Access to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) has been a challenge to south Asia’s rapidly growing and climate change-sensitive region. Nepal, a water-abundant country, faces obstacles to fulfilling the highly prioritized WASH Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6). This review offers details about Nepal’s WASH status from 2000 to 2020 with regard to the challenges Nepal had in delivering reliable WASH services to the people, as well as opportunities for a sustainable way forward, and provides insights that can be applied to other developing countries. From analysis of national-level assessments, estimates point toward healthy progress in extending WASH access to the population. However, large inequalities persist at the subnational level between urban and rural residents, between poor and rich residents, and between genders. Many local constraints such as a lack of long-term infrastructural capacity to provide and maintain WASH services, financial issues, and institutional and policy incompatibilities are some of the key factors that technical considerations and private sector involvement could address. We also propose roles for Nepal’s central, provincial, and local governments for identification and adaptation to the undeniable risks of climate change. Furthermore, there is a need to capitalize on the potential opportunities for developing a much-needed robust and climate-resilient WASH sector in Nepal, safeguarding the rights of future generations to safe and clean water.

Many opto-electronic and energy efficient devices depend on semiconductors’ direct as well as indirect band gap. Using spin-polarized density functional theory approach, we calculate the electronic structure and magnetic properties of K2Mn3S4. We found that this system has a ferrimagnetic ground state with a saturated magnetic moment of 10μB per unit cell. This was mostly caused by the antiferromagnetic interaction between the Mn (I) and Mn (II) atoms, with individual magnetic moment of 4.2 μB and 4.1 μB, respectively. More significantly, from the density of states and band structure calculations, K2Mn3S4 is noted as a semiconductor with an indirect band gap of 1.1 eV between the top of the valence band of spin up channel and bottom of the conduction bands of spin down channel, indicating the material as a promising candidate for photovoltaic and opto-electronic devices.

Wheat is one of the most important cereal crops in the world. It ranks first (in the world) and third (in Nepal) in terms of productivity and total cropped area. Worldwide, wheat provides nearly 55% of the carbohydrates and 20% of the food calories. The ideal temperature for its cultivation is about 15°-20°C. Among several abiotic factors, heat stress is one of the major factors affecting wheat production. Wheat is very sensitive to heat stress. Each degree rise in the temperature can decrease wheat yield by 6%. This review is written with an aim to reflect the influence of heat stress in the production of wheat and the mechanism of how loss in yield occurs. Some of the major findings of this research are : (a) Heat stress negatively effects germination, emergence, root growth, leaf, stem development and growth, tillering, grain yield and quality (b) A sharp decline in photosynthesis is evident when wheat plant is exposed to high temperature stress during vegetative or reproductive phase (c) With increases in temperature, rate of respiration is greater  than the rate of photosynthesis  which ultimately leads to carbon starvation (d) High temperature fastens the crop growth by making it to enter into jointing stage and reproductive stage earlier than normal resulting in decreased crop yield. The identification of such effects of heat stress in our crop helps us adopt several strategies or methods to mitigate the impacts on crop yields and improve tolerance to heat stress.