Local Porters in Nepal: Acute Mountain Sickness and Load Weight of Cargo Carrying

Local porters who haul burdens for trekkers are understudied and underappreciated for the labour they do in Nepal. Their susceptibility to Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) along with the weight of the loads they haul and carry in return for meagres payment, contribute to the difficulties of their very austere and under-resourced employment. They are frequently underpaid for their efforts. Acknowledgement by government organizations and trekking business owners could make their employment more viable by giving them a higher wage in spite of their occupation struggles. Data was gathered from 31 porters completing instruction at a Nepali Porters’ training establishment, based in Kathmandu, Nepal. The research used semi-structured in-depth interviews. Participants participated in a 45-60-minute interview, which was recorded at the field site. All the interviews were documented and then transcribed into English by a bilingual Nepali PhD student. The data was coded using a hierarchical, thematic coding structure approach. Findings showed that porters knew about and had experienced AMS, and that their work of carrying heavy cargoes for trekkers and trekking companies were often not compliant with prescribed kilogram load limits.

Analysis of Non-Idealities on CMOS Passive Mixers

In the current state of the art, WiFi-alike standards require achieving a high Image Rejection Ratio (IRR) while having low power consumption. Thus, quadrature structures based on passive ring mixers offer an attractive and widely used solution, as they can achieve a high IRR while being a passive block. However, it is not easy for the designer to know when a simple quadrature scheme is enough and when they should aim for a double quadrature structure approach, as the latter can improve the performance at the cost of requiring more area and complexity. This study focuses on the IRR, which crucially depends on the symmetry between the I and Q branches. Non-idealities (component mismatches, parasitics, etc.) will degrade the ideal balance by affecting the mixer and/or following/previous stages. This paper analyses the effect of imbalances, providing the constraints for obtaining a 40 dB IRR in the case of a conversion from a one-hundred-megahertz signal to the five-gigahertz range (upconversion) and vice versa (downconversion) for simple and double quadrature schemes. All simulations were carried out with complete device models from 65 nm standard CMOS technology and also a post-layout Monte Carlo analysis was included for mismatch analysis. The final section includes guidelines to help designers choose the most adequate scheme for each case.

STORYTELLING APPLICATION BASED ON INTERACTIVE STORY GRAPH STRUCTURE (ISGS)

Storytelling is a process of conveying series of events and information in words, images, and sound. Conventionally, storytelling developers/writers will apply the linear narrative structure approach to deliver the stories. However, that approach has some limitations; users cannot determine the path to end the story. They have no option to choose how to end the story based on their way of storytelling. Therefore, this study is about applying an Interactive Story Graph Structure (ISGS) approach to storytelling. ISGS approach is a structure used in storytelling in which users can revert their decision when going through the storytelling application implemented during the development. After completing the storytelling prototype development, a survey was conducted to test users’ enjoyment level when using the prototype. The survey was divided into four constructs: expectation, ease of navigation, understanding, and satisfaction. There were 36 respondents, and the data were collected on a random basis. Based on the survey’s result, most users (90.28%) enjoyed the storytelling application. The storytelling prototype was developed using Adobe Animate Creative Cloud and has been distributed among the respondents randomly. The analysis was conducted to determine the findings, limitations, and recommendations for future project improvement based on the results obtained. This study’s outcome is the complete production of storytelling application, which is creative and interactive with ISGS.