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Becoming Rasuwa Relief: Practices Of Multiple Engagement In Post-Earthquake Nepal, Austin Lord, Galen Murton

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

In this article, we reflect on the multiple nature of our engagements in the wake of the 7.8m earthquake that struck Nepal on April 25th 2015. Specifically, we trace the events, experiences, decisions, positions, and processes that constituted our work with a post-earthquake volunteer initiative we helped to form, called Rasuwa Relief. Using the concept of multiplicity (cf. Mol 2002), we consider the uncertain process by which Rasuwa Relief began to cohere, as a collective of diverse efforts, interventions, projects, and commitments, and how Rasuwa Relief was continually and multiply enacted through practices of engagement. As a collaborative effort that …

Disaster Governance And Challenges In A Rural Nepali Community: Notes From Future Village Ngo, Lai Ming Lam, Varun Khanna, Rob Kuipers

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

More than two years after the 2015 earthquakes devastated Nepal, Katunge village in Dhading district, Nepal, remained as destroyed as it was right after the earthquake. While the villagers were rather hopeful about rebuilding their houses and lives during the immediate relief effort in which we engaged, one month after the earthquake, now only a few are confident that they will ever rebuild their homes. In this article, we describe the reconstruction progress, followed by a critique of why the reconstruction progress has been so slow. We conclude with reflections on reconstruction challenges interwoven into the context of our NGO …

The Maintenance Of Virtue Over Time: Notes On Changing Household Lives In Post-Disaster Nepal, Andrew W. Haxby

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

Although it is banal to say the series of earthquakes that hit Nepal in Spring 2015 will radically change the country, what this change will consist of still remains undetermined. As many earthquake victims learn to make do in broken houses, tents, or corrugated tin structures, post-earthquake Nepal seems held within a frustrating stasis, wherein temporary hardship is often impossible to distinguish from lasting consequence. Yet this sense of stasis is in part misleading. While the act of building remains slow, households who lost their homes have been scrambling to rethink their financial futures in order to afford reconstruction. In …

Aftershock: Reflections On The Politics Of Reconstruction In Northern Gorkha, Rune Bolding Bennike

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

Many commentators have described the aftermath of the 2015 earthquake in Nepal either (1) through the notion that ‘nothing is going on’ in regards to postquake reconstruction; or (2) through a celebration of grassroots resilience and urban entrepreneurship in the face of disaster and state neglect. In this article, I draw on observations from Kutang and Nubri in the mountains of northern Gorkha District to argue that neither of these descriptions is fully accurate. Even in this remote and inaccessible area, much was being done in the aftermath of disaster, and a great deal of this activity diverges, in multiple …

Himalayan Trauma: Administrative Thrombosis And Citizens’ Response, Robert E. Beazley

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

In this paper, the author uses excerpts from social media postings and traditional media to highlight how various citizen and volunteer responses to the 2015 earthquake helped fill in the gaps created by institutional dysfunction. Further, he shows how these two types of media played a critical role in facilitating communication between grassroots aid initiatives and earthquake affected people and their families and friends, not only in Kathmandu but also in neglected mountainous areas as well. The author uses a personal, reflexive approach to help situate the distinct experiences of earthquake affected people including trauma patients, people with disabilities, and …

A Field-Based Study Of Impacts Of The 2015 Earthquake On Potentially Dangerous Glacial Lakes In Nepal, Alton C. Byers Iii, Elizabeth A. Byers, Daene C. Mckinney, David R. Rounce

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

Following the earthquake that occurred on April 25, 2015 in Nepal, and the second major earthquake that occurred on May 12, 2015, we conducted field-based studies of five potentially dangerous glacial lakes in Nepal— Imja Tsho, Tsho Rolpa, Dig Tsho, Panga Dinga, and Thulagi. This research was undertaken in an effort to better understand what impacts the earthquake may have had on lake stability, flood potential as well as local perceptions of the dangers that post-earthquake outburst floods pose. Although only one relatively small, earthquakerelated glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) was found to have occurred, the presence of new cracks, …

Calculating Risk, Denying Uncertainty: Seismicity And Hydropower Development In Nepal, Christopher Butler, Matthäus Rest

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

If Ulrich Beck’s definition of ‘risk society’ describes societies increasingly structured by preoccupations with future environmental threats and related insecurities created by modernization, then Nepal’s hydropower community would appear to be quite the opposite, propelled into environmental denial by twin demands for domestic electricity and revenue earned through hydroelectric export. Our research reveals that prior to the April 2015 earthquake in Nepal, the hydropower community was engaging in what Eviatar Zerubavel calls ‘socially organized denial,’ largely ignoring the uncertainties associated with seismic activity. Earthquakes and tremors were viewed as unavoidable realities that should not impede hydropower development. This denial, we …

Gallery | Kevin Bubriski, Kevin Bubriski

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

No abstract provided.

