The lower Karnali River basin is one of Nepal’s most flood-prone regions, yet it has lacked an integrated risk assessment. This study presents the first comprehensive analysis combining physical vulnerability, social vulnerability, and economic damage assessment for the corridor. Utilizing a validated 2D HEC-RAS model across eight return periods (2–500 years), we quantified impacts on 23,929 buildings, 477 km of roads, and 16,065 hectares of paddy cropland using locally calibrated depth-damage curves. Those calibrations were mainly focused on three building typologies, two road surface classes, and paddy crops at the maturity stage. A Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) was developed for 27 wards, integrating demographics, healthcare access, and education. Findings indicate total economic damages range from NPR 395 million (2-year) to NPR 3538 million (500-year), with buildings consistently accounting for the largest share (41–42%). Madhuwan Ward 6, Geruwa Ward 1, and Rajapur Ward 7 emerged as the highest combined flood risk hotspots through the integration of social vulnerability and physical hazard. The results prove that social infrastructure investment, particularly in healthcare, serves as a direct flood risk reduction measure. This research provides a spatially explicit evidence base to guide targeted mitigation, land-use policy, and social protection in the basin.
Youth with type 1 diabetes (T1D) often face barriers to recreation participation, disease self-management, and peer connection. This research note examined how a university-based diabetes camp, grounded in a Community of Practice (CoP) model, supported youth learning, self-management, and belonging. Participants were 33 youth, ages 11 to 18, attending a university-based diabetes day camp in Northern Utah. Self-reported, open-ended post-camp evaluation responses were analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s reflexive thematic analysis. Three themes were identified: applied diabetes knowledge, intentional self-management in active settings, and belonging through shared experience. Findings suggest that recreation-based camp programming supported practical diabetes learning, more deliberate self-management behaviors, and meaningful peer relationships, thereby reducing isolation and normalizing living with T1D. Results highlight the value of interdisciplinary, recreation-centered CoP models for creating supportive recreation spaces for youth with chronic health conditions.
Given the large global population of stroke survivors and limited rehabilitation resources, efficient treatments are urgently needed to help patients regain independence and reintegrate into society. In this review, we discuss how artificial intelligence and neurotechnology can be used to accelerate neurorehabilitation after stroke. First, we introduce neurorehabilitation mechanisms that provide the basis for neurotechnology development. Next, we describe how neurophysiological and neuroimaging biomarkers can be used for multimodal assessment and prognostic prediction. We then provide examples of brain-computer interface (BCI)-driven rehabilitation robots and BCI-triggered transcranial and peripheral neuromodulation for closed-loop rehabilitation training.
Functional diversity estimates increasingly inform ecological research, yet how methodological choices such as trait number and coding affect common metrics remains poorly quantified. Here, we systematically evaluate the effects of trait number and coding strategy on functional diversity metrics using benthic macroinvertebrate traits. Across 14 functional diversity indices representing functional richness, evenness, dispersion, and redundancy, we showed that metric responses to trait number are highly facet-dependent. Functional richness and evenness indices were particularly sensitive to trait number, whereas dispersion and redundancy metrics were comparatively stable. Estimation uncertainty was minimized at intermediate trait number, indicating a potential balance between functional space resolution and statistical robustness. Despite broad consistency between binary and fuzzy coding approaches for several metrics, redundancy metrics showed substantial divergence between coding schemes. These results demonstrate that hidden methodological decisions can substantially influence functional diversity indices. Our study provides a quantitative framework for evaluating metric robustness and reveals that widely used indices differ fundamentally in their response to dimensionality—a mathematical behaviour that must be understood before ecological interpretation. We recommend reporting trait number alongside functional diversity values and exercising caution when comparing communities assessed with different trait sets, particularly for richness and evenness metrics.
