bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
مصادر الضغط النفسي لدى الأطفال كما يدركها الأطفال وكما يدركها المعلمون
Authors: هاشم جاوش الباوي علي
Published: February 2020

مصادر الضغط النفسي لدى الأطفال كما يدركها الأطفال وكما يدركها المعلمون
التنشئة الاجتماعية السياسية مفهومها، جذورها
Authors: عبد الهادي صلاح
Published: February 2020

التنشئة الاجتماعية السياسية

مفهومها، جذورها
* تاريخ التنقيبات في مدينة نفر :
Authors: سياب محان محمد , سياب محان محمد
Published: February 2020

* تاريخ التنقيبات في مدينة نفر :
New Perspectives of Using The Communicative Approach in Teaching Short Story
Authors: Jassim Muhammad Manaal
Published: February 2020

New Perspectives of Using The Communicative Approach

in Teaching Short Story
السلوك غير المقبول اجتماعياً لدى طلبة الدراسة المتوسطة و الإعدادية من وجهة نظر المدرسين في مركز محافظة الديوانية
Authors: صالح محسن عبد الرحيم
Published: February 2020

السلوك غير المقبول اجتماعياً لدى طلبة الدراسة المتوسطة و الإعدادية من وجهة نظر المدرسين في مركز محافظة الديوانية
قوة تحمل الشخصية لدى المشرفين التربويين
Authors: ناصر خليفة رشيد
Published: February 2020

قوة تحمل الشخصية لدى المشرفين التربويين
The search For Identity in Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape
Authors: Hadi Hashim
Published: February 2020

The search For Identity in Eugene O'Neill's

The Hairy Ape
A Contrastive Study of Metathesis in English and Arabic
Authors: Kadim Iggab Zainab
Published: February 2020

A Contrastive Study of Metathesis in English and Arabic
الأمير آرغون آغا الأويراتي - دراسة في سيرته ودوره السياسي والاداري والاقتصادي والعمراني - خلال العصر العباسي (637 -653هـ)/(1239 -1255م)
Authors: هادي حسن الطائي سعاد
Published: February 2020

الأمير آرغون آغا الأويراتي

- دراسة في سيرته ودوره السياسي والاداري والاقتصادي والعمراني -

خلال العصر العباسي (637 -653هـ)/(1239 -1255م)
الواقع الجغرافي والاقتصادي للنفط العراقي رؤيتان متناقضتان ـ دراسة في الجغرافية السياسية
Authors: محي لهيمص محمد
Published: February 2020

الواقع الجغرافي والاقتصادي للنفط العراقي رؤيتان متناقضتان ـ دراسة في الجغرافية السياسية
العامل النحوي دراسة ابستمولوجية
Authors: كريدي كنداوي سعاد
Published: February 2020

العامل النحوي

 دراسة ابستمولوجية
Scrap Superannuation
Authors: Murray Cameron
Published: February 2020

Economically, there can be only one retirement income system. This system allocates goods and services at the time they are needed to retirees who do not have alternative non-work income sources to sustain a socially acceptable level of welfare.Superannuation does not fulfil the requirements of a retirement income system. Instead, it is best thought of as a growth-sapping, resource-wasting, tax-advantaged asset purchase scheme for the wealthy, which may ultimately have little effect on reducing reliance on the age pension system. The age pension vastly outperforms superannuation as a retirement income system across three key areas: macroeconomic cost, macroeconomic efficiency, and fairness. Vested interests perpetuate economic myths to avoid scrutiny of the superannuation system, such as 1) that the age pension system is financially constrained, 2) that pre-funding via asset purchases increases the capacity of a retirement income system, and 3) that superannuation is a payment from employers rather than from wages.Scrapping the superannuation system would massively improve Australia’s economic performance, and thus the performance of our retirement income system, the age pension. This can be done by forcing employers to pay what is now superannuation directly into wage accounts and allowing all super fund holders to withdraw up to a maximum amount each year during a transition period, after which all super balances will receive no special tax treatment. The age pension system could also be enhanced in both size (payment rates, including rent assistance) and scope (reducing the age that people qualify from 67 to 60), vastly increasing the fairness and efficiency of Australia’s retirement income system and economy as a whole.
A note on the system chemistry
Authors: Rakočević Miloje M.
Published: February 2020

In one of our previous works (Rakočević, 2018b), we shown that there is an analogy of genetic and a chemical code. In this note however we would like to suggest that the reverse is true, the genetic code is a kind of natural systems analogous to the chemical system of chemical elements.
Food waste and dynamic complex systems: The case of Peru and a solution model proposal Part 1: Peruvian Anchoveta (Engraulis ringens)
Authors: Almenara Carlos A
Published: February 2020

