Pregnancy and COVID-19: Lessons so far

Since COVID-19 is a new disease, we are still learning how it spreads, what the best prevention measures are and how it affects different groups of people including pregnant women (CDC 2020)

Inequity in the Utilization of Maternal-Health Care Services in South Asia: Nepal, India and Sri Lanka

To review the inequities in utilization of Skilled Birth Attendants (SBA) and institutional delivery services using “Three Delays framework” to categorize and explain socio economic determinants in Nepal, India and Sri Lanka. Design: This is an article review which adopted narrative synthesis (a mixed method approach). Literature search was conducted from a relevant database including: Scopus, ProQuest and PubMed. The search was performed using developed list of search terms to find out published papers from Nepal, India and Sri Lanka. The paper also used data from Nepal Demographic Health Survey (NDHS, 2011), National Family Health Survey, India (NFHS, 2006) and Sri Lanka Demographic Health Survey (DHS, 2007). Findings: From 438 articles, sixteen studies were included, from Nepal, India and Sri Lanka. Findings were organised under three delays themes: (1) deciding to seek health care by women and/or her family, (2) Reaching health care facility and (3) Receiving adequate and appropriate health care at the facility. The evidence from these studies showed wide variation in use of maternal health services exist both between and within respective countries. These differences are affected by education, distance, lack of transportation, cost of transportation and cost of delivery at hospitals. Key conclusions: This study has shown high variations in the use of maternal health care services in South Asian countries. Nepal and India had lower access and higher inequalities in utilization of SBAs at delivery and institutional delivery by socio-economic determinants compared with Sri Lanka

Experimental evaluation of kaolin stabilised with class F fly ash

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of fly ash (FA) in stabilising a kaolin soil through laboratory tests. Kaolin is an example of moderate plasticity clays that require stabilisation methods for construction purposes. The influence of FA on the improvement of kaolin is studied by varying its dosages in the mixtures (0%, 10% to 20%) as well as the cement content, used as an activator in different percentages (5 and 7%). The influence of the dry unit weight and the curing time of the soil mixture is also analysed through unconfined compressive strength and indirect tensile strength tests. The experimental results show that the strength increases linearly with both FA and cement contents. Moreover, higher initial dry unit weights also yield higher final strengths. To further assess the improvement, the application of the porosity over the volumetric cement content ratio, as the main variable, succeeded in attaining a relationship with the strength and the stiffness of the studied soil. Results for the combined effect of the porosity and the volumetric cement on the secant modulus were also determined. Furthermore, a unique relationship was obtained combining porosity, volumetric cement and FA content

Participatory Ranking of Fodders in the Western Hills of Nepal

Fodder is an important source of feed of the ruminants in Nepal. In the mid hills of Nepal, farmers generally practice integrated farming system that combines crop cultivation with livestock husbandry and agroforestry. Tree fodders are good sources of protein during the forage and green grass scarcity periods especially in dry season. Local communities possess indigenous knowledge for the selection of grasses and tree fodders at different seasons in mid hills of western Nepal. A study was conducted on the perception of farmers with respect to selection of fodder species in eight clusters in Kaski and Lumjung districts that range 900-2000 meter above sea level and receive average precipitation of 2000- 4500mm per annum. During the fodder preference ranking, farmers prepared the inventory of fodders found around the villages and nearby forests and selected top ten most important fodders in terms of their availability, palatability, fodder yield, milk yield and milk fat yield. In total, 23 top ranking fodders species were selected from the eight clusters. These fodder species were also ranked using pairwise ranking and weighted scoring methods and ranking was done on the basis of merit numbers obtained from weighted scores. The analysis revealed Artocarpus lakoocha as best tree fodder followed by Ficus semicordata, Thysanolena maxima and Ficus calvata. Similarly, the calendar of fodders trees for lopping season and the best feeding time was prepared on the basis of farmers\u27 local knowledge. This study suggests strategies for promotion of locally preferred tree fodder species and supplementing tree fodder with feed in different seasons depending on their availability and local preferences

Effects of COVID-19 during lockdown in Nepal.

