Synthesis and Analysis of Carbon-transition Metal Oxide Composites

Graphene, a two-dimensional honeycomb structure of carbon due to its high electrical and thermal conductivity, and high specific surface area, is an excellent candidate for nano-electronics and energy storage. However, it is very difficult and expensive to produce a single layered graphene by the traditional method of mechanical exfoliation of highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG). It is mainly manufactured by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) or more economically by chemical exfoliation of graphite by Hummer’s modified method. But there is a major disadvantage in using the chemical exfoliation, instead of forming single layer of pure graphene, a non-stoichiometric and insulating graphene oxide (GO) is formed. GO further needs to be reduced into graphene by either chemical or thermal method. In our work, we have synthesized and evaluated several compositions of transition metal oxides and carbon based materials. The structure and composition of materials are determined from diffraction and absorption experimental results. The diffraction techniques applied for characterization of carbon transitional metal oxides nanocomposites are selected area electron diffraction and powder x-ray diffraction. Absorption experiments used during experiments are Infrared absorption spectroscopy, UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (including X-ray absorption near edge structure and Extended X-ray absorption fine structure)

Political economy of urban change: contestations and contradictions in urban development in Kathmandu Valley focusing on a case of Southern Part of Lalitpur Metropolitan City

Being one of the top ten fastest urbanizing countries in the world with almost 60% urban areas, Nepal and mostly Kathmandu valley (KV), is undergoing rapid urban transition of spatial, demographic and economic changes, especially after the restoration of democracy in 1990 and subsequent political turmoil and changes. As a capital city with opportunities like access to education, jobs, health facilities and others, KV has been constantly pulling people from different parts of the country that led to densification of the city cores and uncontrolled urban sprawl, leading to unplanned growth of the built-up areas in the peri-urban landscape. This working paper, taking a case from a southern settlement of KV called Khokana, analyses the current trend of urbanization in KV with a reference of land use in general, and examines the responses from the local Newar communities as part of the tension and contradictions brought by the urbanization process and development interventions there in. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and review of literature, this study found that there is increasing demand of land creating speculative rise in land prices espoused by the infrastructure development projects being implemented by the federal government. Ultimately, the traditional place and culture are threatened so is the alienation of local people from their land, impacting their livelihood. Also, these development projects do not have resilient plans for their negative impacts in case of natural hazards, risking the achievement of resilient development in tomorrow's cities

Bayesian Models for the Analyzes of Noisy Responses From Small Areas: An Application to Poverty Estimation

We implement techniques of small area estimation (SAE) to study consumption, a welfare indicator, which is used to assess poverty in the 2003-2004 Nepal Living Standards Survey (NLSS-II) and the 2001 census. NLSS-II has detailed information of consumption, but it can give estimates only at stratum level or higher. While population variables are available for all households in the census, they do not include the information on consumption; the survey has the `population' variables nonetheless. We combine these two sets of data to provide estimates of poverty indicators (incidence, gap and severity) for small areas (wards, village development committees and districts). Consumption is the aggregate of all food and all non-food items consumed. In the welfare survey the responders are asked to recall all information about consumptions throughout the reference year. Therefore, such data are likely to be noisy, possibly due to response errors or recalling errors. The consumption variable is continuous and positively skewed, so a statistician might use a logarithmic transformation, which can reduce skewness and help meet the normality assumption required for model building. However, it could be problematic since back transformation may produce inaccurate estimates and there are difficulties in interpretations. Without using the logarithmic transformation, we develop hierarchical Bayesian models to link the survey to the census. In our models for consumption, we incorporate the `population' variables as covariates. First, we assume that consumption is noiseless, and it is modeled using three scenarios: the exponential distribution, the gamma distribution and the generalized gamma distribution. Second, we assume that consumption is noisy, and we fit the generalized beta distribution of the second kind (GB2) to consumption. We consider three more scenarios of GB2: a mixture of exponential and gamma distributions, a mixture of two gamma distributions, and a mixture of two generalized gamma distributions. We note that there are difficulties in fitting the models for noisy responses because these models have non-identifiable parameters. For each scenario, after fitting two hierarchical Bayesian models (with and without area effects), we show how to select the most plausible model and we perform a Bayesian data analysis on Nepal's poverty data. We show how to predict the poverty indicators for all wards, village development committees and districts of Nepal (a big data problem) by combining the survey data with the census. This is a computationally intensive problem because Nepal has about four million households with about four thousand households in the survey and there is no record linkage between households in the survey and the census. Finally, we perform empirical studies to assess the quality of our survey-census procedure

