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Childhood obesity has increased significantly all around the world. On one hand where being underweight predisposes a child towards infectious ailments whereas on the other hand obesity during childhood has been associated with many metabolic and cardiovascular illnesses. So the aim of the present study is to observe different types of dermatoglyphic patterns in adolescents of various body mass index percentile and their association, with body mass index. The sample consisted of 160 subjects belonging to age group 12-16 years, who were divided into four groups based on their body mass index. Significant differences have been found among the various groups in index and middle fingerprint pattern of right hand. So, it was concluded that significant differences exist between fingerprint patterns of adolescents belonging to various body mass index.

Background The number of breastfeeding mothers participating in a labor force to generate income has been increasing in Nepal. In this regard, the study aims to assess the survival of Under 3 children in Nepal from the mother based on their labor force participation and breastfeeding status. Methods Data for the study were obtained from the Nepal Demographic and Health Survey 2016. The sample size of the study was 2,994 live births children, born in the last three years prior to the day of the interview. The robust hazard ratio and cox proportional hazard regression were conducted between dependent and independent variables with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) to conclude. Results From a total of 2,994 live births, 85 children died within 36 months of birth. More than 80% of the non-working mothers were breastfeeding their children. The findings shows that the survival of children under-3 is positively associated with the interaction with the mother’s work and breastfeeding status (Hazard Ratio 0.428, 95% CI 0.24, 0.75), family structure (Hazard Ratio 1.511; 95% CI 1.37, 1.655), relationship with the household head (Hazard Ratio 0.452; 95% CI 0.311, 0.65), wealth quintiles (Hazard Ratio 0.390; 95% CI 0.33, 0.46), caste (Hazard Ratio 0.652; 95% CI 0.60, 0.69), and religion (Hazard Ratio 2.015; 95% CI 1.09, 3.70) with model CI 95%, Log pseudo likelihood = -521.39236, prob. χ2 = 0.005 and time at risk = 52,748. Conclusions The highest rate of child survival was from the working mothers as well as continuing breastfeeding their children followed by mothers breastfeeding the child but not working, compared to mothers working but not breastfeeding the child, and mothers who were neither working nor breastfeeding their children respectively. This study provides clear evidence that breastfeeding is very important for the probability of survival of the child aged below 36 months and work of mother also have some positive impact on child survival. Employers should be encouraged to have a breastfeeding policy in the workplace through the establishment of a breastfeeding facility, and a flexible work schedule. At the same time government should also regulate the paid maternity leave and encourage societal support for the breastfeeding mothers.

Accidental ingestion of sewing needle is a common presentation in daily emergency medical practice but its insertion through the abdominal wall is quite rare. We present a case of 26 years old serving soldier who had an accidental intraabdominal insertion of sewing needle which was managed laparoscopically. Initially patient was asymptomatic, however he complained of lower abdominal pain later. This was followed by successful laparoscopic retrieval of sewing needle located in right iliac fossa with no documented complications during six months of follow-up of the patient.

In recent years, social media has become more advanced, providing travelers with various opportunities to visualize their destination before executing their plans. On the other hand, social networks have also evolved in such a way that they not only became valuable marketing tools for businesses but also proved to be valuable source of information for consumers as it plays a significant role in the decision-making process. The objectives of this research study were to determine if social media has any impact on Tourism, to determine what tourists’ perceived benefits of using social media when taking trips are, and to ascertain if there were any strategic opportunities for value creation for the tourist. Through a survey answered by 267 respondents, the most influential attributes of social media usage in tourism were ascertained, the travelers’ perception of social media was analyzed, and the critical functionalities were determined. In hypothesis testing, independent variable social media functionalities significantly influenced tourist destinations. Whereas various perceptions of social media had no significant influence on a tourist destination regarding reliability, accuracy, and value. After analyzing the study, it is concluded that social media does indeed have an impact on tourism. It can even be used as a sustainable competitive advantage if tourism firms develop a positive reputation and focus on personalizing their services as the key element for their value-creating strategy.

