Radiation Effects on Medical Grade Polycarbonate Urethane

Polycarbonate Urethane (PCU) is a material of growing prominence for use as a biocompatible material for joint replacements. PCU has good wear properties, is easy to lubricate, and is very compatible with natural tissues. Extensive studies stil have not been performed to fully investigate the radiation effects on PCU components. Thermally stimulated luminescence (TSL) spectroscopy is a powerful tool to study radiation-induced defects in materials, while electron spin resonance (ESR) is a technique to directly detect free radicals in a material. To better investigate radiation effects on PCU materials, we have subjected PCU to X- and UV-irradiation and analyzed the thermally-stimulated luminescence (TSL) and radiation-induced free radicals. The materials used for the study were Bionet hip linear obtained from Active Implants Corporation. The resulting TSL and ESR data were analyzed to obtain new insights into the molecular properrties of Polycarbonate urethane

THE PERCEPTION OF INVESTORS TOWARDS INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING: EVIDENCE OF NEPAL

The main aim of this study is to examine the perception of investors towards initial public offering (IPO), to analyze the relationship between different factors (quality management, company goodwill, company performance, company sector, and market information) and investment decision to examine the factors that impact in IPO to making an investment decision. This research used primary data. The data was collected from 290 respondents which were related to five different brokerage firms at Kathmandu district. The inferential analysis was preferred in SPSS by using statistical tools such as correlation and regression analysis to analyze the relationship between variables and the impact of different factors on investment decisions. The study revealed that quality management, company goodwill, company performance, company sector, and market information are the highly considerable factors before making investment decisions in IPO.   &nbsp

Deception Detection with Feature-Augmentation by soft Domain Transfer

In this era of information explosion, deceivers use different domains or mediums of information to exploit the users, such as News, Emails, and Tweets. Although numerous research has been done to detect deception in all these domains, information shortage in a new event necessitates these domains to associate with each other to battle deception. To form this association, we propose a feature augmentation method by harnessing the intermediate layer representation of neural models. Our approaches provide an improvement over the self-domain baseline models by up to 6.60%. We find Tweets to be the most helpful information provider for Fake News and Phishing Email detection, whereas News helps most in Tweet Rumor detection. Our analysis provides a useful insight for domain knowledge transfer which can help build a stronger deception detection system than the existing literature

Striving for Excellence: The Role of Work-Life Balance in Optimizing Job Performance Among Employees in Nepalese Microfinance Institutions

Purpose: Work-life balance is vital to employee well-being and organizational effectiveness in today's fast-paced, ever-changing workplace. Employee engagement and performance boost Nepal's microfinance industry's financial inclusion and growth. This study examines the relationship of work-life balance, quality of work life, and employee engagement affect microfinance job performance in Nepal. It examines how these characteristics affect employee work performance.   Theoretical Framework: The study stresses work-life balance, quality of work life, and employee engagement as independent variables affecting job performance.   Design/Methodology/Approach: A 210 respondents from 20 Nepalese microfinance institutions (MFIs) completed structured questionnaires for the quantitative study. Work-life balance, quality of work life, employee engagement, and job performance were examined using questionnaire data.   Findings: The findings of the study reveal that work-life balance and employee engagement positively impact job performance. Employees who can strike a healthy balance between work and personal life and are actively engaged in their roles exhibit enhanced job performance.   Research, Practical, and Social Implications: This study impacts BFIs, MFIs, regulatory agencies, HR analysts, and planners. These stakeholders may build supportive work environments that encourage employee well-being and organizational success by understanding the essential linkages between work-life balance, quality of work life, employee engagement, and job performance.   Originality/Value: The study sheds light on how work-life balance, quality of work life, employee engagement, and job performance affect the Nepalese microfinance industry. The study improves microfinance employee performance and well-being by comprehensively addressing these elements

Experience of Professional Development Strategies: Context of Nepalese EFL Teachers

Professional Development (PD) for teachers in developing countries isan emerging emphasis despite limited resources. Evidence regarding theteachers’ experiences of PD activities in developing countries, includingNepal, are not well known. This study aimed to identify and discuss PDstrategies employed by Nepalese English as a foreign language (EFL)teachers and experiences. The study employed a qualitative researchdesign for data collection among 45 EFL teachers recruited from 15 highschools and colleges across the districts of Kathmandu and Lalitpur. Dataon teachers’ age, gender, academic qualification, teaching experience (interms of number of years), and teacher training, their experiences aboutPD and the perceived benefits of the different learning strategies of PDwere collected using a questionnaire. The findings are presented in termsof the four main groups of PD strategies - self-directed, professionrelated,peer-supported and study-(research-) focused. We report that theNepalese EFL teachers have positive experience towards different PDstrategies. The EFL teachers have been benefited mostly from selfdirected(own teaching experience and self -monitoring), professionrelated (workshops, seminars and conferences), and peer-supported(learning from colleagues) PD strategies. The study recommends thatthere is a need for on-going PD activities for EFL teachers in Nepal

NARRATIVES AND IDENTITIES: A CRITICAL REVIEW OF EMPIRICAL STUDIES FROM 2004 TO 2022

Amidst the recent surge in English language teacher identity research, this article systematically reviews existing research studies (n=30) conducted on English language teacher identity across English as a foreign language (EFL), English as a second language (ESL), and native English-speaking contexts that employed narrative inquiry as its methodology. Employing Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) framework, the systematic review identifies major themes on teacher professional identity classifying articles on three broad stages of professional development from student teachers’ identity negotiation to novice teachers’ identity development and experienced teachers’ and teacher educators’ identity construction. It reveals that English language teachers’ identity is influenced by their practice in learning communities in varying contexts, macro factors like gender, race, ideology and discourse, critical incidents and agency, conflicting emotions, teacher education programs, and imagined identity and investing. In addition, the article offers a critical assessment of narrative inquiry in language teacher identity and gives suggestions for future research. Finally, it proposes a preliminary framework on the trajectory of identity construction and its implications for English language curriculum and teacher development

Surviving sensor network software faults

We describe Neutron, a version of the TinyOS operating system that efficiently recovers from memory safety bugs. Where existing schemes reboot an entire node on an error, Neutron’s compiler and runtime extensions divide programs into recovery units and reboot only the faulting unit. The TinyOS kernel itself is a recovery unit: a kernel safety violation appears to applications as the processor being unavailable for 10–20 milliseconds. Neutron further minimizes safety violation cost by supporting “precious ” state that persists across reboots. Application data, time synchronization state, and routing tables can all be declared as pre-cious. Neutron’s reboot sequence conservatively checks that pre-cious state is not the source of a fault before preserving it. Together, recovery units and precious state allow Neutron to reduce a safety violation’s cost to time synchronization by 94 % and to a routing protocol by 99.5%. Neutron also protects applications from losing data. Neutron provides this recovery on the very limited resources of a tiny, low-power microcontroller