Multi-Hazard Risk Assessment of Kathmandu Valley, Nepal

Natural hazards are complex phenomena that can occur independently, simultaneously, or in a series as cascading events. For any particular region, numerous single hazard maps may not necessarily provide all information regarding impending hazards to the stakeholders for preparedness and planning. A multi-hazard map furnishes composite illustration of the natural hazards of varying magnitude, frequency, and spatial distribution. Thus, multi-hazard risk assessment is performed to depict the holistic natural hazards scenario of any particular region. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, multi-hazard risk assessments are rarely conducted in Nepal although multiple natural hazards strike the country almost every year. In this study, floods, landslides, earthquakes, and urban fire hazards are used to assess multi-hazard risk in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), which is then integrated with the Geographical Information System (GIS). First, flood, landslide, earthquake, and urban fire hazard assessments are performed individually and then superimposed to obtain multi-hazard risk. Multi-hazard risk assessment of Kathmandu Valley is performed by pair-wise comparison of the four natural hazards. The sum of observations concludes that densely populated areas, old settlements, and the central valley have high to very high level of multi-hazard risk

Exploring the underlying mechanisms of obesity and diabetes and the potential of Traditional Chinese Medicine: an overview of the literature

Obesity and diabetes are closely related metabolic disorders that have become major public health concerns worldwide. Over the past few decades, numerous studies have explored the underlying mechanisms of these disorders and identified various risk factors, including genetics, lifestyle, and dietary habits. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been increasingly recognized for its potential to manage obesity and diabetes. Weight loss is difficult to sustain, and several diabetic therapies, such as sulfonylureas, thiazolidinediones, and insulin, might make it harder to lose weight. While lifestyle changes should be the primary approach for people interested in lowering weight, drugs are also worth investigating. Since some of the newer glucose-lowering medications that cause weight loss, such as glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) and sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i), are additionally utilized or are under consideration for use as anti-obesity drugs, the frontier between glucose-lowering medication and weight loss drugs appears to be shifting. This review provides an overview of the literature on the underlying mechanisms of obesity and diabetes and the prospect of TCM in their management. We discuss the various TCM interventions, including acupuncture, herbal medicine, and dietary therapy, and their effects on metabolic health. We also highlight the potential of TCM in regulating gut microbiota, reducing inflammation, and improving insulin sensitivity. The findings suggest that TCM may provide a promising approach to preventing and managing obesity and diabetes. However, further well-designed studies are needed to confirm the efficacy and safety of TCM interventions and to elucidate their underlying mechanisms of action

A survey of IEEE 802.15.4 effective system parameters for wireless body sensor networks

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Moravejosharieh, Amirhossein, Lloret, Jaime. (2016). A survey of IEEE 802.15.4 effective system parameters for wireless body sensor networks.International Journal of Communication Systems, 29, 7, 1269-1292. DOI: 10.1002/dac.3098, which has been published in final form at http://doi.org/10.1002/dac.3098. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving[EN] Wireless body sensor networks are offered to meet the requirements of a diverse set of applications such as health-related and well-being applications. For instance, they are deployed to measure, fetch and collect human body vital signs. Such information could be further used for diagnosis and monitoring of medical conditions. IEEE 802.15.4 is arguably considered as a well-designed standard protocol to address the need for low-rate, low-power and low-cost wireless body sensor networks. Apart from the vast deployment of this technology, there are still some challenges and issues related to the performance of the medium access control (MAC) protocol of this standard that are required to be addressed. This paper comprises two main parts. In the first part, the survey has provided a thorough assessment of IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol performance where its functionality is evaluated considering a range of effective system parameters, that is, some of the MAC and application parameters and the impact of mutual interference. The second part of this paper is about conducting a simulation study to determine the influence of varying values of the system parameters on IEEE 802.15.4 performance gains. More specifically, we explore the dependability level of IEEE 802.5.4 performance gains on a candidate set of system parameters. Finally, this paper highlights the tangible needs to conduct more investigations on particular aspect(s) of IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Moravejosharieh, A.; Lloret, J. (2016). A survey of IEEE 802.15.4 effective system parameters for wireless body sensor networks. International Journal of Communication Systems. 29(7):1269-1292. https://doi.org/10.1002/dac.3098S12691292297Alrajeh, N. A., Lloret, J., & Canovas, A. (2014). A Framework for Obesity Control Using a Wireless Body Sensor Network. International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, 10(7), 534760. doi:10.1155/2014/534760Lopes I Silva B Rodrigues J Lloret J Proenca M A mobile health monitoring solution for weight control International Conference on Wireless Communications and Signal Processing (WCSP) Nanjing / China 2011 1 5Singh, N., Singh, A. K., & Singh, V. K. (2015). Design and performance of wearable ultrawide band textile antenna for medical applications. Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, 57(7), 1553-1557. doi:10.1002/mop.29131Lan, K., Chou, C.-M., Wang, T., & Li, M.-W. (2012). 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Flexible beacon scheduling scheme for interference mitigation in body sensor networks. 2012 9th Annual IEEE Communications Society Conference on Sensor, Mesh and Ad Hoc Communications and Networks (SECON). doi:10.1109/secon.2012.6275772Bradai N Fourati LC Kamoun L Performance analysis of medium access control protocol for wireless body area networks 27th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications Workshops (WAINA) Barcelona, Spain 2013 916 921Moravejosharieh A Yazdi ET Study of resource utilization in IEEE 802.15.4 wireless body sensor network, part I: the need for enhancement IEEE 16th International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) Sydney, Australia 2013 1226 1231Moravejosharieh A Yazdi ET Willig A Study of resource utilization in IEEE 802.15.4 wireless body sensor network, part II: greedy channel utilization 19th IEEE International Conference on Networks (ICON) Singapore 2013 1 6Moravejosharieh A Yazdi E Willig A Pawlikowski K Adaptive channel utilisation in IEEE 802.15.4 wireless body sensor networks: continuous hopping approach Australasian Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (ATNAC) Melbourne, Australia 2014 93 98 10.1109/ATNAC.2014.7020880Moravejosharieh, A. 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Magnetic interpretation of north Gebel El Shallul area, central Eastern Desert, Egypt

