New Challenges in Underprivileged Regions Call for People-Centered Research for Development

The need for enhancing food production and availability in underprivileged regions of the world requires the attention of scientists. This article explores the possibilities for rethinking agricultural research for development (R4D) in the light of new challenges characterized by a high degree of scientific uncertainty along with associated intense political differences of interest. New challenges that particularly influence food production in underprivileged regions include global climate change, globalization of food chains, and emerging low-carbon energy systems. We argue that by applying the people-centered sustainable livelihoods approach as a research paradigm in R4D, researchers may be more successful in producing knowledge that is useful to entrepreneurial smallholder farmers. Without such rethinking, traditional scientific approaches and logic may limit the contribution that agricultural R4D can make toward the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals of halving extreme hunger by 2015 and improving the livelihoods of all

Quantum spin configurations in Tb2Ti2O7

Low energy collective angular momentum states of the Tb3+ ions in Tb2Ti2O7 are classified according to the irreducible representations of the octahedral point group. Degeneracy lifting due to the exchange interaction is discussed. Diffuse neutron scattering intensity patterns are calculated for each collective angular momentum state and the ground state is inferred by comparing to experiment.Comment: 5 pages, 1 colour figure. Slight corrections and additions to text and figur

Time delay as a key to Apoptosis Induction in the p53 Network

A feedback mechanism that involves the proteins p53 and mdm2, induces cell death as a controled response to severe DNA damage. A minimal model for this mechanism demonstrates that the respone may be dynamic and connected with the time needed to translate the mdm2 protein. The response takes place if the dissociation constant k between p53 and mdm2 varies from its normal value. Although it is widely believed that it is an increase in k that triggers the response, we show that the experimental behaviour is better described by a decrease in the dissociation constant. The response is quite robust upon changes in the parameters of the system, as required by any control mechanism, except for few weak points, which could be connected with the onset of cancer

Phase Transitions in Neutron Stars and Maximum Masses

Using the most recent realistic effective interactions for nuclear matter with a smooth extrapolation to high densities including causality, we constrain the equation of state and calculate maximum masses of rotating neutron stars. First and second order phase transitions to, e.g., quark matter at high densities are included. If neutron star masses of $\sim 2.3M_\odot$ from quasi-periodic oscillations in low mass X-ray binaries are confirmed, a soft equation of state as well as strong phase transitions can be excluded in neutron star cores.Comment: Replaced with revised version, 7 pages, 3 figs. To appear in Ap. J. Let

Inverse Statistics for Stocks and Markets

In recent publications, the authors have considered inverse statistics of the Dow Jones Industrial Averaged (DJIA) [1-3]. Specifically, we argued that the natural candidate for such statistics is the investment horizons distribution. This is the distribution of waiting times needed to achieve a predefined level of return obtained from detrended historic asset prices. Such a distribution typically goes through a maximum at a time coined the {\em optimal investment horizon}, $\tau^*_\rho$, which defines the most likely waiting time for obtaining a given return $\rho$. By considering equal positive and negative levels of return, we reported in [2,3] on a quantitative gain/loss asymmetry most pronounced for short horizons. In the present paper, this gain/loss asymmetry is re-visited for 2/3 of the individual stocks presently in the DJIA. We show that this gain/loss asymmetry established for the DJIA surprisingly is {\em not} present in the time series of the individual stocks. The most reasonable explanation for this fact is that the gain/loss asymmetry observed in the DJIA as well as in the SP500 and Nasdaq are due to movements in the market as a whole, {\it i.e.}, cooperative cascade processes (or ``synchronization'') which disappear in the inverse statistics of the individual stocks.Comment: Revtex 13 pages, including 15 figure

Bursts and Shocks in a Continuum Shell Model

We study a "burst" event, i. e. the evolution of an initial condition having support only in a finite interval of k-space, in the continuum shell model due to Parisi. We show that the continuum equation without forcing or dissipation can be explicitly written in characteristic form and that the right and left moving parts can be solved exactly. When this is supplemented by the appropriate shock condition it is possible to find the asymptotic form of the burst.Comment: 15 pages, 2 eps figures included, Latex 2e. Contribution to the proceedings of the conference: Disorder and Chaos, in honour of Giovanni Paladin, September 22-24, 1997, in Rom

Reentrant phase diagram of branching annihilating random walks with one and two offsprings

