The National Biodiversity Authority has released a new set of rules to manage sharing of benefits generated through the use of biological resources. The Biological Diversity (Access to biological Resources and Knowledge Associated thereto and Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits) Regulation 2025 was approved by the Central government and …
Until now pregnant women were under the misconception that if they had morning sickness, they were less prone to a miscarriage. Kathleen O'Conner of Pennsylvania State University, University Park, says that morning sickness is simply more frequent in younger women. She randomly selected 708 married women (age 18-47 years) in …
a new biotechnology device - bioluminescense - is now being exploited worldwide to detect microbial contamination in industries ranging from cosmetics to foodstuffs and to pharmaceuticals. About 2.5 billion such tests were globally performed last year, costing about us $4.14 billion, says Forest and Sullivan, the market research organisation in …
The Earth's genetic resources of plants and animals exist mainly in the developing South. The Convention on Biological Diversity, which came into force in December 1993, stipulated that if any external party wishes to access these resources it can do so only with the prior consent of the country where …
The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries have decided to put up a joint front before the United Nation General Assembly (UNGA) meeting to be held in June this year in New York, to press for the implementation of Agenda 2 1. Agenda 21 is an agreement signed …
A POLITICAL, moral and biological debate has been raging in the US about the fate of the endangered flower-loving fly found in the dunes of Delhi sands in Colton, California. Saving the fly would effectively mean halting progress, loss of money and jobs. The fast shrinking habitat of the fly …
SCIENTISTS have just synthesised possibly the most complex anti-cancer vaccine to treat patients suffering from prostate cancer at a bospitaJ in New York, US. Boost to immunity Sam Danishefsky and his colleagues from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York have made copies of a large active fragment, …
FROM the state of Gujarat comes one of the more recent examples of innovation in desert reclamation. A private industrial house (the Benzer group) has successfully reclaimed a large chunk of saline wasteland in Bhachau district of Kutch using halophytes, flora which grow in saline habitats. ,The word 'Indian desert' …
A. The quick and the dead Human pressure, lack of research and shrinking forests coupled with a thriving international trade in wildlife threatens to turn a zoologist's Garden of Eden into a poacher's paradise on november 25, 1996, Vietnamese Premier Vo Van Kiet issued a dire warning to his audience …
The present century has seen very few discoveries of new mammalian species. Of the four discovered so far, Vietnam itself accounts for three. In the 1990s, two new species of big mammals
With Vietnam slowly opening up to Western scientists in the last decade, numerous organisations have been vying with each other to study the country's flora and fauna. After Ho Chi Minh ousted the French in 1954, Vietnam's leaders closed the country and its forests were effectively locked to outsiders. Even …
Ornamental fish breeding has expanded recently in Hanoi because of rising incomes. Increased incomes and a liberalised foreign trade is also taking a heavy toll of orchids and rhododendrons. Ethnic minorities collect rhododendron plants in large quantities in the high mountains and bring them regularly for sale in the cities, …
The 72 million litres of herbicides sprayed by US forces in Vietnam during the war will continue to plague several generations of post-war populations with a high rate of reproductive abnormalities. Some 40 million litres of Agent Orange were sprayed; the herbicide contained 170 kg of dioxin, which is the …
The threat to deforestation comes from several basic reasons: the nature of the country's economy; its high population growth rate; firewood demand; shifting cultivation and fire damage; economic liberalisation; and, the pressure on the country to earn foreign exchange through biomass exports like wood and rice. The per capita income …
Afforestation : In 1993, a 10-year programme was initiated to regreen the barren lands of Vietnam. But as one diplomat in Hanoi pointed out, the government went about the task of greening the land "in a militaristic manner', and planted eucalyptus and other exotic species over large stretches of the …
what makes Vietnam particularly worthy from a biodiversity point of view is also its very rich base of traditional medicine. This means Vietnam has the potential to make a worthwhile contribution to the global food and health sectors. Says Nguyen Duc Tao of the Vietnam Pharmaceutical Corporation, which is trying …
About 89 per cent of the Vietnamese population consists of lowland Kinhs and the Muong people, who occupy the two agricultural deltas of the Red River and the Mekong river, besides the narrow coastal strip. The remaining 11 per cent consists of ethnic minorities, most of whom live in the …
Vietnam has an Association of Herbal Traditional Doctors with a nationwide membership of about 20,000, which is recognised by the government. But the association is starved of funds. These traditional doctors often offer their services free and are usually very poor. Berit Richter, a Danish activist working in Hanoi, is …
an exotic heavy particle may have made its first appearance at a particle accelerator in Hamburg in Germany. Scientists say that this could mark the birth of an entirely new physics. If the so-called 'leptoquark' exists, it implies that a previously unknown force is at work, one that may lead …
Two broad categories of organic fertilities - 'New Manor', for growing fruits and vegetables, and 'Green Manor' for cultivating grains obtained by recycling garbage - have been developed by a Beijing-based private firm. Research on the fertiliser technology began in 1994, and encouraged by the early results in 1996, the …
a ban on tourism in core areas of national parks and a general ceiling on visitors to sanctuaries, tiger reserves and other protected areas (pa), have been proposed in the revised guidelines for wildlife tourism in pas. The guidelines were presented to the Indian Board of Wildlife at its recent …
