Spotlight Central Asia

World’s Highest Wildflower App Celebrates Beauty of Mount Everest

Anonymous — Mon, 11 May 2020 21:13:54 +0000

World’s Highest Wildflower App Celebrates Beauty of Mount Everest Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/11/2020 - 15:13

Bozeman, MT (April 2, 2020) – Dreaming of your next trip to Nepal? Or going through photos and memories from your last trip? Today High Country Apps announces a new app, Wildflowers of Mount Everest, the first-ever wildflower identification app for Nepal. The app virtually transports travelers to the world’s highest peak and showcases its remarkable native flora through beautifully detailed images and easy-to-use graphical keys.

In this time of armchair travel, Wildflowers of Mount Everest provides a fun way to learn about the little-known flora of a stunning World Heritage Site. True, most people visit Nepal to see the dramatic peaks and glaciers. But beauty, trekkers soon discover, lies beside the trail as well. Vegetation ecologist Elizabeth Byers has partnered with the Flora of Nepal Project, the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, Nepal, and High Country Apps to produce Wildflowers of Mount Everest.

The flora of Mount Everest is unique in all the world, being specially adapted to survive at high elevation, enduring extreme daily fluctuations in temperature, scarce soil, steep slopes, fierce winds, snowpack, and scarce pollinators. In spring, luxuriant displays of rhododendrons and primroses cover whole mountainsides with color. Summer brings the beautiful and sometimes bizarre alpine blossoms, such as the spine-covered alpine blue poppy or Hippolytia gossypinawith its white-haired pillars topped by clusters of golden flowers. Fall trekking season is painted with the blue of gentians and the bright red and yellow autumn foliage of the shrubs and trees.

Wildflowers of Mount Everest, designed for iOS and Android devices, provides more than 2500 detailed images, 1000 local names, descriptions, plant facts, and local lore for 557 wildflowers, shrubs, and trees that grow on the slopes and trails of Mount Everest. While the geographic focus is on Sagarmatha National Park, many of the plants may also be found at upper elevations throughout Nepal.

The app doesn't require a cellular or internet connection to run, so it can be used in the most remote locations or in your own home. Users can create a list of the plants they see each day and email it to themselves or their friends.

Designed for trekkers and amateur nature buffs, as well as experienced botanists, Wildflowers of Mount Everest will appeal to anyone who wants to identify or learn about plants in the Mount Everest region. According to Gopal Prakash Bhattarai, the Director General of the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, Nepal, the app is perfect for“students, educators, scientists, guides, and visitors interested in the beautiful wildflowers of Nepal’s Mount Everest region.” Mr. Bhattarai also notes that the app will be a “useful tool for park rangers and scouts as they work to conserve the park’s floral diversity.”

“Two things make this field guide special,” says Elizabeth Byers, who has spent much of the last 40 years identifying, photographing, and studying the subalpine and alpine flora of eastern Nepal. “First, the Sherpa elders who have graciously shared plant lore and stories to give us a glimpse of the cultural importance of each species. Second, the botanical experts from all over the world who have volunteered their knowledge of the unique and specially-adapted plants of Mount Everest.”

The Wildflowers of Mount Everest app is available from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store for $7.99. The authors will periodically update the app to include new species and other content, at no additional charge to users. High Country Apps is proud to support the Flora of Nepal Project through donation of a portion of the app proceeds, which will be used to support the field costs of Nepali students or to buy field equipment that will allow Nepali researchers to conduct botanical studies.

Links to the app ($7.99):
Apple - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id1479336982
Google Play -https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.emountainworks.android.everestfieldguide

About author Elizabeth Byers:
Elizabeth Byers is a vegetation ecologist who has published numerous articles on rare plant species, natural vegetation communities, climate change vulnerability of plants, and a field guide to the wetland plants of West Virginia, USA. She has been studying and photographing the flora of eastern Nepal for nearly 40 years.

About the Flora of Nepal Project:
The Flora of Nepal Project is an international partnership tackling a knowledge gap identified inNepal’s National Biodiversity Action Plan. The project is coordinated by the Royal BotanicGarden Edinburgh in partnership with the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology, theGovernment of Nepal’s Department of Plant Resources, Tribhuvan University’s CentralDepartment of Botany and the University of Tokyo, and draws on the expertise of taxonomic experts throughout the world.

