Women's economic advancement through agricultural change

This paper reviews donor experience with the design of development projects that are sensitive to gender-specific constraints. The review finds that the gap between intentions and implementation as regards gender-sensitivity is larger in agriculture than in health and nutrition. One of the reasons forwarded for this gap is the dearth of quantitative studies documenting the foregone benefits in terms of agricultural productivity of not promoting the economic advancement of women in agriculture.employment ,Nutrition ,Gender ,Women Economic conditions. ,Women Employment Bangladesh. ,Women in agriculture Bangladesh. ,Gender. ,Nutrition ,

An open-source multi-FPGA modular system for fair benchmarking of true random number generators

International audienceTrue Random Number Generators (TRNG) are cryptographic primitives that exploit intrinsic noise sources in electronic devices. Their quality is linked to the underlying technology, activity of the neighboring circuitry and device environment (temperature, power supply, electromagnetic emanations). Consequently, when comparing TRNGs, they should be tested in identical technology, system architecture and operating conditions. We present a unified hardware platform and related open source tools aimed at fair benchmarking of TRNGs implemented in different FPGA technologies. The platform is accessible remotely. Designers can download related tools from the web site and they can upload their configuration bitstream to the remote FPGA and download random data generated in the same hardware and in the same conditions as other concurrent designs and state-of-the-art generators. The proposed tools were approved in many applications and they guarantee safe acquisition of random sequences at data rates of up to 400 Mbits/s

Perceptions of Substance Abuse, Attachment Style, and Personality

There is substantial, empirical research on the bidirectional relationship between personal substance abuse and one’s attachment style and personality traits. For example, insecure attachment and impulsivity correspond with greater substance abuse. However, it is not known whether attachment style and personality traits are related to people’s attitudes towards others’ substance abuse. In a sample of 166 participants, we examined whether attachment and personality showed a similar pattern of results with attitudes towards other people abusing substances as they do with personal substance abuse. Results mostly implicated the same attachment and personality variables, and exploratory analyses suggest that impulsivity is a particularly important predictor of attitudes toward others’ substance abuse

On the assumption of mutual independence of jitter realizations in P-TRNG stochastic models

International audienceSecurity in true random number generation in cryptography is based on entropy per bit at the generator output. The entropy is evaluated using stochastic models. Several recent works propose stochastic models based on assumptions related to selected physical analog phenomena such as noise or jittery signal and on the knowledge of the principle of randomness extraction from the obtained analog signal. However, these assumptions simplify often considerably the underlying analog processes, which include several noise sources. In this paper, we present a new comprehensive multilevel approach, which enables to build the stochastic model based on detailed analysis of noise sources starting at transistor level and on conversion of the noise to the clock jitter exploited at the generator level. Using this approach, we can estimate proportion of the jitter coming only from the thermal noise, which is included in the total clock jitter

Spread: a new layer for profiled deep-learning side-channel attacks

Recent publications, such as [10] and [13], exploit the advantages of deep-learning techniques in performing Side-Channel Attacks. One example of the Side-Channel community interest for such techniques is the release of the public ASCAD database, which provides power consumption traces of a masked 128-bit AES implementation, and is meant to be a common benchmark to compare deep-learning techniques performances. In this paper, we propose two ways of improving the effectiveness of such attacks. The first one is as new kind of layer for neural networks, called Spread layer, which is efficient at tackling side-channel attacks issues, since it reduces the number of layers required and speeds up the learning phase. Our second proposal is an efficient way to correct the neural network predictions, based on its confusion matrix. We have validated both methods on ASCAD database, and conclude that they reduce the number of traces required to succeed attacks. In this article, we show their effectiveness for first-order and second-order attacks

