An assessment of the livelihood vulnerability of the riverbank erosion hazard and its impact on food security for rural households in Bangladesh

As the effects of climate change and hazards are starting to be felt worldwide, there are certain frontline countries that are most at risk and Bangladesh is genuinely at risk in terms of its economic viability and food security unless its citizens develop adaptation strategies to compensate for these effects. This study analyses how the impacts of climate change and hazards (specifically riverbank erosion) are already jeopardising the livelihood and food security of rural riparian (riverbank and char) households in Bangladesh, compromising their access to arable land, and thereby holding back their potential for both sustenance and economic development. The researcher has conducted extensive research in two severe riverbank erosion-prone districts in Bangladesh to assess the severity of these problems and to seek the strategies the affected people deploy to offset the effects. This study takes a holistic approach to two key vulnerability assessment methods – the Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) and the Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI). Importantly, this study also develops an indicator-based Resilience Capacity Index (RCI) in order to understand the factors influencing the resilience capacity of these households. This study reveals that the LVI and CVI values are different between char (sandbar) and riverbank communities: households inhabiting char lands display the most vulnerability to climate change and hazards. Also, riparian households are found to be vulnerable due to their relative inaccessibility and low livelihood status which, coupled with the impact of the climate on river morphology, are causing erosion and a loss of land with a consequent decrease in economic potential, thereby perpetuating a cycle of poverty. Creating employment opportunities, increasing the level of education and ensuring access to food, water and health services are potential strategies that are likely to enhance the resilience capacity of such vulnerable households in Bangladesh. In regards to food security, more than 50% of the households are in the ‘food insecure’ category, with a per capita calorie consumption of 12% less than the standard minimum daily requirement. The estimated low Food Security Index (FSI) value indicates that these households can usually manage food twice per day for their family members. The results of logit modelling indicate that household size, educational attainment, adoption of livestock and access to non-farm earnings are important determinants of household food security. This study also finds new evidence that suggests access to improved health care also needs policy support in parallel with improved access to food to achieve and to sustain long-term food security in Bangladesh. Properly targeted income transfers and credit programs along with infrastructure and human development programs in the erosion-affected areas across the country may have very high payoffs by improving food security, and thus, reducing poverty in the long-term. To build resilience, households are autonomously adopting adaptation strategies such as diversifying crops, tree plantation (generally by large and medium farmers), and homestead gardening and migration (generally by small and landless farmers). However, some important barriers to adaptation are felt heterogeneously among the farming groups: among these are access to credit and a lack of information on appropriate adaptation strategies. The results of multi-nominal logit modelling indicate that the choice of an adaptation strategy is influenced significantly by a household head’s education, household income, farm category, access to institutions and social capital. To support adaptation locally and to enhance households’ resilience to cope better with riverbank hazards and other climate change issues, government intervention through planned adaptation such as access to institutions, credit facilities and a package of technologies through agro-ecologically based research are required. This study has contributed to our knowledge base through tailoring various theories and approaches in the context of riparian households in Bangladesh. The innovative coping and adaptation strategies could provide new insights for households in other hazard-prone regions in the world. The analytical framework used for assessing vulnerability, resilience, household food security and adaptation strategies should be replicated in other countries having similar characteristics to Bangladesh that are experiencing adverse impacts from climate change

Social Capital and the Use of Traditional Birth Attendant: is IT Relevant?

Using the services of traditional birth attendants (TBA) in childbirth is considered as one of the maternal mortality determinants in Indonesia. Researchers reported that mothers preferred to have the help of TBAs in childbirth because TBAs have such powers as prayers and mantras that help the delivery process. However, very little is actually known about the factors shaping their preference. This research investigates the role of social capital as to maternal preference for having TBAs in childbirth. A cross sectional data of Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS) 2007 was used. Social capital was measured by social cohesion and community trust. Maternal demographic factors were measured by marital status, employment status, and education. Chi-Square test was used to analyze statistical association. Finally, logistic regression was used to gaugetheir effects on the use of TBAs. The result showed that the existence of social cohesion and trust made a significant impact on the preference for choosing TBAs. In demographic factors, a comparable finding was found only at the educational level. The factors of having childbirth with the help of a traditional birth attendant are complex. An understanding of social context should be taken into consideration in making a serious effort to reduce the maternal mortality rate

Linear stability, transient energy growth and the role of viscosity stratification in compressible plane Couette flow

Linear stability and the non-modal transient energy growth in compressible plane Couette flow are investigated for two prototype mean flows: (a) the {\it uniform shear} flow with constant viscosity, and (b) the {\it non-uniform shear} flow with {\it stratified} viscosity. Both mean flows are linearly unstable for a range of supersonic Mach numbers ($M$). For a given $M$, the critical Reynolds number ($Re$) is significantly smaller for the uniform shear flow than its non-uniform shear counterpart. An analysis of perturbation energy reveals that the instability is primarily caused by an excess transfer of energy from mean-flow to perturbations. It is shown that the energy-transfer from mean-flow occurs close to the moving top-wall for ``mode I'' instability, whereas it occurs in the bulk of the flow domain for ``mode II''. For the non-modal analysis, it is shown that the maximum amplification of perturbation energy, $G_{\max}$, is significantly larger for the uniform shear case compared to its non-uniform counterpart. For $\alpha=0$, the linear stability operator can be partitioned into ${\cal L}\sim \bar{\cal L} + Re^2{\cal L}_p$, and the $Re$-dependent operator ${\cal L}_p$ is shown to have a negligibly small contribution to perturbation energy which is responsible for the validity of the well-known quadratic-scaling law in uniform shear flow: $G(t/{\it Re}) \sim {\it Re}^2$. A reduced inviscid model has been shown to capture all salient features of transient energy growth of full viscous problem. For both modal and non-modal instability, it is shown that the {\it viscosity-stratification} of the underlying mean flow would lead to a delayed transition in compressible Couette flow

