Yarsagumba Collection and Marketing: a Key Income Source of People in Api Nampa Conservation Area, Darchula, Nepal

Yarsagumba the Himalayan gold rush is the major part of the economy of the himalayan people in the Darchula distict. Our study was conducted in Khandeshwori region of the the Darchula district to quantify the contribution of Yarsagumba on the total household income of the harvester and to reveal the problems releated to its harvesting and selling. Income from Yarshagumba accounted upto 68% in this region. Geo-physical problems were observed most during collection along with significant conflicts and lower productivity. Price variation is the major market problem of those Yarshagumba harvesting peoples. Social factors like family size, adult members and educational factors have significant impact in total collection and income. The highest price obtained was Rs.18408.33, average price was Rs.15308.33 and the lowest price was Rs. 10205. Benefit to cost or expenses (BC) ratio found in research area was 5.13. Having sharp eye vision school children were taken for the collection and have to leave school for time. Although the data is emerging on medicinal use and market of Yarshagumba little systematic research has explored village level harvesting practice and socioeconomic impacts, especially in this region of Nepal

Dynamic instability of microtubules: effect of catastrophe-suppressing drugs

Microtubules are stiff filamentary proteins that constitute an important component of the cytoskeleton of cells. These are known to exhibit a dynamic instability. A steadily growing microtubule can suddenly start depolymerizing very rapidly; this phenomenon is known as ``catastrophe''. However, often a shrinking microtubule is ``rescued'' and starts polymerizing again. Here we develope a model for the polymerization-depolymerization dynamics of microtubules in the presence of {\it catastrophe-suppressing drugs}. Solving the dynamical equations in the steady-state, we derive exact analytical expressions for the length distributions of the microtubules tipped with drug-bound tubulin subunits as well as those of the microtubules, in the growing and shrinking phases, tipped with drug-free pure tubulin subunits. We also examine the stability of the steady-state solutions.Comment: Minor corrections; final published versio

A model for bidirectional traffic of cytoskeletal motors

We introduce a stochastic lattice gas model including two particle species and two parallel lanes. One lane with exclusion interaction and directed motion and the other lane without exclusion and unbiased diffusion, mimicking a micotubule filament and the surrounding solution. For a high binding affinity to the filament, jam-like situations dominate the system's behaviour. The fundamental process of position exchange of two particles is approximated. In the case of a many-particle system, we were able to identify a regime in which the system is rather homogenous presenting only small accumulations of particles and a regime in which an important fraction of all particles accumulates in the same cluster. Numerical data proposes that this cluster formation will occur at all densities for large system sizes. Coupling of several filaments leads to an enhanced cluster formation compared to the uncoupled system, suggesting that efficient bidirectional transport on one-dimensional filaments relies on long-ranged interactions and track formation.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figure

Competition of coarsening and shredding of clusters in a driven diffusive lattice gas

We investigate a driven diffusive lattice gas model with two oppositely moving species of particles. The model is motivated by bi-directional traffic of ants on a pre-existing trail. A third species, corresponding to pheromones used by the ants for communication, is not conserved and mediates interactions between the particles. Here we study the spatio-temporal organization of the particles. In the uni-directional variant of this model it is known to be determined by the formation and coarsening of ``loose clusters''. For our bi-directional model, we show that the interaction of oppositely moving clusters is essential. In the late stages of evolution the cluster size oscillates because of a competition between their `shredding' during encounters with oppositely moving counterparts and subsequent "coarsening" during collision-free evolution. We also establish a nontrivial dependence of the spatio-temporal organization on the system size

Nanoparticles to Nanoholes: Fabrication of Porous GaN with Precisely Controlled Dimension via the Enhanced GaN Decomposition by Au Nanoparticles

Porous GaN exhibits unique optoelectronic, chemical, and physical properties such as shift of band gap, increased surface area ratio, excellent chemical, mechanical, and thermal stability as well as efficient luminescence as compared to its bulk counterpart. Herein, we demonstrate a precise, efficient, and still cost-effective method of the fabrication of porous GaN through the enhanced GaN decomposition by using Au nanoparticles (NPs) as a catalyst, in which the size, density, and shape of the pores (nanoholes, NHs) can be precisely controlled. By the thermal annealing assisted with the Au NPs, the NHs are successfully fabricated, and the existence of Au NPs significantly accelerate the GaN decomposition at the interface between the NPs and GaN due to the Ga absorption by the Au NPs. We systematically study the formation mechanism of NHs assisted by the Au NPs by means of annealing temperature, duration, and Au deposition amount, and the results are systematically analyzed and discussed

