Diversity of use and local knowledge of wild edible plant resources in Nepal

Background Wild edible plants (WEP) provide staple and supplement foods, as well as cash income to local communities, thus favouring food security. However, WEP are largely ignored in land use planning and implementation, economic development, and biodiversity conservation. Moreover, WEP-related traditional knowledge is rapidly eroding. Therefore, we designed this study to fulfill a part of the knowledge gap by providing data on diversity, traditional knowledge, economic potential, and conservation value of WEP from Nepal. Methods The information was collected through focus group discussions and key informant interviews. Percentage of general utility of the plants among the study communities was evaluated using the Chi-square (χ2) test of homogeneity. High priority species were identified after consultation with the local stakeholders followed by scoring based on defined criteria. Pairwise ranking was used to assess ethnoecological knowledge to identify the threats to WEP. Results We documented 81 species belonging to Angiosperms (74), Pteridophytes (5), and Fungi (2). Most of the species were used as fruits (44 species) followed by vegetables (36). Almost half of the species (47%) were also used for purposes other than food. From the species with market value (37% of the total), 10 were identified as high priority species. Pairwise ranking revealed that WEP are threatened mostly by habitat destruction, land-use change and over-harvesting. Some of these plants are crop wild relatives and could thus be used for crop improvement. Interestingly, our study also revealed that young people who spend most of the time in the forest as herdsmen are particularly knowledgeable of wild fruit plants. Conclusion We provide empirical evidence from a relatively large area of Nepal about diversity and status of WEP, as well as methodological insights about the proper knowledge holders to consult. Regarding the unique and important knowledge they have on WEP, young people should be included when recruiting participants to ethnobotanical studies or to any type of consultation about WEP. The habit of using wild edible plants is still alive and is a traditional culinary practice that demonstrates rich traditional knowledge of local people. WEP were found to be important for livelihood as well as showing great potential for crop improvement. Priority species should be promoted for income generation activities through sustainable collection and trade. Communities should engage in minimizing the threats to these valuable resources

AVL based bus priority at traffic signals: a review of architectures and case study

Recent developments in technologies such as Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) and advanced control systems have stimulated new interest in bus priority facilities using traffic signals. The use of AVL systems has generated opportunities for implementing flexible bus-specific priority strategies according to performance. The extent of the opportunities available depends very much on the architecture of a bus priority system, including the location(s) of intelligence determining the priority level and its implementation, and the method of priority request to the traffic signal. These aspects are important from the point of view of bus priority performance, communication requirements and the cost of the system. This paper draws together and compares the various architectures currently being used for AVL-based bus priority, providing an overall review to supplement other papers which are usually concerned with individual systems. The paper reviews current bus priority systems used across Europe under five different architecture categories. The present bus priority architecture in London is then analysed in more detail as a case study. The paper concludes with a discussion of issues for this application, given the continuing advances in locations and communication technologies, and issues for the future

Change in cost and affordability of a typical and nutritionally adequate diet among socio-economic groups in rural Nepal after the 2008 food price crisis

Diet quality is an important determinant of nutrition and food security and access can be constrained by changes in food prices and affordability. Poverty, malnutrition, and food insecurity are high in Nepal and may have been aggravated by the 2008 food price crisis. To assess the potential impact of the food price crisis on the affordability of a nutritionally adequate diet in the rural plains of Nepal, data on consumption patterns and local food prices were used to construct typical food baskets, consumed by four different wealth groups in Dhanusha district in 2005 and 2008. A modelled diet designed to meet household requirements for energy and essential nutrients at minimum cost, was also constructed using the ‘Cost of Diet’ linear programming tool, developed by Save the Children. Between 2005 and 2008, the cost of the four typical food baskets increased by 19% – 26% and the cost of the nutritionally adequate modelled diet increased by 28%. Typical food baskets of all wealth groups were low in macro and micronutrients. Income data for the four wealth groups in 2005 and 2008 were used to assess diet affordability. The nutritionally adequate diet was not affordable for poorer households in both 2005 and 2008. Due to an increase in household income levels, the affordability scenario did not deteriorate further in 2008. Poverty constrained access to nutritionally adequate diets for rural households in Dhanusha, even before the 2008 food price crisis. Despite increased income in 2008, households remain financially unable to meet their nutritional requirements

