Lessons from a Social Learning Approach to Designing Joint Irrigation Projects in Morocco

This paper focuses on the evaluation of a participatory approach aimed at supporting groups of small-scale farmers in the design of joint drip irrigation projects. Our idea was to create a sustainable social learning environment in which they could acquire adaptive knowledge about new irrigation technology and about designing and managing a joint irrigation project while at the same time improving their negotiation capacities. We developed a framework to evaluate the process as well as the outputs and outcomes of the use of our approach with four groups of smallholder farmers in the Tadla irrigation scheme in Morocco.

We describe an intein based method to site-specifically conjugate Quantum Dots (QDs) to target proteins in vivo. This approach allows the covalent conjugation of any nanostructure and/or nanodevice to any protein and thus the targeting of such material to any intracellular compartment or signalling complex within the cells of the developing embryo. We genetically fused a pleckstrin-homology (PH) domain with the N-terminus half of a split intein (IN). The C-terminus half (IC) of the intein was conjugated to QDs in vitro. IC-QD's and RNA encoding PH-IN were microinjected into Xenopus embryos.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has steadfastly confirmed the growing need for low carbon biofuels to increase global energy security and reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) relative to petroleum. “Energy needs to be used more efficiently and the carbon content of the energy we consume must be reduced, by switching to low- or zero-carbon sources,” says the IEA in a statement from a recent report that was unequivocal with respect to the need for a rapid transition to low carbon forms of energy to play an increasing role in the global transportation sector.