Structure and evolutionary origin of the human granzyme H gene

Among the molecules proposed to be involved In cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL), natural killer (NK) and lymphokine activated killer (LAK) cell-mediated lysis are the granzymes, a family of serine proteases stored in the cytoplasmic granules of CTLs, NK and LAK cells. In addition to the granzymes A and B, a third member of this family has been cloned in man and designated granzyme H. We present the complete gene sequence including the 5' promoter region and demonstrate that the granzyme H sequence represents a functional gene expressed In activated T cells. Granzyme H shows the highest degree (>54%) of amlno acid sequence homology with granzyme B and cathepsin G and, like these genes, consists of five exons separated by introns at equivalent positions. The evolutionary history of granzyme H has been analyzed by reconstructing an evolutionary tree for granzyme sequences. We provide evidence that Interlocus recombination between the ancestral genes of granzyme B and granzyme H occurred about 21 million years ago, leading to a replacement of exon 3, Intron 3 and part of exon 4 in human granzyme H by human granzyme B sequences. Our results suggest that the ancestral gene of granzyme H is more closely related to cathepsin G and granzyme B than to the murine granzymes C to G; Thus, granzyme H does not represent a human counterpart of the known murine granzymes A to G. It diverged from cathepsin G before mammalian radiation and should, therefore, exist in other mammalian lineages as wel

Experimental Selection for <i>Drosophila</i> Survival in Extremely Low O₂ Environment

Background: Cellular hypoxia, if severe enough, results usually in injury or cell death. Our research in this area has focused on the molecular mechanisms underlying hypoxic tissue injury to explore strategies to prevent injury or enhance tolerance. The current experiments were designed to determine the genetic basis for adaptation to long term low O2 environments.Methodology/Principal Findings: With long term experimental selection over many generations, we obtained a Drosophila melanogaster strain that can live perpetually in extremely low, normally lethal, O2 condition (as low as 4% O2). This strain shows a dramatic phenotypic divergence from controls, including a decreased recovery time from anoxic stupor, a higher rate of O2 consumption in hypoxic conditions, and a decreased body size and mass due to decreased cell number and size. Expression arrays showed that about 4% of the Drosophila genome altered in expression and about half of the alteration was down-regulation. The contribution of some altered transcripts to hypoxia tolerance was examined by testing the survival of available corresponding P-element insertions (and their excisions) under extremely low O2 conditions. We found that down-regulation of several candidate genes including Best1, broad, CG7102, dunce, lin19-like and sec6 conferred severe hypoxia tolerance in Drosophila.Conclusions/Significance: We have identified a number of genes that play an important role in the survival of a selected Drosophila strain in extremely low O2 conditions, selected by decreasing O2 availability over many generations. Because of conservation of pathways, we believe that such genes are critical in hypoxia adaptation in physiological or pathological conditions not only in Drosophila but also in mammals.</p

Experimental Selection for Drosophila Survival in Extremely Low O2 Environment

Cellular hypoxia, if severe enough, results usually in injury or cell death. Our research in this area has focused on the molecular mechanisms underlying hypoxic tissue injury to explore strategies to prevent injury or enhance tolerance. The current experiments were designed to determine the genetic basis for adaptation to long term low O(2) environments.With long term experimental selection over many generations, we obtained a Drosophila melanogaster strain that can live perpetually in extremely low, normally lethal, O(2) condition (as low as 4% O(2)). This strain shows a dramatic phenotypic divergence from controls, including a decreased recovery time from anoxic stupor, a higher rate of O(2 )consumption in hypoxic conditions, and a decreased body size and mass due to decreased cell number and size. Expression arrays showed that about 4% of the Drosophila genome altered in expression and about half of the alteration was down-regulation. The contribution of some altered transcripts to hypoxia tolerance was examined by testing the survival of available corresponding P-element insertions (and their excisions) under extremely low O(2) conditions. We found that down-regulation of several candidate genes including Best1, broad, CG7102, dunce, lin19-like and sec6 conferred severe hypoxia tolerance in Drosophila.We have identified a number of genes that play an important role in the survival of a selected Drosophila strain in extremely low O(2) conditions, selected by decreasing O(2) availability over many generations. Because of conservation of pathways, we believe that such genes are critical in hypoxia adaptation in physiological or pathological conditions not only in Drosophila but also in mammals

On-board microgrids for the More Electric Aircraft: technology review

This paper presents an overview of technology related to on-board microgrids for the More Electric Aircraft. All aircraft use an isolated system, where security of supply and power density represent the main requirements. Different distribution systems (AC and DC) and voltage levels coexist, and power converters have the central role in connecting them with high reliability and high power density. Ensuring the safety of supply with a limited redundancy is one of the targets of the system design, since it allows increasing the power density. This main challenge is often tackled with proper load management and advanced control strategies, as highlighted in this paper