Economic impact of contagious caprine pleuropneumonia and cost-benefit analysis of the vaccination programmes based on a one-year continuous monitoring of flocks in the arid and semi-arid lands of Kenya.

In Kenya and East Africa, contagious caprine pleuropneumonia (CCPP) is one of the most prevalent infectious diseases affecting small ruminants in pastoral areas with adverse consequences on livelihoods. This is so despite the implementation of bi-annual vaccination campaigns. Unfortunately, the impact of the disease and the cost-effectiveness of its prevention and control in a pastoral context have been difficult to assess due to a lack of reliable data. The dynamic of flock population, high illiteracy and limited outreach are the main challenges for proper data collection. Nevertheless, such analysis is important to justify the implementation of national vaccination campaign for livestock disease control and to contribute to pastoral households' economy support programme. A continuous flock monitoring was performed for a year in Turkana County to collect data on flock dynamics and the different causes of mortalities. A stochastic model was developed to evaluate the annual economic losses due to CCPP in a standard flock of 100 heads and evaluate the cost-benefit ratio of the vaccination programmes based on different scenarios of 95%, 50% and 20% vaccination effectiveness. The annual economic losses due to CCPP for a standard flock of 100 heads were estimated at Euros 1,712.66 in average. The benefits-costs ratio of the vaccination supports the current bi-annual vaccination campaigns, even with a vaccine effectiveness limited to 20% (average benefits-costs ratio of 5.715 with SD of 3.914). This justifies the campaigns as part of a food security or livelihood support programme. However, from an overall health perspective and for long-term effects on livestock asset protection and disease control, a higher vaccination effectiveness is required.

Nonperturbative predictions for cold atom bose gases with tunable interactions.

We derive a theoretical description for dilute Bose gases as a loop expansion in terms of composite-field propagators by rewriting the Lagrangian in terms of auxiliary fields related to the normal and anomalous densities. We demonstrate that already in leading order this nonperturbative approach describes a large interval of coupling-constant values, satisfies Goldstone's theorem, yields a Bose-Einstein transition that is second order, and is consistent with the critical temperature predicted in the weak-coupling limit by the next-to-leading-order large-N expansion.

Phase separated BEC for high-sensitivity force measurement.

A trapped, phase separated, two component Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) can be configured to give a single BEC bubble that floats freely in the surrounding BEC. We point out that this system gives a unique template to carry out mesoscopic quantum studies and to detect weak forces. We demonstrate the detection capabilities by proposing and studying a "quantum level" for fundamental quantum fluctuation studies and for mapping the potential energy landscape near a surface with exquisite accuracy.

Acoustic attenuation probe for Fermion superfluidity in ultracold-atom gases.

Dilute gas Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC's), currently used to cool fermionic atoms in atom traps, can also probe the superfluidity of these fermions. The damping rate of BEC-acoustic excitations (phonon modes), measured in the middle of the trap as a function of the phonon momentum, yields an unambiguous signature of BCS-like superfluidity, provides a measurement of the superfluid gap parameter, and gives an estimate of the size of the Cooper pairs in the BEC-BCS crossover regime. We also predict kinks in the momentum dependence of the damping rate which can reveal detailed information about the fermion quasiparticle dispersion relation.

Zero sound in a mixture of a single-component fermion gas and a Bose-Einstein condensate.

The resonant dynamics of mediated interactions supports zero sound in a cold atom degenerate mixture of a single-component fermion gas and a Bose-Einstein condensate. We characterize the onset of instability in the phase separation of an unstable mixture and we find a rich collective mode structure for stable mixtures with one undamped mode that exhibits an avoided crossing and a Landau-damped mode that terminates.