A Phenotype of Early Infancy Predicts Reactivity of the Amygdala in Male Adults

One of the central questions that has occupied those disciplines concerned with human development is the nature of continuities and discontinuities from birth to maturity. The amygdala plays a central role in the processing of novelty and emotion in the brain. While there is considerable variability among individuals in the reactivity of the amygdala to novel and emotional stimuli, the origin of these individual differences is not well understood. Four month old infants called high reactive (HR) demonstrate a distinctive pattern of vigorous motor activity and crying to specific unfamiliar visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli in the laboratory. Low-reactive infants show the complementary pattern. Here we demonstrate that the HR infant phenotype predicts greater amygdalar reactivity to novel faces almost two decades later in adults. A prediction of individual differences in brain function at maturity can be made on the basis of a single behavioural assessment made in the laboratory at four months of age. This is the earliest known human behavioural phenotype that predicts individual differences in patterns of neural activity at maturity. These temperamental differences rooted in infancy may be relevant to understanding individual differences in vulnerability and resilience to clinical psychiatric disorder. Males who were HR infants showed particularly high-levels of reactivity to novel faces in the amygdala that distinguished them as adults from all other sex/temperament subgroups, suggesting that their amygdala is particularly prone to engagement by unfamiliar faces. These findings underline the importance of taking gender into account when studying the developmental neurobiology of human temperament and anxiety disorders. The genetic study of behavioral and biologic intermediate phenotypes (or “endophenotypes”) indexing anxiety-proneness offers an important alternative to examining phenotypes based on clinically-defined disorder. Because the HR phenotype is characterized by specific patterns of reactivity to elemental visual, olfactory, and auditory stimuli, well before complex social behaviors such as shyness or fearful interaction with strangers can be observed, it may be closer to underlying neurobiological mechanisms than behavioral profiles observed later in life. This possibility, together with the fact that environmental factors have less time to impact the four-month phenotype, suggests that this temperamental profile may be a fruitful target for high-risk genetic studies.Psycholog

Commercialization challenges of adsorbent materials for water and wastewater treatment

Abstract. Adsorption is commonly used to remove low-concentration natural organic matter or industrial contaminants from drinking water to improve the water’s taste, color, or safety. Adsorption is carried out with adsorbents, which are solid materials. Scientific research on adsorbent materials has increased exponentially, resulting in rapid advancements in preparation methods, chemical modification, and adsorbent quality assurance, revealing remarkable capacities to absorb organic and inorganic pollutants from natural water and industrial wastewater. However, the experimental new adsorbent materials are only seldomly productized and commercialized despite extensive research. The goal of the thesis was to facilitate the commercialization processes of adsorbent materials for water and wastewater treatment through productization. To achieve the goal, a productization platform for adsorbent materials was first developed through a literature review of business models, productization, and the new technology introduction. The second step was to perform qualitative research. Companies in Finland that represent adsorbent materials producers and vendors, consultants providing water treatment design services, and end-users of adsorbent materials were interviewed for the empirical research. The assessments of the opportunities and challenges in the adsorbent materials productization are based on the analysis of the current status of the interviewed companies. Finally, the research results and the concept of the literature review were combined to recommend a reference business model and productization structure of adsorbent materials for water and wastewater treatment. Clarifying offerings and building a business strategy to support the commercialization of the offering are the two aspects of the productization platform for adsorbent materials. The empirical results led to a determination of the water and wastewater treatment requirements and customer expectations. Materials, legislation and standards, cost, customer, and logistics were listed as the five most important water and wastewater treatment requirements, followed by a long list of consumers (companies with water and wastewater treatment plants) expectations (adsorbent materials should be legally proven, tested, validated, cost-effective, previously used for the same purpose, marketed, etc. ). These requirements and expectations indicate that an adsorbent materials manufacturer, distributor, and service provider should have compelling business models. A business model assists in integrating needs and expectations into the product application by understanding and linking the product’s commercial and technical structure, which results in a commercially successful product. As a result, even though companies face numerous challenges, the productization of adsorbent materials offers innumerable opportunities. Conclusively, a constructive and descriptive business model, as well as a productization framework, were recommended. An effective business plan and perfect productization of the adsorbent materials can aid in commercializing novel adsorbent materials. "The offerings (adsorbent materials) can be offered as — adsorbent materials as a product-oriented and adsorbent materials as a result-oriented," was the key recommendation for commercializing novel adsorbent materials

Electron-Spin Excitation Coupling in an Electron Doped Copper Oxide Superconductor

High-temperature (high-Tc) superconductivity in the copper oxides arises from electron or hole doping of their antiferromagnetic (AF) insulating parent compounds. The evolution of the AF phase with doping and its spatial coexistence with superconductivity are governed by the nature of charge and spin correlations and provide clues to the mechanism of high-Tc superconductivity. Here we use a combined neutron scattering and scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) to study the Tc evolution of electron-doped superconducting Pr0.88LaCe0.12CuO4-delta obtained through the oxygen annealing process. We find that spin excitations detected by neutron scattering have two distinct modes that evolve with Tc in a remarkably similar fashion to the electron tunneling modes in STS. These results demonstrate that antiferromagnetism and superconductivity compete locally and coexist spatially on nanometer length scales, and the dominant electron-boson coupling at low energies originates from the electron-spin excitations.Comment: 30 pages, 12 figures, supplementary information include