Hydropower Development in Nepal - Climate Change, Impacts and Implications

Nepal has endowed high potential of water resources, covering 395,000 ha (48%) area within 45,000 km in length of 6000 rivers with 170 billion m3 annual runoff and 45,610 MW feasible hydroelectricity generation. Since 1911, 500 kW power generation at Pharping, now reached 782.45 MW production in 2016. Nepal government has planned to increase its current 67.3% access in electricity to 1426 MW (87%), by 2022. Globally, 16.6% generation of hydroelectricity, 1,079 GW production, in 2015 will be increased to 1,473 GW by 2040 as projected. Although, hydropower is considered as a renewable clean energy, dam closure, influence within the downstream river and connected ecosystems have consequent impacts on hydropower production. Nepal’s topography offered more RoR types of hydropower and has more risk of landslide, flooding, GLOFs, LDOFs, and flash floods. Despite, Nepal contributes 0.027% of total global Green House Gas (GHG) emissions; Nepal has focused on renewable energy, hydropower production, targeting 12000 MW by 2030 to fulfill its growing demand of 11,500 MW. Consequent development of clean energy, GHG reduction, single Bhotekoshi hydropower can reduce 160092 tons CO2/year. The energy-related CO2 emissions increased 43.2 billion metric tons by 2040 globally, which can be reduced through promotion of clean energy

Impact on Forest and Vegetation Due to Human Interventions

Forest and vegetation play an important role in balancing ecosystem patterns, providing food security, and blessing the environment for living beings, so the status of global forests and biodiversity, their impact and change overtime with climatic effects and challenges is important. This study’s methods include a review of global forest cover and status; distribution, and assessment; biodiversity, forest carbon assessment; causes of forest loss; and the impacts and implications of CO2 emissions. Forests encompass 31% of the world’s forests, are home to 2 million to 1 trillion species, and provide habitat for 80% of amphibian species, 75% of bird species, 68% of mammalian species, and so on. Deforestation is the major cause of forest loss, with a decrease of 4.7 million ha. From 2010 to 2020, only in the Asia Pacific region and from 2000 to 2010, 13 million ha of world forests were lost. All flora, fauna, and microbes are slowly degrading and disappearing due to human activities such as deforestation, intensive use, inappropriate forest management, agriculture, encroachment of forest land, slash burn practices, forest fires, urbanization, overharvesting, environmental deterioration, etc. Because the globe has emitted over 1.5 trillion tonnes of CO2 since 1751, the persistence of biodiversity in human-modified habitats is crucial for conservation and the provision of ecosystem services

Structural, Magnetic and Magneto-caloric studies of Ni50Mn30Sn20Shape Memory Alloy

We have synthesized a nominal composition of Ni50Mn30Sn20 alloy using arc melting technique. Rietveld refinement confirms the austenite L21 structure in Fm-3m space group. Electrical resistivity has been found to clearly exhibiting two different phenomena viz. a magnetic transition from paramagnetic to ferromagnetic and a structural transition from austenite to martensitic phase. Thermo-magnetization measurements M(T) confirms ferromagnetic transition temperature TC at 222 K and martensitic transition starting at 127 K(MS). Magnetization measurement M(H) at 10 K confirms the ferromagnetic state. Frequency dependence of ac susceptibility \c{hi}' at low temperature suggests spin glass behavior in the system. The isothermal magnetic entropy change values have been found to be 1.14 J/Kg.K, 2.69 J/Kg.K and 3.9 J/Kg.K, with refrigeration capacities of 19.6 J/kg, 37.8 J/kg and 54.6 J/kg for the field change of 1, 2 and 3 Tesla respectively at 227 K.Comment: 16 pages text + Figs. Ni50Mn30Sn20 alloy: reasonable refrigeration capacity tunable to Room

Consequences of Climate Change Impacts and Implications on Ecosystem and Biodiversity; Impacts of Developmental Projects and Mitigation Strategy in Nepal

