Papers by Subash Adhikari
University of North Texas, May 1, 2018
Frontiers in Neurology, 2021
Background: After a coma, patients with severe brain injury may present disorders of consciousnes... more Background: After a coma, patients with severe brain injury may present disorders of consciousness (DOC). A substantial proportion of these patients also suffer from severe dysphagia. Assessment of and therapy for swallowing disabilities of patients with DOC are essential because dysphagia has major functional consequences and comorbidities. Dysphagia evaluation in patients with DOC is impeded by the lack of adapted tools. The first aim of this study was to create a new tool, the SWallowing Assessment in Disorders Of Consciousness (SWADOC), and propose a validation protocol. The SWADOC was developed to help therapists assess factors related to swallowing in patients with DOC. The second aim was to investigate the relationship between patients' level of consciousness and SWADOC items and scores.Method/Design: In this multicenter prospective cohort, 104 patients with DOC will be tested three times over five consecutive days with the SWADOC. Statistical analyses will focus on the r...
Additional file 4: Table S3. List of 8 proteins that have not previously identified in human p... more Additional file 4: Table S3. List of 8 proteins that have not previously identified in human plasma, searched against PeptideAtlas database.
Archives of Agriculture and Environmental Science, 2021
The management of municipal solid always poses serious environmental problems on land, air, and g... more The management of municipal solid always poses serious environmental problems on land, air, and groundwater, especially in the case of developing countries. The characterization and assessment of leachates are necessary to understand the water quality in the urban region as well as has enormous importance in sustaining the livelihoods of people in the riverine environment maintaining the ecological balance. Landfill leachate contains thousands of complex components, which contaminate the nearby water bodies, and communities with several hazardous ingredients. The present study was conducted to assess the influence of landfill leachates on the quality of Seti River water. The samples were collected from four stations (Tatopani, Ramghat, Landfill, Below landfill, and Kotre). The samples were analyzed for pH, total hardness, dissolved oxygen, biochemical oxygen demand, turbidity, total dissolved solids, electrical conductivity (EC), Cl-, NH3, and PO43- by standard methods. The pH and E...
<p>Groundwater irrigation has played a critical role in the Green Revolutio... more <p>Groundwater irrigation has played a critical role in the Green Revolution in South Asia, helping to increase crop yields and improve livelihoods of millions of rural households. However, the spread of irrigation has not been homogeneous, with many farmers in the Eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains (EIGP – Nepal Terai and parts of eastern India) still lacking reliable and affordable irrigation access. As a result, agricultural productivity in the EIGP is some of the lowest found across South Asia, with many farmers trapped in chronic cycles of poverty and food insecurity.</p><p>A major focus of government and donor efforts to support intensification of groundwater irrigation in the EIGP has been the replacement of existing diesel-based pumping systems with alternative electric or solar powered pumping technologies. These technologies are viewed as being cheaper for to operate and less environmentally damaging due to their lower operational carbon emissions. However, scaling these technologies in practice has proved challenging due to their high upfront capital costs and the unique socio-technical constraints posed by farming systems in the EIGP (e.g., land fragmentation and poorly developed supply chains).</p><p>In response to these challenges, our research explores whether opportunities exist to make existing diesel pump systems more cost effective for farmers to support adaptation to climate change and reduce poverty. In particular, we seek to identify what factors lead to disparities in groundwater access costs for irrigation, how these disparities affect farmers’ water use behavior, and in turn how this impacts agricultural production outcomes. Our work draws on evidence from a recent survey of over 400 farmer households in the Nepal Terai, along with detailed in-situ testing and analysis of the fuel efficiency and cost-effectiveness of over 100 diesel pumpsets in the same region conducted between 2019-20.