Community interventions to reduce child mortality in Dhanusha, Nepal: study protocol for a cluster randomized controlled trial

Background: Neonatal mortality remains high in rural Nepal. Previous work suggests that local women's groups can effect significant improvement through community mobilisation. The possibility of identification and management of newborn infections by community-based workers has also arisen.Methods/Design: The objective of this trial is to evaluate the effects on newborn health of two community-based interventions involving Female Community Health Volunteers.MIRA Dhanusha community groups: a participatory intervention with women's groups. MIRA Dhanusha sepsis management: training of community volunteers in the recognition and management of neonatal sepsis. The study design is a cluster randomized controlled trial involving 60 village development committee clusters allocated 1:1 to two interventions in a factorial design.MIRA Dhanusha community groups: Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHVs) are supported in convening monthly women's groups. Nine groups per cluster (270 in total) work through two action research cycles in which they (i) identify local issues around maternity, newborn health and nutrition, (ii) prioritise key problems, (iii) develop strategies to address them, (iv) implement the strategies, and (v) evaluate their success. Cycle 1 focuses on maternal and newborn health and cycle 2 on nutrition in pregnancy and infancy and associated postpartum care practices. MIRA Dhanusha sepsis management: FCHVs are trained to care for vulnerable newborn infants. They (i) identify local births, (ii) identify low birth weight infants, (iii) identify possible newborn infection, (iv) manage the process of treatment with oral antibiotics and referral to a health facility to receive parenteral gentamicin, and (v) follow up infants and support families.Primary outcome: neonatal mortality rates. Secondary outcomes: MIRA Dhanusha community group: stillbirth, infant and under-two mortality rates, care practices and health care seeking behaviour, maternal diet, breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices, maternal and under-2 anthropometric status. MIRA Dhanusha sepsis management: identification and treatment of neonatal sepsis by community health volunteers, infection-specific neonatal mortality

Performance of Tomato with Organic Manures in Plastic Tunnel

Tomato is one of the most demanded vegetable with increasing trend of commercial cultivation in Nepal. As it is the heavy feeder crop thus soil nutrient management has been always challenging. Since, in modern world organic production has been favored by consumers for many reasons thus we aimed to compare the efficacy of various compost, mineral fertilizers and their combinations in tomato production and soil productivity. For the purpose a field experiment in plastic tunnel was carried out in Horticulture Research Division, Khumaltar in two consecutive years (2014 and 2015). Srijana, a popular tomato hybrid among commercial producers, was purposively selected. Eight treatments (control, recommended doses of chemical fertilizers, compost 15 t ha-1 + cattle urine, compost 10 t ha-1 + cattle urine, compost 12.5 t ha-1 + cattle urine, compost 15 t ha-1 + 1/4 recommended dose of chemical fertilizers, compost 10 t ha-1 + ¾ recommended dose of chemical fertilizer and compost 12.5 t ha-1 + 1/2 recommended dose of chemical fertilizer) were laid out in randomized complete block design and replicated thrice. The result showed significant (p < 0.05) positive correlation between the plant height and yield of tomato. The treatment with compost dose of 12.5 t ha-1 with half dose of recommended dose of chemical fertilizers produced the highest incremental yield (85% increment) over other treatments followed by compost 15 t ha-1 with cattle urine. Addition of soil organic carbon, soil nitrogen, soil potassium by the increasing level of compost though not significant, but increment in carbon content, nitrogen content and potassium content of soil observed in successive years. For commercial producer at plastic tunnel, compost at the rate 12.5 t ha-1 with half dose of recommended level of chemical fertilizer (100:90:40 kg N:P:K ha-1) is recommended to apply in field, while for organic producer, application of 15 tha-1 compost with fermented cattle urine is recommended

