Water poverty in the northeastern hill region (India): potential alleviation through multiple-use water systems: cross-learnings from Nepal Hills

Water poverty index / Construction / Multiple use / Water storage / Farming systems / Villages / Social aspects / Drip irrigation / India / Nepal / Nagaland / Mon district / Lampong Sheanghah

Priority public health interventions and research agendas in post-earthquake Nepal

The occurrence of natural disasters including earthquake is becoming more frequent phenomena worldwide. All these disasters trigger huge damages to infrastructure, economies as well as population health. Nepal’s earthquake in 2015 has multiple effects on population health and health services delivery. Many public health facilities, mostly health posts or sub-healthposts, were damaged or completely destroyed. Priority health services such as immunization and antenatal care were also seriously affected. The earthquake has prompted the need for a disaster-related population-health-research agenda as well as renewed disaster strategy in post-earthquake Nepal. Meanwhile, it also unveiled the gap in knowledge and practice regarding earthquake resilience in Nepal. There is an opportunity for school-based and community-based interventions in both disaster preparedness and resilience. Nepal can build on experiences from other countries as well as from its own. We have discussed possible impacts of the Nepal earth- quake on population health and health system infrastructures. We have also suggested possible public health interventions bestowing active awareness among the population and a research agenda in this regard. We strongly urge for the translation of the National Health Policy (2014) into action, as it prioritizes the need of an earthquake resistant infrastructure as well as the implementation of a disaster response pla

Stipulating citizen's fundamental right to healthcare: Inference from the Constitution of Federal Republic of Nepal 2015

Nepal has a great opportunity to learn from, and collaborate with, non-governmental development partners and private sectors, and from other governments and organizations around the world, but we must move promptly

Bianchi type-II cosmological model: some remarks

Within the framework of Bianchi type-II (BII) cosmological model the behavior of matter distribution has been considered. It is shown that the non-zero off-diagonal component of Einstein tensor implies some severe restriction on the choice of matter distribution. In particular for a locally rotationally symmetric Bianchi type-II (LRS BII) space-time it is proved that the matter distribution should be strictly isotropic if the corresponding matter field possesses only non-zero diagonal components of the energy-momentum tensor.Comment: 3 page

Observation of semiannual and annual oscillation in equatorial middle atmospheric long term temperature pattern

Extensive measurement of middle atmospheric temperature with the help of lidar data of more than 10 years (1998–2008) and TIMED/SABER data of 7 years (2002–2008), has been carried out from a low latitude station, Gadanki, India (13.5° N, 79.2° E), which exhibits the presence of semiannual oscillation (SAO) and annual oscillation (AnO). The AnO component is stronger in the mesospheric region (80–90 km) and the SAO is dominant at stratospheric altitudes (30–50 km). Overall, the AnO possesses higher amplitude ~6–7 K, and the SAO shows less amplitude ~1–2 K. The AnO present at 90 km finds crest near summer solstice, and the same at 80 km shows peak near winter solstice with a downward progression speed ~1.7 km/month. The SAO propagates downward with an average phase speed ~9 km/month and phase maximizes around equinox and solstice at 50 and 30 km, respectively. The observed SAO has also shown seasonal asymmetry in peaks

North-South Distribution of Solar Flares during Cycle 23

In this paper, we investigate the spatial distribution of solar flares in the northern and southern hemisphere of the Sun that occurred during the period 1996 to 2003. This period of investigation includes the ascending phase, the maximum and part of descending phase of solar cycle 23. It is revealed that the flare activity during this cycle is low compared to previous solar cycle, indicating the violation of Gnevyshev-Ohl rule. The distribution of flares with respect to heliographic latitudes shows a significant asymmetry between northern and southern hemisphere which is maximum during the minimum phase of the solar cycle. The present study indicates that the activity dominates the northern hemisphere in general during the rising phase of the cycle (1997-2000). The dominance of northern hemisphere is shifted towards the southern hemisphere after the solar maximum in 2000 and remained there in the successive years. Although the annual variations in the asymmetry time series during cycle 23 are quite different from cycle 22, they are comparable to cycle 21.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, 1 table; Accepted for the publication in the proceedings of international solar workshop held at ARIES, Nainital, India on "Transient Phenomena on the Sun and Interplanetary Medium" in a special issue of "Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy (JAA)