Maize straw- and rice husk-derived biochars were produced in a simple metal kiln without automated control. Their characteristics and effects on crop productivity were investigated in three fields in Nepal. The maximum temperature inside the kiln reached ~ 450 °C; the charring reaction was maintained for 90 min and 10 h for maize straw- and rice husk-derived biochars, respectively, until 30 °C was reached. The physicochemical properties of the biochars were similar to those of biochars manufactured previously in electric furnaces with automated control. Compared with control soil, incorporation of maize straw- and/or rice husk-derived biochars into soil significantly (p

Introduction: Orthopaedic surgical activity has been significantly affected by COVID-19 pandemic. The decision to perform operative interventions is based on balancing risk to benefit to the patient and health care workers. Though different guidelines have been published, there is a lack of reliable data on orthopaedic surgical activities. Our study aimed to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Orthopaedic surgeries comparing with the previous year. Methods: This was an epidemiological retrospective comparative study conducted at Shree Birendra Hospital, Nepal after taking ethical approval from the Institutional Review Committee of NAIHS. Data of the first four month of orthopaedic surgeries after National lockdown (from March 24 to July 23, 2020) and the same four month period of the previous year (The year 2019) were retrieved. The demographic profiles and operations categories (trauma, elective and infections) were compared between two periods using SPSS 21. Result: Out of total of 651 patients enrolled, 169 patients operated during the pandemic compared with 482 patients before the pandemic. There was a 65% reduction in total surgical procedures, 94% reduction in elective cases and trauma cases were reduced by 29% (P < 0.05). Implant removal (107, 42.8%) constituted the highest elective cases in the year 2019. Conclusions: The orthopaedic surgical procedures were decreased in frequency during COVID-19 because of a decrease in elective cases. The total trauma patients remained more equable during pandemic despite strict lock-down. Health care facilities should consider this during post pandemic recovery.

Introduction: The number of breastfeeding mothers participating as a labor force to generate income has been increasing in Nepal. In this regards study aims to assess the survival of Under 3 children in Nepal from the mother based on their labor force participation and breastfeeding status. Methods: Data for the study were obtained from the Nepal Demographic Health survey 2016-2017. The sample size of the study was 2,994 live birth children born in the last three years from the day of interview. The robust hazard ratio and cox proportional hazard regression were conducted between dependent and independent variables to come to the conclusion.Results: Among 2994 live birth, 85 children died before reaching 36 months of their life. Among them more than 80 % of the non-working mothers were breastfeeding their children. The analysis revealed that the survival of the children under-3 is positively associated with the interaction with mother work and breastfeeding status, family structure, relationship with household head, wealth quintiles, caste and religion of mother. Conclusion: The highest rate of child survival was from the working mothers as well as continuing breastfeeding to their child followed by mothers breastfeeding the child but not working, mother working but not breastfeeding the child and mothers those were neither working nor breastfeeding their child respectively. Employers should be encouraged to have a breastfeeding policy in work place through establishment of breastfeeding facility, paid maternity leave and flexible work schedule.

Aim: The aim of this study is to evaluate the change in the position of hyoid bone, pharyngeal airway, and tongue position in subjects with skeletal Class II malocclusion treated with Twin block therapy. Materials and Methods: This study was performed on pre and post treatment lateral cephalograms of 21 patients with class II malocclusion treated with Twin block appliance, (mean age of (12.24± 1.22). Paired-t test was used to compare the amount of differences of mean value before and after treatment. A value of P

Road safety is a critical issue worldwide. We believe that mobile devices can play a positive role in this context by detecting dangerous conditions and providing feedback. This paper focuses on a specific problem in developing countries: the stopping behaviour of buses in the vicinity of bus stops. For instance, buses could arrive at a bus stop but continue rolling forward instead of coming to a complete halt, or could stop some distance away from the bus stop, possibly even in the middle of a busy road. Such behaviors put at risk the passengers boarding or alighting the bus, and also the people waiting at a bus stop. We present FullStop, a smartphone-based system that detects safety risks emanating from stopping behavior like the ones listed above. We show that the GPS and inertial sensors are unable to perform the fine-grained detection needed. Therefore, our approach in FullStop is based on the view obtained from looking out to the front of the vehicle using the camera of a smartphone that is mounted on the front windshield. Using optical flow vectors, with several refinements, FullStop running on a smartphone is able to effectively detect various unsafe bus stopping behaviours.