We investigate the phase diagram of branching annihilating random walks with one and two offsprings in one dimension. A walker can hop to a nearest neighbor site or branch with one or two offsprings with relative ratio. Two walkers annihilate immediately when they meet. In general, this model exhibits a continuous phase transition from an active state into the absorbing state (vacuum) at a finite hopping probability. We map out the phase diagram by Monte Carlo simulations which shows a reentrant phase transition from vacuum to an active state and finally into vacuum again as the relative rate of the two-offspring branching process increases. This reentrant property apparently contradicts the conventional wisdom that increasing the number of offsprings will tend to make the system more active. We show that the reentrant property is due to the static reflection symmetry of two-offspring branching processes and the conventional wisdom is recovered when the dynamic reflection symmetry is introduced instead of the static one.Comment: 14 pages, Revtex, 4 figures (one PS figure file upon request) (submitted to Phy. Rev. E

No Transition Disk? Infrared Excess, PAH, H-2, And X-Rays From The Weak-Lined T Tauri Star DoAr 21

As part of a program to understand disk dispersal and the interplay between circumstellar disks and X-ray emission, we present new high-resolution mid-infrared (IR) imaging, high-resolution optical spectroscopy, and Chandra grating X-ray spectroscopy of the weak-lined T Tauri star DoAr 21. DoAr 21 (age \u3c 10(6) yr and mass similar to 2.2M(circle dot) based on evolutionary tracks) is a strong X-ray emitter, with conflicting evidence in the literature about its disk properties. It shows weak but broad H alpha emission (reported here for the first time since the 1950s); polarimetric variability; polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) and H-2 emission; and a strong, spatially resolved 24 mu m excess in archival Spitzer photometry. Gemini sub-arcsecond-resolution 9-18 mu m images show that there is little or no excess mid-IR emission within 100 AU of the star; the excess emission is extended over several arcseconds and is quite asymmetric. The extended emission is bright in the ultraviolet (UV)-excited lambda = 11.3 mu m PAH emission feature. A new high-resolution X-ray grating spectrum from Chandra shows that the stellar X-ray emission is very hard and dominated by continuum emission; it is well fit by a multi-temperature thermal model, typical of hard coronal sources, and shows no evidence of unusually high densities. A flare during the X-ray observation shows a temperature approaching 10(8) K. We argue that the far-UV emission from the transition region is sufficient to excite the observed extended PAH and continuum emission, and that the H-2 emission may be similarly extended and excited. While this extended emission may be a disk in the final stages of clearing, it also could be more akin to a small-scale photodissociation region than a protoplanetary disk, highlighting both the very young ages (\u3c10(6) yr) at which some stars are found without disks and the extreme radiation environment around even late-type pre-main-sequence stars

Connecting the Micro-dynamics to the Emergent Macro-variables: Self-Organized Criticality and Absorbing Phase Transitions in the Deterministic Lattice Gas

We reinvestigate the Deterministic Lattice Gas introduced as a paradigmatic model of the 1/f spectra (Phys. Rev. Lett. V26, 3103 (1990)) arising according to the Self-Organized Criticality scenario. We demonstrate that the density fluctuations exhibit an unexpected dependence on systems size and relate the finding to effective Langevin equations. The low density behavior is controlled by the critical properties of the gas at the absorbing state phase transition. We also show that the Deterministic Lattice Gas is in the Manna universality class of absorbing state phase transitions. This is in contrast to expectations in the literature which suggested that the entirely deterministic nature of the dynamics would put the model in a different universality class. To our knowledge this is the first fully deterministic member of the Manna universality class.Comment: 8 pages, 12 figures. Changes in the new version: Reference list has been correcte

Conformal field theory correlations in the Abelian sandpile mode

We calculate all multipoint correlation functions of all local bond modifications in the two-dimensional Abelian sandpile model, both at the critical point, and in the model with dissipation. The set of local bond modifications includes, as the most physically interesting case, all weakly allowed cluster variables. The correlation functions show that all local bond modifications have scaling dimension two, and can be written as linear combinations of operators in the central charge -2 logarithmic conformal field theory, in agreement with a form conjectured earlier by Mahieu and Ruelle in Phys. Rev. E 64, 066130 (2001). We find closed form expressions for the coefficients of the operators, and describe methods that allow their rapid calculation. We determine the fields associated with adding or removing bonds, both in the bulk, and along open and closed boundaries; some bond defects have scaling dimension two, while others have scaling dimension four. We also determine the corrections to bulk probabilities for local bond modifications near open and closed boundaries.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures; referee comments incorporated; Accepted by Phys. Rev.