Kathmandu, January 30, 2007

A team of Nepali students from the Institute of Engineering (IoE), Tribhuvan University, bagged the fourth prize in the International Techno Fest-2007 organised by the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai on January 26-28.

The 18-member Nepali team led by Mahadev Panta had reached the semi-finals in the Full Throttle After Born Competition, which is a head-to-head race of remote control cars. The team returned to Kathmandu today.

Fifty Indian teams and a Nepali team had participated in the competition. “Our car had clutch and brake problems. We could not reach final due to lack of time to repair the car,” Panta told this daily. He said their participation in the international technological festival remained very fruitful for Nepali students. “Such programmes widen the scope of technology,” Panta added, “We observed technological advances in the world closely and gathered new knowledge.” “The knowledge accumulated in the fest will be helpful in the development of automobile technology in Nepal,” he said. “It has also encouraged us to implement our knowledge of engineering studies in practice,” he added.

The Engineering College of Pune bagged the first prize in the competition. In 2004, Nepali team was awarded the first runner up position. In 2005, Nepali students got the best mechanism award.

INGOs plan Bengal tiger census in Nepal

Kathmandu, January 30, 2007

Various international non-government organisations are making plans to carry out a census of Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris) in Nepal’s national parks.

Recent studies have put the number of the wild cats in Nepal at about 350 to 375. A tiger survey has been initiated in the Bardia National Park with a focus on the Babai river floodplain.

A team of seven park personnel will start monitoring from the Chepang area, the gateway of the Babai, according to the last updated draft of the tiger count plan. “We are currently working on methods to conduct a survey in the national parks to find out how many tigers are living in the habitat, which is constantly under human threat,” Dr Ghanashyam Gurung, the action country representative of WWF Nepal, told The Himalayan Times. He expressed the hope that the count will most probably begin this season with support from various other institutions and will last for some six months. “This is the first time the WWF is initiating such a survey.

The past five years of the insurgency have had a marked impact on wildlife population in the Babai river floodplain,” he said. Gurung added that the WWF will also develop a congregated methodology of counting rhinos. He, however, refused to comment on the financial aspect of the surveys. The current tiger population estimation is based on various sources and surveys carried out in the past three decades.