Beyond the banks and deluge: understanding riverscape, flood vulnerability, and responses in kashmir

Flooding in Kashmir results from a complex interplay of physical, sociopolitical, and economic factors, which presents a severe environmental challenge. The intricate interplay between the Jhelum’s riverscape, social interactions, and economic factors is profoundly shaped by the persistent problem of flooding and its associated vulnerabilities. In this study, we examine the vulnerability of Kashmir to flooding and provide a comprehensive assessment of the recent floods. The purpose of this vulnerability assessment is to delve into these intricacies and offer deeper understanding of flood vulnerability in Kashmir. We explore the concept of riverscape in the context of the Jhelum River to encompass a holistic view of the river, understanding its physical features and socio-economic aspects, and examining the spatial and temporal dynamics of river ecosystems. This study analyses the spatial distribution of the inundated population, rainfall and hydrological analysis, flood gauge analysis of the Jhelum River, hydrological trends, and annual peak discharge at key discharge stations from 2003 to 2023. We analyse the policy landscape, social capital, and responses to recent flooding and provide a historical analysis of these policies. Using a mixed methods approach of qualitative as well as remote sensing methods to analyse recent flooding in Kashmir, we assessed the impact of flooding on population and LULC. We analyse how marginalised communities, lacking essential services and resources, disproportionately bear the brunt of these floods

Transcendence over Diversity: black women in the academy

Universities, like many major public institutions have embraced the notion of ‘diversity’ virtually uncritically- it is seen as a moral ‘good in itself’. But what happens to those who come to represent ‘diversity’- the black and minority ethnic groups targeted to increase the institutions thirst for global markets and aversion to accusations of institutional racism? Drawing on existing literature which analyses the process of marginalization in higher education, this paper explores the individual costs to black and female academic staff regardless of the discourse on diversity. However despite the exclusion of staff, black and minority ethnic women are also entering higher education in relatively large numbers as students. Such ‘grassroots’ educational urgency transcends the dominant discourse on diversity and challenges presumptions inherent in top down initiatives such as ‘widening participation’. Such a collective movement from the bottom up shows the importance of understanding black female agency when unpacking the complex dynamics of gendered and racialised exclusion. Black women’s desire for education and learning makes possible a reclaiming of higher education from creeping instrumentalism and reinstates it as a radical site of resistance and refutation

Observation of hard scattering in photoproduction events with a large rapidity gap at HERA

Events with a large rapidity gap and total transverse energy greater than 5 GeV have been observed in quasi-real photoproduction at HERA with the ZEUS detector. The distribution of these events as a function of the $\gamma p$ centre of mass energy is consistent with diffractive scattering. For total transverse energies above 12 GeV, the hadronic final states show predominantly a two-jet structure with each jet having a transverse energy greater than 4 GeV. For the two-jet events, little energy flow is found outside the jets. This observation is consistent with the hard scattering of a quasi-real photon with a colourless object in the proton.Comment: 19 pages, latex, 4 figures appended as uuencoded fil

Sublinear Algorithms for Approximating String Compressibility

We raise the question of approximating the compressibility of a string with respect to a fixed compression scheme, in sublinear time. We study this question in detail for two popular lossless compression schemes: run-length encoding (RLE) and a variant of Lempel-Ziv (LZ77), and present sublinear algorithms for approximating compressibility with respect to both schemes. We also give several lower bounds that show that our algorithms for both schemes cannot be improved significantly. Our investigation of LZ77 yields results whose interest goes beyond the initial questions we set out to study. In particular, we prove combinatorial structural lemmas that relate the compressibility of a string with respect to LZ77 to the number of distinct short substrings contained in it (its ℓth subword complexity , for small ℓ). In addition, we show that approximating the compressibility with respect to LZ77 is related to approximating the support size of a distribution.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award CCF-1065125)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award CCF-0728645)Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant PIRG03-GA-2008-231077Israel Science Foundation (Grant 1147/09)Israel Science Foundation (Grant 1675/09

