Shifting conceptions of social (in)justice in Nepal

The purpose of this paper is to analyse and situate the changing discourses of social (in)justice in the context of political transition and restructuring process that Nepal has gone through since 2006. This paper discusses the origin and development of the discourse and analyses how its meaning has changed over time. As the paper argues, the earlier discourses of social justice in Nepal can be linked to the Hindu and Buddhist notion of dharma and various other ethnic cultural traditions. After Janandolan-I in 1990, the policy and practice of social justice began to be equated with the principle of equality, which was based on the assumptions of sameness. After Janandolan-II in 2006, the public conception of social justice has shifted towards a more vocal emphasis on social equity, inclusiveness, proportionate representation and participatory decision-making. The article provides empirical manifestations of social injustices in Nepal, linking them with various discourses and traditions of justice in the early and modern historical, socio-cultural and political contexts. It is hoped that a thorough understanding of historical shifting of public conceptions of social (in)justice in Nepal will be useful in guiding the country’s future public policies towards inclusive restructuring and equitable development

Centrolene savagei

Number of Pages: 11Geological SciencesIntegrative Biolog

The "ordination" of roman inscriptions on stone: unpublished evidence from Cacera De las Ranas (Aranjuez, Madrid)

En este artículo se publica por primera vez la inscripción de una pieza hallada en 1989 en Cacera de las Ranas, cerca de Aranjuez, que constituye un singular ejemplo de ordinatio antigua. También se presentan comparaciones con otros casos similares.In this paper we are publishing for the first time the inscription of a piece, found in 1989 in Cacera de las Ranas, near Aranjuez, that constitutes an uncommon example of ancient ordinatio. We are also providing a comparison with other similar pieces.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España) FFI2012-39395-C02-0

Nepal\u27s Protracted Democratization in Terms of Modes of Transition

Since 2005, Nepal has been engaged in a complex political transition that has resulted in the termination of Nepal’s 240 year old monarchy. Currently, the progress of Nepal’s political transition confronts the dual challenges of writing a constitution and mainstreaming the Maoists and their thousands of combatants, who had engaged in a decade long insurgency against the state. Growing differences between the radical Maoists and Nepal’s other political parties have repeatedly blocked Nepal’s attempt to institutionalize democracy. How does one study Nepal’s democratic transition? How does Nepal’s case relate to the wider scholarship on transition to democracy? This article critically applies the modes of transition approach to analyze Nepal’s various political transitions. The modes of transition approach with its emphasis on elite interactions during periods of transition and their enduring impact of such interactions on the regime that emerges offers a valuable analytical framework to examine series of transitions in Nepal. Many of the initial assumptions of the modes of transitions approach deriving from the experiences of Southern Europe and Latin America have recently been reexamined in the context of democratic transitions in Eastern Europe. Do Nepal’s transitions resonate with earlier patterns of third wave democratizations in Southern Europe and Latin America or do they show greater similarity with what some describe as the fourth wave of democratic transitions in post-communist Eastern Europe? This article critically applies the major premises of this approach to Nepali case assessing their validity as well as shortcomings. The central thesis underlying this paper is that the modes of transition approach, though useful in its focus on the crucial role of actors and strategies as key to understanding Nepal’s political transition, fails to account for several critical factors such as the role of external actors, the positive role of mass mobilization and leading democratic agenda of radical forces. The paper is divided into three sections. The first section lays out the theoretical framework related to the modes of transition; the second part examines Nepal’s transitions applying the key concepts of modes of transition approach; and the third section presents a critical assessment of problems and prospects of consolidation of Nepal’s current efforts to achieve a democratic system

Non-Abelian statistics and topological quantum information processing in 1D wire networks

Topological quantum computation provides an elegant way around decoherence, as one encodes quantum information in a non-local fashion that the environment finds difficult to corrupt. Here we establish that one of the key operations---braiding of non-Abelian anyons---can be implemented in one-dimensional semiconductor wire networks. Previous work [Lutchyn et al., arXiv:1002.4033 and Oreg et al., arXiv:1003.1145] provided a recipe for driving semiconducting wires into a topological phase supporting long-sought particles known as Majorana fermions that can store topologically protected quantum information. Majorana fermions in this setting can be transported, created, and fused by applying locally tunable gates to the wire. More importantly, we show that networks of such wires allow braiding of Majorana fermions and that they exhibit non-Abelian statistics like vortices in a p+ip superconductor. We propose experimental setups that enable the Majorana fusion rules to be probed, along with networks that allow for efficient exchange of arbitrary numbers of Majorana fermions. This work paves a new path forward in topological quantum computation that benefits from physical transparency and experimental realism.Comment: 6 pages + 17 pages of Supp. Mat.; 10 figures. Supp. Mat. has doubled in size to establish results more rigorously; many other improvements as wel

Arboreal frogs, tank bromeliads and disturbed seasonal tropical forest

We investigated the relationship between arboreal frogs, tank bromeliads and landscape transformation in tropical forests of southeastern Campeche, Mexico. We surveyed frogs in six distinct habitats: slash and burn agriculture, seasonally flooded forest (bajo), aquatic habitats (lagoons and small ponds), second growth upland forest, primary forest and creek habitat using both systematic and non-systematic surveys. The highest species richness of frogs was documented in primary forest and small ponds. In contrast, no frogs were recorded in second growth forest. Similarly, tank bromeliads (Aechmea bracteata) were completely absent from early successional stages and were almost twice as abundant in seasonally flooded forest as in upland forest. The vertical distribution of A. bracteata differed between forest types, and they significantly more abundant in larger diameter trees. We examined 60 tank bromeliads during the peak of the dry season to test their use as refugia by frogs. Approximately 27% of tank bromeliads sampled had arboreal frogs belonging to three species, but 9 species have been recorded as occasional users of bromeliads in the region. There were significantly more frogs on large than on medium-sized bromeliads, and frogs were more abundant on bromeliads higher on host trees, particularly those above 3 m in height. Our results suggest that the loss of tank bromeliads from drier and less structurally complex habitats created by slash and burn agriculture and selective logging results in loss of refugia for arboreal frogs in this seasonal tropical forest. We suggest that Aechmea bracteata be a keystone species in seasonal tropical forest

Majorana-based fermionic quantum computation

Because Majorana zero modes store quantum information non-locally, they are protected from noise, and have been proposed as a building block for a quantum computer. We show how to use the same protection from noise to implement universal fermionic quantum computation. Our architecture requires only two Majoranas to encode a fermionic quantum degree of freedom, compared to alternative implementations which require a minimum of four Majoranas for a spin quantum degree of freedom. The fermionic degrees of freedom support both unitary coupled cluster variational quantum eigensolver and quantum phase estimation algorithms, proposed for quantum chemistry simulations. Because we avoid the Jordan-Wigner transformation, our scheme has a lower overhead for implementing both of these algorithms, and the simulation of Trotterized Hubbard Hamiltonian in $\mathcal{O}(1)$ time per unitary step. We finally demonstrate magic state distillation in our fermionic architecture, giving a universal set of topologically protected fermionic quantum gates.Comment: 4 pages + 4 page appendix, 4 figures, 2 table