268 research outputs found
Situation Analysis and Needs Assessment Report for Ma Village and Yan Bai Province, Vietnam
Ma village is one of the 15 villages of Vinh Kien commune, Yen Binh district, Yen Bai province in the
northern mountainous region of Viet Nam. Ma village was selected as a site for the Climate Smart Village
(CSV) development under the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security
(CCAFS). It has a topography, landscape and climate conditions representing most in the region and faces
increasing challenges caused by climate variability, natural resources degradation, and environmental
pollution.
The village’s current production systems have low sustainability and profits. Maize and cassava are largely
produced in dominant monoculture systems on sloping lands representing most of the village’s total arable
lands, while rice is planted in a small area. Slash and burn practices are used largely in sloping lands, while
unbalanced fertilizer levels (often with too much nitrogen) are applied for all the crops, and integrated pest
management is yet to be promoted. All these have caused high intensity soil erosion, land degradation,
and GHG emission. In addition, improper waste management, particularly from cassava, has resulted in
severe water pollution in all river and lake systems.
Organizations are present to support Ma village and the province in the areas of agriculture, forestry, food
security, and climate change adaptation and mitigation. However, coordination between organizations
remains poor. The local systems currently do not have the capacity to solve the multiple problems in
the village. Human and financial resources. Inadequate. Support from CCAFS in important to help the
village address the increasing problems caused by climate change, water pollution, soil erosion, and land
degradation
Low-Thermal Conductivity Suspensions Used in the Isolation of the Salt Pills Aboard the Astro-H Adiabatic Demagnetization Refrigerator
An adiabatic demagnetization refrigerator (ADR) utilizes the magnetocholoric effect in a paramagnetic salt to produce sub-Kelvin temperatures. It is a solid-state device that has no moving parts and does not rely upon a density gradient in a working fluid. This makes it ideal for cooling space-based instruments. Typically the salt is enclosed in a cylindrical pill that is suspended within the bore of a magnet. The suspension between the salt pill and magnet must be robust enough to survive a launch yet have a thermal conductance that minimizes heat from the magnet that is mechanically, and thermally, anchored to a stage at a higher temperature. Here we detail such a design that uses Kevlar(Trade Mark) as the supporting media in a system that limits motion of the salt pill axial as well as laterally with respect to the magnet bore
Toll-like receptor 3 blockade in rhinovirus-induced experimental asthma exacerbations:A Randomized Controlled Study
BACKGROUND: Human rhinoviruses (HRVs) commonly precipitate asthma exacerbations. Toll-like receptor 3, an innate pattern recognition receptor, is triggered by HRV, driving inflammation that can worsen asthma. OBJECTIVE: We sought to evaluate an inhibitory mAb to Toll-like receptor 3, CNTO3157, on experimental HRV-16 inoculation in healthy subjects and asthmatic patients. METHODS: In this double-blind, multicenter, randomized, parallel-group study in North America and Europe, healthy subjects and patients with mild-to-moderate stable asthma received single or multiple doses of CNTO3157 or placebo, respectively, and were then inoculated with HRV-16 within 72 hours. All subjects were monitored for respiratory symptoms, lung function, and nasal viral load. The primary end point was maximal decrease in FEV1 during 10 days after inoculation. RESULTS: In asthmatic patients (n = 63) CNTO3157 provided no protection against FEV1 decrease (least squares mean: CNTO3157 [n = 30] = -7.08% [SE, 8.15%]; placebo [n = 25] = -5.98% [SE, 8.56%]) or symptoms after inoculation. In healthy subjects (n = 12) CNTO3157 versus placebo significantly attenuated upper (P = .03) and lower (P = .02) airway symptom scores, with area-under-the-curve increases of 9.1 (15.1) versus 34.9 (17.6) and 13.0 (18.4) versus 50.4 (25.9) for the CNTO3157 (n = 8) and placebo (n = 4) groups, respectively, after inoculation. All of the severe and 4 of the nonserious asthma exacerbations occurred while receiving CNTO3157. CONCLUSION: In summary, CNTO3157 was ineffective in attenuating the effect of HRV-16 challenge on lung function, asthma control, and symptoms in asthmatic patients but suppressed cold symptoms in healthy subjects. Other approaches, including blockade of multiple pathways or antiviral agents, need to be sought for this high unmet medical need
Distorted magnetic orders and electronic structures of tetragonal FeSe from first-principles
We use the state-of-the-arts density-functional-theory method to study
various magnetic orders and their effects on the electronic structures of the
FeSe. Our calculated results show that, for the spins of the single Fe layer,
the striped antiferromagnetic orders with distortion are more favorable in
total energy than the checkerboard antiferromagnetic orders with tetragonal
symmetry, which is consistent with known experimental data, and the inter-layer
magnetic interaction is very weak. We investigate the electronic structures and
magnetic property of the distorted phases. We also present our calculated spin
coupling constants and discuss the reduction of the Fe magnetic moment by
quantum many-body effects. These results are useful to understand the
structural, magnetic, and electronic properties of FeSe, and may have some
helpful implications to other FeAs-based materials
THE SuperTIGER Instrument: Measurement of Elemental Abundances of Ultra-Heavy Galactic Cosmic Rays
