Small Business and Livelihood: A Study of Pashupatinath UNESCO Heritage Site of Nepal

Small businesses in world heritage sites provide services to visitors and livelihood for residents. Besides the cultural and religious values promoted by these businesses, they also provide socioeconomic support to their owners. The Pashupatinath temple is known as Hindu's major religious and pilgrimage destination in South Asia. Hundreds of businesses around the temple provide services to visitors. This study evaluates the socioeconomic impacts of these small businesses around Pashupatinath temple. Using a survey of 110 businesses, binary logistic regression models find that the owners of larger businesses selling religious supplies in this area are more likely to own houses in Kathmandu and to be more satisfied with their businesses. The study also finds that businesses without permanent stalls faced severe hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study assessed the socioeconomic status of a business owner through house ownership in Kathmandu, and finds that small businesses operating in the premises of the religious heritage site of Pashupatinath temple have a positive relation to the livelihood of the business owners and their families. It concludes that small-scale business in world heritage sites directly contributes to local livelihoods and economies. © 2022 by the authors.

Travel motivation during COVID-19: a case from Nepal

The tourism industry is one of the most affected industries by the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding travel motivation is necessary for the tourism movement, even in the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, this quantitative study aimed to explore travel motivation and its determinants. We collected 181 samples through a web-based questionnaire survey of the Nepali people in January and February 2021. The data were analyzed using a probit regression model through two different travel companion perspectives, i.e., traveling with friends and traveling with family members. We found that travel motivation, attributes, travel purpose, and transport mode preferences differed in companion groups. Specifically, those who want to travel with friends are government employees, 20-29 years of age, set health and wellness purposes, choose the bike for transportation, are less willing to visit homestay and agritourism, and want to travel for around one week. Those who plan to travel with family members use the coach to travel, choose rural destinations, including villages, and spend around two weeks. Based on these findings, we suggest that the Nepalese tourism destination and public transport companies make tourism packages targeting the groups. Since both groups showed interest in visiting rural destinations, we can say that tourism in rural destinations may revive earlier than urban tourism after the pandemic. However, a low-risk travel environment should be ensured for traveling to attract more tourists during and the post-disaster.

Transition to online higher education during COVID-19 pandemic: turmoil and way forward to developing country of South Asia-Nepal

Purpose: Every day thousands of academic institutes suspend their classes and students are staying in their home maintaining social distancing due to the fear of COVID-19 pandemic and Nepal is no exception. Realizing these facts, this study aims to explore the factors for the effectiveness of online mode of classes to on-class course-based students and analyzes the perception of faculties and students toward online mode during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach: It is based on exploratory research design, following mixed methods of qualitative and quantitative procedure. To build a rich understanding of the phenomenon, three-stage data collection procedure: preliminary interview, structural survey and validation were used. Findings: This study revealed triplet factors: infrastructure, student and teacher as antecedents of effectiveness of online classes during a pandemic. Technological support, infrastructure availability, faculty and students' perception have a significant relationship for the effectiveness of the online mode of the teaching-learning process. Students faced anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic, but a higher willingness to learn reduces the level of anxiety. Originality/value: This study significantly contributes to the future management of higher education and digs the future path of online and on-class teaching-learning practices. © 2021, Dhruba Kumar Gautam and Prakash Kumar Gautam.

Sentiment Analysis on Wearing Mask during COVID19 pandemic in India: A case study on Twitter

The ongoing pandemic, which is initiated in Wuhan, China, the rapid spread of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has caused public health crises regionally and internationally. According to World Health Organization (WHO), the virus can spread from an infected person's mouth or nose. Therefore, WHO has given various guidelines to be followed by people as precautions, among them, wearing a face mask is also one among them. So, in the proposed paper sentiment analysis will be performed to study public views on wearing masks, even after getting vaccinated. The purpose of this study is to analyze tweets by Indian citizens on problems due to wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data analysis was conducted by several classification algorithms based on Artificial Immune System algorithms (AIS), which are a new deep-learning model for text analysis and performance, and results are also compared with other models such as Naïve Bayes (NB), Support Vector Machines (SVM), etc. © The Electrochemical Society