Medial epicondyle fracture associated with incarcerated intra‐articular fragment and ulnar nerve palsy is uncommon and frequently missed. We report a case of 13‐year‐old boy with incarcerated medial epicondyle fracture fragment in ulnohumeral joint and ulnar nerve palsy, which was managed successfully by open reduction internal fixation and ulnar nerve transposition.

Current smartphone-based navigation applications fail to provide lane-level information due to poor GPS accuracy. Detecting and tracking a vehicle’s lane position on the road assists in lane-level navigation. For instance, it would be important to know whether a vehicle is in the correct lane for safely making a turn, or whether the vehicle’s speed is compliant with a lane-specific speed limit. Recent efforts have used road network information and inertial sensors to estimate lane position. While inertial sensors can detect lane shifts over short windows, it would suffer from error accumulation over time. In this article, we present DeepLane, a system that leverages the back camera of a windshield-mounted smartphone to provide an accurate estimate of the vehicle’s current lane. We employ a deep learning--based technique to classify the vehicle’s lane position. DeepLane does not depend on any infrastructure support such as lane markings and works even when there are no lane markings, a characteristic of many roads in developing regions. We perform extensive evaluation of DeepLane on real-world datasets collected in developed and developing regions. DeepLane can detect a vehicle’s lane position with an accuracy of over 90%, and we have implemented DeepLane as an Android app.

Study Design: Epidemiological retrospective study. Objective: To describe the demographics, timing to surgery, delay, short-term neurological recovery, and complications in surgically treated subaxial cervical trauma in a resource-constrained country. Methods: Thirty consecutive subaxial cervical trauma patients presenting to a trauma hospital in Nepal between December 2015 and August 2017 were analyzed as a retrospective cohort. Patients were segregated into 4 groups based on the timing to surgery: within 2 days, 3 to 7 days, 8 to 30 days, and >31 days. Results: There were 27 male and 3 female patients with mean age 40 years. Twenty-four sustained fall injury, and 27 patients were from outside Kathmandu. No patients were treated within the first 48 hours; only 9 were treated between 3 and 7 days, 16 between 8 and 30 days, and 5 a month later. Major delay was finance and operating room availability. Thirteen patients had a C6C7 involvement followed by C5C6 in 6 patients. Seven patients had complete neurological deficit while 18 patients had incomplete deficit. A total of 46.7% improved their neurology in 6 months. No neurological recovery was observed in complete deficit patients. Conclusion: Seventy percent of our patients were treated longer than 1 week after injury, which would likely be considered unacceptable in most first world countries. As expected, the outcomes for many of these patients were far worse than reported in North American centers with early access to medical care and insurance. Despite this, nearly half of our patients improved neurologically following treatment; hence, surgery holds hope of some restoration of neurologic deficits.

Introduction: Implant removal surgery is one of the common surgical procedures done in orthopedics. Studies report that a major portion of orthopedic surgeries carried out in different institutions comprises implant removal procedures. This can be challenging in limited manpower and infrastructure availability scenarios, like in developing countries like Nepal. This study aims to study the prevalence of orthopedic implant removal procedures carried out among overall surgical procedures in the orthopedic department of a tertiary care center in Nepal. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was performed on the medical records of the department of orthopedics of a tertiary care center after approval from the institutional review committee. The data included records from the starting of 2018 to the end of 2019. Data related to the number of implant removal procedures, types of implants, indications, fracture sites, anesthesia use, gender and age distribution were studied. Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 20 was used to study descriptive data. Results: Out of 2557 orthopedic operations carried out in the study duration, 458 (17.91%) of implant removal procedures were done in the department. The most common age group was the young adult age group, 255 (55.68%). Medium-sized implants were the commonly removed ones, 337 (73.58%). Elective procedures were the most common indication, 369 (80.57%). Conclusions: Implant removal procedures cover a major fraction of overall orthopedic operations carried out by the department, most of which are elective procedures. In limited-resource settings, this can be challenging, and a proper evaluation with counseling could be done before implant removal surgery.