Climate change impacts and implications towards ecosystems and biodiversity, water resources, food production, and infrastructures can be mitigated through adapting, reducing or avoiding adverse impacts and maximizing positive consequences. It can have numerous effects on the world’s natural ecosystems and their functions. IPCC projections showed approximately 10% of species to be at an increasing high risk of extinction for every 1 °C rise in global mean temperature and recommended to limit global temperatures below 1.5 °C. To identify consequences of climate change, impacts, and implications, data collected from different sources, reviewed, assessed and analyzed, discussing dimensional impacts and mitigation strategies adopted. Nepal’s 118 major ecosystems and 75 vegetation types with 44.74% forestland comprising 0.1% of global landmass harboring 3.2% flora and 1.1% fauna of the world’s biodiversity critically influenced by the regional climate change and intervention of developmental projects. Since 2000, Nepal lost forest area by 2.1% including several endangered and threatened species. Nepal is highly vulnerable towards natural disasters like GLOF, Glacier retreat, flooding, landslide and global warming. Therefore, it is crucial to plan climate resilience infrastructures adopting effective environmental management tools, formulation of strong plan, policy and strategy, mitigation of greenhouse gases, climate resilient adaptation and restoration of degraded ecosystems

Developmental Changes in Analytic and Holistic Processes in Face Perception

Although infants demonstrate sensitivity to some kinds of perceptual information in faces, many face capacities continue to develop throughout childhood. One debate is the degree to which children perceive faces analytically versus holistically and how these processes undergo developmental change. In the present study, school-aged children and adults performed a perceptual matching task with upright and inverted face and house pairs that varied in similarity of featural or 2nd order configural information. Holistic processing was operationalized as the degree of serial processing when discriminating faces and houses [i.e., increased reaction time (RT), as more features or spacing relations were shared between stimuli]. Analytical processing was operationalized as the degree of parallel processing (or no change in RT as a function of greater similarity of features or spatial relations). Adults showed the most evidence for holistic processing (most strongly for 2nd order faces) and holistic processing was weaker for inverted faces and houses. Younger children (6-8 years), in contrast, showed analytical processing across all experimental manipulations. Older children (9-11 years) showed an intermediate pattern with a trend toward holistic processing of 2nd order faces like adults, but parallel processing in other experimental conditions like younger children. These findings indicate that holistic face representations emerge around 10 years of age. In adults both 2nd order and featural information are incorporated into holistic representations, whereas older children only incorporate 2nd order information. Holistic processing was not evident in younger children. Hence, the development of holistic face representations relies on 2nd order processing initially then incorporates featural information by adulthood

Influence of socio-economic attributes of farmers on the adoption of orchard management practices of mandarin in Myagdi district, Nepal

Mandarin is one of the major and highly commercialized fruit crops of Nepal. However, its productivity is widely varied throughout the country. The association of socio-economic characteristics of the farmers with the adoption of different orchard management practices and ultimately productivity is less known. Therefore, survey research was conducted in the Myagdi district to study the influence of socio-economic attributes on the adoption of different orchard management practices and their relation to the productivity of mandarin. A total sample size of 94 was selected by simple random sampling technique and interviewed with a pre-tested, semi-structured questionnaire. Data were entered and analyzed using MS Excel, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), and STATA, and the inferences were retrieved using the binary logistic regression model and multiple linear regression model. The study showed that the education level of the farmers has a positive influence on the adoption of mulching (p = 0.04) and pruning (p = 0.07). The secondary income source of the household has a positive impact on the adoption of chemical fertilizers (p = 0.08) and pruning (p = 0.03). Commercial mandarin farming in larger area has a positive influence on the adoption of Bordeaux mixture (p = 0.03) and insect management (p = 0.01). Extension services has great influence on the adoption of chemical fertilizers (p = 0.02), mulching (p = 0.03), Bordeaux mixture (p = 0.00) and insect management (p = 0.1). However, education level (p = 0.05), area under mandarin farm (p = 0.09), and extension services (p = 0.00) discourage the adoption of intercropping in the mandarin orchard. The productivity of mandarin orchards was significantly enhanced by FYM application, chemical fertilizers, irrigation, weeding, and Bordeaux application. This study shows that the farmers with better socio-economic conditions are more likely to adopt improved management practices in mandarin orchard which in turn enhance their productivity