[THE MANUSCRIPT IS A DRAFT] According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO, 2020), food waste and losses comprises nearly 1.3 billion tonnes every year, which equates to around US$ 990 billion worldwide. Ironically, over 820 million people do not have enough food to eat (FAO, 2020). This gap production-consumption puts in evidence the need to reformulate certain practices such as the controversial monocropping (i.e., growing a single crop on the same land on a yearly basis), as well as to improve others such as revenue management through intelligent systems. In this first part of a series of articles, the focus is on the Peruvian anchoveta fish (Engraulis ringens).
The Effectiveness of Dual-task Interventions for Modulating Emotional Memories in the Laboratory: A Meta-Analysis
Authors: Mertens Gaëtan , Lund Maren , Engelhard Iris
Published: February 2020

Persistent emotional memories and intrusive mental images can be weakened by executing a demanding dual-task during recollection of those images and memories. According to working memory (WM) theories, such dual-task interventions are effective because they limit the amount of cognitive resources available for the processing of emotional memories. However, there is still ongoing debate about the extent to which and under what conditions dual-task interventions are effective to interfere with emotional memories. In the current meta-analysis, we assessed k = 44 laboratory experiments investigating the effects of dual-task interventions on negative and positive memories. The effect was measured with the raw mean reduction in vividness and emotionality self-report ratings of emotional memories before compared to after the intervention on 100-point rating scales. Results showed that the dual-task interventions made both negative and positive memories less vivid (mean reduction negative images = 10.83, 95% CI = [8.15, 13.52]; mean reduction positive images = 12.48, 95% CI = [6.73, 15.39]) and less emotional (mean reduction negative images = 11.34, 95% CI = [7.38, 15.30]; mean reduction positive images = 5.35, 95% CI = [2.15, 8.54]). Several moderators were tested and are discussed in the light of WM theories.
Musical Training Mediates the Relation Between Working Memory Capacity and Preference for Musical Complexity
Authors: Vuvan Dominique T , Simon Ethan , Baker David John , Monzingo Elizabeth , Elliott Emily M.
Published: February 2020

Previous research has examined the relationships among cognitive variables and musical training, but relatively less attention has addressed downstream effects of musical training on other psychological domains, such as aesthetic preference, and the potential impact of domain-general constructs, such as working memory. Accordingly, the present study sought to draw links between musical training, working memory capacity, and preference for musical complexity. Participants were assessed for their experience with musical training, their working memory capacity, and their preference for musical complexity. Diverging from predictions based on vision research, our analyses revealed that musical training significantly mediated the association between working memory capacity and preference for music complexity. This significant mediation held even after a variety of sociodemographic variables (gender, education, socioeconomic status) were taken into account. Furthermore, the role of working memory capacity was domain general, such that the mediation was significant regardless of which measure of working memory capacity was used (tone, operation, or symmetry span). The current results develop a model of aesthetic preference that illuminates differences between vision and audition in terms of the multifaceted effects of complex skills training on cognition and affect. Moreover, they drive new work aimed at better understanding how domain-general constructs such as working memory capacity might interact with domain-specific cognition.
Unpacking the Mascot Debate: Native American Identification Predicts Opposition to Native Mascots
Authors: Fryberg Stephanie A. , Eason Arianne E. , Brady Laura , Jessop Nadia , Lopez Julisa
Published: February 2020

While major organizations representing Native Americans (e.g., National Congress of American Indians, n.d.) contend that Native mascots are stereotypical and dehumanizing, sports teams with Native mascots cite polls claiming their mascots are not offensive to Native people (Vargas, 2019). We conducted a large-scale, empirical study to provide a valid and generalizable understanding of Native Americans’ (N=1021) attitudes toward Native mascots. Building on the identity centrality literature, we examined how multiple aspects of Native identification uniquely shaped attitudes towards mascots. While Native Americans in our sample generally opposed Native mascots, especially the Redskins, attitudes varied according to demographic characteristics (e.g., age, political orientation, education) and the strength of participants’ racial-ethnic identification. Specifically, stronger Native identification (behavioral engagement and identity centrality) predicted greater opposition. Results highlight the importance of considering the unique and multifaceted aspects of identity, particularly when seeking to understand Native people’s attitudes and experiences.
The evolving sense of agency: Context recency and quality modulate the interaction between prospective and retrospective processes
Authors: Di Plinio Simone , Arnò Simone , Perrucci Mauro Gianni , Ebisch Sjoerd
Published: February 2020

Humans acquire a sense of agency through their interactions with the world and their sensory consequences. Previous studies have highlighted stable agency-related phenomena like intentional binding, which depend on both prospective, context-dependent and retrospective, outcome-dependent processes. In the current study, we investigated the interaction between prospective and retrospective processes underlying the adaptation of an ongoing sense of agency. The results showed that prospective intentional binding developed during a temporal window of up to 20 prior events were independent of the nature of the ongoing event. By contrast, the characteristics of the ongoing event retrospectively influenced prospective intentional binding developed during a temporal window narrower than 6 prior events. These findings characterize the interaction between prospective and retrospective mechanisms as a fundamental process to continuously update the sense of agency through sensorimotor learning. High psychosis-like experience traits weakened this interaction, suggesting that reduced adaption to the context contribute to altered self-experience.
Investigating the flexibility of male Eurasian jays' food-sharing behavior
Authors: Crosby Rachel , Legg Edward , Brecht Katharina Friederike , Mendl Michael , Ostojic Ljerka , Clayton Nicola
Published: February 2020

