Utilization and Status of Plant Resources in Northern Part of Pokhara valley, Central Nepal

Study on plants and plant products and their present status is helpful for proper management of those resources. Nepal is a multicultural and multilingual country. Present study on utilization of forest plant resources was carried out in Bhurjungkhola, Sardikhola VDC, northern part of Pokhara valley during October and November 2004. Altogether 116 plant species belonging to 61 families and 103 genera along with their vernacular names, their uses and present status of abundance were documented. Out of 116 plant species, 58 plant species are used as medicinal purposes, 2 as a food value, 22 as fruits, 20 as vegetables, 56 as fodder and forages, 19 as timber, 45 as fuelwood, 11 as religious and 5 species as ornamental. The status of 66 plant species are found in medium followed by 36 plant species with low status and 15 plant species with increasing number

Indigenous Knowledge on Miscellaneous Uses of Plants by the People of Parroha VDC, Rupandehi District, Central Nepal

This study aims to explore the information on miscellaneous uses on plant resources found in Parroha VDC of Rupandehi district, Nepal. The study was conducted during May 2007. Informations on plant resources were collected interviewing key informants using a semi structured open ended questionnaires. Altogether 33 different species of plants belonging to 19 families were found used for miscellaneous purposes

Science Learning from the School Garden through Participatory Action Research in Nepal

Nepal\u27s NORHED/Rupantaran project designed and developed participatory action research through school gardening. This study explored the ways for the community schools, science teachers and basic level (grade five to eight) students to foster a sense of agency in the school science curriculum through life-based experiential learning. Qualitative research design on thematic and verbatim methods are used to collect and analyze the data in this study. The findings show that school gardening activities are helpful and productive for science teaching and learning. The evidence from participatory action research experiences in actual school settings would provide new insights for policymakers to transform the school science curriculum. Further, the study findings show collaborative knowledge production through school gardening in a contextual environment, often neglected in community school science teaching and learning. The implications of the research findings could contribute to policy-level discussions about science teachers\u27 professional development

Combination of convalescent plasma therapy and repurposed drugs to treat severe COVID-19 patient with multimorbidity.

Combination of convalescent plasma therapy and repurposed drugs such as dexamethasone and remdesivir could be beneficial for severe COVID-19 patients with obesity and chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension

The development and validation of a scoring tool to predict the operative duration of elective laparoscopic cholecystectomy

Background: The ability to accurately predict operative duration has the potential to optimise theatre efficiency and utilisation, thus reducing costs and increasing staff and patient satisfaction. With laparoscopic cholecystectomy being one of the most commonly performed procedures worldwide, a tool to predict operative duration could be extremely beneficial to healthcare organisations. Methods: Data collected from the CholeS study on patients undergoing cholecystectomy in UK and Irish hospitals between 04/2014 and 05/2014 were used to study operative duration. A multivariable binary logistic regression model was produced in order to identify significant independent predictors of long (> 90 min) operations. The resulting model was converted to a risk score, which was subsequently validated on second cohort of patients using ROC curves. Results: After exclusions, data were available for 7227 patients in the derivation (CholeS) cohort. The median operative duration was 60 min (interquartile range 45–85), with 17.7% of operations lasting longer than 90 min. Ten factors were found to be significant independent predictors of operative durations > 90 min, including ASA, age, previous surgical admissions, BMI, gallbladder wall thickness and CBD diameter. A risk score was then produced from these factors, and applied to a cohort of 2405 patients from a tertiary centre for external validation. This returned an area under the ROC curve of 0.708 (SE = 0.013, p  90 min increasing more than eightfold from 5.1 to 41.8% in the extremes of the score. Conclusion: The scoring tool produced in this study was found to be significantly predictive of long operative durations on validation in an external cohort. As such, the tool may have the potential to enable organisations to better organise theatre lists and deliver greater efficiencies in care

Measurement of the branching ratio Γ(Λb⁰ → ψ(2S)Λ0)/Γ(Λb⁰ → J/ψΛ0) with the ATLAS detector

An observation of the $\Lambda_b^0 \rightarrow \psi(2S) \Lambda^0$ decay and a comparison of its branching fraction with that of the $\Lambda_b^0 \rightarrow J/\psi \Lambda^0$ decay has been made with the ATLAS detector in proton--proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=8\,$TeV at the LHC using an integrated luminosity of $20.6\,$fb$^{-1}$. The $J/\psi$ and $\psi(2S)$ mesons are reconstructed in their decays to a muon pair, while the $\Lambda^0\rightarrow p\pi^-$ decay is exploited for the $\Lambda^0$ baryon reconstruction. The $\Lambda_b^0$ baryons are reconstructed with transverse momentum $p_{\rm T}>10\,$GeV and pseudorapidity $|\eta|<2.1$. The measured branching ratio of the $\Lambda_b^0 \rightarrow \psi(2S) \Lambda^0$ and $\Lambda_b^0 \rightarrow J/\psi \Lambda^0$ decays is $\Gamma(\Lambda_b^0 \rightarrow \psi(2S)\Lambda^0)/\Gamma(\Lambda_b^0 \rightarrow J/\psi\Lambda^0) = 0.501\pm 0.033 ({\rm stat})\pm 0.019({\rm syst})$, lower than the expectation from the covariant quark model.Comment: 12 pages plus author list (28 pages total), 5 figures, 1 table, published on Physics Letters B 751 (2015) 63-80. All figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/BPHY-2013-08