Agreement between Lea Symbols and Patti Pics visual acuity in children and adults

Background: Patti Pics (PP) and Lea Symbols (LS) are commonly used by eye care practitioners worldwide. Although the relationship between the two tests is fairly well understood, the availability of different chart designs (single optotypes, multiple optotypes, multiple optotypes with crowding box) merits futher understanding. The purpose of this study is to explore the agreement between the acuity measures obtained with Patti Pics and Lea Symbols in children and adults and compare their performance with the Sloan Letter (SL) chart in adults. Methods: Monocular visual acuity was obtained from ninety-three 3 to 5-year-old children using Patti Pics and Lea Symbols. Acuities were also obtained from 113 adults using the same tests under identical conditions. Acuity results obtained with the pediatric tests were compared with the gold-standard Sloan Letter chart in adults. The Bland-Altman method was implemented to compare the level of agreement between tests. Results: Patti Pics yielded worse visual acuity than the Lea Symbols by approximately half a logMAR line in both children (mean difference: -0.07 ± 0.07 logMAR, p <0.01) and adults (Mean difference: -0.05 ± 0.06 logMAR, p <0.01). The 95% limits of agreement between Lea Symbol acuity and Patti pics acuity in children was ± 0.14 logMAR. Mean difference between the Sloan Letter chart and Lea Symbols acuity was not statistically significant (p = 0.08) in adults but the difference was statistically significant between PP and SL (p<0.001). The 95% limits of agreement between LS and SL and between PP and SL was ± 0.19 logMAR and ± 0.22 logMAR, respectively. Conclusion: Patti Pics consistently underestimated visual acuity as compared to Lea Symbols both in children and adults although the differences were not clinically significant. The LS and PP did not yield clinically significant differences in acuities when compared with Sloan letters in adults

Validating an Agency-based Tool for Measuring Women’s Empowerment in a Complex Public Health Trial in Rural Nepal

Despite the rising popularity of indicators of women’s empowerment in global development programmes, little work has been done on the validity of existing measures of such a complex concept. We present a mixed methods validation of the use of the Relative Autonomy Index for measuring Amartya Sen’s notion of agency freedom in rural Nepal. Analysis of think-aloud interviews (n = 7) indicated adequate respondent understanding of questionnaire items, but multiple problems of interpretation including difficulties with the four-point Likert scale, questionnaire item ambiguity and difficulties with translation. Exploratory Factor Analysis of a calibration sample (n = 519) suggested two positively correlated factors (r = 0.64) loading on internally and externally motivated behaviour. Both factors increased with decreasing education and decision-making power on large expenditures and food preparation. Confirmatory Factor Analysis on a validation sample (n = 509) revealed good fit (Root Mean Square Error of Approximation 0.05–0.08, Comparative Fit Index 0.91–0.99). In conclusion, we caution against uncritical use of agency-based quantification of women’s empowerment. While qualitative and quantitative analysis revealed overall satisfactory construct and content validity, the positive correlation between external and internal motivations suggests the existence of adaptive preferences. High scores on internally motivated behaviour may reflect internalized oppression rather than agency freedom

Experimental and Computational Study of Area Printing™ Additive Manufacturing: Inconel 718 and M300 Maraging Steel Density Improvement

The low manufacturing speed of laser-powder bed fusion (LPBF) additive manufacturing has hindered its adoption in conventional manufacturing methods. Large-area pulsed laser powder bed fusion (LAPBF), also known as "Area Printing™", has addressed this limitation by replacing the point laser with a large-area pulsed laser. Each pulse melts a region of the powder bed in the order of square millimeters, which enables scalability without the sacrifice of resolution and high throughput at an equivalent or better quality (in part due to a lack of spatter) when compared to conventional LPBF methods. In this study, process parameters are optimized to achieve near-fulldensity parts, and a computational model is developed to understand the multi-physics governing the process. It is observed that the shallow depth and high aspect ratio of the melt pool lead to a unidirectional solidification front extending along the build direction where grains grow epitaxially, and highly directional microstructures are created.Mechanical Engineerin