Mountains of Nepal are rich in natural resources as well as shelter for many ethnic group and indigenous community. Mountain people depend on natural resources and unique landscapes to survive, to preserve a unique sense of identity, and to provide livelihoods for centuries. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented damage to the mountain economy given the immediate effect on ecotourism and remittance, which are the main source of income for communities in the mountains. People in mountains have been using indigenous and local knowledge for utilization of natural resources for their survival. Skilled manpower returning home from abroad can be beneficial and with the use of appropriate technology will be beneficial for those returning from the abroad due to various reasons. Sustainable harvesting of natural resources and various micro/small enterprises can be developed using the appropriate technology. These enterprises not only creates jobs but also can contribute to improve the local to national level economy. A new approach is required combining the science and engineering aspect with local communities contributing their local knowledge and practices, which can develop socio-environmental resilience-building and transformation in mountains of Nepal.

Radial head dislocations are uncommon in adults. They are commonly seen in children and aregenerally associated with proximal ulna fracture. Radial head dislocation with associated proximalradial shaft fracture is rarer than isolated radial head dislocation in adults. Due to the rarity of thiscomplex injury, in the absence of keen observation and meticulous attention, the correct diagnosismight be missed leading to unsatisfactory management and related complications. Here, a similarcase of radial head dislocation with associated proximal radial shaft fracture has been presented.

Roads form a critical part of any region's infrastructure. Their constant monitoring and maintenance is thus essential. Traditional monitoring mechanisms are heavy-weight, and hence have insufficient coverage. In this paper, we explore the use of crowd-sourced intelligent measurements from commuters' smart-phone sensors. Specifically, we propose a deep-learning based approach to road surface quality monitoring, using accelerometer and GPS sensor readings. Through extensive data collection of over 36 hours on different kinds of roads, and subsequent evaluation based on this, we show that the approach can achieve high accuracy (98.5%) in a three-way classification of road surface quality. We also show how the classification can be extended to a finer grained 11-point scale of road quality. The model is also efficient: it can be implemented on today's smart-phones, thus making it practical. Our approach, called RoadCare, enables several useful smart-city applications such as spatio-temporal monitoring of the city's roads, early warning of bad road conditions, as well as choosing the "smoothest" road route to a destination.

Determining the location of a mobile user is central to several crowd-sensing applications. Using a Global Positioning System is not only power-hungry, but also unavailable in many locations. While there has been work on cellular-based localization, we consider an unexplored opportunity to improve location accuracy by combining cellular information across multiple mobile devices located near each other. For instance, this opportunity may arise in the context of public transport units having multiple travelers. Based on theoretical analysis and an extensive experimental study on several public transportation routes in two cities, we show that combining cellular information across nearby phones considerably improves location accuracy. Combining information across phones is especially useful when a phone has to use another phone’s fingerprint database, in a fingerprinting-based localization scheme. Both the median and 90 percentile errors reduce significantly. The location accuracy also improves irrespective of whether we combine information across phones connected to the same or different cellular operators. Sharing information across phones can raise privacy concerns. To address this, we have developed an id-free broadcast mechanism, using audio as a medium, to share information among mobile phones. We show that such communication can work effectively on smartphones, even in real-life, noisy-road conditions.

Scissor bites is a less often encountered situation in a clinical operatory but the treatment can be challenging for a clinician. Many treatment modalities for the scissor bite are available some of which includes cross elastics, transpalatal arches. The present article describes the treatment of posterior scissor bite using a removable orthodontic appliance. Keywords: Scissor bite, Removable appliance, Orthodontic bracket.