</p><p>Our results demonstrate that substantial variability exists in the costs of diesel pump irrigation in the EIGP and that higher costs of groundwater access are associated with lower levels of agricultural productivity and household income. Dependence on expensive pumpset rental markets, in particular amongst credit constrained households, is a major driver of the highest irrigation access costs. Additionally, many farmers also continue to operate and invest in pumpset models and designs that are significantly oversized for local hydrological conditions, resulting in fuel inefficiencies and excess costs that reduce the overall profitability of irrigation water use.</p><p>Our findings have important implications for national and regional policy debates about sustainable intensification of irrigated agriculture in the EIGP and other regions. We suggest that intensification of water use and improvements in agricultural productivity can be achieved in the near-term without need for radical technology changes. Targeted credit support, combined with data-driven advisories and improved supply chains for maintenance services and spare parts, could incentivize and enable adoption of low-cost fuel-efficient diesel pumpsets resulting in substantial reductions in costs of irrigation for many farmers. This would have positive near-term impacts on agricultural productivity and rural livelihoods, supporting adaptation to climate change and future transitions to alternative low-carbon irrigation technologies in the region.</p>
Microorganisms, as successive members of the food web, play a major role in biological processes.... more Microorganisms, as successive members of the food web, play a major role in biological processes. They are found in environments ranging from extremely hot to harsh cold temperatures. Thus, the study of bacterial communities in various ecosystems is of great concern around the world. The glacier is one of the parts of the cryosphere, which is the key component and sensitive indicator of climatic and environmental changes. A glacial ecosystem is a habitat for various microorganisms, i.e., autotrophic and heterotrophic. Different physicochemical parameters like temperature, pH, electrical conductivity, the input of nutrient concentration, precipitation, ions concentrations, etc. influence the microbial diversity in the glacial ecosystem for their metabolic processes. Successive studies of bacterial communities in the Himalayan glacial ecosystem are reliable proxies to know the relationships between microbial biodiversity and climate change since the Himalayan glaciers are free from an...
Archives of Agriculture and Environmental Science, 2021
The threats of climate change are found in both developed and developing countries. Since the imp... more The threats of climate change are found in both developed and developing countries. Since the impacts of climate change are global, irreversible, and pervasive, it is gaining worldwide attention. High mountains are the first indicators of climate change. However, the idea of what causes climate change effects on multiple ecosystem services remains scattered. This article is meant for information regarding the impacts of climate change on the ecosystem of Nepal. The result shows that climate change causes tree line shifting, change in land cover, extinction of species due to loss of habitat, imbalance in carbon sequestration on the terrestrial ecosystem while eutrophication of water bodies and extinction of endemic fish species was reported from the aquatic ecosystem. Tropical area is considered to be more affected by climate change in terms of Natural disasters and Health impacts. Moreover, different types of ecological modeling can be simulated in the context of Nepal for the predi...
Nature Communications, 2020
The Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) launched the Human Proteome Project (HPP) in 2010, creatin... more The Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) launched the Human Proteome Project (HPP) in 2010, creating an international framework for global collaboration, data sharing, quality assurance and enhancing accurate annotation of the genome-encoded proteome. During the subsequent decade, the HPP established collaborations, developed guidelines and metrics, and undertook reanalysis of previously deposited community data, continuously increasing the coverage of the human proteome. On the occasion of the HPP’s tenth anniversary, we here report a 90.4% complete high-stringency human proteome blueprint. This knowledge is essential for discerning molecular processes in health and disease, as we demonstrate by highlighting potential roles the human proteome plays in our understanding, diagnosis and treatment of cancers, cardiovascular and infectious diseases.
