Agroforestry holds the key in providing alternative economically viable livelihood development and to support mountainous farmers to adapt to climate change. Innovative agroforestry interventions integrating animal production, horticulture etc into cropping systems exist that can help farmers improve yields and build resilience for supporting livelihoods particularly among marginal communities. But, the lack of knowledge, technical know-how and other information among the farmers are major barriers in adoption of agroforestry. Millions of the farmers of mountainous regions are already wrestling with water scarcity, which would be more severe in climate change scenario. The Himalayan regions are have been considered to be highly sensitive to climate change. Indeed, Innovative agroforestry interventions have the potential to conserve natural resources, improve productivity and provide resilience to climate change. The present paper highlights the need for developing innovative agroforestry interventions to promote various alternate livelihood options through diversification, adoption of high yielding varieties and development of innovative products from forest resources.  Of these spice based agroforetry, silvi-medicinal systems, Van silk cultivation, bamboo and ringal cultivation  and development and use of farm resources based products like  bamboo based composite structures, Seabuckthorn herbal tea, Ghingaroo juice  (Crataegus crenulata) and incense products etc holds a promising potential to be explored as better options for future scenario.

It increased the demands on ground-water supplies that prolonged drought and improper maintenance of water resources. So it is necessary to evaluate ground-water resources in the hard rock terrain. In recent years, Remote-Sensing methods have been increasingly recognized as a means of obtaining crucial geoscientific data for both regional and site-specific investigations. This work aims to develop and apply integrated methods combining the information obtained by geo-hydrological field mapping and those obtained by analyzing multi-source remotely sensed data in a GIS environment for better understanding the Groundwater condition in hard rock terrain. In this study, digitally enhanced Landsat ETM+ data was used to extract information on geology, geomorphology. The Hill-Shading techniques are applied to SRTM DEM data to enhance terrain perspective views, and extract Geomorphological features and morphologically defined structures through the means of lineament analysis. A combination of Spectral information from Landsat ETM+ data plus spatial information from SRTM-DEM data is used to address the groundwater potential of alluvium, colluvium, and fractured crystalline rocks in the study area. The spatial distribution of groundwater potential zones shows regional patterns related to lithologies, lineaments, drainage systems, and landforms. High-yielding wells and springs are often related to large lineaments and corresponding structural features such as dykes. The results show that the combination of remote sensing, GIS, traditional fieldwork, and models provide a powerful tool for water resources assessment and management, and groundwater exploration planning.

Infrastructure development is critical for sustaining Asia’s economic growth. Unfortunately, huge financing gaps—estimated by a recent Asian Development Bank study to be USD22.5 trillion—constrain the ability of most emerging Asian countries to fully realize the benefits of infrastructure development. For instance, over 70% of infrastructure investments in Asia are still funded by public resources, which pose acute financing challenges for many countries with limited budgets and fiscal constraints. This paper discusses some of the challenges associated with public financing of infrastructure projects in emerging Asian countries, before introducing some new options for alleviating their infrastructure investment needs. In particular, it proposes a new approach to infrastructure financing by utilizing the spillover effects of infrastructure investment, where additional revenues generated from such investment can be channeled back to investors as subsidy to increase the returns to their investment. The paper also argues the need for Asian countries to implement fiscal reforms and to develop a more balanced approach to financing, one that involves both the private and public sector. 

This paper concerns a miniature gasifier fed with a constant ambient-pressure flow of air to study the pyrolysis and subsequent combustion stage of a single wood pellet at T = 800 ℃. The alkali release and the concentration of simple gases were recorded simultaneously using an improved alkali surface ionisation detector and a mass spectrometer in time steps of 1 s and 1.2 s, respectively. It showed alkali release during both stages. During combustion, the MS data showed almost complete oxidation of the charred pellet to CO₂. The derived alkali release, “O₂ consumed”, and “CO₂ produced” conversion rates all indicated very similar temporal growth and coalescence features with respect to the varying char pore surface area underlying the original random pore model of Bhatia and Perlmutter. But, also large, rapid signal accelerations near the end and marked peak-tails with O₂ and CO₂ after that, but not with the alkali release data. The latter features appear indicative of alkali–deprived char attributable to the preceding pyrolysis with flowing air. Except for the peak-tails, all other features were reproduced well with the modified model equations of Struis et al. and the parameter values resembled closely those reported for fir charcoal gasified with CO₂ at T = 800 ℃.

In the rapidly evolving landscape of China’s pharmaceutical industry, this study investigates how pharmaceutical enterprises can achieve profitable sales innovation amid the process of digital transformation. Grounded in the Affordance theory, it posits that the positive impact of digital transformation on sales innovation is driven by the affordance afforded by digital technology and ubiquity. The research focuses on A-share pharmaceutical companies in China, utilizing data from 2012 to 2022 and employing multiple regression analysis to examine the influence of digital transformation on corporate sales innovation. The results demonstrate a significant positive effect of digital transformation on sales innovation. The study further categorizes digital transformation into technological affordance and ubiquity affordance, separately validating their roles in promoting sales innovation. Moreover, by considering synergistic effects, the research unveils the intricate relationship between digital transformation and corporate innovation performance. The findings provide a fresh perspective on understanding how digital technology propels sales innovation and offer concrete guidance for the digital transformation practices in the pharmaceutical industry.

With the increasing call for sustainable development, cities’ demand for green innovation has also been growing. However, relatively little research summarizes the influencing factors of urban green innovation. In this study, we conducted a visual analysis of 1193 research articles on green innovation in cities from the Web of Science core database using bibliometrics and visualization analysis. By analyzing co-occurrence, co-citation, and high-frequency keywords in the literature, we explored the current research status and development trends of influencing factors of urban green innovation and summarized the research in this field. The study found that collaboration among authors and institutions in this field needs to be strengthened to a certain extent. In addition, the study identified the research hotspots and frontiers in the field of urban green innovation, including “management”, “diffusion”, “smart city”, “indicator”, “sustainable city”, “governance”, and “environmental regulation”. Among them, “management”, “governance”, “indicator”, and “internet” are the research frontiers in this field, which are expected to have profound impacts on the future development of urban green innovation. The co-citation analysis results found that China has the highest research output in this field, followed by the United States, England, Australia, and Italy. In conclusion, this study uses CiteSpace software to identify important influencing factors and development trends of urban green innovation. Urban green innovation has gradually become a norm for social and collective behavior in the process of concretization, interdisciplinary development, and technological innovation. These findings have important reference value for promoting research and practice of urban green innovation.