Rural Poverty Dynamics, Agricultural Productivity and Access to Resources

The objectives of this paper are: measure the prevalence of rural poverty in 1997 and 2000, based on the nationwide Tegemeo survey; categorize households according to whether they were above the poverty line in both 1997 and 2000, entered into poverty or exited from poverty between 1997 and 2000, or were above the poverty line in both years; identifies the household-level and community-level factors associated with rural poverty through econometric analysis; and the implications of these results for the design of appropriate poverty reduction strategies. Such analysis is intended to guide donor programs and interventions designed to attack the roots of chronic poverty.Food Security, Food Policy, Kenya, Rural Poverty, Food Security and Poverty, Productivity Analysis, Q18,

Wheat Farmers' Seed Management and Varietal Adoption in Kenya

Wheat is the second most important crop in Kenya after maize and is becoming an important source of food both for humans and livestock. Despite increasing wheat production, only 50% of domestic consumption requirements are being met. While the National Plant Breeding Research Centre at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute has released more than 100 wheat varieties since it began operations in 1927, adoption has been slow in spite of better performance of new varieties. This study examined factors that influence farmers' adoption of new varieties in the Narok, Nakuru, and Uasin Gishu Districts that account for 80% of Kenya's domestic wheat production. The study found that most farmers in these Districts neither knew nor grew new wheat varieties, reflecting lack of seed and knowledge of these new varieties. Wheat varieties were also often not adopted in agroecological zones for which they were targeted. This should be an issue of concern to wheat breeders since varieties are currently bred specifically for agroecological zones. The main sources of wheat seed (old and new) for both small-scale and large-scale farmers were other farmers. The adoption of new wheat varieties was significantly higher among large-scale farmers in the high potential zone in Uasin Gishu District than among small-scale farmers in the low potential zone in Nakuru and Narok Districts. The logit model showed that experience in wheat farming had a positive impact on adoption of new wheat varieties. These factors will need to be taken into account by researchers, extension specialists, and policy makers.Crop Production/Industries,

Joint Impact Assessment of CTA's support to EAFF (2003-2013)

The report of the in-depth phase of the joint impact assessment of CTA support to the Eastern Africa Farmers Federation (EAFF) is one of the last steps in a series of activities intended to offer an opportunity for evaluating the mutual co-operation between the two institutions

Comparisons Between NO PLIF Imaging and CFD Simulations of Mixing Flowfields for High-Speed Fuel Injectors

The current work compares experimentally and computationally obtained nitric oxide (NO) planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) images of the mixing flowfields for three types of high-speed fuel injectors: a strut, a ramp, and a rectangular flush-wall. These injection devices, which exhibited promising mixing performance at lower flight Mach numbers, are currently being studied as a part of the Enhanced Injection and Mixing Project (EIMP) at the NASA Langley Research Center. The EIMP aims to investigate scramjet fuel injection and mixing physics, and improve the understanding of underlying physical processes relevant to flight Mach numbers greater than eight. In the experiments, conducted in the NASA Langley Arc-Heated Scramjet Test Facility (AHSTF), the injectors are placed downstream of a Mach 6 facility nozzle, which simulates the high Mach number air flow at the entrance of a scramjet combustor. Helium is used as an inert substitute for hydrogen fuel. The PLIF is obtained by using a tunable laser to excite the NO, which is present in the AHSTF air as a direct result of arc-heating. Consequently, the absence of signal is an indication of pure helium (fuel). The PLIF images computed from the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are obtained by combining a fluorescence model for NO with the Reynolds-Averaged Simulation results carried out using the VULCAN-CFD solver to obtain a computational equivalent of the experimentally measured PLIF signal. The measured NO PLIF signal is mainly a function of NO concentration allowing for semi-quantitative comparisons between the CFD and the experiments. The PLIF signal intensity is also sensitive to pressure and temperature variations in the flow, allowing additional flow features to be identified and compared with the CFD. Good agreement between the PLIF and the CFD results provides increased confidence in the CFD simulations for investigations of injector performance

Non-Fermi liquid behavior from two-dimensional antiferromagnetic fluctuations: a renormalization-group and large-N analysis

We analyze the Hertz-Moriya-Millis theory of an antiferromagnetic quantum critical point, in the marginal case of two dimensions (d=2,z=2). Up to next-to-leading order in the number of components (N) of the field, we find that logarithmic corrections do not lead to an enhancement of the Landau damping. This is in agreement with a renormalization-group analysis, for arbitrary N. Hence, the logarithmic effects are unable to account for the behavior reportedly observed in inelastic neutron scattering experiments on CeCu_{6-x}Au_x. We also examine the extended dynamical mean-field treatment (local approximation) of this theory, and find that only subdominant corrections to the Landau damping are obtained within this approximation, in contrast to recent claims.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure

Evaluating ZNF217 mRNA Expression Levels as a Predictor of Response to Endocrine Therapy in ER+ Breast Cancer

