Role of Asia-Pacific Regions in Partnering UN SDGs

The research paper identifies broad strategies for accelerating transformative change processes in the form of mission orientation and mobilizing the public and stakeholders, aligning systems, readying institutions and people for change, policy making for managing complexity which are considered to be the building blocks in the Asia Pacific region. The focus of the research study is on the growth, development, economics of peace, role and impact of SDGs on the economies and societies in general including justice, peace building, developing strong institutions and in transforming the region into an international hub to achieve the SDGs and the broader agenda of UN 2030 including the overall development of the Asia-Pacific region in the long run. The paper studies the aspects of the inter-linkages between Governments and other stakeholders to deliver the ‘decade of action towards SDG’, particularly in the aftermath of COVID-19. It is observed that COVID-19 pandemic has created many gaps in social protection systems and wider policies for delivering public goods with devastating effects on the poorest and utmost vulnerable in the Asia-Pacific region. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal Summit held in 2019 had identified six transformative areas to accelerate progress towards the SDGs. In fact, these transformative areas present development challenges that are interlinked, complex and integrate goals and targets across the SDG framework which are strengthening human well-being and capabilities, shifting towards sustainable and just economies, securing the global environmental commons. A proposed action plan with regional interventions in the Asia-Pacific region, alignment with the goals and outcomes of the UNFPA strategic plan 2018-2021 and the Roadmap of PIFS in accelerating the SDGs have been delineated in the study

LOCAL PROPERTY OF A FACTORED FOURIER SERIES USING ABSOLUTE NORLUND INDEXED-SUMMABILITY

In this paper we have established a theorem on the local property of absolute Norlund indexed-summability of  Factored Fourier series

A study on the proportion of hearing impairment among percussionists in Thrissur district of Kerala

Background: Hearing loss is a cause of global concern. Percussionists are exposed to greater levels of continuous or intermittent noise than others. Little is known about the relationship between percussion activity and hearing impairment. The early detection of the same and subsequent management makes a significant reduction in the burden of health care services. The objective was to study the proportion of hearing impairment in percussionists in the district of Thrissur using an IOS based mobile application.Methods: A cross sectional study was done on percussionists from Thrissur district who has experience of more than five years and has no congenital or traumatic hearing loss. A predesigned semi structured questionnaire was given and hearing tests were done using a mobile application U hear in a sound proof setting to understand the current state of hearing ability amoung the percussionists.Results: A total of 39 subjects were involved in our study of which all were males. Mean age of our study population was 30.44+12.04. most of them were diagnosed with at least mild degree of hearing loss of one of the ear or both the ears. 15.4% of them had mild degree of hearing loss, 64.1% had moderate degree of hearing loss and 20.5% had severe hearing loss.Conclusions: The study shows percussionists are more exposed to sounds of various frequencies for longer duration, they are more prone to hearing loss. The study brought out that age is directly proportional to hearing loss, music induced hearing loss progress at a rate proportion to the work experience.

Coconut (Cocos nucifera)-based farming system: a viable land use option for small and marginal farmers in coastal Odisha

An investigation was carried out during 2012-2013 in Puri district of Odisha to study the composition, structure and role of coconut (Cocos nucifera L.) based farming in 15 different holding sizes, i.e. 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 and 1.5 acre. The experiment was laid out in randomised block design with three replications. The smaller holdings were found close to houses as homegardens and comparatively larger holdings were found little away from the houses. The composition was found very diverse consisting of perennial trees, annual crops and seasonal crops. The coconut based agroforestry systems of various sizes are playing important role for the household which include productive role, protective and ameliorative role, recreational and educational role as well as developmental role giving various kinds of tangible and intangible benefits. As the natural forest cover is less in coastal Odisha, a substantial quantity of fuel wood was found to be derived from homegarden and the contribution of fuel wood production increased with increase of holding size up to 1.2 acre. The net return varied from Rupees 5 617 to Rupees 32 850/annum showing the income level increased with increase in holding size, while the economics was calculated on acre basis, the net income ranged from Rupees 56 167 to Rupees 21 900 indicating decreasing trend towards higher holding sizes. In terms of market orientation, the smaller unit sizes were found more subsistence and less commercial than bigger holding sizes and vice versa. The coconut based agroforestry system of size 0.8 acre (perennials-coconut, siris, rain tree, eucalyptus, acacia, areca nut, mango, sissoo, teak, jackfruit, bamboo, guava, pomegranate, papaya, drumstick, bael, citrus, banana, curry leaf ; seasonals-pine apple, yam, arrowroot, turmeric, ginger, brinjal, okra, bitter gourd, ridge gourd, chilli, greens, cowpea, tomato, cauliflower, pumpkin; mushroom-paddy straw/oyster; fish- rohu, silver crap, grass crap; cattle, buffalo, goat, poultry, duck) was found to be the best among the holding sizes studied with regard to viability of landuse

Inflation as a probe of new physics

In this paper we consider inflation as a probe of new physics near the string or Planck scale. We discuss how new physics can be captured by the choice of vacuum, and how this leads to modifications of the primordial spectrum as well as the way in which the universe expands during inflation. Provided there is a large number of fields contributing to the vacuum energy -- as typically is expected in string theory -- we will argue that both types of effects can be present simultaneously and be of observational relevance. Our conclusion is that the ambiguity in choice of vacuum is an interesting new parameter in serious model building.Comment: 14 page

Geodesic motion in the space-time of a cosmic string

We study the geodesic equation in the space-time of an Abelian-Higgs string and discuss the motion of massless and massive test particles. The geodesics can be classified according to the particles energy, angular momentum and linear momentum along the string axis. We observe that bound orbits of massive particles are only possible if the Higgs boson mass is smaller than the gauge boson mass, while massless particles always move on escape orbits. Moreover, neither massive nor massless particles can ever reach the string axis for non-vanishing angular momentum. We also discuss the dependence of light deflection by a cosmic string as well as the perihelion shift of bound orbits of massive particles on the ratio between Higgs and gauge boson mass and the ratio between symmetry breaking scale and Planck mass, respectively.Comment: 20 pages including 14 figures; v2: references added, discussion on null geodesics extended, numerical results adde

The conceptual and practical ethical dilemmas of using health discussion board posts as research data.

Increasing numbers of people living with a long-term health condition are putting personal health information online, including on discussion boards. Many discussion boards contain material of potential use to researchers; however, it is unclear how this information can and should be used by researchers. To date there has been no evaluation of the views of those individuals sharing health information online regarding the use of their shared information for research purposes

Exact spectrum of scalar field perturbations in a radiation deformed closed de Sitter universe

We observe that the equation of motion for a free scalar field in a closed universe with radiation and a positive cosmological constant is given by Lam\'e's equation. Computing the exact power spectrum of scalar field perturbations, the presence of both curvature and radiation produces a red tilt weakly dependent on the amount of radiation.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figure

Localized D-dimensional global k-defects

We explicitly demonstrate the existence of static global defect solutions of arbitrary dimensionality whose energy does not diverge at spatial infinity, by considering maximally symmetric solutions described by an action with non-standard kinetic terms in a D+1 dimensional Minkowski space-time. We analytically determine the defect profile both at small and large distances from the defect centre. We verify the stability of such solutions and discuss possible implications of our findings, in particular for dark matter and charge fractionalization in graphene.Comment: 6 pages, published versio