Measurements of differential production cross sections for a Z boson in association with jets in pp collisions at root s=8 TeV

Peer reviewe

Methodology for generating a global forest management layer

The first ever global map of forest management was generated based on remote sensing data. To collect training data, we launched a series of Geo-Wiki (https://www.geo-wiki.org/) campaigns involving forest experts from different world regions, to explore which information related to forest management could be collected by visual interpretation of very high-resolution images from Google Maps and Microsoft Bing, Sentinel time series and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) profiles derived from Google Earth Engine. A machine learning technique was then used with the visually interpreted sample (280K locations) as a training dataset to classify PROBA-V satellite imagery. Finally, we obtained a global wall-to-wall map of forest management at a 100m resolution for the year 2015. The map includes classes such as intact forests; forests with signs of management, including logging; planted forests; woody plantations with a rotation period up to 15 years; oil palm plantations; and agroforestry. The map can be used to deliver further information about forest ecosystems, protected and observed forest status changes, biodiversity assessments, and other ecosystem-related aspects

The global burden of cancer attributable to risk factors, 2010–19: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

BACKGROUND: Understanding the magnitude of cancer burden attributable to potentially modifiable risk factors is crucial for development of effective prevention and mitigation strategies. We analysed results from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019 to inform cancer control planning efforts globally. METHODS: The GBD 2019 comparative risk assessment framework was used to estimate cancer burden attributable to behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risk factors. A total of 82 risk–outcome pairs were included on the basis of the World Cancer Research Fund criteria. Estimated cancer deaths and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) in 2019 and change in these measures between 2010 and 2019 are presented. FINDINGS: Globally, in 2019, the risk factors included in this analysis accounted for 4·45 million (95% uncertainty interval 4·01–4·94) deaths and 105 million (95·0–116) DALYs for both sexes combined, representing 44·4% (41·3–48·4) of all cancer deaths and 42·0% (39·1–45·6) of all DALYs. There were 2·88 million (2·60–3·18) risk-attributable cancer deaths in males (50·6% [47·8–54·1] of all male cancer deaths) and 1·58 million (1·36–1·84) risk-attributable cancer deaths in females (36·3% [32·5–41·3] of all female cancer deaths). The leading risk factors at the most detailed level globally for risk-attributable cancer deaths and DALYs in 2019 for both sexes combined were smoking, followed by alcohol use and high BMI. Risk-attributable cancer burden varied by world region and Socio-demographic Index (SDI), with smoking, unsafe sex, and alcohol use being the three leading risk factors for risk-attributable cancer DALYs in low SDI locations in 2019, whereas DALYs in high SDI locations mirrored the top three global risk factor rankings. From 2010 to 2019, global risk-attributable cancer deaths increased by 20·4% (12·6–28·4) and DALYs by 16·8% (8·8–25·0), with the greatest percentage increase in metabolic risks (34·7% [27·9–42·8] and 33·3% [25·8–42·0]). INTERPRETATION: The leading risk factors contributing to global cancer burden in 2019 were behavioural, whereas metabolic risk factors saw the largest increases between 2010 and 2019. Reducing exposure to these modifiable risk factors would decrease cancer mortality and DALY rates worldwide, and policies should be tailored appropriately to local cancer risk factor burden

Charged-particle nuclear modification factors in PbPb and pPb collisions at √=sNN=5.02 TeV

The spectra of charged particles produced within the pseudorapidity window |η| < 1 at √ sNN = 5.02 TeV are measured using 404 µb −1 of PbPb and 27.4 pb−1 of pp data collected by the CMS detector at the LHC in 2015. The spectra are presented over the transverse momentum ranges spanning 0.5 < pT < 400 GeV in pp and 0.7 < pT < 400 GeV in PbPb collisions. The corresponding nuclear modification factor, RAA, is measured in bins of collision centrality. The RAA in the 5% most central collisions shows a maximal suppression by a factor of 7–8 in the pT region of 6–9 GeV. This dip is followed by an increase, which continues up to the highest pT measured, and approaches unity in the vicinity of pT = 200 GeV. The RAA is compared to theoretical predictions and earlier experimental results at lower collision energies. The newly measured pp spectrum is combined with the pPb spectrum previously published by the CMS collaboration to construct the pPb nuclear modification factor, RpA, up to 120 GeV. For pT > 20 GeV, RpA exhibits weak momentum dependence and shows a moderate enhancement above unity