Calcific tendinitis occurs frequently in shoulder and hip region. Its occurrence in elbow joint is frequently misdiagnosed because of its rare incidence and similar clinical presentation with other acute conditions of elbow like trauma, infection and tennis elbow. Characteristic symptoms of this condition are acute onset of pain, tenderness and swelling on the lateral aspect the elbow. Plain Radiograph is the primary modality to distinguish and evaluate this condition. Awareness and familiarity with this condition helps in early diagnosis and avoids unnecessary treatments and biopsy as this condition is self-limited.Keywords: Calcific tendinitis; self-limited; tennis elbow.

Current smartphone-based navigation applications fail to provide lane-level information due to poor GPS accuracy. Detecting and tracking a vehicle's lane position on the road assists in lane-level navigation. For instance, it would be important to know whether a vehicle is in the correct lane for safely making a turn, perhaps even alerting the driver in advance if it is not, or whether the vehicle's speed is compliant with a lane-specific speed limit. Recent efforts have used road network information and inertial sensors to estimate lane position. While inertial sensors can detect lane shifts over short windows, it would suffer from error accumulation over time. In this paper we present DeepLane, a system that leverages the back camera of a windshield-mounted smartphone to provide an accurate estimate of the vehicle's current lane. We employ a deep learning based technique to classify the vehicle's lane position. DeepLane does not depend on any infrastructure support such as lane markings and works even when there are no lane markings, a characteristic of many roads in developing regions.We perform extensive evaluation of DeepLane on real world datasets collected in developed and developing regions. DeepLane can detect vehicle's lane position with an accuracy of over 90% in both day and night conditions. We have implemented DeepLane as an Android-app that runs at 5 fps on CPU and upto 15 fps on smart-phone's GPU and can also assist existing navigation applications with lane-level information.

Road safety is a major public health issue the world over. Many studies have found that the primary factors responsible for road accidents center on the driver and her/his driving. Hence, there is the need to monitor driver's state and her/his driving, with a view to providing effective feedback. Our proposed demo is of HAMS, a windshield-mounted, smartphone-based system that uses the front camera to monitor the driver and back camera to monitor her/his driving behaviour. The objective of HAMS is to provide ADAS-like functionality with low-cost devices that can be retrofitted onto the large installed base of vehicles that lack specialized and expensive sensors such as LIDAR and RADAR. Our demo would show HAMS in action on an Android smartphone to monitor the state of the driver, specifically such as drowsiness, distraction and gaze, and vehicle ranging, lane detection running on pre-recorded videos from drives.

In this work, waste coal fly ash was utilized to synthesis different types of zeolites. Conventional alkali fusion step followed by hydrothermal treatment was used for zeolite synthesis. The synthesis conditions were optimized to obtain highly crystalline zeolite. The effect of acid treatment and calcination temperature on zeolite formation was investigated. Further, the effect of addition of sodium aluminate (controlling Si/Al ratio) on zeolitization was also studied. highly crystalline zeolite was obtained at fly ash/NaOH ratio of 1:1.5, fusion temperature of 550 °C, hydrothermal temperature of 90 °C and 8 h hydrothermal time. The zeolite obtained was characterized for its structural, morphological and compositional properties. It was found that high Si/Al ratio favors zeolite X and higher concentration of aluminum results in the formation of zeolite A. The average particle size of the synthesized zeolites was found to be about 2–5 μm. The maximum surface area of fly ash based zeolite X and A was found to be 727.2 and 24 m 2 g −1 respectively. Maximum biodiesel yield of 81.2% was obtained using synthesized catalyst. The calorific value of the synthesized biodiesel was 39.2 MJ kg −1 and was found competent with commercial biodiesel (38–42 MJ kg −1 ).