About High Country Apps:
High Country Apps is dedicated to developing applications that deliver high quality natural history information with an intuitive, easy-to-use interface. Our goal is to enable discovery! We present information in simple, non-technical language that will delight and empower the rank amateur who loves the outdoors and wants to learn more. Yet we are also meticulous about creating scientifically accurate apps, thus making them excellent tools for serious biologists. To accomplish this goal, we actively partner with expert botanists and photographers in each region so that we can provide information of the highest quality in our mobile field guides.

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Byers Writes about Environmental Impacts of Mules on Everest

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 13:48:57 +0000

Byers Writes about Environmental Impacts of Mules on Everest Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/25/2019 - 06:48

Alton C. Byers, CAS Visiting Scholar and Research Associate at INSTAAR has authored an article about the impact mules are making on the Everest Trail. In the article, Byers writes that "[The mules] have largely replaced the use of dzopkio (yak-cattle cross breeds) for the Lukla to Namche supply run, although dzopkio and yak continue to be used from Namche onward to the higher altitudes. On a recent walk from Phakding to Lukla there well over 100 mules in trains averaging about 15 animals each.

The locals hate them because mules destroy the trails with their sharp hooves, and leave behind so much poop that one seemingly spends more time playing hop scotch than trekking. Worse, they seem to think they have a right of way on the trails. Dzopko and yak always seem to go out of their way to avoid making any kind of contact with humans. But not mules."

Read the full article here.

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CAS Event on Wednesday: A History of the Communist Purge Against Buddhism in Mongolia

Anonymous — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 22:01:23 +0000

CAS Event on Wednesday: A History of the Communist Purge Against Buddhism in Mongolia Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/30/2019 - 16:01

with Oyungerel Tsedevdamba and Jeffrey L. Falt
Wednesday, October 2 @ 5PM
Eaton Humanities 250

Meet Oyungerel Tsedevdamba, well-known in Mongolia as a social change-maker, former Member of the Mongolian Parliament, ex Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism, author of bestselling novels and multiple non-fiction books, a human rights and women’s empowerment activist, and democracy advocate.

Oyungerel grew up with her herder family in the Hogsvol countryside. She, like many Mongolians, learned about life during the Communist regime and the purges of the 1930s from relatives’ stories. The combination of personal connections and research of this era have grounded the writing that she and her husband, Jeff, have done about the Communist period of Mongolian history. Their series of four books – the Guardian quartet – tells the story of life in Mongolia from the 1930s to the 1989-90 revolution -- the birth of today’s democracy.

Their first historical novel, The Green-Eyed Lama (2008), was released in English in the U.S. in 2018 following a decade of record-breaking sales and awards in Mongolia. It chronicles the budding romance between Sendmaa, a young belle in the countryside, and Baasan, a monk in the lamasery, as they try to cope with the turmoil of the Stalinist purge, terrible massacres and mass executions of thousands of innocent lamas and laymen alike. The second book in the series, Sixty White Sheep (Жаран цагаан хонь), was published in 2017 is also a bestseller, setting records on the Mongolian market.

Join us for an illustrated lecture to learn about this fascinating country, its recent history under Communist rule and the impact of the purge on daily life and the Buddhist religion in Mongolia.

Short Bio of Authors of the Green Eyed Lama:

OYUNGEREL TSEDEVDAMBA grew up a herder girl in Communist Mongolia. She received a scholarship to study planning economy in the USSR and, after the fall of communism, she earned a Master’s Degree in Market Economy in Russia. She subsequently received a Master’s Degree from Stanford University where she was a Fulbright Fellow. Oyungerel is an Eisenhower Fellow and a World Fellow of Yale University. From 2000 to 2004 she headed Liberty Center, at that time Mongolia’s most active human rights organization. She later served as Adviser to the Prime Minister of Mongolia and subsequently to the President of Mongolia on human rights and civic participation. In 2010 Oyungerel was elected president of the 90,000 member Democratic Women’s Union. In 2012 she won election to Mongolia’s Parliament and was appointed Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism. In 2015 Oyungerel was awarded the Chevalier de L'ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Ministry of Culture of France for her efforts to end the death penalty in Mongolia and for her work in preserving and protecting Mongolia’s cultural heritage including the much-publicized Tyrannosaurus bataar case. Oyungerel is the author of 11 books and co-author of three with Jeffrey. Jeff and Oyuna live in Ulaanbaatar.

