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ESL/EFL teachers, especially those working in higher education, across the world were required to teach online after the spread on COVID-19. Many empirical studies have been conducted in the last 1 year to investigate various aspects of online teaching and learning of languages. However, online ESL teaching in South Asian contexts remains almost unexplored. This paper reports a multiple case study that aimed to bridge this gap and explore online formative assessment (FA) and feedback practices of three ESL teachers working in three universities in India, Bangladesh and Nepal. Data were collected through classroom observations, interviews and document analysis. The results indicate that all three teachers actively engaged their students in a variety of FA practices, although they did not use the obtained information from assessments properly and there remained many areas of improvement. Their feedback practices, which involved the integration of a few digital tools, were regular and student-friendly. The study is significant in that it is the first of its kind. Future researchers can conduct large scale studies to verify if the findings of the study are true for other university ESL teachers who are teaching online.

Household air pollution caused by inefficient cooking practices causes 4 million deaths a year worldwide. In Nepal, 86% of the rural population use solid fuels for cooking. Over 25% of premature deaths associated with air pollution are respiratory in nature. Here we aimed to identify molecular signatures of different cookstove and fuel type exposures in human airway epithelial cells, to understand the mechanisms mediating cook stove smoke induced lung disease. Primary human airway epithelial cells in submerged culture were exposed to traditional cook stove (TCS), improved cook stove (ICS) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) stove smoke extracts. Changes to gene expression, DNA methylation and hydroxymethylation were measured by bulk RNA sequencing and HumanMethylationEPIC BeadChip following oxidative bisulphite conversion, respectively. TCS smoke extract alone reproducibly caused changes in the expression of 52 genes enriched for oxidative stress pathways. TCS, ICS and LPG smoke extract exposures were associated with distinct changes to DNA methylation and hydroxymethylation. A subset of TCS induced genes were associated with differentially methylated and/or hydroxymethylated CpGs sites, and enriched for the ferroptosis pathway and the upstream regulator NFE2L2. DNA methylation and hydroxymethylation changes not associated with a concurrent change in gene expression, were linked to biological processes and molecular pathways important to airway health, including neutrophil function, transforming growth factor beta signalling, GTPase activity, and cell junction organisation. Our data identified differential impacts of TCS, ICS and LPG cook stove smoke on the human airway epithelium transcriptome, DNA methylome and hydroxymethylome and provide further insight into the association between indoor air pollution exposure and chronic lung disease mechanisms. [Display omitted] • Traditional cookstove smoke alters gene expression, and DNAm/hm in epithelial cells • Improved cookstove smoke/LPG did not alter gene expression but did impact DNAm/hm • DNAm/hmc linked gene expression enriched for ferroptosis and NFE2L2 regulation • DNAm/hmc changes linked to processes and pathways important to airway health • Data provide insight into indoor air pollution contributions to lung disease [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study discusses year-long (October 2016–September 2017) observations of atmospheric black carbon (BC) mass concentration, its source and sector contributions using a chemical transport model at a high-altitude (28°12′49.21″N, 85°36′33.77″E, 4900 masl) site located near the Yala Glacier in the central Himalayas, Nepal. During a field campaign, fresh snow samples were collected from the surface of the Yala Glacier in May 2017, which were analysed for BC and water-insoluble organic carbon mass concentration in order to estimate the scavenging ratio and surface albedo reduction. The maximum BC mass concentration in the ambient atmosphere (0.73 μg m−3) was recorded in the pre-monsoon season. The BC and water-insoluble organic carbon analysed from the snow samples were in the range of 96–542 ng g−1 and 152–827 ng g−1, respectively. The source apportionment study using the absorption Ångström exponent from in situ observations indicated approximately 44% contribution of BC from biomass-burning sources and the remainder from fossil-fuel sources during the entire study period. The source contribution study, using model data sets, indicated ∼14% contribution of BC from open-burning and ∼77% from anthropogenic sources during the study period. Our analysis of regional contributions of BC indicated that the highest contribution was from both Nepal and India combined, followed by China, while the rest was distributed among the nearby countries. The surface snow albedo reduction, estimated by an online model – Snow, Ice, and Aerosol Radiation – was in the range of 0.8–3.8% during the pre-monsoon season. The glacier mass balance analysis suggested that BC contributed to approximately 39% of the total mass loss in the pre-monsoon season. Image 1 • Open-burning sources contributed ∼14% of annual atmospheric BC over central Himalayas. • Biomass sources contributed 44% of annual atmospheric BC over central Himalayas. • India and Nepal together contributed 69% of atmospheric BC over central Himalayas. • BC deposition contributed to ∼39% of the total melting in the pre-monsoon season. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]