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 …
A detailed survey of Bhutan's ecological diversity will soon be undertaken to facilitate a better understanding of the country's wealth. Presenting a framework for assessing the biodiversity, Deki Yonten, an officer with the nature conservation section of the forestry services division of the government said that the "population of many …
Researchers from the Southampton Oceanography Centre in the US have recently developed a measuring device which could enhance the efficiency of clean up operations following an oil spill. Traditionally, oil spills have been detected by radar. But once oil and water emulsify, the radar cannot be used to track the …
Transmyocardial laser revascularisation (TMR), a new technique for creating channels in the left ventricular wall to improve blood supply to the damaged heart muscle, offers new hope to those suffering from heart disease. Heart patients who are unfit to undergo a coronary artery bypass graft or percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty, …
India's biodiversity is rich, often unique and increasingly endangered. India is one of the twelve megadiversity countries in the world, that collectively account for 60-70 percent of the world's biodiversity. Its ten biogeographic zones represent a broad range of ecosystems.
Danish researchers have called for a national monitoring of lindane after traces of this chemical (banned in the country) were found in certain remote locations. An investigation by the Danish office for the Environment has established the fact that airborne lindane is being deposited in the southern and the western …
werner's syndrome is a malignancy affecting only a small number of people, but shows devastating manifestations. The victims are cruelly wizened and grey by the time they reach their late 20's. They await their death from prematurely clogged arteries and heart malfunctions in their late 40s or 50s. The cause …
Saproxylic beetles fall under the group of obligate organisms which occupy a variety of habitat. Their diversity is related to variability in various ecological parameters. Researchers have found decaying wood and wood-inhabiting fungi to be the most important factors responsible for the diversity of the beetles. Among the other factors …
agriculture can be a highly disease and accident-prone proposition. A large number of acute and traumatic injuries and deaths are caused by accidents involving farm machinery. Farm equipment also impart chronic injuries upon workers which include noise-induced hearing loss and vibration associated ailments of the back. Agrichemicals pose a risk …
for the millions who have been condemned to life on a wheelchair after having met with an accident and damaging their nerves and for those suffering from multiple sclerosis, there is now a ray of hope. Scientists have found that certain drugs could come handy in curing multiple sclerosis or …
to the tribals of India, February 25, 1996, had seemed like a red-letter day. On that day, S S Ahluwalia, the minister of state for urban development in the erstwhile Congress government, had formally announced that the Centre was at last ready to pay heed to the Bhuria Committee Report, …
Since the colonial era, resources from tropical forests and woodlands have been indiscriminately appropriated by Northern agricultural systems and then by multinationals. The Convention on Biological Diversity (cbd), for the first time, recognised
research on finding safer substitutes for ods like cfcs, halons, and carbontetrachloride are underway. In fact certain replacements have already been made and are successfully being used. cfcs are regarded as being harmful because they damage the ozone layer which helps screen out damaging ultraviolet rays emitted by the sun …
in a new procedure being developed at nasa's Ames Research Centre in Mountain View, us , a robotic probe will learn the brain's characteristics by using neural net software; the same type of software technology that helps focus camcorders. A tiny pressure sensor in the
At recent meeting in New York to discuss the upcoming special session of the un General Assembly in June 1997 - which will consider the development made on the recommendations of the 1992 Rio Conference - several environmentalists and experts expressed considerable disappointment at the lack of progress on the …
ECO-DEVELOPMENT is the biggest participatory exercise that the Word Bank(WB) has been involved in and we look forward to this project becoming a model for future Bank projects emphatically stated Ken Newcombe, chief of the WB's Global Environment Division, speaking on the environment ministry's eco-development project at a recently concluded …
WHEN Mt Vesuvius erupted in Italy, the town of Pompeii vanished. All that was left behind were crusts of dried lava. For long, scientists have held that it is the run-off streams of lava from volcanic eruptions that kills thousands of people, sweeping away entire civilisations. But recent reports have …
OLDER women can also enjoy good cardiac health if they opt for hormone replacement therapy (HRT) after menopause, because the hormone alters the shape of the body giving the older women more younger and healthier figures. At the recently held European Congress on Obesity in Barcelona, Spain, an Australian endocrinologist …
SELECTING a mate is perhaps a daunting task, but is it really that complex? Lee Dugatkin, a behavi6ural ecologist at the University of Louisville, us, fixes up Trinidadian guppies on dates in aquariums and probes the sociobiology of these creatures. His study seeks to determine the criteria employed by female …
CANCER patients at a hospital in Edinburgh are being treated with a drug that gums up the molecular :ccelerator pedals' on the surface of tumour cells. Blocking these sites could halt the growth of tumour cells, so that they wither and die. The drug is designed to treat small-celllung cancer, …
William Foster of the Universityof Cambridge in Massachusetts, US, Witnessed a duel between horned aphids (Astegopteryx minuta), which is the first case of a fight over territory to be observed among insects. The difficulry in finding good feeding sites led to the strife. Their weapons were their horns - protrusions …