Male Eurasian jays were previously reported to alter their food-sharing response in line with the specific satiety of their female partner. Here, we tested the flexibility of the same males’ food-sharing behavior by testing whether they can process information from contextual cues that predict the opposite pattern of food shared to that observed in previous studies. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the amount of food eaten by the females in a choice context before males shared with them. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the identity of the non-chosen food that was available in a choice context before males shared with the females. In both experiments, males showed flexibility in their sharing pattern in a comparison between the experimental and control conditions. In Experiment 1, this observed pattern appears to be based on the males’ response to the amount of food eaten by the female, and in Experiment 2, it appears to be based on the males’ response to the choice context in which the female’s eating took place. Although the experimental conditions in Experiments 1 and 2 were conceptual replications, the predicted pattern of food shared by the males was detected only in the latter. While replications are needed to test the generalizability and robustness of these results, the current study provides a first set of data in line with the hypothesis that the Eurasian jay males may be able to flexibly adjust their food-sharing behavior to contextual cues. Raw data are available at 10.5281/zenodo.3633986, and code and meta-data are available at https://osf.io/n9rcd/.
Comparisons as Predictors of People’s Beliefs about the Importance of Changing Their Health Behaviors
Authors: Miller Jane Elizabeth , Windschitl Paul D. , Treat Teresa , Scherer Aaron M
Published: February 2020

The current study tested relative strengths of different comparison beliefs for predicting people’s self-assessments of whether they should increase their health-relevant behaviors (exercise, sleep, and fruit and vegetable consumption). Comparison beliefs relevant to three standards (perceived global, local, expert standards) were evaluated. Data were combined from three similar studies (total N = 744) that had a cross-sectional, within-subject design. Participants completed importance-of-change scales regarding the three health behaviors and reported comparison beliefs and absolute behavior frequencies/amounts. Results were consistent across the three behaviors. Comparison beliefs predicted ratings of importance of changing one’s behavior, even beyond what is predicted by reports of absolute behavior frequency. Expert comparisons were consistently most predictive above and beyond the absolute estimates and the other comparison standards. There was no evidence of a local dominance effect when examining local versus global comparisons. Comparison beliefs have unique utility for predicting people’s perceived importance of changing their heath behavior. The fact that expert comparisons were consistently most predictive (and local comparisons the least) may have implications for interventions designed for encouraging behavior change.
Do senior faculty members produce fewer research publications than their younger colleagues? Evidence from Ph.D. granting institutions in the United States
Authors: Savage William E. , Olejniczak Anthony J.
Published: February 2020

The aging of the professoriate throughout the end of the 20th century and the early years of the 2000’s (both before and after the end of mandatory retirement in the United States, ca. 1994) has become a source of concern for some scholars and research administrators, who posit that the “greying” of the academy results in lower research activity and a decline in scientific advancement. Some published opinions concur that senior scholars’ research programs do not keep pace with those of their younger colleagues, but little quantitative evidence has been presented to evaluate that claim. In this study, we quantify senior faculty publication activity in six broad fields, comparing their publication rates to their younger colleagues across four modes of knowledge dissemination: journal articles, conference proceedings, books, and book chapters. Career publication activity does not follow the “peak and decline” pattern described in earlier studies. In most fields, journal article publication rates do not decline substantively with age (and in some cases article publication rates are higher among senior scholars), conference proceeding publication rates tend to decline with age, while book and chapter publication rates increase markedly with age. Overall, senior scholars maintain publishing activity levels and tend to shift their focus to the development and evolution of ideas through the publication of longer-format works as books and book chapters.
Distributed Multimedia System for Distance Education
Authors: Sharma Gajendra , Shakya Subarna , Thapa Lal Bahadur R.
Published: February 2020

A distributed multimedia system (DMS) come to play as a backbone of 21th century to provide sophisticated technology to realize such a modern distance education/learning. In this paper, we describe distributed multimedia system for distance education that could be implemented at Kathmandu University and how this system interacts with other University i.e. Tribhuvan University. Proposed framework brings an abstraction and its infrastructure for multimedia materials storage, management, real time review of this multimedia on demand and a shared whiteboard on web browser to distance learner. For the design of the proposed system, it is necessary to consider different requirement and management of Quality of Service (QoS). This system is made available to only registered student/users through various networks i.e. Local Area Network (LAN)/Internet using university's own VPN user ID and Password. In addition, proposed system provides abstraction in which distance learner or student access lecturer presentation/notes on web browser and can review multimedia lecture's notes, presentation on demand. Student or people could have different reasons for attending distance education/learning such as constraints of time, distance, and finance etc. So, distance education system should reduce the distance gap between a student/participants and lecturer. This is done by quick response interaction between lecturer and student throughout the system. The main objective of this paper is to provide distance education platform while guarantying secure communication and user on demand multimedia access with the sophisticated QoS.
Islanding Detection in Distributed Generation Integrated Thimi – Sallaghari Distribution Feeder Using Wavelet Transform and Artificial Neural Network
Authors: Pancha Basanta , Shrestha Rajendra , Jha Ajay Kumar
Published: February 2020

