Crucial, But not Systematically Investigated: Rock Glaciers, the Concealed Water Reservoirs of the Himalayas: An Opinion

The current article is an opinion on the sensitivity of high mountain regions which are the most fragile,sensitive and vulnerable to ongoing climate change.Its impacts are especially severe on the high mountain communities owing to their weak socio-economic profile,limited livelihood resources and agricultural land.The melting of glaciers and changes in the snow cover under the climate change scenario is leading to the scarcity of freshwater supplies,affecting both local and downstream communities.Changes in the precipitation patterns have been suggested to cause droughts,impact restricted agriculture,and limit the availability of water for domestic use.Additionally,the high mountain areas contain distinct flora and fauna,and climate change is not just altering them,but also has resulted in biodiversity loss as species are unable to adapt to the changing climate.Because of its higher altitudes and semi-arid to arid climate,the consequences of climate change are more evident in the higher Himalayas.Climate change is affecting the availability of key resources,such as freshwater and agriculture and pasture lands,resulting in food and water insecurity and their reliance on imports from other regions.As a result,high mountain communities in the Himalayas are progressively shifting to higher glacier valleys in search of suitable cultivable land with adequate irrigation.People are engaging in agro-pastoral activities around thermokarst lakes(Oasis)atop rock glaciers as part of this endeavour.Such actions underscore the crucial role of rock glaciers in dealing with and adjusting to the consequences of climate change.Despite its relevance,rock glacier research in the Himalayan region is still in its infancy.The purpose of this work is to emphasise the significance of these major climate-resilient water resources,as well as the methodology that must be adopted for their systematic and compressive investigations.

METHODOLOGICAL EVALUATION ON CLINICAL RESEARCH LITERATURE OF ACUPUNCTURE TREATMENT OF FACIAL PARALYSIS

Objective: To try to give an objective evaluation on the clinical research situation about acupuncture treatment of facial paralysis in the past 50 years and try to provide a possible evidence for clinical practice. Methods: All papers are searched and assessed according to the international standards and clinical epidemiology. Results: There is no systematic review (SR) on acupuncture treatment of facial palsy in a total of 1021 articles enlisted in the present paper. Comparing with the quantity of the descriptive studies and expert opinions (constituting 84.84%), that of the randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and clinical controlled trials (CCTs) is smaller (constituting 15.16%), besides, the quality of RCTs and CCTs is unsatisfactory. Conclusion: At present, the quantity and quality of studies with RCTs about acupuncture treatment of facial paralysis can’t meet the need of clinical practice, and in order to improve the therapeutic effect, a higher quality of RCTs and SR is required.

Systematic Investigation of Two-Phase Flow in Special Channels

A systematic study of two-phase(water-air)currents in open channels(water-air)has been conducted by means of experiments and numerical simulations.A dedicated device has been designed and manufactured on purpose.The numerical simulations have been based on the solution of a system of mass,momentum and energy balance equations for a two-phase fluid.The effect of different influential parameters has been explored,namely,velocity and dimensions of the channel,surface pressure and tension.

SYSTEMATIC STUDIES ON THE PRIMULACEAE OF CHINA

The Primulaceae is a large subcosmopolitan family of 22 genera and about 1,000 species with a wide diversity in morphological features as well as in ecological characteristics. Because of its significance in phylogenetic research and its remarkable decorative value, it has attracted the attention of the earliest botanists and horticulturalists. China is particularly rich in this family as upwards 50% of the species are found there. When Primula sinensis, a well-known pot plant, was introduced to England in 1821 for the first time, it aroused the enthusiasm

Software Project Management Approaches for Global Software Development： A Systematic Mapping Study

Global Software Development （GSD） is a well established field of software engineering with the benefits of a global environment. Software Project Management （SPM） plays a key role in the success of GSD. As a result, the need has arisen to study and evaluate the downsides of SPM for GSD, to thereby pave the way for the development of new methods, techniques, and tools with which to tackle them. This paper aims to identify and classify research on SPM approaches for GSD that are available in the literature, to identify their current weaknesses and strengths, and to analyze their applications in industry. We performed a Systematic Mapping Study （SMS） based on six classification criteria. Eighty-four papers were selected and analyzed. The results indicate that interest in SPM for GSD has been increasing since 2006. As a class of approaches, the most frequently reported methods （40%） are those used for coordination, planning, and monitoring, along with estimation techniques that can be used to better match a distributed project. SPM for GSD requires further investigation by researchers and practitioners, particularly with respect to cost and time estimations. These findings will help overcome the challenges that must to be considered in future SPM research for GSD, especially regarding collaboration and time-zone differences.

Empirical Research in Software Engineering -- A Literature Survey

Empirical research is playing a significant role in software engineering （SE）, and it has been applied to evaluate software artifacts and technologies. There have been a great number of empirical research articles published recently. There is also a large research community in empirical software engineering （ESE）. In this paper, we identify both the overall landscape and detailed implementations of ESE, and investigate frequently applied empirical methods, targeted research purposes, used data sources, and applied data processing approaches and tools in ESE. The aim is to identify new trends and obtain interesting observations of empirical software engineering across different sub-fields of software engineering. We conduct a mapping study on 538 selected articles from January 2013 to November 2017, with four research questions. We observe that the trend of applying empirical methods in software engineering is continuously increasing and the most commonly applied methods are experiment, case study and survey. Moreover, open source projects are the most frequently used data sources. We also observe that most of researchers have paid attention to the validity and the possibility to replicate their studies. These observations are carefully analyzed and presented as carefully designed diagrams. We also reveal shortcomings and demanded knowledge/strategies in ESE and propose recommendations for researchers.