Recursos fitogenéticos: bases para un futuro resiliente al clima y libre de hambre en el Caribe

En toda la región Caribe, el cambio climático no solamente planteará desafíos sino también una amplia gama de oportunidades, que ofrecen mayor importancia a la riqueza de recursos fitogenéticos de la región. Materializar el potencial de estos recursos para contribuir a garantizar la seguridad alimentaria y crear sistemas agrícolas más resilientes frente al cambio climático requerirá de una mayor cooperación regional. Los objetivos centrales de esta cooperación deberán ser: desarrollar intervenciones oportunas en las fronteras nacionales que mejoren la colecta, conservación y el intercambio de los recursos fitogenéticos

Plant genetic resources: foundations for a food-secure and climate-resilient future in the Caribbean

Across the Caribbean, climate change will bring about not only challenges but also a wide array of opportunities, which lend greater significance to the region’s wealth of plant genetic resources. Realizing the potential of those resources to help ensure food security and build more-resilient agricultural systems in the face of climate change will require stronger regional cooperation. Its central aims should be to develop timely interventions across national borders that improve the collection, conservation, and sharing of plant genetic resources

Dielectric and conductivity relaxation in mixtures of glycerol with LiCl

We report a thorough dielectric characterization of the alpha relaxation of glass forming glycerol with varying additions of LiCl. Nine salt concentrations from 0.1 - 20 mol% are investigated in a frequency range of 20 Hz - 3 GHz and analyzed in the dielectric loss and modulus representation. Information on the dc conductivity, the dielectric relaxation time (from the loss) and the conductivity relaxation time (from the modulus) is provided. Overall, with increasing ion concentration, a transition from reorientationally to translationally dominated behavior is observed and the translational ion dynamics and the dipolar reorientational dynamics become successively coupled. This gives rise to the prospect that by adding ions to dipolar glass formers, dielectric spectroscopy may directly couple to the translational degrees of freedom determining the glass transition, even in frequency regimes where usually strong decoupling is observed.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

Evidence-informed health policy: are we beginning to get there at last

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

A Decentralized Communication Policy for Multi Agent Multi Armed Bandit Problems

This paper proposes a novel policy for a group of agents to, individually as well as collectively, solve a multi armed bandit (MAB) problem. The policy relies solely on the information that an agent has obtained through sampling of the options on its own and through communication with neighbors. The option selection policy is based on an Upper Confidence Based (UCB) strategy while the communication strategy that is proposed forces agents to communicate with other agents who they believe are most likely to be exploring than exploiting. The overall strategy is shown to significantly outperform an independent Erd\H{o}s-R\'{e}nyi (ER) graph based random communication policy. The policy is shown to be cost effective in terms of communication and thus to be easily scalable to a large network of agents.Comment: This is the full version of a preprint that will appear in the proceedings of the 2020 European Control Conference (ECC

Preliminary Study on the Effect of Agrochemical Application on Freshwater Algae

  The addition of agrochemicals to freshwater ecosystems can have a significant impact on the growth of algae. This study investigated the effects of fertilizers, herbicide, and insecticide on the growth of freshwater algae in selected ponds in Jaffna peninsula, Sri Lanka. Cultures of freshwater algae were grown in modified Blue green-11 (BG-11) media under laboratory conditions for three weeks and haemocytometer counts (cells/ml) were made. Similar count was made after adding eight different concentrations of fertilizer, herbicide, and insecticide. Cultures of freshwater algae were grown in glass house in trays resembling paddy field conditions for three weeks. Statistical analysis was done using Minitab 17. The results showed that the fertilizers used significantly (p=0.05) increased the growth of algae at all concentrations tested. The high- dose treatment of urea (3.33×10-3 mol/dm3) and triple superphosphate (TSP) (1.219×10-3 mol/dm3) had the greatest effect on growth, followed by low-dose treatment having lowest effect under the experimental conditions used. The results also showed that the herbicide (Kensolo bispospyribac sodium) significantly (p=0.05) decreased the growth of algae at all concentrations tested. The highest concentration of herbicide (0.0307×10-8 mol/dm3) had the greatest effect on growth under the experimental conditions used. However, the results for Insecticide (Thiamethoxam) showed that it had no significant effect on the growth of algae under the experimental conditions used. The control treatment without the addition of fertilizer, herbicide and insecticide had no significant (P=0.05) effect on growth   Keywords: Freshwater algae, Insecticide, Herbicid

Good on paper: the gap between programme theory and real-world context in Pakistan's Community Midwife programme

Objective To understand why skilled birth attendance—an acknowledged strategy for reducing maternal deaths—has been effective in some settings but is failing in Pakistan and to demonstrate the value of a theory-driven approach to evaluating implementation of maternal healthcare interventions. Design Implementation research was conducted using an institutional ethnographic approach. Setting and population National programme and local community levels in Pakistan. Methods Observations, focus group discussions, and in-depth interviews were conducted with 38 Community Midwives (CMWs), 20 policymakers, 45 healthcare providers and 136 community members. A critical policy document review was conducted. National and local level data were brought together. Main outcomes Alignment of programme theory with real-world practice. Results Data revealed gaps between programme theory, assumptions and reality on the ground. The design of the programme failed to take into account: (1) the incongruity between the role of a midwife and dominant class and gendered norms that devalue such a role; (2) market and consumer behaviour that prevented CMWs from establishing private practices; (3) the complexity of public–private sector cooperation. Uniform deployment policies failed to consider existing provider density and geography. Conclusions Greater attention to programme theory and the ‘real-world’ setting during design of maternal health strategies is needed to achieve consistent results in different contexts