In response to the problem of increased load demand, efforts have been made to decentralize the power utility through the use of distributed generation (DG). Despite the advantages of DG integration, un-intentional islanding remains a big challenge and has to be addressed in the integration of DG to the power system. Islanding condition occurs when the DG continues to power a part of the grid system even after the connection to the rest of the system has been lost, either intentionally or un-intentionally. The unintentional islanding mode of operation is not desirable as it poses a threat to the line workers’ safety and power quality issues. There are many methods which may be used to detect the islanding situation. Passive methods such as under/over voltage and under/over frequency work well when there is an imbalance of power between the loads and the DG present in the power island. However, these methods has larger Non Detection Zone (NDZ) and fail to detect the islanding condition if there is a balance of power supplied and consumed in the island. Remote technique of islanding detection is reliable but is not economical in small network area. Active technique of islanding detection distorts the power quality of the system as it introduces external signal in the system. This paper uses the Wavelet Transform (WT) to extract the features of voltage signal at PCC (Point of Common Coupling) and these features have been used to train Artificial Neural Network (ANN). The ANN model trained by these WT features, which understands the pattern of input feature vector, have been used to classify the islanding and non-islanding events. In this proposed method, NDZ has been efficiently eliminated which is created due to difference between active and reactive power during islanding condition. No power quality problem exists in this method as there is no disturbance injection. Hence, this proposed method is better than conventional passive and active methods.
Comparative Analysis of Hydrogenotrophic Denitrification in up and down Flow Reactors
Authors: Maharjan Rabin , Amatya Iswar Man , Sharma Ram Kumar
Published: February 2020

Use of ground water containing ammonical nitrogen has been increasing in Kathmandu valley. The use of locally and cheaply fitted Hydrogenotrophic Denitrification (HD) has been taken as an effective way to remove the nitrates in this study. Comparative analysis of HD reactors had been studied for the determination of the effective flow direction of water as Up Flow or Down Flow. The result reviled that flow direction as Down Flow HD reactor performed slightly better than Up Flow HD reactor. The maximum NO3-N conversion reached 100% for Down Flow and 98.65% for Up Flow reactor with maximum of total inorganic nitrogen (TIN) removed were 41.11% and 33.89% for Down Flow and Up Flow reactor respectively. The difference in NO3-N conversion and TIN removal were observed. As the NO2-N was accumulated, suggesting NO3 conversion is higher than NO2 conversion thus, and majorly incomplete denitrification existed. The NO2-N in water reached to maximum of 78.89 mg/l and 72.55 mg/l for Down Flow and Up Flow rector.
Performance Analysis of Structured Matrix Decomposition with Contour Based Spatial Prior for Extracting Salient Object from Complex Scene
Authors: Bhandari Ramesh , Ghimire Sharad Kumar
Published: February 2020

Automatically extracting most conspicuous object from an image is useful and important for many computer vision related tasks. Performance of several applications such as object segmentation, image classification based on salient object and content based image editing in computer vision can be improved using this technique. In this research work, performance of structured matrix decomposition with contour based spatial prior is analyzed for extracting salient object from the complex scene. To separate background and salient object, structured matrix decomposition model based on low rank matrix recovery theory is used along with two structural regularizations. Tree structured sparsity inducing regularization is used to capture image structure and to enforce the same object to assign similar saliency values. And, Laplacian regularization is used to enlarge the gap between background part and salient object part. In addition to structured matrix decomposition model, general high level priors along with biologically inspired contour based spatial prior is integrated to improve the performance of saliency related tasks. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated on two demanding datasets, namely, ICOSEG and PASCAL-S for complex scene images. For PASCAL-S dataset precision recall curve of proposed method starts from 0.81 and follows top and right-hand border more than structured matrix decomposition which starts from 0.79. Similarly, structural similarity index score, which is 0.596654 and 0.394864 without using contour based spatial prior and 0.720875 and 0.568001 using contour based spatial prior for ICOSEG and PASCAL-S datasets shows improved result.
A Note on Full-Rank Factorization of Matrix
Authors: Thapa Gyan Bahadur , López-Bonilla J. , López-Vázquez R.
Published: February 2020

We exhibit that the Singular Value Decomposition of a matrix Anxm implies a natural full-rank factorization of the matrix.
Conjunctive Use of Water Resources in Sustainable Development of Agriculture in Terai Nepal
Authors: Bhattarai Debi Prasad , Shakya Narendra Man
Published: February 2020

