Urban change monitoring using GIS and remote sensing tools in Kathmandu valley (Nepal)

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial TechnologiesThe urbanization pattern during the period of 1989 to 2006 of Kathmandu valley was studied using Landsat data. The main aims of the study were to apply Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing tools for the study of land use and land cover classification, change analysis and urban growth model for 2019 of the Kathmandu valley. The study also reviewed population growth and urbanization trends in connection with increasing built up areas leading to the environmental degradation. The population growth and urbanization trend of Kathmandu valley was the highest among other cities in Nepal. Principal component analysis was applied to spectrally enhance images to get the better image classification results. Images were classified in six land use and land cover classes using supervised classification and maximum likelihood algorithm which were then re-classed into built up and non-built up to focus on urbanization. The analysis showed that the built up area had grown up to 134% in 2006 since 1989. The assessed overall accuracies for the classification of three images were between 86 to 89 percentages. Cellular Automata Markov (CA_MARKOV) and GEOMOD modeling programs were used to project the 2006 and then 2019 land use and land cover classes. The 2019 land use and land covers was projected after satisfactory validation of projected 2006 land classes resulting with Kappa more than 0.55 up to 0.75. The future projection of land classes did not show that the urban growth will have significant effects to the designated areas. However, there will be some effects in water bodies. The Landsat images along with other ancillary data proved to be useful for the overall study

Coping with Drought in Rice Farming in Asia: Insights from a Cross-Country Comparative Study

Drought is a major constraint affecting rice production especially in rainfed areas of Asia. Despite its importance in rice growing areas, the magnitude of economic losses arising from drought, its impact on farm households and farmers' drought coping mechanisms are poorly understood. This paper provides insights into these aspects of drought based on a cross-country comparative analysis of rainfed rice growing areas in China, India and Thailand. The economic cost of drought is found to be substantially higher in eastern India than in the other two countries. Higher probability and greater spatial covariance of drought and less diversified farming systems with rice accounting for a large r share of household income are likely to be the main reasons for this higher cost of drought in eastern India. Farmers deploy various coping mechanisms but such mechanisms are largely unable to prevent a reduction in income and consumption, especially in eastern India. As a result, welfare consequences on poor farmers are substantial with a large number of people falling back into poverty during drought years. The overall implications for technology design and for policy improvements for drought mitigation and drought relief are discussed in the light of the empirical findings of the study.Drought, Economic cost, Coping mechanisms, Poverty, Crop Production/Industries, D1, I3, Q1,

Population history and genome wide association studies of birth weight in a native high altitude Ladakhi population

Pathological low birth weight due to fetal growth restriction (FGR) is an important predictor of adverse obstetric and neonatal outcomes. It is more common amongst native lowlanders when gestating in the hypoxic environment of high altitude, whilst populations who have resided at high altitude for many generations are relatively protected. Genetic study of pregnant populations at high altitude permits exploration of the role of hypoxia in FGR pathogenesis, and perhaps of FGR pathogenesis more broadly. We studied the umbilical cord blood DNA of 316 neonates born to pregnant women managed at the Sonam Norboo Memorial Hospital, Ladakh (altitude 3540m) between February 2017 and January 2019. Principal component, admixture and genome wide association studies (GWAS) were applied to dense single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genetic data, to explore ancestry and genetic predictors of low birth weight. Our findings support Tibetan ancestry in the Ladakhi population, with subsequent admixture with neighboring Indo-Aryan populations. Fetal growth protection was evident in Ladakhi neonates. Although no variants achieved genome wide significance, we observed nominal association of seven variants across genes (ZBTB38, ZFP36L2, HMGA2, CDKAL1, PLCG1) previously associated with birthweight

Optimasi Portofolio Resiko Menggunakan Model Markowitz MVO Dikaitkan dengan Keterbatasan Manusia dalam Memprediksi Masa Depan dalam Perspektif Al-Qur`an

Risk portfolio on modern finance has become increasingly technical, requiring the use of sophisticated mathematical tools in both research and practice. Since companies cannot insure themselves completely against risk, as human incompetence in predicting the future precisely that written in Al-Quran surah Luqman verse 34, they have to manage it to yield an optimal portfolio. The objective here is to minimize the variance among all portfolios, or alternatively, to maximize expected return among all portfolios that has at least a certain expected return. Furthermore, this study focuses on optimizing risk portfolio so called Markowitz MVO (Mean-Variance Optimization). Some theoretical frameworks for analysis are arithmetic mean, geometric mean, variance, covariance, linear programming, and quadratic programming. Moreover, finding a minimum variance portfolio produces a convex quadratic programming, that is minimizing the objective function ðð¥with constraintsð ð 𥠥 ðandð´ð¥ = ð. The outcome of this research is the solution of optimal risk portofolio in some investments that could be finished smoothly using MATLAB R2007b software together with its graphic analysis

Search for supersymmetry in events with one lepton and multiple jets in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

Peer reviewe

Measurement of the top quark forward-backward production asymmetry and the anomalous chromoelectric and chromomagnetic moments in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV

Abstract The parton-level top quark (t) forward-backward asymmetry and the anomalous chromoelectric (d̂ t) and chromomagnetic (μ̂ t) moments have been measured using LHC pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, collected in the CMS detector in a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb−1. The linearized variable AFB(1) is used to approximate the asymmetry. Candidate t t ¯ events decaying to a muon or electron and jets in final states with low and high Lorentz boosts are selected and reconstructed using a fit of the kinematic distributions of the decay products to those expected for t t ¯ final states. The values found for the parameters are AFB(1)=0.048−0.087+0.095(stat)−0.029+0.020(syst),μ̂t=−0.024−0.009+0.013(stat)−0.011+0.016(syst), and a limit is placed on the magnitude of | d̂ t| < 0.03 at 95% confidence level. [Figure not available: see fulltext.

Measurement of t(t)over-bar normalised multi-differential cross sections in pp collisions at root s=13 TeV, and simultaneous determination of the strong coupling strength, top quark pole mass, and parton distribution functions

Peer reviewe

An embedding technique to determine ττ backgrounds in proton-proton collision data

An embedding technique is presented to estimate standard model tau tau backgrounds from data with minimal simulation input. In the data, the muons are removed from reconstructed mu mu events and replaced with simulated tau leptons with the same kinematic properties. In this way, a set of hybrid events is obtained that does not rely on simulation except for the decay of the tau leptons. The challenges in describing the underlying event or the production of associated jets in the simulation are avoided. The technique described in this paper was developed for CMS. Its validation and the inherent uncertainties are also discussed. The demonstration of the performance of the technique is based on a sample of proton-proton collisions collected by CMS in 2017 at root s = 13 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 41.5 fb(-1).Peer reviewe

Measurement of the Splitting Function in &ITpp &ITand Pb-Pb Collisions at root&ITsNN&IT=5.02 TeV

Data from heavy ion collisions suggest that the evolution of a parton shower is modified by interactions with the color charges in the dense partonic medium created in these collisions, but it is not known where in the shower evolution the modifications occur. The momentum ratio of the two leading partons, resolved as subjets, provides information about the parton shower evolution. This substructure observable, known as the splitting function, reflects the process of a parton splitting into two other partons and has been measured for jets with transverse momentum between 140 and 500 GeV, in pp and PbPb collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV per nucleon pair. In central PbPb collisions, the splitting function indicates a more unbalanced momentum ratio, compared to peripheral PbPb and pp collisions.. The measurements are compared to various predictions from event generators and analytical calculations.Peer reviewe