7,982 research outputs found
The resilience of indigenous knowledge in small-scale African agriculture: key drivers
The successful use of indigenous knowledge (IK) in development practice in rural Africa over the last couple of decades has proved to be elusive and disappointing. Using empirical field data from northern Malawi, this study suggests that the two key drivers for farmers in this area are household food security and the maintenance of soil fertility. Indigenous ways of knowing underpin the agricultural system which has been developed, rather than the adoption of more modern, âscientificâ ways, to deliver against these drivers. Such IKs, however, are deeply embedded in the economic, social and cultural environments in which they operate
Surveillance of cancer among sexual and gender minority populations: Where are we and where do we need to go?
Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/153075/1/cncr32384_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/153075/2/cncr32384.pd
Optical and Radio Polarimetry of the M87 Jet at 0.2" Resolution
We discuss optical (HST/WFPC2 F555W) and radio (15 GHz VLA) polarimetry
observations of the M87 jet taken during 1994-1995. Many knot regions are very
highly polarized (, approaching the theoretical maximum for
optically thin synchrotron radiation), suggesting highly ordered magnetic
fields. High degrees of polarization are also observed in interknot regions.
While the optical and radio polarization maps share many similarities, we
observe significant differences between the radio and optical polarized
structures, particularly for bright knots in the inner jet, giving us important
insight into the jet's radial structure. Unlike in the radio, the optical
magnetic field position angle becomes perpendicular to the jet at the upstream
ends of knots HST-1, D, E and F. Moreover, the optical polarization decreases
markedly at the position of the flux maxima in these knots. In contrast, the
magnetic field position angle observed in the radio remains parallel to the jet
in most of these regions, and the decreases in radio polarization are smaller.
More minor differences are seen in other jet regions. Many of the differences
between optical and radio polarimetry results can be explained in terms of a
model whereby shocks occur in the jet interior, where higher-energy electrons
are concentrated and dominate both polarized and unpolarized emissions in the
optical, while the radio maps show strong contributions from lower-energy
electrons in regions with {\bf B} parallel, near the jet surface.Comment: 28 pages, 7 figures; accepted for publication in AJ (May 1999
Symmetric Grothendieck polynomials, skew Cauchy identities, and dual filtered Young graphs
Symmetric Grothendieck polynomials are analogues of Schur polynomials in the
K-theory of Grassmannians. We build dual families of symmetric Grothendieck
polynomials using Schur operators. With this approach we prove skew Cauchy
identity and then derive various applications: skew Pieri rules, dual
filtrations of Young's lattice, generating series and enumerative identities.
We also give a new explanation of the finite expansion property for products of
Grothendieck polynomials
Safe Crossover of Neural Networks Through Neuron Alignment
One of the main and largely unexplored challenges in evolving the weights of
neural networks using genetic algorithms is to find a sensible crossover
operation between parent networks. Indeed, naive crossover leads to
functionally damaged offspring that do not retain information from the parents.
This is because neural networks are invariant to permutations of neurons,
giving rise to multiple ways of representing the same solution. This is often
referred to as the competing conventions problem. In this paper, we propose a
two-step safe crossover(SC) operator. First, the neurons of the parents are
functionally aligned by computing how well they correlate, and only then are
the parents recombined. We compare two ways of measuring relationships between
neurons: Pairwise Correlation (PwC) and Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA).
We test our safe crossover operators (SC-PwC and SC-CCA) on MNIST and CIFAR-10
by performing arithmetic crossover on the weights of feed-forward neural
network pairs. We show that it effectively transmits information from parents
to offspring and significantly improves upon naive crossover. Our method is
computationally fast,can serve as a way to explore the fitness landscape more
efficiently and makes safe crossover a potentially promising operator in future
neuroevolution research and applications
The Impact of Nicotine and Cigarette Smoke Condensate on Metabolic Activity and Biofilm Formation of Candida albicans on Acrylic Denture Material
Purpose
Smokers have increased denture stomatitis caused primarily by Candida albicans. The primary aim of this study was to demonstrate the impact of a wide range of nicotine and cigarette smoke condensate (CSC) concentrations on biofilm formation and metabolic activity of C. albicans on acrylic denture material.
Materials and Methods
C. albicans (ATCC strain 10231) was used. Standardized denture acrylic (PMMA) specimens (total of 135 specimens) were incubated with C. albicans and exposed to nicotine and CSC at different concentrations (0, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 mg/ml) and (0, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 mg/ml), respectively. For each experiment, 3 samples per nicotine and CSC concentration and a total of 45 specimens (27 specimens for the nicotine and 18 specimens for the CSCâtreated samples) were used and were selected randomly for each group. The control group consisted of 0 mg/ml of nicotine or CSC. The viability of C. albicans was measured using spiral plating on blood agar plates. The effect of nicotine and CSC concentrations on planktonic cells was were measured using a microplate reader. Metabolic activity of 24âhourâold established C. albicans biofilm exposed to nicotine and CSC for 24 hours in microtiter plates was determined using a 2,3âbis (2âmethoxyâ4ânitroâ5âsulfophenyl)â2Hâtetrazoliumâcarboxanilide (XTT) reduction assay.
Results
The viability of C. albicans increased concomitant with increasing concentrations of CSC and nicotine, particularly at 0.5 and 2 mg/ml, respectively. Concentrations of CSC and nicotine above this resulted in an inhibitory effect on C. albicans viability. CSC and nicotine at 4 and 16 mg/ml, respectively, increased C. albicans biofilm metabolic activity.
Conclusion
Nicotine and CSC up to certain concentrations caused increases in biofilm formation, metabolic activity, viability, and planktonic cell absorbance of C. albicans. This in vitro study demonstrates the effectiveness of tobacco on promoting the growth of C. albicans and suggests their potential contributing factor in C. albicans biofilm related infections in smokers
Deep CCD Surface Photometry of Galaxy Clusters I: Methods and Initial Studies of Intracluster Starlight
We report the initial results of a deep imaging survey of galaxy clusters.
The primary goals of this survey are to quantify the amount of intracluster
light as a function of cluster properties, and to quantify the frequency of
tidal debris. We outline the techniques needed to perform such a survey, and we
report findings for the first two galaxy clusters in the survey: Abell 1413,
and MKW 7 . These clusters vary greatly in richness and structure. We show that
our surface photometry reliably reaches to a surface brightness of \mu_v = 26.5
mags per arcsec. We find that both clusters show clear excesses over a
best-fitting r^{1/4} profile: this was expected for Abell 1413, but not for MKW
7. Both clusters also show evidence of tidal debris in the form of plumes and
arc-like structures, but no long tidal arcs were detected. We also find that
the central cD galaxy in Abell 1413 is flattened at large radii, with an
ellipticity of , the largest measured ellipticity of any cD galaxy
to date.Comment: 58 pages, 24 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical
Journal. Version has extremely low resolution figures to comply with 650k
limit. High resolution version is available at
http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/johnf/icl1.ps.gz Obtaining high resolution version
is strongly reccomende
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