The need of conjunctive use of surface and ground water resources in agricultural sector arises due to the continuous increase in population and its growing demand for the production of food and fiber globally. United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2 also targets to double the agricultural productivity to feed the growing population and ensure sustainable food production systems by 2030. The conjunctive uses allow the utilization of ground water and surface water simultaneously as per the demand and supply requirement of available water resources. This paper presents an overview of the conjunctive use practices in the different parts of the world in general and specific issues for conjunctive use of irrigation for sustainable agriculture in the Terai region of Nepal. It covers a synopsis of literatures available regarding the conjunctive use of irrigation system in different irrigation command area of Nepal and unveils some research issues that need to be addressed. The review also covers an overview of different computer based models developed for the management of conjunctive water use for irrigated agriculture. Based on the review conclusions are drawn which could be helpful for further research and for the management of conjunctive irrigation system in the Terai region of Nepal.
Art, Human Condition and Beyond …
Authors: Thapa Rena
Published: February 2020

Philosophers of different ages have made rigorous attempts to define art aiming to establish a set of characteristics applicable to all kinds of fine arts. However to point a definite meaning of art is elusive task. Similarly the question whether art can be didactic to provide knowledge, or insight is as old as philosophy itself. Art can be appreciated, enjoyed and loved for the powerful emotional values it reflects to the beholders. The production of art deals with creativity, imagination and innate ability of an artist. Art evolves from the culture that inspires artistic expression and art is born from the inner necessity of the artist. To determine the coherent ontological status of works of art has been a problematic issue despite the consistent philosophical practices. The metaphysical categorization of art as “the imaginary experience of the total activity" of the artist recreated by competent viewer is not all inclusive perception of art. The more liberal outlook of art as abstract cultural entities that are created at certain time through human activities seems convincing and relevant.
A Note on Teaching and Learning Linear Algebra in Tribhuvan University
Authors: Nepal Tulasi Prasad
Published: February 2020

The teaching of linear algebra has always been a challenge for teachers of mathematics, because it is extremely important that students become introduced into complex and abstract mathematical system of linear algebra and learn concepts which can be successfully applied later in other mathematical topics. It is necessary that teachers better understand how students learn, and recognize and allow that the appropriate content, methods and context could be different in different environments. As mathematicians, we are aware of the significant interconnections of different ideas and concepts, which is difficult to recognize and understand. We should not forget that understanding of these kinds of interconnections develops through active and hard exploration of mathematical topics through permanent discovering of new interconnections and relations. Thus, primary role of a teacher is to try to move students to take an active part during the class concerning important and difficult concepts, either through the form of individual opinion or through the form of group discussions. It is not easy to suggest teaching methods, especially in comparison to traditional lectures, which would be effective and would actively, engage students and generate stimulating learning.
Flowering and fruiting seasonal changes of six accessions of Jatropha curcas L. in a semi-arid region of Senegal
Authors: Diedhiou Ibrahima , Bayala Roger , Sagna Moustapha Diere , Madiallacke Diedhiou Pape
Published: February 2020

Jatropha curcas is the priority species for biofuel promotion in Senegal. However the lack of knowledge on floral biology and fruiting of this plant remains a problem to increase its yield and improve farmers’ adoption. The objectives of this study were to assess seasonal changes on flowering and fruiting of six accessions of Jatropha curcas in semi-arid area, Senegal. In this study the total number of inflorescences, flowers and fruits were evaluated during six month son four years old plants, installed in the Agricultural Engineering School ( ENSA) of Thies. The results showed significant effect of the studied factors (season, accession) and interaction between them on floral and fruiting traits of J. curcas. Due to more favorable climatic conditions, the performance of flowering is better in the wet season. During this season, the number of male and female flowers ranged, respectively from 107.47–191.60 and from 2.47–11.87 per inflorescence. Consequently, ripe fruits production was higher in wet season and varied between66 and 97% of the total production. Two peaks of flowering were observed; the first one occurred in dry season (April, 24th- June 6th) and the second, with the highest number of inflorescences, arrived in wet season (8 - 22 July). Fruiting patterns is highest concentration between at the end of the wet season (September 15th and October 3rd).High seed yields were observed with the accessions CE6 (2739.3 kg ha-1), CE97 (1451.0 kg ha-1) and CE95 (1326.3 kg ha-1) that are promising for biofuel production in semi-arid areas of Senegal.
Flora of community managed forests of Palpa district, western Nepal
Authors: Shrestha Pratiksha , Chaudhary Ram Prasad , Shrestha Krishna Kumar , Dangol Dharma Raj
Published: February 2020