Hemoglobin status in children in the age group 6 to 60 months

Objective of this study was to see the prevalence rate of anemia in children among the age of 6-60 months who attended paediatric out patient department of Kathmandu Medical College. 100 children aged 6-60 months were randomly selected for hemoglobin measurement and anthropometry. Detailed clinical examination including anthropometry was done. Hemoglobin was checked by Hemocue machine with prior consent from the attendant. Mean height, weight, and body mass index (BMI) were measured. Forty six percent of the study group population had hemoglobin <11gm/dl, similar numbers of the children were in the various state of malnutrition. Twenty eight percent of the children came from outside of the valley residing in Kathmandu. Fifty percent were illiterate or had primary level education only. Poverty, high rate of illiteracy and lack of awareness on taking appropriate food were important factors related to such a high childhood anemia. Iron supplementation should be given to the children particularly in the age group of 6 months to 3 years. Key Words: Anemia, Nutritional status, Children 6 months to 60 months

Use of GeoGebra in Teaching and Learning Geometric Transformation in School Mathematics

The use of GeoGebra in teaching geometric transformations was investigated in this study. GeoGebra is a math software available in over 100 plus languages, both online and offline. GeoGebra is a useful application to improve and enrich mathematics teaching and learning by allowing students to visualize mathematical concepts, which is extremely useful for mathematical experiments and discoveries at all educational levels, from elementary school to university. The theoretical referents used in this article are cognitive learning theory and Vygotsky's social learning theory. Twenty students (twelve boys and eight girls) in grade IX from a private school in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, were taught mathematics using a variety of specific instances of transformation highlighted in this study, including reflection, rotation, translation, and dilation. This research used a qualitative research method called a teaching experiment to examine the use of GeoGebra in eleven episodes. Students were aided in visualizing abstract concepts of change by using relevant images, photos, and animations of GeoGebra-created objects. The findings of a classroom experiment are GeoGebra is an easy-to-use application, GeoGebra allows for discovery learning, GeoGebra encourages collaborative learning, and GeoGebra to visualize geometric transformations. Likewise, GeoGebra aids in the teaching and comprehension of abstract transformation concepts. These findings show how students can develop into active knowledge builders when GeoGebra is used in mathematics classes. They also communicate with one another, keep track of the change process, and respect their instructors' authority in such classes. It is an important instructional tool that supports the educational system's transition from a teacher-centered to a learner-centered approach by complementing the traditional lecture method of teaching mathematics

The urban political ecology of ‘haphazard urbanisation’ and disaster risk creation in the Kathmandu valley, Nepal

This paper examines the impact of rapid urbanisation on the production of unequal disaster risk in Khokana, peri-urban town in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. It brings together scholarships in disaster risk creation and urban political ecology, asking: (1) what are the roots of Khokana’s specific urbanisation trajectory; (2) how is this trajectory altering geographies of hazard risks in Khokana; and (3) how is this risk unevenly distributed between social groups. The data reveal overlapping forms of risk and precarity affecting residents’ (long-standing and migrants) everyday lives, in ways that disproportionately impact already-disadvantaged and marginalised groups. These unequal risk geographies are related to the specific forms and processes of urban growth occurring in Khokana, fuelled by three powerful, interconnected pressures: neoliberal capitalist expansion, internal migration, and a strong developmental state. We characterise the resulting form of urbanisation as ‘haphazard’: a patchwork of planned and unplanned developments, with inadequate attention to hazard risk, livelihood stability and essential services. The paper advances understanding of the place- and historically-specific ways that hazard risk intersects with social, political and economic forces to produce disaster risk in rapidly-urbanising centres. We extend calls for more situated UPE analysis and call for greater, more granular attention to forms of haphazard urbanisation and their uneven risk-producing qualities. We conclude an urgent need to reimagine urban development as a political and economic project, and for future urban planning to pay deliberate and deliberative attention to risk factors, both in KV and in other rapidly urbanising areas of the global South

Development and Evaluation of E-Learning Courses: Validity, Practicality, and Effectiveness

This study attempts to develop a reliable, practical, and efficient process for developing online and distance courses. The study aims to develop e-learning online and distance education courses. ICT and e-Research course development processes have shown significant learning opportunities and outcomes. A substitute for raising these opportunities is the need for innovative research in education while implementing online and distance modes of learning and teaching. Subscribing research and development research methodology, the study aims to produce e-learning instructional materials using a three-stage development model. The course, along with the learning strategy, the learning tools, the assessment tools, and other components, are designed and developed using the Plomp model, a development research model. The research participants were forty-two 2021 Winter Batch MPhil in Educational Studies students and nine lecturers at Nepal Open University (NOU), Nepal. The descriptive analysis uses data analysis to explain the online course's validity, applicability, and effectiveness. Experimental research design was developed using the one-group pre-test post-test design methodology. The most important results are results of preliminary analysis, validity: average material validation is 0.885; average media validation is 0.885 and practicality: more than 71% (very practical). This article proposes a more comprehensive framework to design, develop, and implement online and distance courses in e-learning systems in higher education