India's plant and animal species,
particularly in the global biodiversity hotspots of Himalayas, Western
Ghats, Northeast and the Nicobar Islands, are under severe threat due to
overexploitation, forest fires and climate change, says an official
report. The Environment Ministry report, came out in the midst of
raging debate between environmental protection and industrial growth,
rings alarm bells over destruction of forest and biodiversity in the
country, which is home to 45,000 species of plants and 91,000 species of
animals. In a candid admission, the Ministry says that it has diverted
an estimated over 1.7 million hectares of forest land for executing
more than 23,000 developmental projects since the enactment of Forest
Conservation Act in 1980. The report says that "a considerable area of
forests in the country is under low fragmentation (49.63 per cent of the
total geographic area of the country), 21.89 per cent under medium
while 5.16 per cent was under high fragmentation. The Fifth National
Report to the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), a copy of which is with
PTI, was developed prior to CBD's Strategic Plan for Biodiversity
2011-2020. "Habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation through
conversion of land use through agriculture, urbanisation and industrial
development, invasive alien species and over exploitation of natural
resources, including plants and animals, are amongst the major threats
faced by biodiversity globally and in India," says the report. Mining
and quarrying caused habitat loss and degradation, with severe
consequences for the ecology of areas such as the Aravalli range and the
Western Ghats. Considering the outstanding universal values and
exceptionally high levels of endemism in the Western Ghats, 39 sites in
the states of Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra have been
inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2012.
Difficulty or inability to write a coherent text message, even in people who have no problem speaking, may become a "vital" tool in diagnosing a type of crippling stroke, according to a new research. Scientists at Henry Ford Hospital focused on a 40-year-old man visiting the metro Detroit area on business who showed signs of "dystextia," a recently coined term for incoherent text messaging that can sometimes be confused with autocorrect garble. But in his case, the man saw nothing wrong with the garble. The patient had no problem with a routine bedside test of his language abilities - including fluency of speech, reading, writing, comprehension and other factors. However, when asked to type a simple text message, he not only produced garble, but he was unable to see it as such. Despite showing only slight facial asymmetry and no other symptoms, doctors determined the man had suffered an acute ischemic stroke, in which a clot or other blockage cuts off blood supply t...
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