Development of Body Emotion Perception in Infancy: From Discrimination to Recognition

Research suggests that infants progress from discrimination to recognition of emotions in faces during the first half year of life. It is unknown whether the perception of emotions from bodies develops in a similar manner. In the current study, when presented with happy and angry body videos and voices, 5-month-olds looked longer at the matching video when they were presented upright but not when they were inverted. In contrast, 3.5-month-olds failed to match even with upright videos. Thus, 5-month-olds but not 3.5-month-olds exhibited evidence of recognition of emotions from bodies by demonstrating intermodal matching. In a subsequent experiment, younger infants did discriminate between body emotion videos but failed to exhibit an inversion effect, suggesting that discrimination may be based on low-level stimulus features. These results document a developmental change from discrimination based on non-emotional information at 3.5 months to recognition of body emotions at 5 months. This pattern of development is similar to face emotion knowledge development and suggests that both the face and body emotion perception systems develop rapidly during the first half year of life

Process and Domain Specificity in Regions Engaged for Face Processing: An fMRI Study of Perceptual Differentiation

The degree to which face-specific brain regions are specialized for different kinds of perceptual processing is debated. This study parametrically varied demands on featural, first-order configural, or second-order configural processing of faces and houses in a perceptual matching task to determine the extent to which the process of perceptual differentiation was selective for faces regardless of processing type (domain-specific account), specialized for specific types of perceptual processing regardless of category (process-specific account), engaged in category-optimized processing (i.e., configural face processing or featural house processing), or reflected generalized perceptual differentiation (i.e., differentiation that crosses category and processing type boundaries). ROIs were identified in a separate localizer run or with a similarity regressor in the face-matching runs. The predominant principle accounting for fMRI signal modulation in most regions was generalized perceptual differentiation. Nearly all regions showed perceptual differentiation for both faces and houses for more than one processing type, even if the region was identified as face-preferential in the localizer run. Consistent with process specificity, some regions showed perceptual differentiation for first-order processing of faces and houses (right fusiform face area and occipito-temporal cortex and right lateral occipital complex), but not for featural or second-order processing. Somewhat consistent with domain specificity, the right inferior frontal gyrus showed perceptual differentiation only for faces in the featural matching task. The present findings demonstrate that the majority of regions involved in perceptual differentiation of faces are also involved in differentiation of other visually homogenous categories

Further Evidence of Early Development of Attention to Dynamic Facial Emotions: Reply to Grossmann and Jessen

Adults exhibit enhanced attention to negative emotions like fear, which is thought to be an adaptive reaction to emotional information. Previous research, mostly conducted with static faces, suggests that infants exhibit an attentional bias toward fearful faces only at around 7 months of age. In a recent study (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2016, Vol. 147, pp. 100–110), we found that 5-month-olds also exhibit heightened attention to fear when tested with dynamic face videos. This indication of an earlier development of an attention bias to fear raises questions about developmental mechanisms that have been proposed to underlie this function. However, Grossmann and Jessen (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2016, Vol. 153, pp. 149–154) argued that this result may have been due to differences in the amount of movement in the videos rather than a response toemotional information. To examine this possibility, we tested a new sample of 5-month-olds exactly as in the original study (Heck, Hock, White, Jubran, & Bhatt, 2016) but with inverted faces. We found that the fear bias seen in our study was no longer apparent with inverted faces. Therefore, it is likely that infants’ enhanced attention to fear in our study was indeed a response to emotions rather than a reaction to arbitrary low-level stimulus features. This finding indicates enhanced attention to fear at 5 months and underscores the need to find mechanisms that engender the development of emotion knowledge early in life