The present work utilizes the aeromagnetic data supported by geology and remote sensing satellite data, to delineate surface and subsurface structural elements in north Gebel El Shallul area. Geologically, the area is covered by Precambrian basement rocks to the East (metasediments, metavolcanics, Hammamat sediments and younger granites) and Phanerozoic sediments to the West (Nubian Sandstones and Qouseir clastics). The Landsat image of the area gave additional detailed litholgic information which is very useful in identifying and discriminating the different lithologic rocks exposed in the area. Analysis of the structural lineaments of the Landsat image and the compiled geological map show that most of the well-developed structural lineaments have NW, NNW and ENE trends. The aeromagnetic data were analyzed and processed by several advanced techniques; reduction to the pole, regional-residual separation, second vertical derivative (SVD), analytical signal, Euler deconvolution and shadowgrams. The application of local power spectrum on the reduced to North Pole (RTP) aeromagnetic data indicated that the average depths to the near–surface and deep-seated causative magnetic bodies were found to attain 0.5 and 1.8 km, respectively. Therefore, the filtering of the aeromagnetic data at the two assigned interfaces was conducted to assist the discrimination of the residual (near-surface) and regional (deep–seated) magnetic anomalies. The prepared aeromagnetic maps have been interpreted qualitatively and quantitatively to deduce the structural elements which were used to construct a basement tectonic map for the area. The used analysis techniques helped to reveal many structural elements such as faults of different orders, uplifted blocks (antiforms or horsts) and subsided blocks (basins or synforms). It has been found that the NNW pronounced linear magnetic anomalies, normally and reversely magnetized, are associated with deep-seated diabasic dykes. The interpretation of the basement tectonic map of the area indicated the presence of a set of unexposed subsurface basic dykes running generally in NNW–SSE direction controlling the courses of major wadis in the study area. This set of NNW–SSE basic dykes are dissected by a NE–SW fault system. These two sets of fault systems were found to be matched well with that obtained from the Landsat image and geological map. It was found that the pronounced NNW direction is a predominant structural trend controlling the structural framework of the area

Evaluation of Land Use/Cover Change and Urban Sprawling Pattern Using Remote Sensing and GIS:A Case Study in Thimphu, Bhutan

The urbanisation and multifarious upsurge of infrastructures in Bhutan have caused intense alteration of land cover topographies. These rapid changes undergoing are predominately snow cover, vegetation, water bodies, built-up, barren land, and agricultural land which are commonly called land use/land cover (LULC) change. The current research attempts to analyse concerning temporal and spatial frameworks features to observe the nature of development sprawling processes of Thimphu over 30 years (1990-2020), by using multi-temporal remote sensing data. Landsat 5, 7 and sentinel 2B imageries have been adopted for estimating land use/cover change in Thimphu for the past 30 years. The confusion matrix and Kappa coefficient methods were adopted for the classification accuracy assessment. This is further validated by field visit essentially on water bodies and barren land which were quite perplexing. The paper concludes that the largest proportion of the area (65.97%) in 1990 was under vegetation cover, followed by barren land (31.63%) and the third biggest (1.39%) was under snow cover. The current research will provide significant aid to the planners and architects to understand the pattern of development sprawling in the past and facilitate futuristic mapping the developmental activities