Effect of some Growth Promoters on Performance and Proximate Chemical Analysis of New Zealand Rabbit

Rabbit meat provides a good source of high-quality animal protein with low fat content, it is considered a functional food. This study aimed to determine the growth performance, carcass traits, and chemical quality of New Zealand White rabbit meat breeding treated with different growth promoters. Therefore, 40 apparently healthy New Zealand White male rabbits, 5 weeks of age, were allotted to 4 equal experimental groups. The first group was kept as a control group, the second group included rabbits fed ad libitum supplemented with a beta-glucan 2.0 g/kg diet, The third group comprised rabbits that were injected twice intramuscular of boldenone undecylenate (5 mg/kg body weight) with 3-weeks intervals, the fourth group included rabbits that injected intramuscular of 40 µg/kg body weight estradiol day by day for 30 days. The obtained results revealed that the treated groups with growth promoters had a significant increase (P&lt;0.05) in growth performance (total body weight gain and daily weight gain) and dressing percentage. Administration of boldenone undecylenate resulted in a significant increase (P&lt; 0.05) in protein content in their meat compared to the control group. Rabbits injected with estradiol show a nonsignificant effect (P&gt; 0.05) on dressing % or protein content of meat. Rabbits feed on a beta-glucan-supplemented diet show the highest carcass dressing percentage. Further studies were challenging food investigators for the rabbit meat treated with hormonal growth promoters to study their residues and their impact on consumer health

Above Ground Biomass Estimation for Alpine Grasslands of Kashmir Himalayas Using Remote Sensing and Field-Data

This study presents a comprehensive analysis of Alpine pastures in the Kashmir Himalayas through a multidisciplinary approach, combining remote sensing and field-based assessments for biomass estimation and time series analysis of the (NDVI) Index for the growing season from May to October 2022. The Alpine and Subalpine region of Kashmir was delineated using ALOS PALSAR Digital Elevation Model, and Landsat 8 imagery was classified using a maximum likelihood algorithm, revealing a total grassland area of 160,974 hectares. After grassland delineation Biomass estimation was carried out based on data collected from 18 pastures, each of which was subjected to a stratified sampling approach to establish four 1 m² quadrats, with two designated for grazed areas and two for ungrazed areas, this yielded average biomass yields of 20.87 t/ha and an average dry weight biomass of 5.16 t/ha. Pastures like Daksum (28.36 t/ha), Tragbal (28.22 t/ha), Krush (27.83 t/ha), Lung Marg (27.03 t/ha), observed high biomass availability, while moderate levels were found in locations like Gangbal (22.75 t/ha), Hangel Marg (22.68 t/ha), Dagwan (21.76 t/ha), Gumri (20.82 t/ha), Bangus (20.66 t/ha), Pir Galli (18.52t/ha), Maalish (18.21 t/ha), In contrast, lower biomass values were recorded in Mohand Marg (11.47 t/ha), and Thajwas (9.81 t/ha). These findings were complemented by (NDVI) metrics, which varied across sites. For example, high NDVI values were observed for sites such as Pir Gilli, Bangus, and Kud Marg, indicating a healthier vegetative profile with less impact of grazing during the grazing season. In contrast, pastures like Mohand Marg, Thajwas, Razdan, and Tragbal recorded moderate NDVI values, suggesting a moderate level of grazing impact. Pasture sites with lower NDVI values and high standard deviation, such as Hangel Marg and Gumari, witnessed high seasonal variability, suggesting a high grazing impact, besides other natural factors responsible, like early snowfall. The study emphasizes the need for ongoing, multifaceted ecological assessments for the sustainable management and conservation of these critical Alpine ecosystems