Temporal stability of network partitions

We present a method to find the best temporal partition at any time-scale and rank the relevance of partitions found at different time-scales. This method is based on random walkers coevolving with the network and as such constitutes a generalization of partition stability to the case of temporal networks. We show that, when applied to a toy model and real datasets, temporal stability uncovers structures that are persistent over meaningful time-scales as well as important isolated events, making it an effective tool to study both abrupt changes and gradual evolution of a network mesoscopic structures.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figure

Closing the Gender Gap in African Agriculture in the Face of Climate Change

Gender is not about ‘women and girls’ but about roles, responsibilities, access and control over resources and relations between men and women, boys and girls which are socially ascribed. Women’s meaningful participation in decision-making requires going beyond the presence of more women in institutions and processes. Comprehensive gender analyses at national and local levels are necessary to identify the challenges and opportunities for developing gender-responsive agricultural policies. A Gender Action Plan (GAP) for agriculture with a well-structured and robust M&E system is essential. Strengthening Gender Management Systems in the agriculture sector with regular gender audits can promote greater equity between women and men

Land Degradation and Climate Change in Africa

Land degradation is rampant in Africa, accounting for 46% of the total land area. Land degradation at the current pace is projected to render more than half of the cultivated land in Africa unusable by 2050. Land degradation and climate change mutually reinforce each other, creating serious implications for food security, biodiversity and livelihoods in Africa. Effective early warning systems are an essential and important alert mechanism for addressing land degradation. An integrated landscape approach is a promising way to address the broad and multi-faceted nature of land degradation across Africa’s different agro-ecological zones

Desertification and Climate Change in Africa

Desertification has increased in African drylands in recent decades, led by land use change, climatic variability and poor land management practices. People living in drylands in Africa are highly vulnerable to desertification and climate change, because of their impacts on a wide range of livelihood based resources. Desertification and climate change affect gender disproportionately, with women and youth being the most affected. Without implementation of adequate measures, climate change will exacerbate the vulnerability to desertification among dryland populations in Africa. Policy responses and integrated land management practices, as well as indigenous and local knowledge are needed to consider the complex and multi-faceted nature of causes and effects of desertification

Enhancing Food Security in a Changing Climate in Africa

Climate and socio-ecological change scenarios are invaluable tools in developing appropriate response options for ensuring food security and human wellbeing in the future: evidence-based approach. Climate change necessitates research on crops, livestock and systems that are resilient to variability and extreme events. Prioritize and mainstream food security and nutrition issues into regional and national climate change adaptation and mitigation programmes and initiatives. Opportunities exist for the development of climate-proof and resilient food systems across Africa through technology diffusion, agronomic practices and innovations that can be optimized and scaled up

Sexuality education : what is it?

This policy brief developed by the European Expert Group on Sexuality Education provides an overview of key issues in sexuality education. It focuses primarily on sexuality education in Europe and Central Asia but is also relevant to countries outside of these regions

Financial stability challenges in EU candidate countries - Financial systems in the aftermath of the global crisis

This paper reviews financial stability challenges in the EU candidate countries: Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Turkey. It follows a macro-prudential approach, emphasising systemic risks and the stability of financial systems as a whole. The paper recalls that the economies of all three countries experienced a recession in 2008-09 and shows how this slowed the rapid process of financial deepening that had been taking place since the beginning of the last decade. The deteriorating economic and financial conditions manifested themselves, first and foremost, through a marked deterioration in asset quality. These direct credit risks were compounded by the transformation of exchange and interest rate risks through a widespread use of foreign exchange-denominated or indexed loans and variable or adjustable interest rate loans. Moreover, funding and liquidity risks also materialised to some extent, although fully fledged bank runs were avoided, and none of the countries experienced a sharp reversal in external financing. Overall, the deterioration in asset quality has so far been managed well by the banking systems of the candidate countries, facilitated by large capital buffers, pro-active macro-prudential policies pursued by the authorities both before and during the crisis and the relative stability of exchange rates. Looking ahead, although uncertainties remain high regarding credit quality, the shock-absorbing capacities of the banking systems are fairly robust, as also evidenced by their relative resilience so far. Nevertheless, as the economic recovery sets in, the central banks should return to and possibly reinforce the implementation of measures to avoid a pro-cyclical build-up of credit asset) boom-bust cycles. Furthermore, given the relevance of foreign-owned banks in two of the three countries, a continued strengthening of home-host cooperation in the supervisory area will be crucial to avoid any kind of regulatory arbitrage. JEL Classification: E3, E52, E58banking sector, emerging markets, Europe, macro-prudential approach, vulnerability indicators

MENGA: a new comprehensive tool for the integration of neuroimaging data and the Allen human brain transcriptome atlas

Brain-wide mRNA mappings offer a great potential for neuroscience research as they can provide information about system proteomics. In a previous work we have correlated mRNA maps with the binding patterns of radioligands targeting specific molecular systems and imaged with positron emission tomography (PET) in unrelated control groups. This approach is potentially applicable to any imaging modality as long as an efficient procedure of imaging-genomic matching is provided. In the original work we considered mRNA brain maps of the whole human genome derived from the Allen human brain database (ABA) and we performed the analysis with a specific region-based segmentation with a resolution that was limited by the PET data parcellation. There we identified the need for a platform for imaging-genomic integration that should be usable with any imaging modalities and fully exploit the high resolution mapping of ABA dataset.In this work we present MENGA (Multimodal Environment for Neuroimaging and Genomic Analysis), a software platform that allows the investigation of the correlation patterns between neuroimaging data of any sort (both functional and structural) with mRNA gene expression profiles derived from the ABA database at high resolution.We applied MENGA to six different imaging datasets from three modalities (PET, single photon emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging) targeting the dopamine and serotonin receptor systems and the myelin molecular structure. We further investigated imaging-genomic correlations in the case of mismatch between selected proteins and imaging targets

Directed Abelian sandpile with multiple downward neighbors

We study the directed Abelian sandpile model on a square lattice, with $K$ downward neighbors per site, $K > 2$. The $K=3$ case is solved exactly, which extends the earlier known solution for the $K=2$ case. For $K>2$, the avalanche clusters can have holes and side-branches and are thus qualitatively different from the $K=2$ case where avalance clusters are compact. However, we find that the critical exponents for $K>2$ are identical with those for the $K=2$ case, and the large scale structure of the avalanches for $K>2$ tends to the $K=2$ case.Comment: Accepted for publication in PR