A Trapeze Act: Women Balancing Paid Work and Unpaid Care Work in Nepal

Despite high rates of labour force participation by women in Nepal, there has been very little engagement by communities and the state on the issue of women’s ‘double burden’ of balancing unpaid care work with paid labour activities. The ‘Balancing paid work and unpaid care work – Nepal’ research study aims to create knowledge about how women’s economic empowerment (WEE) policy and programming can generate a ‘double boon’, i.e. paid work that empowers women and provides more support to their unpaid care work responsibilities. Research discussed in this report looks at two WEE programmes in Nepal: (1) a state programme, the Karnali Employment Programme; and (2) a non-state programme, Oxfam Nepal’s Enterprise Development Programme. One of the stark conclusions of the study is that women are currently unable to balance their paid and unpaid care work due to several factors: the lack of availability of decent employment opportunities in rural areas; a lack of quality public resources and services; migration of men; a lack of assets such as land; and prevailing gender norms, especially around women’s participation in unpaid care work and mobility. The report makes recommendations at state, non-state, market, community and family levels. Programmes aimed at women’s empowerment need to have a care perspective in their design and implementation, and grass-roots-level communication and advocacy needs to be encouraged and implemented, in order to reduce women’s ‘double burden’ and move towards a’ double boon’.Department for International Development (DFID)William and Flora Hewlett FoundationInternational Development Research Centre (IDRC

Care Responsiveness of Livelihoods Programming: The Enterprise Development Programme, Oxfam Nepal

Oxfam launched the Enterprise Development Programme (EDP) in Nepal in 2011. As a livelihoods programme, it aims to develop capabilities and markets for small rural enterprises, with a specific focus on women. The programme targets those agricultural sub-sectors that create opportunities for women at various levels, including at the levels of production, access to the market and leadership and management. This Programmatic Note examines Nepal’s EDP programme to understand how women’s economic empowerment (WEE) policy and programming can generate a ‘double boon’ – paid work that empowers women and provides more support for their unpaid care work responsibilities. It discusses what works for and what hinders a “double boon’, and makes suggestions on what steps can be taken in order to engender a double boon.Department for International Development (DFID)International Development Research Centre (IDRC)William and Flora Hewlett Foundatio

Efficient and Cost-effective Drone – NDVI system for Precision Farming

The motive of the project is to develop a under budget system that automates the process of farming by interfacing cutting edge technologies like Drones and ‘NDVI’ to improve the level of productivity in Agriculture. Humans and satellites have a hard time beating a drone’s eye for detail in scanning farming systems from above. Flying below the clouds, collecting and sending images in almost real-time, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) gained ground quickly in agriculture in the last decade as part of so-called precision agriculture. Among their wide range of applications, they can help farmers check crops’ health, track livestock, plan fertilization, assess damages, and map fields at high-resolution. But all this comes with a cost. Currently the models of drones used for such applications cost extensively higher, which makes it unfeasible for the small farmers, especially in India. The projects aim on designing a drone system that can work on both autonomous as well as manual mode and perform mapping, inspecting and spraying processes with efficiency accuracy and considerably good speed which can help boosting the profits of the farmers with large as well as small agricultural lands. As there are lots of restrictions on Drone flight in India. The project aims to follow and implements all the norms stated by the government. (e.g., Permission before flight). The project aims towards overcoming all the above-mentioned problems by automating the procedure

Efficacy of nanomaterials for sustainable crop productivity of Capsicum (Capsicum annuum L.) var. Rani under naturally ventilated polyhouse

Nanomaterials, as a source of plant nutrients, play a significant role in cellular metabolism and nutrients uptake by plants, so they have the potential to improve the growth and productivity of Capsicum. A replicated field trial was carried out in 3 x 3 factors Randomized Block Design (RBD) with two factors viz., micronutrients (Cu, B and Mn) and nanomaterials (nano-Fe, nano-Zn and nano-Mg) applied at the rate of 1000 ppm to explore efficacy of nanomaterials and micronutrient for enhancing productivity of Capsicum (Capsicum annuum L.) var. Rani. The layout of experimental area was designed to accommodate 9 treatments (3 x 3) and a control (without treating with micronutrients and nanomaterials). Inside the naturally ventilated polyhouse, the raised beds (height-30 cm, length-50 m, width-90 cm and bed spacing-60 cm) were prepared for the transplanting capsicum seedlings. Application of nano-Zn and/or nano-Fe @ 1000 ppm in combination with borax and/or CuSO4 @ 1000 ppm was significant (p<0.05) for improving various plant growth and productivity parameters of Capsicum. The combined application of nano-Zn with borax or CuSO4 and nano-Fe with borax or CuSO4 (@ 1000 ppm each) was the effective approach for improvement in plant height, number of leaves, number of flowers, number of fruits, yield plant-1 and estimated yield hectare-1. The experimental findings of the present study confirm the necessities of nanomaterials as a nutrient source for enhancing capsicum's productivity to achieve food and nutritional security and promote sustainable agriculture, inclusive and sustainable economic growth of the farming community

Making Karnali Employment Programme More Care-Responsive

The Karnali Employment Programme (KEP) was launched by the Government of Nepal in 2006 with the slogan of ‘ek ghar ek rojgar’ (one household, one job). The aim was to provide at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment, per fiscal year, to households living in extreme poverty without any other source of income in five districts of Karnali zone. A further objective was also to create local public assets that would contribute to enhancing local livelihoods in the longer term. This Programmatic Note examines the KEP programme’s potential to achieve women’s economic empowerment that generates a ‘double boon’ – paid work that empowers women and provides more support for their unpaid care work responsibilities. The research was conducted in two sites in Jumla - Chandannath and Depalgaon. In both sites, the main source of livelihood for low-income households was subsistence agriculture and non-agricultural wage work, especially related to masonry and construction related work. Women from poor households are also engaged in multiple low-income paid work such as agricultural labour, breaking stones and vegetable farming. The research highlights factors that affect “what works for a ‘double boon’” and also “what hinders a ‘double boon’”.Department for International Development (DFID)International Development Research Centre (IDRC)William and Flora Hewlett Foundatio