The True Cost: The Bitter Truth Behind Fast Fashion, Zeynep Ozdamar-Ertekin

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

The True Cost is a documentary about the clothes we wear, the people who make them and the impact the industry has on the environment, the society, and the workers. It shows us the dark and grim side of global fast fashion supply chain. The review provides the main highlights of the film and summarizes the human, social and environmental costs of the industry. A number of counter-examples are included to show how people can make a difference and there can be a better way of making clothes. The current fast fashion model is all about profit. It does not …

Editorial, Sienna Craig, Mark Turin

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

No abstract provided.

Ruchir Sharma, Breakout Nations (2013), Victoria L. Rodner

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

No abstract provided.

Globalization Tumult And Civilizational Greatness, Pradip N. Khandwalla

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

In the kind of tumultuous, strife-torn, and stressful world we are living in, we need to ask the questions: “Is our civilization moving in the right direction? What makes a civilization great?” Greed for power and greed for money, unless offset by a shared conception of civilizational excellence, often degenerate into widespread corruption, fraud, and violence. In developing countries like India, the challenge is to design a civilization that uses the creativity and enterprise of the market economy, the freedom of choice of democracy, and the altruism of the developmental state – to reverse degeneration and foster social, economic, and …

Front Inside Cover

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

No abstract provided.

Antinomies Of Globalization, Yahya Mete Madra

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

The defining antinomy of the post-2008 crash phase is argued to be the one between neoliberalism and populism. This essay aims to complicate the terms of this antinomy and offers a reading that problematizes the association of neoliberalism with internationalism and globalization on the one hand and populism with nationalism and anti-imperialism on the other. Not only internationalism in its historical origins is an anti-imperialist concept but also today we can easily discern how reactionary forms of populist nationalisms are made possible by globalization of finance—a hallmark of neoliberalism. The essay concludes with a discussion of the possibility of …

Front Outside Cover

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

No abstract provided.

Orbits Of Contemporary Globalization, A. Fuat Fırat

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Contrary to the commonly accepted view, human beings were global (i.e., migratory and without borders) to begin with and then localized as they started to reduce hunting and gathering and got into agriculture and animal husbandry. When they were migratory, humans exchanged genes, tools, cultures – in effect, they were already globalizing. In the second part of this commentary, I analyze the contemporary conditions of globalization. I suggest that today we are experiencing a market centered iconographic culture; and the possibilities for richer and more inclusive symbolic cultures exist, and need to be cultivated.

Collective Narcissism, Anti-Globalism, Brexit, Trump, And The Chinese Juggernaut, Russell Belk

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Brexit and the election of Trump both relied on a particular type of nationalistic appeal to collective narcissism — an exaggerated emotional belief that the nation’s greatness is being undermined by other nations and other people. This tendency is catered to by appeals to make the nation great again by shutting borders and embracing isolationism while scapegoating refugees and immigrants. The rise of jingoistic leaders like Trump, Putin, and Erdogan can be explained by such appeals. But China, which has long suffered feelings of national humiliation is reacting in quite different ways that embrace globalism, even while rejecting multiculturalism. This …

Globalization: Mere Hiccup, Major Convulsion Or Mega Transformation?, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Deniz Atik

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

Task-Focused User Interface, Christopher Farrar

Defensive Publications Series

Computer or mobile device users that try focusing on a single task often become distracted or interrupted by other applications, notifications or tasks. Also, users may distract themselves while working on a project by thinking about a task from another project. When users are distracted or interrupted, they switch context from one task to another, which may impact the quality of the tasks they are trying to complete and also increases the time needed for task completion.

