Suchergebnisse

Reintegration of ex-combatants is one of the major processes after the end of armed conflict. This study revolved around the question of social, political and economic challenges and opportunities that ex-combatants in Nepal come across while they remained in cantonment and after their voluntary retirement. The idea of integration has been analyzed along three dimensions; social, political and economic reintegration, notably adapted in Nepalese cultural, social and political context. After the demobilization, most of the ex-combatants did not return to their original home community, instead they opted to settling new lives, especially in new communities. The research is based on the analysis of primary data from the field, through the semi-structured interview methods of the data collection. The Study suggests that the cash which ex-combatants received during voluntary retirement helped them to move out of the cantonment but it failed to contribute or bring any noticeable changes in their lives as civilians due to the lack of guidance and plan. The cash based option has been understood as the problem solving schemes for the management of ex-combatants as an approach to implement the peace agreement rather than a process to transform ex-combatants into civilians.

Background: Babies with a birth weight of less than 2500 grams, irrespective of the period of their gestation are termed as Low Birth Weight (LBW) babies. Despite consistent efforts to improve the quality of maternal and child health, more than twenty million low birth-weight (LBW) babies are born every year throughout the world. Though, the health situation of Nepal has improved substantially over the years, the low birth-weight (LBW) rate is still high. The objective of this study was to assess the proportion of low birth weight and identify the associated factors for low birth weight in a live born infant among the institutionally delivered newborns. Methods: A hospital based cross sectional study was conducted in Obstetrics and Gynaecology ward of Bharatpur hospital, Bharatpur, from 17th September to 4th October , 2012. Altogether 480 respondents were taken and respondents were mothers who had delivered newborns in Bharatpur hospital.Results: A total of 480 births occurred during the study period, of which 480 met the study criteria. Among which 9.4% were low birth weight and 90.6% were normal birth weight .Overall mean birth weight was found to be 2.96 kg. Out of total 9.4% newborns were weighing less than 2.50 kg and mean birth weight 2.96kg. Conclusions: This study suggests that there were several factors interplaying which lead to LBW babies; which are age of mother at delivery,weight gain by mother during pregnancy, short, low body mass index and hyperemesis gravidarum was the strongest predictor in this study.

Species distribution models are a key component for understanding a species' potential occurrence, specifically in vastly undersampled landscapes. The current species distribution data for the Assamese macaque Macaca assamensis are outdated, but suggest a patchy distribution in moist broadleaved forests in South and Southeast Asia. Therefore, in this study, we used a species distribution model to explore the potential climatic niche of this species and assess its distribution and potential barriers in 12 South and Southeast Asian countries. We combined primary and secondary species occurrence records from different countries. We applied Classification and Regression Tree (CART), TreeNet (boosting), RandomForest (bagging) and Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) machine-learning algorithms with elevation as well as 19 bioclimatic variables for the first ensemble predictions ever completed for this species. Our results suggested that the predicted distribution of the Assamese macaque is strongly associated with precipitation of warmest quarter (BIO18), temperature annual range (BIO7) and temperature seasonality (BIO4). Our prediction shows a continuous potential climatic niche of the species from east of the Kaligandaki River in Nepal to Lao People's Democratic Republic. There are also potential niche patches in Bhutan, Southeast China, Thailand and Cambodia, while Pakistan and Afghanistan have no potential niche for the species. We believe that our workflow presents a new conservation-oriented open access research template to progress empirical primate conservation worldwide.