Credible detection and quantification of low abundance proteins from human blood plasma is a majo... more Credible detection and quantification of low abundance proteins from human blood plasma is a major challenge in precision medicine biomarker discovery when using mass spectrometry (MS). Here, we employed a mixture of recombinant proteins in DDA libraries to subsequently detect cancer-associated low abundance plasma proteins using SWATH/DIA. The exemplar DDA recombinant protein spectral library (rPSL) was derived from tryptic digestion of 36 human recombinant proteins that had been previously implicated as possible cancer biomarkers in both our own and other studies. The rPSL was then used to identify proteins from non-depleted colorectal cancer (CRC) plasmas by SWATH-MS. Most (32/36) of the proteins in the rPSL were reliably identified in plasma samples, including 8 proteins (BTC, CXCL10, IL1B, IL6, ITGB6, TGFα, TNF, TP53) not previously detected using highstringency MS in human plasmas according to PeptideAtlas. The rPSL SWATH-MS protocol was compared to DDA-MS using MARS-depleted and post-digestion peptide fractionated plasmas (here referred to as a human plasma DDA library). Of the 32 proteins identified using rPSL SWATH, only 12 were identified using DDA-MS. The 20 additional proteins exclusively identified by using the rPSL approach with SWATH were mostly lower abundance (i.e., <10ng/ml) plasma proteins. To mitigate FDR concerns, and replicating a more typical approach, the DDA rPSL was also merged into a human plasma DDA library. When SWATH identification was repeated using this merged library, the majority (33/36) of low abundance plasma proteins from the rPSL could still be identified using high-stringency HPP Guidelines v3.0 protein inference criteria. Colorectal
One key to improve the performance of advanced optoelectronic devices and energy harvest in graph... more One key to improve the performance of advanced optoelectronic devices and energy harvest in graphene is to understand the predominant carrier scattering via optical phonons. Nevertheless, low light absorbance in graphene yields the limited photoexcited carrier density, hampering the hot carrier effect which is strongly correlated to hot optical-phonon bottleneck effect as the energy-loss channel. Here, by integrating graphene with monolayer MoS2 possessing stronger light absorbance, we demonstrate an efficient interfacial hot carrier transfer between graphene and MoS2 in their heterostructure with a prolonged relaxation time using broadband transient-differential-transmittance spectroscopy. We observe that the carrier relaxation time of graphene in the heterostructure is four times slower than that of bare graphene. This is explained by non-dissipative interlayer transfer from MoS2 to graphene, which is attributed to the enhanced hot optical-phonon bottleneck effect of graphene in the heterostructure by an increased photoexcited carrier population. A significant reduction of both amplitude and relaxation time in A- and B-excitons is another evidence of the interlayer transfer from MoS2 to graphene. The non-dissipative interlayer charge transfer from MoS2 to graphene is confirmed by density-functional calculations. This provides a different platform to further study the photoinduced hot carrier effect in graphene heterostructures for photo-thermoelectric detectors or hot carrier solar cells.
Journal of Forensic Accounting Research, 2020
To help guard against weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting (ICFR), the Sarbane... more To help guard against weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting (ICFR), the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 requires certain filers to have their ICFR assertions audited. Beneish et al. (2008) show that market participants fail to react negatively to adverse ICFR audit opinions. This is puzzling because weak ICFR heightens the risk of fraud or materially misstated financial statements. Our study reexamines this issue for the time periods covered by Auditing Standard No. 2 (AS2) and Auditing Standard No. 5 (AS5). We too find no significant negative market reaction to the disclosure of adverse ICFR audits in the AS2 era. However, we show that markets react negatively for first-time disclosures of adverse ICFR audits after the adoption of AS5. Furthermore, in the AS5 regime, markets seem to differentiate between entity-wide versus account-specific ICFR weaknesses. We also show that correcting previous ineffective ICFR results in a positive market reaction. Data Availability: D...
Journal of Mountain Science, 2021
High-altitude Himalayan lakes act as natural storage for environmental evidence related to climat... more High-altitude Himalayan lakes act as natural storage for environmental evidence related to climate change and environmental factors. A great number of lakes are distributed in the southern slope area of the central Himalayas; however, research concerning the hydrochemical processes of these lakes is still insufficient. Herein, we present a comprehensive study on the water chemistry of the lake waters and the inlet stream waters from Rara Lake in western Nepal based upon samples collected in November 2018. The pH, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll-a concentration (chl-a), water temperature, electric conductivity (EC) and total dissolved solids (TDS) were measured in situ, and the concentrations of major ions (Ca 2+ , Mg 2+ , K + , Na + , Cl − , SO 4 2− , and NO 3 − ) were analyzed in the laboratory. The results revealed that the water in Rara Lake is slightly alkaline, with pH values ranging from 7.6–7.98. The cations, in decreasing order of concentration in the lake water, are Ca 2+ >Mg 2+ >K + >Na + with average concentrations of 20.64 mg·L −1 , 11.78 mg·L −1 , 1.48 mg·L −1 and 0.72 mg·L −1 , respectively; the order and concentrations for the anions is HCO 3 − >SO 4 2− >Cl − >NO 3 − , with average concentrations of 122.15 mg·L −1 , 2.15 mg·L −1 , 0.46 mg·L −1 and 0.55 mg·L −1 , respectively. The dominant cation and anion in the lake water are Ca 2+ and HCO3 − , and they account for 48.14% and 71.8% of the totals, respectively. The range of lake water TDS is from 95 mg·L −1 to 98 mg·L −1 , with an average of 96.85 mg·L −1 . The high ratio of (Ca 2+ + Mg 2+ ) to total cations and the low ratio of (Na + + K + ) to total cations indicate that Rara Lake receives ions from rock weathering, especially from carbonate rocks. Similarly, Gibbs boomerang diagrams and Piper diagrams also support the hydrochemistry of Rara Lake as being dominated by rock-weathering patterns. Likewise, other statistical analysis tools, such as Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and correlation strongly suggest the dominance of weathering of calcium and magnesium bicarbonate rocks as the major source of ions in Rara Lake. However, several traces of anthropogenic inputs into the lake were noticed, and the hypolimnion in the lake appears to be oxygen deficient, which may not be an issue at present but cannot be ignored in the future.