Floristic diversity is studied based on gender in two different management committee community forests (Barangdi-Kohal jointly managed community forest and Bansa-Gopal women managed community forest) of Palpa district, west Nepal. Square plot of 10m×10m size quadrat were laid for covering all forest areas and maintained minimum 40m distance between two quadrats. Altogether 68 plots (34 in each forest) were sampled. Both community forests had nearly same altitudinal range, aspect and slope but differed in different environmental variables and members of management committees. All the species present in quadrate and as well as outside the quadrate were recorded for analysis. There were 213 species of flowering plant belonging to 67 families and 182 genera. Barangdi-Kohal JM community forest had high species richness i.e. 176 species belonging to 64 families and 150 genera as compared to Bansa-Gopal WM community forest with 143 species belonging to 56 families and 129 genera. According to different life forms and family and genus wise jointly managed forest has high species richness than in women managed forest. Both community forest are banned for fodder, fuel wood and timber collection without permission of management comities. There is restriction of grazing in JM forest, whereas no restriction of grazing in WM forest.
Evidences of red panda in Rachuli VDC, Kalikot district, Nepal
Authors: Dangol Bishok , Chalise Mukesh Kumar
Published: February 2020

Presence of the red panda was assessed in Rachuli Village Development Committee (VDC)(latitude 290 1.98’ N to 2903.57’ N and longitude 81013.52’ E to 81015.87’ E, at altitudinal range between 1800 to 4400 masl), Kalikot, mid-west Nepal. The interaction and interviews with local peoples was organised to collect initial confirmation on occurrence of the red panda. For sign survey of animal, altogether 20 quadrate plots (each of 10×10 sq. meters) at the point where pellets of red panda were found, were laid between altitude of 2800 m to 3300 masl. The presence of Red panda pellets in the study area was major evidence of presence of redpanda in the area. The lowest altitude in which pellet found was 2993 m and the highest was3297 m. The highest number of pellets was observed in altitudinal range of 3100 m to 3150m. The average number of pellets per group was 10.13 ± 5.33. The typical dominant species of trees in red panda habitat were Betula utilis, Abies spectabilis and Quercus semecarpifolia observed with the highest Important Value Index (IVI) of 83.80, 75.83 and 52.80 respectively. Nigalo (Thamnocalamus sp.), the most preferable food plant of red panda, was distributed widely in the study range. The number of pellets groups in the plots and nigalo density were positively correlated (0.795, significant statistically at 0.01 levels (2-tailed)).
Diversity and conservation threats of water birds in and around Barandabhar corridor forest, Chitwan, Nepal
Authors: Adhikari Jagan Nath , Bhattarai Bishnu Prasad , Thapa Tej Bahadur
Published: February 2020

Wetlands provide major ecological services for feeding and breeding places of a large number of water birds in many parts of the globe and also play a vital role in conservation of threatened species. Wetlands in Nepal support a total of 27% of nationally threatened birds. Barandabhar forest is only one vertical (south-north) bio-corridor that links two different ecosystems, CNP and the Mahabharat hill range. Eight wetlands were selected for water birds monitoring by using area search and point count methods to explore the diversity and conservation threats of water birds in Barandabhar corridor forest. This study recorded 3664 individuals of water birds belonging to 54 species, 11 orders and 13 families in which the highest numbers of the species were belonged to order Passeriformes (17 species). The diversity of water birds in eight different wetlands showed the highest diversity in Rapti river (H= 3.403), followed by Beeshazari lakesystem (H= 3.401), Batulpokari lake area (H= 3.377) and the rest of others. The least diversityof water birds was found in Gundremandre lake (H=2.210). Similarly, the species dominance was more in Gundremandre lake (D=0.189) than Beeshazari (D=0.046) and Batulpokhari (D=0.042). The species richness in various habitats association with wetlands showed that Shorea forest association was utilized very less as compared to its availability. Fishermen (r= -0.391, t = 10.6, P<0.0001) and livestock pressure (r = -0.276, t = 6.63, P = 0.0009) caused the significant negative impact on the occurrence of water birds in many parts of the study sites. The study suggests that annual flooding in the rivers (e.g., Rapti, Budhirapti and Khageririvers), human disturbance (e.g., livestock grazing and fishing), habitat loss and degradation, declining water quality and quantity caused by eutrophication and chemical pollution are the major threats of water bird communities in Barandabhar corridor forest.
Secondary succession and soil nutrient dynamics in abandoned fallows of goth in Panchase, central midhill, Nepal
Authors: Pathak Hom Nath , Bhuju Dinesh Raj
Published: February 2020

Livestock farming in Nepal have a common feature of temporary shelter called goth. In recent years, young people in the villages go for foreign jobs and there is severe lack of labour force and the Gothpractice has gradually been abandoned. In the abandoned got fallows, plant succession is observed. In Panchase, abandoned fallows of one year, two years, five years, 15 years were sampled. The sampling included species-wise count of plants and their coverage. Density, frequency and coverage were determined to obtain species diversity. Soil samples were taken from each of the fallow studied. It was found that the species diversity increased with the age of the fallow land, while beta diversity decreased with the successive fallow age. Soil samples were analyzed for pH value, organic matter, water holding capacity, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium value. Aluminum and phosphorus were the determinants in succession of herbs by shrubs and then by tree species to climax.
Teaching and testing of English listening and speaking in secondary schools in Nepal: Pretend for praxis?
Authors: Rana Kesh , Rana Karna
Published: February 2020