The described techniques provide a task-focused user interface that, with express user permission and consent, temporarily restricts the user to a single task …

Control Of Jitter Buffer Size Using Machine Learning, Ivo Creusen, Oliver Walter, Henrik Lundin

Defensive Publications Series

Determining the size of a jitter buffer for calls conducted over the network involves a trade-off between the probability of buffer under-runs and user-perceived delay, which impedes communication. Techniques of this disclosure perform data-driven optimization of the jitter buffer of audio and/or video calls conducted over the internet. Event logs that contain data about network conditions experienced during completed calls are used to calculate optimal jitter buffer size using an optimizer. The output of the optimizer is used as a target for offline training of a machine-learning model to calculate optimal jitter buffer size. The trained model is employed to …

Connect 228 - December 2017

Connect

Click the DOWNLOAD link to obtain a PDF of this issue.

The Lorax, Noel Michel

Blog Archive: River Reflections at the University of Dayton

As River Stewards, our program’s mission is to “engage in interdisciplinary and experiential learning, civic engagement, and sustainable community development around rivers;” But how do we stay motivated to accomplish this goal? Today, if you were to google how much trash is in our oceans you would see statistics such as “8 million tons of trash is dumped in the world’s oceans and rivers everyday” or “There is a plastic island the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean”. We live in a throwaway culture society where everything is just for now, and it doesn’t matter where it goes. On …

Role Of An Upwelled Coastal Area In Northeastern Colombia In The Distribution, Population Dynamics And Genetic Diversity Of The Migratory Habitat-Shifting Chelonia Mydas, Catalina Vasquez Carrillo

Open Access Dissertations

The Caribbean is generally an oligotrophic sea; however, in the southern portion between Venezuela and Colombia, a yearly, moderate, coastal upwelling fuels a very productive marine ecosystem, the Southern Caribbean Upwelling System. Extensive submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) ecosystems are found in the Colombian side of the system, by La Guajira peninsula. SAV ecosystems constitute key habitat for multiple marine fauna species, specially at juvenile/larval stages. La Guajira’s SAV unique, upwelled ecosystems are hypothesized as important foraging and developmental habitat for the endangered, migratory sea turtle Chelonia mydas. The complex habitat-shifting behavior and very long-lasting juvenile stage traits of the species …

Study On Ultra Wideband Spectral Response And Efficient Hot Electron Detection Using Plasmon Field Effect Transistor, Seongman Cho

Open Access Dissertations

Plasmon based field effect transistors (FET) can be used to convert energy induced by incident optical radiation to electrical energy. Plasmonic FETs can efficiently detect incident light and amplify it by coupling to resonant plasmonic modes thus improving selectivity and signal to noise ratio. The spectral responses can be tailored both through optimization of nanostructure geometry as well as constitutive materials. In this paper, we studied various plasmonic nanostructures using gold for a wideband spectral response from visible to near IR. We show using empirical data and simulation results that detection loss exponentially increases as the volume of metal nanostructure …

Women's And Gender Studies 40th Anniversary, Lauren Reid

College of Arts and Sciences Newsroom

The University of Dayton women's and gender studies program was first discussed during the 1960s when issues of gender were being raised on college campuses. The University formally launched a women's study program in 1978 with a social justice-oriented mission to make students aware that women and gender issues matter.

To Catch A Predator Abroad: A Call For Greater Extraterritorial Enforcement Of Sexual Exploitation Of Children, Michelle Kfoury

Utah Law Student Scholarship

What can be done do increase extraterritorial enforcement of sexual exploitation crimes? To start, it would help if the United Nations established a convention to impose an obligation on signatory nations to adopt a criminal prohibition of sexual exploitation. In her presentation to the UN Human Rights Council, Special Rapporteur Najat Maalla M’jid suggests proposing a set of laws that can be easily adopted by all states. Such a broad set of laws would need to include a legal definition of child pornography, criminalize the mere possession of child pornography, criminalize sexual exploitation crimes facilitated by computers, and require all …

Gay Man Denied Marriage License Hopes To Unseat County Clerk, Adam Beam

Media Collection

No abstract provided.

Kim Davis Denied His Right To Marry Another Man. Now David Ermold Is Going To Run Against Her., Eli Rosenberg

Media Collection

No abstract provided.

Winthrop Team Places In International Programming Competition, Winthrop University

Winthrop News 2017

• Winthrop has participated in the competition for approximately 20 years.
• Teams of three students each work on nine to 11 problems for approximately five hours, offering programming solutions via one computer.