Organisational Baseline Study: Overview report for My Loi CSV, Vietnam (VN02)

This report covers the Organisational Baseline Study (OBS) for the CCAFS climate-smart village My Loi in central Viet Nam. During October and November 2014 interviews were conducted with ten organisations working or collaborating with farmers and/or the community in Ky Anh district in Ha Tinh province. The My Loi research site lies in the uplands of the north central coast. The region has four but increasingly variable seasons, increase in frequency and magnitude of storms and tropical low-pressure systems, increase in intensity of dry and hot westerly wind (Laos wind). The main farming systems comprise a blend of crop-livestock systems with the main crops being rainfed rice, cassava, peanut, and acacia. This OBS report supplements the qualitative village baseline studies at the same location. The objectives of the organisational baseline study are to: Provide indicators to monitor changes in behaviours and practices of locally relevant organisations that have climate change related activities in Ha Tinh over time Understand the provision of information/services at the local level that informs farmers’ decision making about their livelihood strategies in response to climate chang

Participatory identification of climate-smart agriculture priorities

With the concept climate-smart agriculture (CSA) being relatively new, there is a need to test and develop practical and systematic methodologies and approaches for documenting and evaluating CSA practices in the field. The implementation of CCAFS’ Climate-Smart Villages (CSV) involves identifying, assessing and selecting climate-smart farming practices. This report contains three sections: (i) a framework for identifying and assessing CSA in the field with a long list of CSA indicators in identifying and monitoring CSA interventions; (ii) cost-benefit analysis of some selected climate-smart farming systems; and (iii) the participatory process of prioritizing CSA options with the villagers. The work builds on our experiences from the My Loi CSV and its scaling domains in Ky Anh district, Ha Tinh province, in the north-central region of Viet Nam. English version: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/bitstream/handle/10568/75542/Participatory%20CSA_ICRAF_Final.pd

The Visible Light Activity of the TiO2 and TiO2:V4+ Photocatalyst

TiO2 and vanadium‐doped TiO2 nanoparticles were synthesized by using the hydrothermal method. The V doping contents are 0.0; 0.1; 0.3; 0.5; 0.7 and 0.9% molar. The vanadium‐doped TiO2 nanoparticles have identical anatase phase with an average crystal size of 10‐20nm. The oleic acid and ethanol solvents with different molar concentrations can make spherical nanograins, or stick form grains, which influence the photo activity of the materials. The absorption spectra of doped samples exhibited long-tailed absorption in the visible light region above 380nm. The visible light photocatalytic activity was evaluated by the degradation of phenol aqueous solutions; after 360 min. under the visible irradiation, the normalized concentration of phenol decreased to 9%

Biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles using curcumin against the bovine mastitis bacteria

Bovine mastitis is the most common disease and has greatly affected economies around the world. This study aimed to determine the antibacterial ability of bovine mastitis by curcumin - silver nanoparticles (Cur-AgNPs). The study included experiments on presenting a new process for synthesizing silver nanoparticles using curcumin from fresh turmeric as a reducing agent and stabilizer. UV visible spectroscopy of the samples revealed the localized surface plasmon resonance absorbance of the dispersion of silver nanoparticles at 430 nm. The prepared Cur-AgNPs has a spherical shape with an average size of 30 nm and a size distribution of 15–47 nm. FT-IR (Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy) measurements of the samples showed that silver nanopartilces has been encapsulated well by curcumin. Cur-AgNPs with a concentration of 50-200 μg/mL has very effect to Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa causing bovine mastitis in vitro. The maximum inhibition zone formed was 15 ± 0.85 mm for Staphylococcus aureus and 14 ± 0.56 mm for Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Plant materials mediating for the synthesis of silver nanoparticles have relatively rapid, less expensive, and widespread applications for antimicrobial therapy in the livestock sector

HUPSMT: AN EFFICIENT ALGORITHM FOR MINING HIGH UTILITY-PROBABILITY SEQUENCES IN UNCERTAIN DATABASES WITH MULTIPLE MINIMUM UTILITY THRESHOLDS

The problem of high utility sequence mining (HUSM) in quantitative se-quence databases (QSDBs) is more general than that of frequent sequence mining in se-quence databases. An important limitation of HUSM is that a user-predened minimum tility threshold is used commonly to decide if a sequence is high utility. However, this is not convincing in many real-life applications as sequences may have diferent importance. Another limitation of HUSM is that data in QSDBs are assumed to be precise. But in the real world, collected data such as by sensor maybe uncertain. Thus, this paper proposes a framework for mining high utility-probability sequences (HUPSs) in uncertain QSDBs (UQS-DBs) with multiple minimum utility thresholds using a minimum utility. Two new width and depth pruning strategies are also introduced to early eliminate low utility or low probability sequences as well as their extensions, and to reduce sets of candidate items for extensions during the mining process. Based on these strategies, a novel ecient algorithm named HUPSMT is designed for discovering HUPSs. Finally, an experimental study conducted in both real-life and synthetic UQSDBs shows the performance of HUPSMT in terms of time and memory consumption

Preschool STEM Activities and Associated Outcomes: A Scoping Review

This review highlights the need for further investigation into the benefits of STEM activities in preschool children’s learning, girls’ engagement and learning of children with disabilities in the STEM field. The review process involved accessing 19 relevant studies from Scopus, ERIC and Google Scholar databases in March 2023. Through the synthesis of information from these studies, seven STEM activities were identified as effective in enhancing preschool children’s learning: educational robots, educational games, argumentative interactions, inquiry-based learning and engineering design, drawing and telling about engineers, free play and pretend play, and group membership. Each of these activities contributes to different learning outcomes for children. Moreover, the review emphasizes the importance of role-playing activities ‘as if’ engineers and scientists, facilitated by teachers, in fostering girls’ motivation and engagement in the STEM field from an early age. Long-term scientific interventions at home have a significant positive impact on the science literacy skills of deaf children. The implications of this review are particularly relevant for early childhood educators, as it provides valuable insights into the use of STEM activities to enhance children’s learning outcomes

Combining Passivity-Based Control and Linear Quadratic Regulator to Control a Rotary Inverted Pendulum

In this manuscript, new combination methodology is proposed, which named combining Passivity-Based Control and Linear Quadratic Regulator (for short, CPBC-LQR), to support the stabilization process as the system is far from equilibrium point. More precisely, Linear Quadratic Regulator (for short, LQR) is used together with Passivity-Based Control (for short, PBC) controller. Though passivity-based control and linear quadratic regulator are two control methods, it is possible to integrate them together. The combination of passivity-based control and linear quadratic regulator is analyzed, designed and implemented on so-called rotary inverted pendulum system (for short, RIP). In this work, CPBC-LQR is validated and discussed on both MATLAB/Simulink environment and real-time experimental setup. The numerical simulation and experimental results reveal the ability of CPBC-LQR control scheme in stabilization problem and achieve a good and stable performance. Effectiveness and feasibility of proposed controller are confirmed via comparative simulation and experiments