Secondary English course requires testing of four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing independently. Secondary Education Examination (SEE) board conducts a written examination, which includes reading and writing skills, through different centres and English teachers are responsible to test students’ listening and speaking tests in their own schools and submit grades to District Education Office. Semi-structured interviews with secondary English teachers in private schools and school graduates investigated how the teachers practice listening and speaking skills in the classrooms and administer aural-oral tests. Findings indicate that private schools in the capital city have mandated English-only for communication in school premises with an expectation to develop students’ English language proficiency. Teachers focused on centre-based written examination and less emphasised the teaching and testing of listening and speaking skills. Teachers’ random assessment of students’ aural-oral skills without formal tests supported in declining the teaching of these skills. This article suggests that for realizing the examination effective, sustainable system needs to be developed for teachers to teach all language skills equitably.
University teachers’ attitudes towards English language curriculum of M.Ed. semester system
Authors: Paudel Pitamber
Published: February 2020

A curriculum changes as per the concurrent philosophical and methodological changes of a country. This study investigates the Tribhuvan University (TU)teachers’ attitudes towards the current Masters level English language (semester system) curriculum. In order to achieve this goal, explanatory sequential mixed research design was employed. Forty-five English language teachers from both constituent and affiliated campuses of Tribhuvan University, Nepal, were purposively selected. The research shows that the university English teachers had positive attitude towards the current curriculum for its input and process. However, they did not like the context of its design and the implementation process. This implies that the policy maker and curriculum designers should make an analysis of the context in terms of situation and the needs of the stakeholders before selecting the courses and their contents so that the curriculum can be effectively implemented.
Language hybridity among Nepali Twitter users: Trend and possible implications
Authors: Bhandari Ganga Laxmi
Published: February 2020

In Nepal, Twitter has recently been one of the fastest means of communication and information sharing app. This social networking site is used to express ideas, communicate messages, dispute opinions and expression of others and vent frustrations. What is striking is the use of hybridity or bilingualism in tweets in which Nepali and English are used freely and almost inseparably not just in chitchats but also in communicating information of public importance. Curious to see if such ybridity has the potential to contribute to changing perspectives on teaching and learning English, a brief study was undertaken in November-December 2018 as wells in June 2019. The study included selection of random tweets within the specific period of time and their analysis in terms of the currency and diversity of opinions expressed. The results show that hybridity is popular among Nepali tweeters not just in casual expressions, but also in serious communications, such as in formal complaints/notices, advertisements and commentaries on issues of public concern. The result also indicates that the ELT community cannot remain aloof of the language pattern.
Veracities of teaching listening in Nepal
Authors: Ghimire Nanibabu
Published: February 2020

This study explores realities, problems and their solutions of teaching listening in English in secondary level education in Nepal. As it is a narrative inquiry, I chose three English teachers and six students from three different secondary level community schools of Kamalamai Municipality of Sindhuli district, Nepal as the participants of the study using purposive sampling procedure. The findings demonstrated that the listening skill is the neglected skill in our school education. The teachers do not pay much more attention to teach this skill in our community school by thinking teaching listening is not important for examination purpose. There is scarcity of audio-visual devices, the classroom is not techno-friendly, teachers are not dedicated and trained, monitoring strategies of concerned authority is not effective for teaching listening. Recommended solutions include - the students should be proactive and the school administration has to be responsible for making availability of listening equipment and materials. Similarly, the teachers should use various interactive and cooperative activities such as role-play, pair work, group work and communication games using authentic materials such as English films, favourite songs, funny short stories, some exciting programmes on radio, TV or the internet for the effectual teaching of listening.
Story-based teaching: Activities for young learners
Authors: Bidari Samikshya
Published: February 2020

Not available.
Analysis of Hybrid Cryptosystem Developed Using Blowfish and ECC with Different Key Size
Authors: Timilsina Suresh , Gautam Sarmila
Published: February 2020

Hybridization is always done in search of better system which may not be always achieved. But most of the time hybridization has proved to produce a system with advantages of the algorithms used in developing that hybrid system. Even if the system doesn’t have performance enhancement it will act as multi-layer security. Here, combing of Blowfish algorithm along with ECC algorithm is performed. After hybridization their performance analysis is done based on five different parameters with different key size of Blowfish algorithm i.e. 32 bit, 128 bit, 192 bit, 256 bit, 448 bit. Among these different hybrid cryptosystem we found that the Blowfish ECC system with key size 448 bit has better performance than all other bit size.
Correlation between Concrete Compressive Strength and Rebound Number of River Bed and Crusher Run Coarse Aggregate in Pokhara Valley
Authors: Katuwal Tek Bahadur
Published: February 2020

Concrete is principally composed of the mixture of cement, fine and coarse aggregates, and water and widely used for every building structure and other infrastructure. Aggregate has important functions as concrete making materials for the hardness and strength of concrete. The objective of this research was co – relation of compressive strength of concrete with Rebound number of crusher and river bed coarse aggregate in respect to the M20 grade of concrete with nominal mix. For this research, sample were taken from Hemja Crusher (HC), Hemja River Bed (HR), Kotre Crusher (KC), Kotre River Bed (KR) and considering sand from single source and commercially available single brand OPC cement. Fifteen cubes (150 mm × 150 mm×150mm) were cast for each sampled sources and the Compressive strength and Rebound number was determined after 7 days, 14 days and 28 days of curing.

