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Literacies are the social processes that emerge and sustain, from everyday life, representing and transforming the mundane and repeated activities which resist the unequal power adjustment in society. In this regard, informal learning and literacies cultivate critical reflexivity of people to perform like activists. This paper aims to explore informal learning and literacies that foster awareness of existing social hierarchies and structures to help bring about change in family and social life. Two adult women's groups were purposefully selected in a village in Nepal. The main sources of data were persistent observations of these groups in a number of meetings, transient walks in the village, and participation in a range of community activities. Two women from each group were selected for in-depth interviews. The themes emerging were generated and analysed from three human interest perspectives: technical, practical, and emancipatory, using the concepts of Jurgen Habermas. This paper found that everyday life activities are embedded in learning and literacies which result in the critical reflexivity of a marginalised group of people. Critical reflexivity has helped them to think through their value system and to anticipate the changes in their life. The paper concludes that informal learning and literacies are the process of activism that enables change in the lives of adult women and the wider community, thereby recognising and valuing adult learning and literacies.

This paper uses narrative inquiry to explore the formal-informal learning continuum in the context of a higher education institution in Kathmandu, Nepal. The paper finds a gap within the official curriculum and pedagogy in its lack of recognition for informal ways of learning. Similarly, the everyday life activities and the cultural context of youth are not reflected within the formal structure of university programmes. Youth learn from collaborating with their peers in informal and incidental ways. Such informal ways of learning complement and contest the formal learning situation and process. The research concludes that for higher education to be relevant to youth, attention needs to be paid to these forms of informal learning that reflect their everyday learning and prepare them for lifelong learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new stability-indicating RP-HPLC method for the determination of metformin hydrochloride and nateglinidein bulk was developed. The separation wasperformed on a Hypersil BDS-C18column (250 X 4.6 mm ID, 5 µm) by using 0.05 M potassium dihydrogen orthophosphate (pH 3.5) acetonitrile (30:70 v/v) as the mobile phase with UV detection at 226 nm. Under these chromatographic conditions, favorable retention parameters were obtained with good symmetry of peaks for the studied compounds. The validation studies performed as per ICH guidelines. The proposed method showed high degree of accuracy, and precision, with a good degree of sensitivity and robustness. The drugs were subjected to forced degradation using acidic, alkaline, oxidation, wet heat, dry heat, and photodegradation conditions. The results confirmed that the method could effectively separate the drugs in the presence of their degradation products, hence it can be regarded as stability indicating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on observations of a rural community and in-depth interviews with five rural women, this paper shows how access to smartphones enables marginalised rural women to engage in digital literacies in their everyday life practices. The research shows that rural women learn digital skills, communication skills, and literacies in an unplanned and informal way within the family setting and their neighbourhood and through commercial activities in the local markets. The paper concludes that policymakers have much to learn from the unplanned and informal ways in which these rural women are developing their digital literacies in their everyday life through having access to smartphones. Therefore, using smartphones with informal learning approaches could provide a foundation for future literacy programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political modernization in Nepal accelerated since 1951 when the country changed its course owing to a popular movement that was acclaimed as the beginning of democracy in the country. However, the governments continued cultural and political homogenization. This has been so in the case of local governance practices as well. Modern governing structures/institutions are guided by the state formed policies and elite-based power structures despite the fact that different ethnic groups in Nepal have their own traditional self-governance systems. In this context, this article unfolds the inheritance of traditional practices of the Tamang community (one of the major ethnic groups of Nepal), in a village, in the district adjoining Kathmandu valley, within the modern structures of governance of forest and school management systems. The paper argues that there is a legacy of the traditional institution, the Choho, though the system of Choho itself has now largely disappeared. This paper, based on ethnographic fieldwork, presents the accounts of Choho and examples of how the particular norms, values, beliefs, and practices are still in practice challenging and denying the modern/state formed mechanisms of governing the forests and schools in the village. The paper further argues that given the modern governance system, the traditional souvenir exchange practice that was rooted in the notion of honour and respect has now shifted towards the practice of giving and receiving gifts based upon the principle of reciprocal benefits that could be described as a bribe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A high impedance fault (HIF) is characterized by a small, nonlinear, random, unstable, and widely varying fault current in a power distribution system. HIFs draw very low fault currents, and hence are not always effectively cleared by conventional overcurrent relays. Various schemes are proposed to detect such faults. This paper presents a method to detect HIFs using a tool based on mathematical morphology (MM). The method is implemented alongside the conventional overcurrent relay at the substation to improve the performance of this relay in detecting HIFs. It is rigorously tested on standard test systems using PSCAD/EMTDC® to generate test waveforms, and Matlab® to implement the method. Simulation results show that the proposed method is fast, secure, and dependable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]