Effects of hospital facilities on patient outcomes after cancer surgery: an international, prospective, observational study

Background Early death after cancer surgery is higher in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) compared with in high-income countries, yet the impact of facility characteristics on early postoperative outcomes is unknown. The aim of this study was to examine the association between hospital infrastructure, resource availability, and processes on early outcomes after cancer surgery worldwide.Methods A multimethods analysis was performed as part of the GlobalSurg 3 study-a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study of patients who had surgery for breast, colorectal, or gastric cancer. The primary outcomes were 30-day mortality and 30-day major complication rates. Potentially beneficial hospital facilities were identified by variable selection to select those associated with 30-day mortality. Adjusted outcomes were determined using generalised estimating equations to account for patient characteristics and country-income group, with population stratification by hospital.Findings Between April 1, 2018, and April 23, 2019, facility-level data were collected for 9685 patients across 238 hospitals in 66 countries (91 hospitals in 20 high-income countries; 57 hospitals in 19 upper-middle-income countries; and 90 hospitals in 27 low-income to lower-middle-income countries). The availability of five hospital facilities was inversely associated with mortality: ultrasound, CT scanner, critical care unit, opioid analgesia, and oncologist. After adjustment for case-mix and country income group, hospitals with three or fewer of these facilities (62 hospitals, 1294 patients) had higher mortality compared with those with four or five (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 3.85 [95% CI 2.58-5.75]; p&lt;0.0001), with excess mortality predominantly explained by a limited capacity to rescue following the development of major complications (63.0% vs 82.7%; OR 0.35 [0.23-0.53]; p&lt;0.0001). Across LMICs, improvements in hospital facilities would prevent one to three deaths for every 100 patients undergoing surgery for cancer.Interpretation Hospitals with higher levels of infrastructure and resources have better outcomes after cancer surgery, independent of country income. Without urgent strengthening of hospital infrastructure and resources, the reductions in cancer-associated mortality associated with improved access will not be realised

Science Teachers’ Information Processing Behaviours in Nepal: A Reflective Comparative Study

This study examines the investigation of the information processing behaviours of secondary level science teachers. It is based on the data collected from 50 secondary level school science teachers working in Kathmandy valley. The simple random sampling and the Cognitive Style Inventory have been used respectively as the technique and tool to collect the data. The results indicate that the secondary level science teachers possess three types of information processing behaviours, namely, split cognitive style, undifferentiated cognitive style and integrated cognitive style. It has also been found that there exists a difference in cognitive behaviours of science teachers based on the variation in their type of schools while there is no significant difference in information processing behaviours based on type the of activities, qualification, instructional method used and their castes

Invasive Species: Genetics, Characteristics and Trait Variation Along a Latitudinal Gradient

Globalization during the second half of the 20th century has accelerated the introduction and the spread of non-native species. Introduced species is considered the second largest threat to biodiversity after habitat destruction. It is therefore necessary to understand what makes introduced species successful in novel environments. Furthermore, introduced species provide unique opportunities to study the evolutionary processes that are involved in invasion success. We studied genetics, and evolution of higher phenotypic plasticity and local adaptation after introduction of one of the highly invasive species in Europe, Impatiens glandulifera, and compared trait variation in native and invasive Impatiens species along a latitudinal gradient in Europe. We found evidence of multiple introductions of the invasive I. glandulifera in Europe. Despite multiple introductions, there was a strong loss of genetic diversity in the invasive populations compared to native populations from Kashmir, India. Furthermore, loss of genetic diversity in the invasive populations does not constrain evolution of adaptive genetic differentiation. In another study, we did not find evidence that the species developed increased plasticity after introduction. A comparative study between a native, Impatiens noli-tangere, and an invasive species, Impatiens parviflora, showed that latitude has stronger effect on the performance of the invasive species in terms of plant height than on the native species. Surprisingly, the invasive species performed better under low nitrogen compared to high nitrogen conditions along the latitudinal gradient indicating that the invasive species is not constrained by low nitrogen conditions. All together these findings suggest that invasive species loose genetic variation, and do not adapt into more aggressive invasives, but they do evolve rapid adaptations to broad-scale environmental conditions in their introduced rang