In this research, statistical analysis was carried out to determine the best fit curve by using IBM SPSS. Finally the outcomes of this research indicated that the relationship between rebound number and compressive strength curve is liner.
Performance Analysis and Recognition of Speech using Recurrent Neural Network
Authors: Lamichanne Bishon , K.C. Hari
Published: February 2020

Speech is one of the most natural ways to communicate between people. It plays an important role in our daily lives. To make machines able to talk with people is a challenging but very useful task. A crucial step is to enable machines to recognize and understand what people are saying. Hence, speech recognition becomes a key technique providing an interface for communication between machines and humans. There has been a long research history on speech recognition. Neural network is known as a technique that has ability to classify nonlinear problem. Today, lots of research are going in the field of speech recognition with the help of the Neural Network. Even though positive results have been obtained from continuous study, research on minimizing the error rate is still gaining lots attention. The English language offers a number of challenges for speech recognition. This paper implements the RNN to analyze and recognize speech from the set of spoken words.
Power Flow management among PV, BESS and Grid for EV Charging
Authors: Karki Menaka , Kunwar Dol Raj , Sharma Bijay , Paudel Sunil , Ojha Tanka Nath
Published: February 2020

Electric Vehicles (EVs) are the cleanest means of transportation compared to the conventional vehicles. Unlike conventional vehicles, EVs do not depend on petroleum products and thus use of electric vehicle is going to dominate the transportation sector soon. The battery electric vehicles need charging stations for their battery to charge. The proposed topology focuses on power flow management for charging of EV loads. it proposes electric vehicle charging system in which vehicle owners are allowed to park their vehicle in the charging station and EVs are charged up to their desired SOC level. The proposed system promotes penetration of RES to a larger extent which minimizes the kwh cost of grid energy consumption, and hence generating significant economical revenue of the charging station. In this paper, charging station is modeled with PV, battery and grid, and power management strategies are proposed among them. Regulation of load sharing and prevention of mismatch between circulating currents supplied by power sources is implemented using fixed droop method. The trend of power demand by EVs in the charging station is estimated and matching between demand and supply is implemented. Energy storage system is used in order to support continuous power availability in the station. The simulations are successfully implemented to validate the effectiveness of the system and to demonstrate the load management system by the uncoordinated method of charging. The overall system is implemented by algorithm run in MATLAB/Simulink.
Surface Water Quality Assessment Using Remote Sensing, Gis and Artificial Intelligence
Authors: KC A. , Chalise A. , Parajuli D. , Dhital N. , Shrestha S. , Kandel T.
Published: February 2020

The deterioration of surface water quality occurs due to the presence of various types of pollutants from human activities such as agriculture, industry, construction, deforestation, etc. Thus, the presence of various pollutants in water bodies can lead to deterioration of both surface water quality and aquatic life. Conventional surface water quality assessment methods are widely performed using laboratory analysis, which are labour intensive, costly, and time consuming. Moreover, these methods can only provide individual concentration of surface water quality parameters (SWQPs), measured at monitoring stations and shown in a discrete point format, which are difficult for decision-makers to understand without providing the overall patterns of surface water quality. To such problem, Remote Sensing has been a blessing because of its low cost, spatial continuity and temporal consistency. The relationship between SWQPs and satellite data is complex to be modelled accurately by using regression-based methods. Therefore, our study attempts to develop an artificial intelligence modelling method for mapping concentrations of both optical and non-optical SWQPs.

This study aims to develop techniques for estimating the concentration of both optical and non-optical SWQPs from Satellite Imagery (Landsat8) which supports coastal studies and mapping the complex relationship between satellite multi-spectral signature and concentration of SWQPs. It will also focus on classifying the most significant SWQPs that contribute to both spatial and temporal surface water quality. In contrast to traditionally performed surface water quality assessment methods, this research project will be focused on identifying such parameters incorporating the new and evolving machine intelligence that is Artificial Intelligence (AI). Significant number of samples have to be collected along with the GPS data which is used to model the relationship. In this context, a remote-sensing framework based on the back-propagation neural network (BPNN) will be developed to quantify concentrations of different SWQPs from the Landsat8 satellite imagery. The study area chosen for this research is Bijayapur River of distance approximately 10 km flowing above, through and down the Pokhara city. The sole purpose of this research is to examine the water quality before it flows through the city and analysing after it passes through the city.