, a regional approach to pro-poor agricultural growth is seldom taken. Finally, although studies of gendered time-use in agricultural production and its nutritional outcomes exist, few studies consider the links between food security, gender and pathways of commercialisation. This paper does not therefore focus on production as such, but explores the connection between commercialisation and food security. The analysis is based primarily on descriptive statistics; it does not aim to explore causal relations but rather to assemble data to elucidate changes over time in crosssectional patterns. The paper uses data from the Afrint database covering roughly 2,100 smallholders in six African countries: Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia, surveyed in 2002, 2008 and 2013. It addresses key aspects of food and nutrition security and their linkages to commercialisation. Following a presentation of the data at the country level, regional comparisons will be made, discussing the linkages between food security outcomes and particular commercialisation pathways for the final wave of panel data (2008–13).ESR