JEFFREY L. FALT is an attorney with a Bachelor’s Degree, a Master’s Degree and a Doctor of Jurisprudence from the University of California at Berkeley. Following a stint as a legal aid attorney in rural California he turned to human rights law, court reform and access to justice for marginalized communities in developing countries with The Asia Foundation, Amnesty International, the American Bar Association, USAID and numerous other international organizations in Africa, Asia and Latin America. He worked in Liberia during the oppressive rule of Charles Taylor; in East Timor during the UN Mandate; in Nepal while the Maoist rebellion had nearly surrounded Kathmandu; and in Sri Lanka monitoring a fragile ceasefire in rebel held areas during the Tamil uprising. With an armed escort Jeffrey and his brother were among the first foreign visitors to Angkor Wat in Cambodia while the Khmer Rouges still roamed the countryside and mined the temples. Jeffrey taught at the Graduate Program in Pacific Basin Studies at Dominican University. His journal article, “Legal aid and the Empowerment of the Poor in Developing Countries” became a teaching tool and a call to action. Jeffrey met Oyungerel in 2000 while on a peaceful assignment in Mongolia. They married in 2004.

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CAS and THI Event: Political Contests and Moral Battles: A Perspective on Bhutan's Democratic Transition

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 19:22:35 +0000

CAS and THI Event: Political Contests and Moral Battles: A Perspective on Bhutan's Democratic Transition Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/12/2019 - 13:22

CAS Event/Tibet Himalaya Initiative Event
Wednesday, March 20 at 5pm
British and Irish Studies Room, Norlin Library

Dr. Sonam Kinga is an important political figure, scholar, and writer in the Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan. Now that the country is a decade into its transition to democracy, Dr. Kinga will present a public lecture at CU Boulder on March 20, 2019 on "Political Contests and Moral Battles: A Perspective on Bhutan's Democratic Transition." As political parties compete in national elections, they draw on specific symbols to evoke the moral authority of the Bhutanese royal family and the country's Buddhist heritage. In these various political battles, the fifth King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck continues to serve as a central unifying factor for the nation and moral force as a dedicated Buddhist, despite smear campaigns by political parties. Based on a forthcoming book of the same title, Dr. Kinga's lecture addresses the ongoing role of the monarchy, and by extension its Buddhist moral underpinnings, in Bhutan's democracy.

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Professor Morris Rossabi to Offer Reassessment of the Mongol Empire

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 19:00:07 +0000

Professor Morris Rossabi to Offer Reassessment of the Mongol Empire Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/09/2015 - 13:00

The Center for Asian Studies is pleased to help bring Professor Morris Rossabi of the City University of New York on Wednesday, March 11, to offer new insights into the history of the Mongol empire in "Genghis Khan and the Mongols: Barbarians or Harbingers of Global History."

Most people perceived the thirteenth-century Mongols as plunderers, rapacious, and murderers and believed that their invasions and rule were destructive, if not disastrous.

Over the past two decades, specialists have challenged this depiction of the Mongols and of Genghis Khan and have focused on the Mongols’ contribution to trade, relations between East and West, and cultural, religious, technological, and artistic diffusion. These recent works have not ignored the bloodshed and the colossal damage the Mongols wrought, but they also have attempted their role in Eurasian history. In his slide-illustrated presentation, Professor Rossabi describes and assesses Genghis as an individual and the Mongols as a group.

Professor Rossabi's talk will begin at 4:00 p.m. in Humanities 250 on the CU-Boulder campus.

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New Persian Course Book Released!