Written texts can reveal the personality traits of the authors of those documents. Beyond the dif... more Written texts can reveal the personality traits of the authors of those documents. Beyond the differences in writing styles of individuals, the choice of words and use of vocabulary can be different for each individual depending on their personality traits. In this study, we use Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC2015) software to analyze the content of emails from a sample of Enron and Facebook executives. We compare the attributes revealed in these emails at the individual and company level. The results of the analysis indicate that there are significant differences in the personality traits of individuals in the two companies. We show that context analysis can be used as an aid to gain insight on the attributes of business leaders and such tool can potentially aid in identifying the fraud risk among a company's C-suite executives.
Atmospheric Research, 2021
Abstract The quantitative and qualitative characterization of ions and inorganic nitrogen in prec... more Abstract The quantitative and qualitative characterization of ions and inorganic nitrogen in precipitation assists in understanding the accompanying sources and chemistry of regional precipitation. A total of 212 event-based precipitation samples were collected from four sites in Bangladesh in 2017 to investigate the physicochemical characteristics, sources, and deposition of atmospheric ionic constituents and inorganic nitrogen. During the entire monitoring period, 5.7% of the total samples were acidic (i.e., pH Cox's Bazar > Dinajpur > Sylhet, whereas the anthropogenic species exhibited the order of Dinajpur > Satkhira > Sylhet > Cox's Bazar, underlining the local and regional impacts of these species in Bangladesh. Based on the source apportionment, the sources were categorized as marine (Na+ and Cl−), terrigenous (Ca2+, Mg2+, and HCO3−), fossil fuel combustion (NO3− and SO42−), agriculture (NH4+), and biomass burning (K+). The Cl− in Sylhet and Satkhira suggests additional sources associated with anthropogenic activities. The back-trajectory analyses and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction's final (NCEP FNL) datasets illustrate the presence of significantly diverse air masses with contributions from various sources in the monsoon and non-monsoon climates. Both the amount of precipitation and the ionic quantity governs the fluxes in Bangladesh. The Na+ % and SAR lie under the safe category suggesting a good precipitation water quality for agriculture and soil in Bangladesh, while the deposition of inorganic nitrogen has resulted in a value above the threshold line (10 kg ha−1 y−1). Thus, this study conveys a comprehensive picture of the ionic composition, providing a baseline dataset to assess the atmospheric environment in this lowland region.
Archives of Agriculture and Environmental Science, 2020
This review provides a comprehensive overview of the basic and applied aspects of different plant... more This review provides a comprehensive overview of the basic and applied aspects of different plant growth regulators in the regulation of growth and development of cucumber plants. The study is completely based on the use of secondary sources of data; related journals, government institutes, and relevant reports. Foliar application of PGRs has been shown to change the physiological and developmental processes, including plant vegetative growth, sex expression, yield, and yield components in cucumber. There are basically two types of growth regulators; plant growth promoters such as auxin, gibberellins, cytokinins, maleic hydrazide, ethephon, etc. and plant growth inhibitors such as ethylene, abscisic acids, dormins, etc. The combined use of auxins and gibberellins result in increased secondary growth. Maleic hydrazide (MH) along with Ethephon at 100 ppm each increases the number of nodes and primary branches. Ethrel at 300-400 ppm retards the secondary development and increase femal...
Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry, 2020
The major ions in precipitation can reflect the conditions of the atmosphere, while stable isotop... more The major ions in precipitation can reflect the conditions of the atmosphere, while stable isotopic characteristics provide information on the moisture source. In order to understand the local hydro-chemical features and regional geochemical cycle, it is essential to assess the chemical composition of precipitation and the associated sources. Therefore, a total of 57 precipitation samples (2016 to 2017) for major ions and 178 samples (2013 to 2017) for stable isotopes were collected from the Wengguo station and analyzed to explore the major ionic deposition and stable isotopic characteristics in the northern slopes of the Himalayas. The average pH and electrical conductivity were 6.82 ± 0.45 and 15.36 ± 11.67 μS cm -1 , respectively. Ca 2+ followed by K + and Mg 2+ played a crucial role in neutralizing the precipitation acidity. The major ionic sources in the region were terrigenous (Ca 2+ , HCO 3 -, and Mg 2+ ) and sea salt (Na + , Cl -, and Mg 2+ ), as well as anthropogenic emissions (SO 4 2-and NO 3 -) and biomass burning (K + ). The total deposition flux of the major ions was higher in 2016 than in 2017 and was influenced by the higher precipitation. The average values of δ 18 O and δD in precipitation were -15.22 ± 5.17 ‰ and -116.01 ± 41.31 ‰, respectively. The precipitation stable isotopes were not significantly correlated to the local air temperature but the precipitation amount. Moreover, the variation in stable isotopes, local meteoric water line, and d-excess indicated the existence of continental and monsoon moisture transport systems. The transport of chemicals over the high elevation region from polluted cities in South Asia via moisture originating in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea was determined based on the source identification, clusters of air mass backward trajectory analysis, and the National Center for Environmental Prediction Final dataset. Thus, the ionic concentrations and stable isotopic characteristics of the precipitation from this study provided a valuable dataset to assess the atmospheric environment in the northern slopes of the Himalayas at Southern Tibetan Plateau.
Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry, 2020
The major ions in precipitation can reflect the conditions of the atmosphere, while stable isotop... more The major ions in precipitation can reflect the conditions of the atmosphere, while stable isotopic characteristics provide information on the moisture source. In order to understand the local hydro-chemical features and regional geochemical cycle, it is essential to assess the chemical composition of precipitation and the associated sources. Therefore, a total of 57 precipitation samples (2016 to 2017) for major ions and 178 samples (2013 to 2017) for stable isotopes were collected from the Wengguo station and analyzed to explore the major ionic deposition and stable isotopic characteristics in the northern slopes of the Himalayas. The average pH and electrical conductivity were 6.82 ± 0.45 and 15.36 ± 11.67 μS cm −1 , respectively. Ca 2+ followed by K + and Mg 2+ played a crucial role in neutralizing the precipitation acidity. The major ionic sources in the region were terrigenous (Ca 2+ , HCO 3 − , and Mg 2+) and sea salt (Na + , Cl − , and Mg 2+), as well as anthropogenic emissions (SO 4 2− and NO 3 −) and biomass burning (K +). The total deposition flux of the major ions was higher in 2016 than in 2017 and was influenced by the higher precipitation. The average values of δ 18 O and δD in precipitation were − 15.22 ± 5.17 ‰ and − 116.01 ± 41.31 ‰, respectively. The precipitation stable isotopes were not significantly correlated to the local air temperature but the precipitation amount. Moreover, the variation in stable isotopes, local meteoric water line, and d-excess indicated the existence of continental and monsoon moisture transport systems. The transport of chemicals over the high elevation region from polluted cities in South Asia via moisture originating in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea was determined based on the source identification, clusters of air mass backward trajectory analysis, and the National Center for Environmental Prediction Final dataset. Thus, the ionic concentrations and stable isotopic characteristics of the precipitation from this study provided a valuable dataset to assess the atmospheric environment in the northern slopes of the Himalayas at Southern Tibetan Plateau.
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Papers by Subash Adhikari