Assessment of Air Quality Impact Due to Covid-19: A Global Scenario

The global COVID-19 pandemic has put much of the world into lockdown which led to the unintended and positive changes in the environment surrounding us. It has benefited human race as it has led to improve air quality post-pandemic. Several studies state that the concentration of the various pollutants has decreased, where NO2 air quality index value falls more precipitously (23–37%) relative to the pre-lockdown period, followed by PM10 (14–20%), SO2 (2–20%), PM2.5 (7–16%), and CO (7–11%), but the O3 increases 10–27%. Due to this Covid-19 pandemic, D.C. has witnessed the cleanest spring since the last few decades, and L.A., one of the highly polluted city of the USA, has experienced improvement in the air quality. Air quality has always been an important issue where several big countries like China the COVID-19 outbreak has improved the air quality and lowered the pollution levels. According to several data analysis in the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment, PM concentration levels decreased by more than 20% during January and April in more than 300 cities when compared to the previous month’s pollution levels. There were many cities in which the air pollution level fell drastically during lockdown, 16% in Hong Kong, and 13% in Sydney and in 14% in Singapore. Few researchers studied that when restrictions were eased the PM 2.5 level increased for cities like Beijing, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town and New York. There were cities like New York the pollution level took a dip during the peak lockdown by 59%. Also when talking about the Indian context, the air quality improved for several cities and states including Maharashtra being worst hit state. The air pollution level resulted in ‘satisfactory’ level (AQI) due to this lockdown. After this dip, there was again a peak at 33% increase in the air pollution when the city slowly started and reached to the pre-lockdown levels. This air quality has direct impact on the health of the people. Several air pollutants like NOx have resulted on harmful effects such as increasing heart and lung disease. When examining the Indian population, around 7% of total population is above the age of 65 and 27% in the age 0–14 who are more prone to the air pollution leading diseases like asthma, bronchitis, emphysema, and possibly cancer. This onset of pandemic has cleared the thought of people where immediate changes in air quality within dense population/industry can be improved based on pollution mitigation. This chapter focuses on the worldwide air pollution studies and the findings can be implemented to maintain clean air. In addition, attempt has been made to assess the temporal behavior of daily Tropospheric Columnar NO2 Flux and Ground-level NO2 concentration for three days, one each in pre-lockdown, during lockdown and post-lockdown for three major cities of world, viz. New York, Mumbai and Wuhan. Also, NO2 pollution assessment is done by mapping the remotely sensed columnar tropospheric NO2 fluxes. Moreover, accelerated information approximately the hyperlink among air pollutants and COVID-19 can be useful worldwide with the aid of using informing public regarding fitness measures and sickness control techniques in scientific practice. The findings will be utilized by policymakers to set new benchmarks for air pollutants that could enhance the high-satisfactory lifestyles for principal sectors of the World’s populace and additionally to cut down the air pollutants in destiny with the aid of enforcing the strategic lockdowns on the pollutant hotspots with minimum financial drop. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Role of autopsy in COVID-19 patients

Coronavirus disease 2019 had caused a pandemic leading to over 6M posi-tive cases worldwide out of which 3.73 lac are demised (until when the article was written). Its first outbreak was seen in Wuhan, China. In the Indian sce-nario, we have a total of 2 lac cases out of which 5,679 have been deceased (until when the article was written). Due to the high transmissibility of this disease, the entire country is under lockdown to prevent the spread of the virus. The main etiology of this virus is the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2(SARS-CoV-2). This affects the respiratory system leading to cough, shortness of breath, and fever. There have been cases with mild or no symptoms reported, but the cause of death is due to the virus. This helps us understand the diagnosis, epidemiology, symptoms, and pathophysiology about the virus, which can help in treatment modalities. An autopsy is one of the methods by which we can understand the systematic involvement other than the respiratory system. Various pathological, microbiological changes can occur in the other organs. Even though the person is deceased, the virus is highly infectious can cause the spread through body fluids. Proper care must be taken while handling the body and performing the procedure. This review article aims to focus on the autopsy findings found in various cases to study the disease pathophysiology of the SARS-CoV-2. This article also helps us understand the guidelines that have been put forward by WHO and CDC must be followed regarding the specification required in the autopsy room;PPE’s to be worn, human waste and fluid disposal, body transportation. Proper per-sonal hygiene must be maintained while handling the COVID-19 patients;this can lead to less susceptibility of acquiring the disease.

COVID-19: A bibliometric analysis and insights

The current outbreak of the coronavirus disease has left the whole world traumatised. The illness triggered by the novel coronavirus is named as COVID-19. It is pre-fixed with the word "novel" because it comes under the new strain of the virus that has not been reported before. This virus outbreak has disrupted human life in the most petrifying way worldwide. The present study aims to analyse the work done in this field through a state-of-the-art review of articles based on COVID-19 and discuss the current trends in the epidemiology of this disease entity with special reference to India and the effects of this pandemic on the environment. The time frame selected for review is the beginning of this pandemic to April 10th, 2020. Scopus® database is used to carry out the analysis. Moreover, the most contributed authors, institutions, countries, etc. are showed through the analysis. The purpose of this review is to get an idea about the direction of the flow of current research, the association of various authors with each other, the role of collaboration between several institutions and the position of India in current explosive ongoing research. © 2020, International Journal of Mathematical, Engineering and Management Sciences.