Concept of Artavavaha Srotas

In Ayurveda, the concept of Srotas has been propagated very specifically. They are integral part of the body. Body is composed of numerous Srotas which have a significant role in maintenance of equilibrium of body elements. They are responsible for maintenance of health as well as disease condition. Srotas is a channel through which different elements undergo transformation, circulation and transportation. Pathological changes occurs in the body due to Srotodushti, Srotosanga etc

Baymax- Your Mental Health Care Companion - An Artificial Intelligence based Chat bot for Mental Health Care

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and techniques have useful purposes in every domain of mental health care including clinical decision-making, treatments, assessment, self-care, mental health care management and more. Recent technological innovations are highlighted to demonstrate capabilities and opportunities. This application involves an AI based Expert System which can significantly contribute to improving mental health of an individual to lead a better life without any stress or melancholy. The expert system provides expert advice and therapy to overcome negative thoughts. This app can also help to reduce the number of suicides caused due to extreme depression. It is about virtual human conversation with the system to support user’s interaction within a mental health care context. It provides private online healthcare guidance and support where the app can serve the role of a clinician or a psychotherapist.It uses Smartphone technology particularly relevant for applications in Mental health. Recent advances in artificial intelligence are providing an unprecedented ability of online mental health care research and clinical organizations to collect and analyse data that is broader in scope. This application provides a system capable of calculating the depression level using Fuzzy Logic Controller. It sends an alert message to user’s acquaintance thereby preventing the user from causing harm to himself. It tries to imbibe happy thoughts and optimism into the user. Thus, this system can have a meaningful impact on people’s lives by improving their mental health

OCR Using Python and Its Application

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) of papers has tremendous practical value given the prevalence of handwritten documents in human exchanges. A discipline known as optical character recognition makes it possible to convert many kinds of texts or photos into editable, searchable, and analysable data. In the past ten years, academics have developed systems that automatically evaluate printed and handwritten documents to convert them to electronic format. In the modern era, as demand for computer systems arose, the demand to convert paper text and computer vision also erose. To interact the computer with capability to read text from images, videos and images have been arose rapidly and many software companies came in role to fulfil this need. One of the active and difficult study areas in the world of pattern recognition and image processing has been handwriting recognition. Among its many uses are bank checks, reading assistance for the blind, and the conversion of any handwritten document into structural text. The main aim of this paper is to create a searchable pdf from the image and bring the application to easy use and deployable on premises and cloud. &nbsp

Advances in Bosonic Quantum Error Correction with Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill Codes: Theory, Engineering and Applications

Encoding quantum information into a set of harmonic oscillators is considered a hardware efficient approach to mitigate noise for reliable quantum information processing. Various codes have been proposed to encode a qubit into an oscillator -- including cat codes, binomial codes and Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) codes. These bosonic codes are among the first to reach a break-even point for quantum error correction. Furthermore, GKP states not only enable close-to-optimal quantum communication rates in bosonic channels, but also allow for error correction of an oscillator into many oscillators. This review focuses on the basic working mechanism, performance characterization, and the many applications of GKP codes, with emphasis on recent experimental progress in superconducting circuit architectures and theoretical progress in multimode GKP qubit codes and oscillators-to-oscillators (O2O) codes. We begin with a preliminary continuous-variable formalism needed for bosonic codes. We then proceed to the quantum engineering involved to physically realize GKP states. We take a deep dive into GKP stabilization and preparation in superconducting architectures and examine proposals for realizing GKP states in the optical domain (along with a concise review of GKP realization in trapped-ion platforms). Finally, we present multimode GKP qubits and GKP-O2O codes, examine code performance and discuss applications of GKP codes in quantum information processing tasks such as computing, communication, and sensing.Comment: 77+5 pages, 31 figures. Minor bugs fixed in v2. comments are welcome

Complications of gynaecologic laparoscopy: an audit

Background: Minimal access surgery as a modality of treatment for various gynecologic conditions is rapidly gaining grounds in the recent years1. Approximately 30 years after its introduction; the use of laparoscopy in gynecology has evolved from diagnostic purposes into a more coordinated system for the repair or removal of diseased abdominal and pelvic organs. The rapid increase in the number of procedures being performed, the introduction of new equipment, and variability in the training of surgeons all contribute to the complication rate. The objective is to review complications associated with laparoscopic gynecological surgeries and identify associated risk factors.Methods: Hospital based descriptive observational study performed between January 2013 to December 2017 which included all gynecologic laparoscopies performed in present institute. Variables were recorded for patient characteristics, indication for surgery, length of hospital stay (in days), major and minor complications, conversions to laparotomy and postoperative complications. The laparoscopic procedures were divided into three subgroups: Diagnostic cases, tubal sterilization and Advanced operative laparoscopy.Results: Of all 3724 laparoscopies included, overall frequency of major was 1.96 %, and that of minor complications was 3.51%. Of 3724 laparoscopic procedures, 214 complications occurred (5.8% of all procedures) and one death occurred. The level of technical difficulty and existence of prior abdominal surgery were associated with a higher risk of major complications and conversions to laparotomy.Conclusions: Laparoscopic surgery has many advantages, but it is not without complications. Despite rapidly improving technical equipment’s and surgical skill; complication rates and preventable injuries demonstrate continuous pattern. Delayed recognition and intervention add to morbidity and mortality. Each laparoscopic surgeon should be aware of the potential complications, how they can be prevented and managed efficiently