Nepal started its full lockdown on March 24, 2020 and has been extended until 14 June 2020 as a precaution for prevention of COVID-19 infection. However, the strict lockdown has been criticised by many as not all the deaths are caused by COVID-19. The long and strict lockdown have had some negative effects in many aspects of health of an individual in the community. Many women are facing barriers to access maternity health care during the lockdown period and there has been rise in the suicidal behaviour such as sucidal attempt and actual suicide itself among the general population. As the lockdown began in Nepal, all the school and colleges were suspended, and children were forced to spend their time indoors and exams has been postponed leaving the students stressed about the uncertainty of their future. Social distancing, isolation and quarantine at home can result in isolated in an abusive home where there could be even more increase in abuse during such crisis. Millions of babies are missing the routine vaccinations which is a threat to global achievement in immunization. Apart from the rise in negative impact on health of Nepali people, there are other impacts related to health such as serious impacts on logistics and supply management including shortage of medicine and food supply; and impacts on farming including both production and sale. Nepal took several precautionary measures as a response towards COVID-19 such as First, limiting international air travel, sealing the land border-crossings with India and introduction of social distancing measures. However, with rise in deaths due to non COVID related causes and negative impacts on economic and financial condition of the country, there is a need for the country to ease its lockdown. Contact tracing, making face mask mandatory along with social distancing measure can be an alternative to lockdown for Nepal while the country is preparing to ease its lockdown. Social distancing, hygiene, lifestyle factors and PPE measures need to continue for long term, whilst we need to keep working on the big public health issues such as poverty reduction, improving access to health service to achieve universal health coverage

STUDY OF RIVER CHANNEL MIGRATION AND IDENTIFICATION OF POTENTIAL SUGARCANE CULTIVATION AREA IN THE MOHANA-MACHELI WATERSHED USING REMOTE SENSING

Channel migration becomes the main characteristic of major rivers of Mohana-Macheli watershed of western Nepal. Study of river channel migration of major rivers of watershed using freely available remote sensing show that the channel has shifted to as high as 1000 meters from the original river path over the span of 9 years (2009–2017). The channel migration directly affects the land use and it has direct effect on the flood plain settlements of the study area. Cultivation of sugarcane in sand area is one of the mitigating measures of flood effects and prevent river bank erosion. The study shows that the area of sand is changing disproportionately in the region. This paper presents an enhanced change detection method of river channel migration using remotely sensed images and identification of sand area using classification and interpretation technique

The Conducting Ring Viewed as a Wormhole

We compute the exterior Green function for a grounded equi-potential circular ring in two-dimensional electrostatics by treating the system geometrically as a "squashed wormhole" with an image charge located in a novel but obvious position, thereby implementing a method first suggested in 1897 by Sommerfeld. We compare and contrast the strength and location of the image charge in the wormhole picture with that of the conventional point of view where an image charge is located inside the circular ring. While the two viewpoints give mathematically equivalent Green functions, we believe they provide strikingly different physics perspectives. We also comment on earlier Green function results by Hobson in 1900, and by Davis and Reitz in 1971, who applied Sommerfeld's method to analyze a grounded conducting circular disk in three-dimensional electrostatics.Comment: 13 figure

Ensemble Riemannian data assimilation over the Wasserstein space

In this paper, we present an ensemble data assimilation paradigm over a Riemannian manifold equipped with the Wasserstein metric. Unlike the Euclidean distance used in classic data assimilation methodologies, the Wasserstein metric can capture the translation and difference between the shapes of square-integrable probability distributions of the background state and observations. This enables us to formally penalize geophysical biases in state space with nonGaussian distributions. The new approach is applied to dissipative and chaotic evolutionary dynamics, and its potential advantages and limitations are highlighted compared to the classic ensemble data assimilation approaches under systematic errors

FPGA based Security Login System using GSM with OTP Generation

Security of system is major concern in this age of high-tech infrastructure. In today\u27s materialistic world, security holds an in dispensable place. Security in every aspect is highly desirable may be at home or at office etc. as thefts and robberies are increasing day by day. To overcome this security threat, a security system has been proposed using GSM technology, by generating One Time Password and implementing in FPGA. As FPGAs offer all of the features needed to implement most complex designs. This security system activates, authenticates and validates the user and then unlocks the system. This project attempts to create security login systemwhere the user is granted access if he enters the correct predefined password and is denied access if he enter the wrong password. When password is entered GSM gets activated and send SMS to user\u27s mobile phone, after authentication random OTP is generated and should be verified such that the system gets accessed. In every 3 minutes this OTP verification code will change and is valid for 3 minutes. The outcome of each and all would be available in the LCD of the Spartan 3E board. VHDL codes are used to design this system using Xilinx ISE 9.2i