Central to the achievement of the Agenda for Sustainable Development is an adequate, equitably distributed and fully supported health workforce. Nurses are the largest occupational group and represent an indispensable force with which to combat inequities in access to health services and progress towards health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while …
Annual emissions of anthropogenic Hg to the atmosphere in different regions of the world during the last decade show an interesting dichotomy: the emissions in the developed countries increased at the rate of about 4.5–5.5% yr−1 up to 1989 and have since remained nearly constant, while in developing countries the …
seventeen European countries belonging to Eumetsat, the agency responsible for European weather satellites, met recently at Darmstadt, Germany, to approve a us $2.3 billion-system of weather satellites which will help provide more accurate forecasts. The members have proposed to build three satellites, for launch from the year 2002 , to …
IT TOOK just 66 seconds for US $7 billion and 10 years of hard work put in by European space scientists, to go up in smoke. Ariane-5 - the pride of the European Space Programme - had to be destroyed along with its payload of four scientific satellites by ground …
PITY lexicographer. His job is hard as it is. But imagine how difficult it would be if, on defining the word 'up', it was necessary to add that it might just as well mean 'down'. It would be a very Alice-in-Wonderlandish dictionary, which might be worse than no dictionary at …
THE study of Neandertal bones discovered in the Vindija Cave, Croatia, in the '70s has provided important clues about the lives of these hunter-gatherers, who occupied this cave some 50,000 years ago. The first Neandertal fossils were named after Neaderthal or Neander Valley in Germany, where they were discovered in …
A recent study by Fred Spoor, a researcher from University College, London, has given fresh insights illto the lives of Cro-Magllons alld Nealldertals. The study hints at trade alldcultural contacts between some Neandertals and the Cro-Magnons, who ultimately replaced them, Researchers had excavated sophisticated tools and ornaments made from bones …
Familiarity breeds contempt. This , in a nutshell, encapsulates the oftrepeated statements of various gov- ernmentofficials on the status of the world's natural fish stocks. At the European Union (EU) conference on setting fishing quotas, which began on April 22 at Brussels in the Netherlands, the assertions of the European …
FAULTY AIDS test kits manufactured by the Chicago-based Abbott laboratories Incorporated, have forced thousands of Europeans to face the anxiety of undergoing the test all over again. The company had withdrawn the test kit from the market on March 25, following at least four complaints of the test showing negative …
OZONE levels have been depleting at the average annual rate of 4.3 per cent every decade in the Northern Hemisphere, and a slightly lower 4.1 per cent in the Southern Hemisphere, since 1979. These figures were disclosed by Rumen Bojkov of the World Meteorological Organization (wmo) in Geneva, Switzerland. The …
In a span of five years, Dutch sci4ntists R Hoekstra, C Elij and others at the Delft-based Institute of Applied Physics, have developed a spectrometer called the global ozone monitoring experiment (GOME). A spectrometer is a spectroscope equipped with a photoelectric photdAeter to measure radiant intensities at various wavelengths. GOME, …
THE squabble over fishing quotas in the European Union (EU) came to a disappointing halt in Brussels last month. EU fisheries ministries, meeting to discuss the fishing quotas for this year, tried hard to bargain against the cuts citing the cause of the livelihood of the fisherfolk which could get …
IT WAS the inexorable hand of climate that spurred human evolution. This is the latest finding of Peter researcher, working with the University of Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Observatory, us. No one knows for c tain what first forced huntoem remote ape-like ancestors to forsa the trees they called home, why so …
LEADING environmental Ncos and public interest groups in Europe, persistently rooting against the patenting of genes and living organisms, are now seething with indignation against the European Patent Office (EPO). The organisation has gone ahead and presented a draft proposal at a forum in Munich in September end, claiming that …
EUROPEAN pharmaceutical companies, specially those based in Germany and are bell bent on blocking the of the low priced Spanish and wipme drugs in the European Union When Spain and Germany sed the Eu in 1985, their drugs were Red bemuse neither country offered at protection for pharmaceuticals. IM both …
A FOSSILISED jaw of Homo erectus-modern man's closest ancestor has been traced in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, could be the oldest ever found outside Africa. It has been generally believed that Africa is the evolutionary home of humans, with the Homo erectus developing from proto-human species. The new …
CORINE, the Coordination of Information on the Environment, which is the official classification system for natural habitats of the European Community (EC), is putting Europe's vulnerable wildlife sanctuaries under severe risk, alleges John Rodwell of Lancaster University. Rodwell, who is the coordinator of the British Natural Vegetation Classification, is extremely …
AS EUROPE sticks its snorkel out of the muddy and deep waters of the continent's most devastating floods this century, the efficacy of its dykes comes under pained introspection. Cutting across the Netherlands, Germany, France and Belgium is a realisation that the continent's much-praised flood control practices may be soft …
The European Commission's (EC) attempt to devise a common carbon energy tax has fallen apart. At a meeting in Brussels in mid-December 1994, European environment ministers gave their assent to the adoption of individual measures by member-states to cut down carbon dioxide emissions. uk environment minister John Gummer said that …
The European Court of Justice has finally given its verdict on the prickly question of European trade policy: the European Commission, the European Community's (ec) executive body, must share authority over trade in services and intellectual property with other ec members. The ruling in mid-November was a blow to the …