Road safety is a critical issue the world-over, and the problem is particularly acute in developing countries, where the combination of crowding, inadequate roads, and driver indiscipline serves up a deadly cocktail. We believe that mobile devices can play a positive role in this context by detecting dangerous conditions and providing feedback to enable timely redressal of potential dangers. This paper focuses on a specific problem that is responsible for many accidents in developing countries: the stopping behaviour of buses especially in the vicinity of bus stops. For instance, buses could arrive at a bus stop but continue rolling forward instead of coming to a complete halt, or could stop some distance away from the bus stop, possibly even in the middle of a busy road. Each of these behaviours can result in injury or worse to people waiting at a bus stop as well as to passengers boarding or alighting from buses. We present FullStop, a smartphone-based system to detect safety risks arising from bus stopping behaviour, as described above. We show that the GPS and inertial sensors are unable to perform the fine-grained detection needed, by themselves. Therefore, FullStop is based on the view obtained from looking out to the front of the vehicle using the camera of a smartphone that is mounted on the front windshield. Using optical flow vectors, with several refinements, FullStop running on a smartphone is able to effectively detect safety-related situations such as a rolling stop or stopping at a location that is displaced laterally relative to the designated bus stop.

Malpositioned teeth are responsible for esthetic and occlusal aberrations in many adults. Patient often skips orthodontic treatment because of longer treatment time. Increased orthodontic force does not increase root movement, because the periodontal tissue cannot overcome the resistance of alveolar bone without any damage to periodontal ligament. ′When are you taking off my braces?′ This is probably the question most often addressed to orthodontists. The search for this efficiency, to shorten treatment time without forgoing optimal results is corticotomy. The process of bone metabolism takes time due to which the orthodontic treatment is prolonged. The purpose of corticotomy is to increase the rate of retraction by generation of local osteopenia in bone, which reduces the bone resistance to the tooth movement, thereby reducing the treatment time. My article describes the case reports of two patients that were treated with corticotomy.

Introduction: External Apical Root Resorption (EARR) is characterized by loss of the superficial layer of cells that protect the tooth root. Although many studies have estimated EARR, very few studies have examined permanent teeth from central incisor to first molar with adequate radiographic techniques like Computed Tomographs (CT) as used in the present study. Aim: To investigate the prevalence and degree of orthodontically induced EARR with fixed appliances from central incisor to first molar in permanent teeth after en-masse retraction using Dentascan. Materials and Methods: All patients had Class I malocclusion with dentoalveolar protrusion and minimum crowding (

Road accidents cause an estimated 1.3 million fatalities each year worldwide. We believe that mobile devices can play a positive role by detecting various driving related events like red light cutting, rash driving and many more. We focus on a specific problem that is responsible for many accidents in India: the stopping behaviour of buses especially in the vicinity of bus stops. We propose a smartphone-based system that specifically seeks to detect and report the following scenarios. Has the bus come to a complete stop(instead of a rolling stop)?Has the bus stopped in the left lane?Has the bus stopped exactly at the bus stop? thus prevent from derailment of trains

In parallel with, and as complement to globalisation, social capital has enjoyed a meteoric rise in Sociology and across the social sciences in general over the last two decades. Not surprisingly, it has been particularly prominent across development studies, not least through heavy promotion by the World Bank. As a concept, though, as has been pointed out persistently by a minority critical literature, social capital is fundamentally lawed. Although capable of addressing almost anything designated as social, it has tended to neglect the state, class, power and conflict. As a buzzword, it has heavily constrained the currently progressive departure from the extremes of neo-liberalism and postmodernism at a time of aggressive assault by economics imperialism. Social capital should not be ignored but contested – and rejected. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/hjsa.v4i0.4676 Himalayan Journal of Sociology and Anthropology Vol.IV (2010) 224-240