ZNF217 is a candidate oncogene with a wide variety of deleterious functions in breast cancer. Here, we aimed at investigating in a pilot prospective study the association between ZNF217 mRNA expression levels and the clinical response to neoadjuvant endocrine therapy (ET) in postmenopausal ER-positive (ER C) breast cancer patients. Core surgical biopsy samples before treatment initiation and post-treatment were obtained from 68 patients, and Ki-67 values measured by immunohistochemistry (IHC) were used to identify responders (n = 59) and non-responders (n = 9) after 4 months of ET. We report for the first time that high ZNF217 mRNA expression level measured by RT-qPCR in the initial tumor samples (pre-treatment) is associated with poor response to neoadjuvant ET. Indeed, the clinical positive response rate in patients with low ZNF217 expression levels was significantly higher than that in those with high ZNF217 expression levels (P = 0.027). Additionally, a retrospective analysis evaluating ZNF217 expression levels in primary breast tumor of ER+/HER2-/LNO breast cancer patients treated with adjuvant ET enabled the identification of poorer responders prone to earlier relapse (P = 0.013), while ZNF217 did not retain any prognostic value in the ER+/HER2-/LNO breast cancer patients who did not receive any treatment. Altogether, these data suggest that ZNF217 expression might be predictive of clinical response to ET

Genome sequencing of the extinct Eurasian wild aurochs, Bos primigenius, illuminates the phylogeography and evolution of cattle

Background Domestication of the now-extinct wild aurochs, Bos primigenius, gave rise to the two major domestic extant cattle taxa, B. taurus and B. indicus. While previous genetic studies have shed some light on the evolutionary relationships between European aurochs and modern cattle, important questions remain unanswered, including the phylogenetic status of aurochs, whether gene flow from aurochs into early domestic populations occurred, and which genomic regions were subject to selection processes during and after domestication. Here, we address these questions using whole-genome sequencing data generated from an approximately 6,750-year-old British aurochs bone and genome sequence data from 81 additional cattle plus genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism data from a diverse panel of 1,225 modern animals. Results Phylogenomic analyses place the aurochs as a distinct outgroup to the domestic B. taurus lineage, supporting the predominant Near Eastern origin of European cattle. Conversely, traditional British and Irish breeds share more genetic variants with this aurochs specimen than other European populations, supporting localized gene flow from aurochs into the ancestors of modern British and Irish cattle, perhaps through purposeful restocking by early herders in Britain. Finally, the functions of genes showing evidence for positive selection in B. taurus are enriched for neurobiology, growth, metabolism and immunobiology, suggesting that these biological processes have been important in the domestication of cattle. Conclusions This work provides important new information regarding the origins and functional evolution of modern cattle, revealing that the interface between early European domestic populations and wild aurochs was significantly more complex than previously thought

Taxation of Risky Investment and Paradoxical Investor Behavior

Under uncertainty and irreversibility, real option-based models are widely accepted for assessing investment projects. So far the existing post-tax analyses do not provide a general analytical description of investor reactions towards profit tax rate changes. This paper sets out to fill part of the void. We implement a simple tax system and focus on risky capital market investment and an option to wait. Taxes affect risk-free and risky capital market investment asymmetrically and hence cause distortions. We analytically identify a set of neutral tax rates (tax regimes) that preserve the critical post-tax investment threshold in case of tax rate changes as well as general normal and paradoxical settings. Unlike for other tax paradoxa neither depreciation rules nor loss offset restrictions are responsible for the observed paradoxical reaction. Identifying normal and paradoxical tax regimes can be regarded as a first step to a generalized description of tax effects under uncertainty, both for individual project evaluation as well as for understanding tax effects on an aggregate level

Measurement of inclusive π0\pi^{0} production in hadronic Z0Z^{0} decays

An analysis is presented of inclusive \pi^0 production in Z^0 decays measured with the DELPHI detector. At low energies, \pi^0 decays are reconstructed by \linebreak using pairs of converted photons and combinations of converted photons and photons reconstructed in the barrel electromagnetic calorimeter (HPC). At high energies (up to x_p = 2 \cdot p_{\pi}/\sqrt{s} = 0.75) the excellent granularity of the HPC is exploited to search for two-photon substructures in single showers. The inclusive differential cross section is measured as a function of energy for {q\overline q} and {b \bar b} events. The number of \pi^0's per hadronic Z^0 event is N(\pi^0)/ Z_{had}^0 = 9.2 \pm 0.2 \mbox{(stat)} \pm 1.0 \mbox{(syst)} and for {b \bar b}~events the number of \pi^0's is {\mathrm N(\pi^0)/ b \overline b} = 10.1 \pm 0.4 \mbox{(stat)} \pm 1.1 \mbox{(syst)} . The ratio of the number of \pi^0's in b \overline b events to hadronic Z^0 events is less affected by the systematic errors and is found to be 1.09 \pm 0.05 \pm 0.01. The measured \pi^0 cross sections are compared with the predictions of different parton shower models. For hadronic events, the peak position in the \mathrm \xi_p = \ln(1/x_p) distribution is \xi_p^{\star} = 3.90^{+0.24}_{-0.14}. The average number of \pi^0's from the decay of primary \mathrm B hadrons is found to be {\mathrm N} (B \rightarrow \pi^0 \, X)/\mbox{B hadron} = 2.78 \pm 0.15 \mbox{(stat)} \pm 0.60 \mbox{(syst)}

Measurements of the leptonic branching fractions of the τ\tau

Data collected with the DELPHI detector from 1993 to 1995 combined with previous DELPHI results for data from 1991 and 1992 yield the branching fractions B({\tau \rightarrow \mbox{\rm e} \nu \bar{\nu}}) = (17.877 \pm 0.109_{stat} \pm 0.110_{sys} )\% and $B({\tau \rightarrow \mu \nu \bar{\nu}}) = (17.325 \pm 0.095_{stat} \pm 0.077_{sys} )\%$