Making seismology accessible to the public in Nepal: an earthquake location tutorial for education purposes

Earthquakes become a hot topic for discussion in Nepali communities when a big local event happens. Beyond the seismic monitoring and research, efforts to improve the population’s preparedness or to reduce earthquake related risks are limited, and there is a gap between scientific community and society. To establish the missing link between seismology and citizens we have initiated an educational approach called Seismology at School in Nepal and a total of 30 low-cost seismometers have been installed in schools. The program is engaging the public on earthquake related activities and found to be effective in raising the awareness levels of children, promoting broader earthquake learning in the community, thus improving the adaptive capacities and preparedness for future earthquakes. The aim of this work is to present a simple tutorial of earthquake location mainly for Nepali citizens and school teachers. We describe procedures for computing an earthquake epicenter using an open and user-friendly software, Seisgram2K. This tutorial helps the public to have first-order information on earthquakes, by allowing to locate epicenters, which will increase the frequency of earthquake discussion in the community. Open seismic data and the earthquake location tutorial helps to inspire the next generation to study Earth sciences, which is very important and required for earthquake prone countries, like Nepal

EFFECT OF FORCED EXERCISE (TAP STRESS) ON DROSOPHILA MELANOGASTER AND EFFICACY OF ABHRAK BHASMA AS DIETARY SUPPLEMENT.

 Objective: Generation of reactive oxygen species and other oxidants as an outcome of aerobic respiration has been well documented. During boosted muscular activities/exercise, there is an increase in the rate of respiration and subsequent generation of oxidants; for which, organisms possess various defense systems. There is, however, paucity of reports on the effect of forced exercise in Drosophila melanogaster.Methods: The present investigation reports a method for inducing forced exercise, the tap stress,†in D. melanogaster. This method takes advantage of the natural tendency of Drosophila flies to climb/fly upward in a cylindrical tube. Simplicity of assembly, ease of experimentation and cost effectiveness are some of the key advantages of this method. Tap stress has been assumed to manifest through the generation of oxidative stress, thus, parameters indicative of oxidative stress have been evaluated.Results: The results indicate that tap stress induces oxidative stress mainly by influencing the non-catalytic components; total reduced glutathione (GSH), GSH: oxidized glutathione ratio, and free radical scavenging capacity. The catalytic components (superoxide dismutase, and catalase), on the contrary, remain largely unaffected. Abhrak bhasma (AB) influences total GSH content with an increase by about 38±21%, while flies on control diet register a decrease in total GSH content by 34±7% during tap stress. Feeding flies on AB, specifically, show a prominent increase in the transcription levels of cap n†collar C, heat shock protein 70 and catalase genes (>1.5 fold).Conclusion: Overall, dietary supplement of AB and ascorbic acid benefits Drosophila flies in the management of oxidative stress induced through tap stress.Â

Realization of random-field dipolar Ising ferromagnetism in a molecular magnet

The longitudinal magnetic susceptibility of single crystals of the molecular magnet Mn$_{12}$-acetate obeys a Curie-Weiss law, indicating a transition to a ferromagnetic phase due to dipolar interactions. With increasing magnetic field applied transverse to the easy axis, the transition temperature decreases considerably more rapidly than predicted by mean field theory to a T=0 quantum critical point. Our results are consistent with an effective Hamiltonian for a random-field Ising ferromagnet in a transverse field, where the randomness is induced by an external field applied to Mn$_{12}$-acetate crystals that are known to have an intrinsic distribution of locally tilted magnetic easy axes.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Two Is Better Than One: Dual Embeddings for Complementary Product Recommendations

Embedding based product recommendations have gained popularity in recent years due to its ability to easily integrate to large-scale systems and allowing nearest neighbor searches in real-time. The bulk of studies in this area has predominantly been focused on similar item recommendations. Research on complementary item recommendations, on the other hand, still remains considerably under-explored. We define similar items as items that are interchangeable in terms of their utility and complementary items as items that serve different purposes, yet are compatible when used with one another. In this paper, we apply a novel approach to finding complementary items by leveraging dual embedding representations for products. We demonstrate that the notion of relatedness discovered in NLP for skip-gram negative sampling (SGNS) models translates effectively to the concept of complementarity when training item representations using co-purchase data. Since sparsity of purchase data is a major challenge in real-world scenarios, we further augment the model using synthetic samples to extend coverage. This allows the model to provide complementary recommendations for items that do not share co-purchase data by leveraging other abundantly available data modalities such as images, text, clicks etc. We establish the effectiveness of our approach in improving both coverage and quality of recommendations on real world data for a major online retail company. We further show the importance of task specific hyperparameter tuning in training SGNS. Our model is effective yet simple to implement, making it a great candidate for generating complementary item recommendations at any e-commerce website.Comment: Accepted at ICKG 202

Land administration and its impact on economic development

This thesis investigates the relationship between land administration and economic development. More specifically, it assesses the role of land tenure security in productivity and that of land administration services in revenue generation. The empirical part of the study was undertaken in Nepal, Bangladesh and Thailand. A mixed method approach was employed for data collection, analysis and interpretation. The information was gathered using questionnaires, interviews, observations, informal discussions and documentation analysis. This study demonstrates that land administration plays a crucial role in providing security of land tenure. It also evidences that the use value, collateral value and exchange value of land is increased after registration which has benefitted the occupation, investment and finance sectors of the case study economies. Specifically, it was found that land use activity became more productive. With regard to financial services, banks more readily accepted land as loan security for debt finance and did so at an interest rate that was lower than that offered by private lenders. Land-related investment and income also increased and these effects are found to be positively correlated with tenure security. However, access to credit is not enough to increase investment unless it is communicated properly. This study demonstrates that quality of land administration services affects on tenure security and revenue generation. Poor land administration, improper land valuation and inefficient and unscrupulous employees threaten tenure security and reduce the amount of revenue that can be generated from land. The establishment of land administration systems and security of land tenure is beneficial for the government as it supports economic development by increasing production and generating revenue to some extent. It may also enhance efficient use of scarce resources, increase household income and play an important role in maintaining distributive justice and reducing poverty. The findings of this study indicate a need for further research on the contribution of land administration in the real estate sector as well as changes to the livelihoods of civilians

Low-temperature magneto-thermal transport investigation of a Ni-based superconductor BaNi2As2: Evidence for fully gapped superconductivity

We have performed low-temperature specific heat and thermal conductivity measurements of the Ni-based superconductor BaNi$_2$As$_2$ ($T_\mathrm{c}$ = 0.7 K) in magnetic field. In zero field, thermal conductivity shows $T$-linear behavior in the normal state and exhibits a BCS-like exponential decrease below $T_\mathrm{c}$. The field dependence of the residual thermal conductivity extrapolated to zero temperature is indicative of a fully gapped superconductor. This conclusion is supported by the analysis of the specific heat data, which are well fit by the BCS temperature dependence from $T_\mathrm{c}$ down to the lowest temperature of 0.1 K.Comment: Physical Review Letters, to be publishe