On 10 April 2008, Nepal turned a new page in its history. Nearly two decades of violence and instability caused by an ongoing political, economic, and cultural crisis ended with the stunning electoral success of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). In addition to resolving the well-known structural and economic imbalances of the country, after five decades of failed development, Nepal must also find a way to resolve the crisis of rising ethno-cultural nationalism amidst continuing conditions of inequality. We suggest Nepali nationalism provides a grand narrative that goes to the heart of the future of Nepal and its prospects for a sustained democracy.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the role of culture in general, and social distance in particular, in influencing the choice and efficiency of various contractual modes in developing country agriculture. It aims to focus on sharecropping, but the model of social distance can be applied to any contract, mainly those in close‐knit village societies.Design/methodology/approachPrincipal components analysis (PCA) is used in the study to develop a social distance index for all sharecroppers, which is included as an independent variable in land productivity ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions.FindingsFindings indicate social distance is a key determinant in sharecropping efficiency for marginal tenant farmers in rural Nepal. Specifically, social distance is found to be a significant factor in explaining land productivity differentials between owned land and sharecropped land.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research hopes to see whether social distance is also a significant factor in the efficiency and choice of bonded labor contracts. It intends to use simple OLS regressions for sharecroppers and bonded laborers separately in which: input use and land productivity are separate dependent variables, and the various factors or proxies of social distance are independent variables to test for their particular impact; each type of contract is the dependent variable to see the extent to which social distance affects the choice of tenancy; and social distance is the dependent variable so one can see the specific impact of different proxies. Given the small sample (although representative), the strong results in this paper are limited.Practical implicationsFrom a policy standpoint, the results suggest that a relatively egalitarian agrarian structure, insofar as it results in lower social distances among parties to land and labor contracts, would have a positive impact on productivity. Therefore, the object of agrarian reforms should not be to alter or constrain the form of contracts (for example by banning sharecropping) but rather to improve the social relations among contracting parties.Originality/valueThis paper is original and provides value in three ways: a conceptually and theoretically innovative model that explains sharecropping efficiency independent of standard explanations of market imperfections, transaction costs, and risk; in developing a new measure of social distance that allows the data to determine the weights of the independent variables in constructing social distance; and to see the need to more importantly study the changing social relations on which contracts are based and are often only one element of.

The World Bank recently published a comprehensive statement on land reform policy, the first in 30 years, that self-proclaims market-assisted land reform as a key policy to achieve not only efficiency, but even more importantly, equity. At the core of this ‘neo-populist neoclassical’ orthodoxy is: 1) the long-term pursuit of individual property and associated rights; 2) an idealized notion of the egalitarian and efficient small farmer based on the well-known inverse relation between farm size and productivity; and 3) a static view of rural markets blinding one to the negative and unforeseen consequences by landlords in the face of reform. This article critically examines the validity of these core assumptions in light of current calls for market-assisted land reform in Nepal. A major conclusion is that given the evidence, the presumed benefits of such reforms are ideologically driven, and therefore, will unlikely provide a much needed escape from poverty for millions of Nepali citizens.

Crowd-sourcing of information about various aspects of a road is an important mechanism in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). In this work, we consider crowd-sourcing from public transportation commuters, information about the road, traffic, and the specific public transportation unit. Any crowd-sourced information has to be tagged with the information provider's location. Since GPS-based location determination is energy-expensive, we focus on GSM signal based location determination. A specific dimension we explore, not considered in prior work, is the use of GSM signal information from multiple commuters' phones. This consideration is triggered by the observation that a large set of commuters have (almost) the same physical location for large durations of time: when they share the same bus. We present an analysis of data collected from two different Indian cities: Mumbai and Chandigarh. We find that such combination of information can lower the median location error by a factor of 2–10.

Introduction: Corticotomy is an effective method of accelerating the orthodontic treatment. The aim of this study was to compare the treatment time for the extraction space closure, between corticotomy assisted and conventional orthodontic tooth movement and to check the alveolar bone thickness before and after corticotomy procedure in the corticotomy group. Settings and Design: Cross-sectional clinical study. Materials and Methods: Twenty patients (age>15 y) requiring orthodontic treatment with upper anterior retraction in the extraction space of 1st premolar were selected and were randomised into control and corticotomy group each group consisted of 10 subjects. Pre retraction, corticotomy was performed in the maxillary anterior segment. The pre and post retraction CT scans were recorded and the thickness of the alveolar plates were measured at crestal level (S1), mid root level (S2) and apical level (S3) PreTreatment (T1). The same measurements were repeated after incisor retraction was completed PostTreatment (T2). Statistical Analysis: Student’s t-test, Pearson correlation coefficient. Results: There was a significant difference in retraction time (days) between control and corticotomy groups (p

Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign “aid” organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet’s natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. I should know; I was an EHM. —John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (2004) This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website , where most recent articles are published in full. Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The positron annihilation technique (PAT) was used to study the annealing behaviour of defects prodeuced by 30.0 MeV alpha-irradiation in molybdenum. The small increase in the Doppler broadening lineshape parameter, S, in the temperature region 150–300°C is assigned to the migration of vacancies and the formation of vacancy clusters. In the temperature region 300–750°C S showed a prominent decrease. this later recovery can be seen in two steps, from 300°C to 550°C and from 650°C to 750°C, indicating two different types of defects were present. The first step can be assigned to the agglomeration of vacancy clusters whereas the second step may be due to the thermal coarsening of microvoids or due to He bubble growth.

Measurements of positron lifetime and Doppler broadening have been used to study the nature of radiation damage and defect annealing in α-irradiated molybdenum. Vacancies, dislocation/vacancy loops and microvoids were detected in as-irradiated samples. Positron trapping at these defects was predicted to be near saturation by the model proposed for the trapping process. The behaviour on annealing showed vacancy migration and formation of vacancy clusters in the region 150–500°C. Above 650°C microvoid coarsening to form voids was observed in two stages. Dislocation/vacancy loops started to anneal out at ∼650°C, but significant recovery of them was observed above 950°C. Various aspects regarding the effect of helium on defect annealing, positronium (Ps) formation in metal voids and its decay scheme are discussed along with a brief review of previous investigations. The results indicate that Ps decays primarily from a singlet state in clean voids, whereas a triplet state decay is possible in the pres...

Isochronal annealing studies on alpha-irradiated nickel specimens have been performed via the positron annihilation technique using both the Doppler broadening and life-time measurement methods. A two-state trapping model favours the presence of dislocation loops and vacancy clusters like microvoids in the irradiated specimens. The decrease of the positron parameters between 400 and 650 K has been associated with He trapping by vacancy-type defects and He-vacancy complex formation. Above 650 K stabilization of this complex has been observed. The results agree with the model where the He atoms, though initially at interstitial sites, quickly interact with vacancy-type defects and relax to substitutional positions. Present observations favour the idea that a He atom in a metal vacancy (substitutional) acts as a trapping site for positrons.

The positron annihilation technique has been used to study the recovery of defects in alpha-irradiated Nb. A comparative study on plastically deformed Nb has also been performed. An antirecovery behaviour of Doppler broadening lineshape parameter, S , is observed only in alpha-irradiated specimens between 350–600°C. This has been identified to arise from the presence of He and to the formation of He-vacancy complexes. A further sharp rise in S occurring in both irradiated and deformed specimens at about 600°C is presumed to be due to the release of vacancies from dissociating vacancy-impurity complexes. Above 650°C, S decreased towards the reference value. In irradiated specimens this recovery is seen till 950°C in two stages, i.e. rearrangement in the configuration and dissociation of He-vacancy complexes, respectively.

The positron annihilation technique has been used to study the recovery of defects in α-irradiated n-type GaAs. The Doppler broadening lineshape parameter, S , showed, for the first time, the recovery in three steps beginning around 120°C, 300°C and 510°C indicating the presence of three types of defects.

Surgical complications of typhoid fever are uncommon and usually when it occurs, it commonly involves gut than the gallbladder. We present a case report of 20years old gentleman who presented with ten days duration of fever and one day history of sudden severe generalized pain abdomen. Patient was evaluated and investigated and undergone laparotomy in the line of peritonitis. Operative finding was gallbladder perforation and he underwent cholecystectomy. Other investigations were supportive of typhoid fever. Patient improved and was discharged after seven days. Key words: gallbladder, perforation, typhoid DOI: 10.3126/jnhrc.v7i1.2295 Journal of Nepal Health Research Council Vol. 7, No. 1, 2009 April 52-53