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 21:24:59 +0000

New Persian Course Book Released! Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 08/11/2014 - 15:24

The second volume of Persian: Here and Now (Mage: summer 2014) authored by our Persian instructor and coordinator of Persian (Farsi) program recently released and will be used this year as a course book for Farsi Intermediate. Extract from preface of the book:

"In this volume, as in the first volume of Persian: Here and Now (for introductory Farsi), an attempt is made not only to provide students with level-appropriate, grammatical and lexical material but also to introduce them to language as embodied culture (i.e. to a variety of relevant, comprehensible, here and now representations of mainstream Iranian culture embodied in the language of Persian today). Hence, it is in pursuit of two objectives - linguistic proficiency and cultural proficiency - that material was selected and assembled for this book."

The first volume of the book (Mage: 2014) has been already used as a course book for introductory level of Farsi offered by ALC’s Persian Program and it has also been adopted by the Persian programs at Brown University, Stanford University, UC Irvin and U-W Madison’s Persian Immersion program.

Written by CU Farsi Instructor, Reza Farokhfal.

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CU-Boulder Anthropology PhD Candidate Magdelena Stawkowski to Discuss Cultural Changes in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 15:55:45 +0000

CU-Boulder Anthropology PhD Candidate Magdelena Stawkowski to Discuss Cultural Changes in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/27/2014 - 09:55

Magdelena Stawkowski, a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at CU-Boulder, will kick off the 2014 CAS Annual Symposium: Catastrophic Asia with her presentation entitled "Radiation 'Adaptation': Emergent Subjectivities and Health Strategies Among Indigenous Kazakhs at Semipalatinsk." In this paper, she draws on sixteen months of field work to describe the legacies of the Soviet atomic testing project and its long-term disastrous effects on the inhabitants of the nuclear zone in Kazakhstan. Focusing on the village of Koyan in the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site region, she examines local Indigenous Kazakh villager’s understandings of health, livelihood and suffering, specifically their emerging subjectivities and health strategies after forty years of Soviet nuclear testing. While rooted in the broader histories of the Kazakh steppe and subsequent decline of the Soviet state, the context for this discussion is a forty-year period of Cold War nuclear testing and then its programmatic and abrupt closure. Particularly, she elucidates how scientific authority about the biological effects of low-dose radiation exposure, coupled with Kazakhstan’s economic restructuring programs, led to the socio-economic marginalization of inhabitants living adjacent to the test site. Principally, she addresses how Kazakhstan’s current political-economic climate has fostered a specific post-socialist “mutant” subjectivity in the nuclear zone—one that has rural populations “embracing” radioactive pollution. Tragically, the people she came to know see their own survival as proof that they are biologically adapted to a radioactive ecosystem.

In a broad sense, Magdelena's interests lie in the changing visions of militarized and nuclear spaces and how these produce specific forms of social, political, and economic exclusion among people who live on a former nuclear test site. Her dissertation, ‘Radioactive Knowledge’: State Control of Scientific Information in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan, is an ethnographic account of the legacies of the Soviet atomic bomb project—their disastrous health effects and the formation of a nuclear landscape. She initially traveled to Kazakhstan compelled to study a Polish diaspora group exiled to the region by Joseph Stalin in the 1930s. Yet, in 2007 when conducting some initial field work, she learned of the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site. As it turns out, this is the largest terrestrial nuclear research complex in the world and one that continues to be inhabited by ethnic Kazakhs. Moreover, it is the only site of this kind in the world where people live next to craters produced by underground nuclear tests and travel freely through some of the most radioactive areas on the planet.

On another note, her current dissertation research coincides with a broader interest of hers in Cold War era nuclear legacies. This comes in part, from her own experience of the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine and its effects in Poland. Many of her relatives, for example, have come to attribute some of their illnesses to radioactive exposure. Whether this is the case, remains a controversial topic and one that her work as a medical anthropologist engages with. As a result, together with Professor Donna Goldstein, they began the "Human Survival in a New Nuclear Age Initiative” at the University of Colorado through the Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences. This initiative aims to bring together social science researchers, scientists, and members of the Boulder community in order to address a broad range of questions associated with the nuclear age. After her graduation from the University of Colorado Boulder, Department of Anthropology, she is taking a post-doctoral position at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University where she will produce research that informs policy decisions concerning the issues of nuclear nonproliferation and global health.

Magdelena's talk will begin at 1:00 p.m. in the Center for British and Irish Studies on the fifth floor of Norlin Library. To find out more about the conference, please click here.