Optical Backplane Based on Ring-Resonators: Scalability and Performance Analysis for 10Gb/s OOK-NRZ

The use of architectures that implement optical switching without any need of optoelectronic conversion allows us to overcome the limits imposed by today’s electronic backplane, such as power consumption and dissipation, as well as power supply and footprint requirements. We propose a ring-resonator based optical backplane for router line-card interconnection. In particular we investigate how the scalability of the architecture is affected by the following parameters: number of line cards, switching-element round-trip losses, frequency drifting due to thermal variations, and waveguide-crossing effects. Moreover, to quantify the signal distortions introduced by filtering operations, the bit error rate for the different parameter conditions are shown in case of an on-off keying non-return-to-zero (OOK-NRZ) input signal at 10 Gb/s

AN OVERALL VIEW ON GEMSTONE MINING IN GILGIT-BALTISTAN: PROBLEMS AND MITIGATIONS

Gilgit-Baltistan has tremendous amount of gemstone wealth and thousands of miners are busy to explore this wealth, but due to unscientific and crude mining methods this mineral wealth goes into waste in many ways, like fractures, damages and total destructions of gemstone due to ill blasting methods and lack of proper training. Gemstone mining is done in all districts of Gilgit-Baltistan. According to a careful survey in July 2007, 32 types of Gemstones (Precious and Semiprecious) are found in GB, out of total production of gemstones produced in Pakistan 95% come from GB. According to this survey there are more than 2000 mines which produce different variety of gemstones and numbers of miners involved in this mining industry directly or indirectly are more than 25000.  Due to these crude and unscientific mining methods, improper camps without hygienic facilities, lack of proper mining equipment, lack of basic health facilities and safety tools and lack of mining equipment repairing facilities at mining sites, number of problems are arising. These problems include damage to the fauna and flora in mining areas, damage to the eco system due to blasting and flow of people; mountains are becoming vulnerable due to improper mines development, glaciers melting due to use of thermal generators, spreading of human filth and waste like plastic and at last polluting of the water. This research is based on the mitigation of all these problems to some extent. The damage to the fauna and flora may be reduced by controlling spreading of human filth and waste, controlled blasting may be done by using modern blasting techniques, proper mines of international standard may be developed by enforcing the mining rules, use of thermal generators may be prohibited by developing small hydro projects at sites and at last pollution of water may be controlled by training people to adopt the cleanliness drives time to time and equipment repairing facilities at sites as well.  &nbsp

Analisis Titik Pulang Pokok USAha Bawang Goreng pada C.v Duta Agrolestari di Kotapalu

Palu fried onion is one of the leading commodity in Palu. Unlike the other onions from Java,fried onions from Palu, Sigi, and even Donggala have a unique taste and aroma. This study aims to determine the physical production, the cost of production, selling price and the amount of revenue that the CV Duta Agrolestarireceived on fried onions in thebusiness. Therefore the business achieve break-even point. The results indicate that on average the business produce about 2600 kg fried onions per month. CV Agro Lestari must pay the total cost of production without packaging of Rp . 283.655.960. With the price of Rp.160.000/kg, obtained revenue about Rp.416.000.000, so the average income earned about Rp.132.344.040. The results of the analysis showed that the fried onions business of CV. Duta Agrolestari will achieve the break-even point if the revenue reached Rp.30.720.000/bulan or on average production reached as much as 192 kg per month, with a selling price of Rp.160.000/kg

Stopping power of hot QCD plasma

The partonic energy loss has been calculated taking both the hard and soft contributions for all the $2 \to 2$ processes, revealing the importance of the individual channels. Cancellation of the intermediate separation scale has been exhibited. Subtleties related to the identical final state partons have properly been taken into account. The estimated collisional loss is compared with its radiative counter part. We show that there exists a critical energy ($E_c$) below which the collisional loss is more than its radiative counterpart. In addition, we present closed form formulas for both the collision probabilities and the stopping power ($dE/dx$)Comment: revised version, section added, 9pages with 5 figure

Origin of Magnetic Circular Dichroism in GaMnAs: Giant Zeeman Splitting versus Spin Dependent Density of States

We present a unified interpretation of experimentally observed magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) in the ferromagnetic semiconductor (Ga,Mn)As, based on theoretical arguments, which demonstrates that MCD in this material arises primarily from a difference in the density of spin-up and spin-down states in the valence band brought about by the presence of the Mn impurity band, rather than being primarily due to the Zeeman splitting of electronic states.Comment: 4+ pages, 4 figure