The SuperTIGER (Super Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder) instrument was developed to measure the abundances of galactic cosmic-ray elements from Ne-10 to Zr-40 with individual element resolution and the high statistics needed to test models of cosmic-ray origins. SuperTIGER also makes exploratory measurements of the abundances of elements with 40 or = 10, including approx.1300 with Z > 29 and approx.60 with Z > 49. Here, we describe the instrument, the methods of charge identification employed, the SuperTIGER balloon flight, and the instrument performance
Effect of noise in CT image reconstruction using QR- Decomposition algorithm
[EN] The QR-Decomposition algorithm for CT 3D image
reconstruction uses a linear system of equations to model the
CT system response. Linear systems have a condition number
that can be used to estimate the image noise. In this work the
number of projections and the number of pixels in the detector
have been studied to characterize the CT and the linear system
of equations. The condition number of the system is estimated for
the previous parameters used to generate the CT model with the
aim of characterizing how these parameters affect the condition
number and therefore bound the image noise level. It is shown
that the condition number mainly depends on the size of pixels
of the detector rather than the number of projections and this
algorithm can be applied to low dose CT 3D image reconstruction
without compromising image qualityThis work was supported by the Spanish Plan Nacional de Investigacion Científica, Desarrollo e Innovación Tecnológica (I+D+I) under Grant No. FIS2010-21216-CO2-01 and Valencian Local Government under Grants PROMETEOII/2013/010 and ISIC 2011/013Iborra, A.; Rodríguez-Álvarez, MJ.; Soriano, A.; Sánchez, F.; Bellido, P.; Conde, P.; Crespo, E.... (2013). Effect of noise in CT image reconstruction using QR- Decomposition algorithm. IEEE. 5-9. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/167122S5
Time reconstruction study using tubes of response backprojectors in List Mode algorithms, applied to amonolithic crystals based breast PET
[Otros] The LM-EM algorithm has the advantage to
calculate the emission probabilities needed for the reconstruction
process on the fly, without the need of a pre-calculated system
matrix. The reconstruction time for this algorithm strongly
depends on the used backprojector and the available statistics.
This algorithm when implemented in systems using monolithic
crystals to detect gamma radiation allows one to extensively
exploit the virtual pixilation feature, not available for systems
based on pixilated crystals. In this work we present a
backprojector for LM-EM, the TOR method, which achieves a
tradeoff between computational efficiency and image quality. Its
temporal subset algorithm optimization (LM-OS) has also been
implemented in order to achieve real-time reconstructions. To
evaluate the performances of LM-OS algorithm with the TOR
method backprojector and only with one iteration on the
datasets, studies based on the system spatial resolution,
uniformity, and contrast coefficients were carried out and they
were compared with those obtained with LM-EM and MLEM
algorithms using twelve iteration. Finally, a study on
reconstruction time using LM-OS has been performed with
breast patients dataProject funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and co-funded with FEDER's funds within the INNPACTO 2011 program. This work was supported by the Spanish Plan Nacional de Investigación Científica, Desarrollo e Innovación Tecnológica (I+D+i) under Grant No. FIS2010-21216-CO2-01 and the Valencian Local Government under Grants PROMETEOII/2013/010 and ISIC 2011/013Moliner, L.; Correcher, C.; González Martínez, AJ.; Conde, P.; Crespo, E.; Hernandez, L.; Rigla, JP.... (2013). Time reconstruction study using tubes of response backprojectors in List Mode algorithms, applied to amonolithic crystals based breast PET. IEEE. 14-18. https://doi.org/10.1109/NSSMIC.2013.6829372S141
Statistical moments of scintillation light distribution analysis with dSiPMs and monolithic crystals
[Otros] Monolithic scintillation crystals offer the possibility to preserve the scintillation light distribution, specially when black painted. Furthermore, the statistical moments of that distribution can provide accurate information about the three spatial components. Nevertheless, for monolithic crystal the moments estimation has an associated error due to the symmetry truncation of the light distribution towards the crystal borders. For the 2-D impact coordinates determination, this error is called compression as it is accentuated near the edges. The computation of all centered moments is, therefore, affected by this error. Digital SiPMs (dSiPMs) can offer complete information about the light distribution, since all cells are purely digital detectors, so that other ways to obtain ¿-impact coordinates can be performed. In this work, a comparison between the statistical moments analysis and an alternative fitting the light distribution for each event to a theoretical distribution has been made. With the fitted approach, compression is avoided and an approximately constant spatial resolution is obtained for the entire photodetection area. Moreover, DOI information is improved and preserved all over the crystal.This work was supported by the Spanish Plan Nacional de Investigacion Científica, Desarrollo e Innovación Tecnologica (I+D+I) under Grant No. FIS2010-21216-CO2-01 and Valencian Local Government under Grants PROMETEOII/2013/010 and ISIC 2011/013Conde, P.; González Martínez, AJ.; Hernández, L.; Bellido, P.; Crespo, E.; Iborra, A.; Moliner, L.... (2013). Statistical moments of scintillation light distribution analysis with dSiPMs and monolithic crystals. IEEE. 10-13. https://doi.org/10.1109/NSSMIC.2013.6829086S101
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