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CAS Luncheon Series: Jerry Peterson Presents "Kazakhstan Joins the World"

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 18:28:57 +0000

CAS Luncheon Series: Jerry Peterson Presents "Kazakhstan Joins the World" Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/10/2014 - 12:28

Professor Jerry Peterson of the Departments of Physics and International Affairs will give a Luncheon Series talk on Kazakhstan Joins the World on Thursday, March 13, at 12:00 p.m.

When The Republic of Kazakhstan became independent of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, this vast land had very little connection with the rest of the world. Today, the streets of Almaty, the principal city, are clogged with expensive imported cars. Much of this prosperity has come from the exploitation of Kazakhstan’s vast natural resources, and a strong industry of processing these materials. Kazakhstan ranks 11th in the world in oil reserves, and first in uranium. The political system, a nominal democracy, has evolved more slowly, with the original Communist Party boss of the Kazakh SSR still serving as President.

Prosperity seems to have brought harmony, but Kazakhstan sits, largely empty, in an ‘interesting’ part of the world. Professor Peterson will review things in Kazakhstan as he has seen them in his many visits over twenty years as a research collaborator, co-investigator for funded research, and instructor.

This Luncheon Series event will be held at 12:00 p.m. in the CAS Conference Room at 1424 Broadway. Lunch will be provided.

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The US and Prospects for Democracy in Iran

Anonymous — Mon, 28 Oct 2013 19:41:16 +0000

The US and Prospects for Democracy in Iran Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/28/2013 - 13:41

Dr. Abbas Milani, director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University, will be coming to Boulder at the end of this week to give a talk on the US and the possibilities of democracy in Iran.

We are at a critical juncture in the troubled history of US-Iran relations and the prospects of democracy in Iran. After a brief schematic account of this history--from the arrival of missionaries to the advent of the Second World War, from 1951 to 1979, and from 1980 till today--Professor Milani will discuss the two questions of Iran's pursuit of democracy and America's uneven approach to this pursuit. The central focus of the talk will be how Iran today stands at the cusp of a cultural and political transformation--more societal than merely political--and only by grasping the essence of these changes can America formulate a policy that safeguards its own national interests while also respecting the pursuit of life, liberty and democracy for all in Iran.

An Iranian-American historian and author, Prof. Milani is presently the director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University; professor of International, Comparative, and Area Studies; a founding co-director of the Iran Democracy Project, and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is also a prominent scholar of Iranian literature and culture. The most acclaimed recent book of his is Shah (Macmillan 2012), a biography of the last Shah of Iran in which Prof. Milani shows how Iran went from a politically moderate monarchy to a totalitarian Islamic republic.

Professor Milani has been invited to UC-Boulder by the Persian (Farsi) Program (Department of Asian Languages and Civilization), and this event has been sponsored by the Center for Asian Studies and the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations.

This event will be on Friday, November 1, at 5:00 pm, in Humanities 150. For more information and to see a map of the event location, please click here.

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Speaker Series Event: New Perspectives on Medieval Chinese Poetry

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:38:45 +0000

Speaker Series Event: New Perspectives on Medieval Chinese Poetry Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/14/2013 - 09:38

Join us for a conference in celebration of the 30th anniversary CU-Boulder's Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations.

New Perspectives on Medieval Chinese Poetry
February 21-22, 9:00am - 5:00pm
Old Main Chapel, CU-Boulder campus

The two-day conference will begin Thursday with welcoming remarks by Steven Leigh, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, at 9:00am. Speakers include ten major scholars on Chinese medieval poetry: Pauline Yu (American Council of Learned Societies), Stephen Owen (Harvard University), David Knechtges (University of Washington), Robert Joe Cutter (Arizona State University), Ding Xiang Warner (Cornell University), Timothy Wai KeungChan (Hong Kong Baptist University), Wendy Swartz (Rutgers University), Ronald C. Egan (Stanford University), Paul W. Kroll (University of Colorado Boulder) and Ping Wang (Princeton University). Please see flyer below for a complete schedule.

Sponsored by the President’s Fund for the Humanities, UCB Chancellor’s Office, UCB Vice-Chancellor for Research’s Office, Graduate Committee on Arts and Humanities, Center for Asian Studies, A&S Dean’s Fund for Excellence.

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