Using plants for health: Indigenous knowledge in health care in a tribal region of Bihar,India

While the potential of indigenous knowledge for health care is fully recognised in the literature and by many health professionals, the practices of so many indigenous peoples go unrecorded and untested. Indigenous knowledge remains essentially untapped, an unwritten resource involving information, language and skills in many groups, languages, cultures and environments. An attempt is made in this paper to identify selected indigenous health technologies in a tribal area of Bihar State, India; to describe the treatments, their application and preparation; and to link the traditional practice with the relevant scientific information to test or determine the validity of the practices. These practices were found to be effective in the treatment of a variety of health problems, and most were also scientifically confirmed. The paper argues, however, that other plant uses practised by tribal people still need to be explored: in order to popularise more widely the authenticated practices; to preserve indigenous knowledge; to integrate or blend it with scientific knowledge so that health professionals and healthcare users may benefit from a wider range of healthcare strategies which are environmentally unthreatening.     

Phytoremediation of polyaromatic hydrocarbons, anilines and phenols

Phytoremediation technologies based on the combined action of plants and the microbial communities that they support within the rhizosphere hold promise in the remediation of land and waterways contaminated with hydrocarbons but they have not yet been adopted in large-scale remediation strategies. In this review plant and microbial degradative capacities, viewed as a continuum, have been dissected in order to identify where bottle-necks and limitations exist. Phenols, anilines and polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were selected as the target classes of molecule for consideration, in part because of their common patterns of distribution, but also because of the urgent need to develop techniques to overcome their toxicity to human health. Depending on the chemical and physical properties of the pollutant, the emerging picture suggests that plants will draw pollutants including PAHs into the plant rhizosphere to varying extents via the transpiration stream. Mycorrhizosphere-bacteria and -fungi may play a crucial role in establishing plants in degraded ecosystems. Within the rhizosphere, microbial degradative activities prevail in order to extract energy and carbon skeletons from the pollutants for microbial cell growth. There has been little systematic analysis of the changing dynamics of pollutant degradation within the rhizosphere; however, the importance of plants in supplying oxygen and nutrients to the rhizosphere via fine roots, and of the beneficial effect of microorganisms on plant root growth is stressed. In addition to their role in supporting rhizospheric degradative activities, plants may possess a limited capacity to transport some of the more mobile pollutants into roots and shoots via fine roots. In those situations where uptake does occur (i.e. only limited microbial activity in the rhizosphere) there is good evidence that the pollutant may be metabolised. However, plant uptake is frequently associated with the inhibition of plant growth and an increasing tendency to oxidant stress. Pollutant tolerance seems to correlate with the ability to deposit large quantities of pollutant metabolites in the 'bound' residue fraction of plant cell walls compared to the vacuole. In this regard, particular attention is paid to the activities of peroxidases, laccases, cytochromes P450, glucosyltransferases and ABC transporters. However, despite the seemingly large diversity of these proteins, direct proof of their participation in the metabolism of industrial aromatic pollutants is surprisingly scarce and little is known about their control in the overall metabolic scheme. Little is known about the bioavailability of bound metabolites; however, there may be a need to prevent their movement into wildlife food chains. In this regard, the application to harvested plants of composting techniques based on the degradative capacity of white-rot fungi merits attention.     

Scanning electron microscopic investigations of root structural modifications arising from growth in crude oil-contaminated sand

The choice of plant for phytoremediation success requires knowledge of how plants respond to contaminant exposure, especially their roots which are instrumental in supporting rhizosphere activity. In this study, we investigated the responses of plants with different architectures represented by beetroot (Beta vulgaris), a eudicot with a central taproot and many narrower lateral roots, and tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea), a monocot possessing a mass of threadlike fibrous roots to grow in crude oil-treated sand. In this paper, scanning electron microscopy was used to investigate modifications to plant root structure caused by growth in crude oil-contaminated sand. Root structural disorders were evident and included enhanced thickening in the endodermis, increased width of the root cortical zone and smaller diameter of xylem vessels. Inhibition in the rate of root elongation correlated with the increase in cell wall thickening and was dramatically pronounced in beetroot compared to the roots of treated fescue. The latter possessed significantly fewer (p?<?0.001) and significantly shorter (p?<?0.001) root hairs compared to control plants. Possibly, root hairs that absorb the hydrophobic contaminants may prevent contaminant absorption into the main root and concomitant axile root thickening by being sloughed off from roots. Tall fescue exhibited greater root morphological adaptability to growth in crude oil-treated sand than beetroot and, thus, a potential for long-term phytoremediation.     

Rare non-mosaic trisomies in chorionic villus tissue not confirmed at amniocentesis

This paper reports eight cases of non-mosaic, rare, and typically lethal trisomies diagnosed in chorionic villi and not confirmed by amniocentesis. Four cases were 47,XX, + 16; two cases were 47,XX, +2; one was 47,XX, + 12; and one was 47,XY, +7. There have been no known complications in any of these gestations. These eight cases were found in a series of approximately 12 000 samples processed in our laboratory (0.07 per cent). We conclude that (1) rare non-mosaic trisomy not reflecting the fetal condition is an occasional source of diagnostic ambiguity in chorionic villus sampling; and (2) when encountered, a follow-up amniocentesis should be recommended to the patient to confirm or rule out the abnormality. We propose the term ‘confined placental abnormality’ to describe non-mosaic trisomies and other related abnormalities found only in chorionic tissue.     

Ozone Control Strategies Based on the Ratio of Volatile Organic Compounds to Nitrogen Oxides

The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments require states with O₃ nonattainment areas to adopt regulations to enforce reasonable available control technologies (RACT) for NO_X stationary sources by November 1992. However, if the states can demonstrate that such measures will have an adverse effect on air quality, NO_X requirements may be waived. To assist the states in making this decision, the U.S. EPA is attempting to develop guidelines for the states to use in deciding whether NO_X reductions will have a positive or negative impact on O3 air quality. Although NO_X is a precursor of O₃, at low VOC/NO_X ratios, the reduction of NO_X can result in increased peak O₃. EPA is examining existing information on VOC/NO_X ratios to develop “rules of thumb” to guide the states in their decision-making process. An examination of 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. VOC/NO_X ratios at a number of sites in the eastern U.S. indicates that the ratio is highly variable from day-to-day and there is no apparent relationship between ratios measured at different sites within the same area. In addition, statistical analysis failed to identify significant relationships between the 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. VOC/NO_X ratio and the maximum 1-hr. O₃ within a given area. Since we know from smog chamber and modeling studies that such a relationship exists, this further invalidates the assumption that a ratio measured at a single site is representative of the ratio for the entire region. Based on this Information, we conclude that having the 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. ambient VOC/NO_X ratio for a given area is insufficient information, by itself, to decide whether a VOC-alone, a NO_x-alone, or a combined VOC-NO_X reduction strategy is a viable or optimum O₃-reduction strategy.     

Observations on the workshop as a means of improving communication between holders of traditional and scientific knowledge

Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and the information and insights it offers to natural resource research and management have been given much attention in recent years. On the practical question of how TEK is accessed and used together with scientific knowledge, most work to date has examined documentation and methods of recording and disseminating information. Relatively little has been done regarding exchanges between scientific and traditional knowledge. This paper examines three workshop settings in which such exchanges were intended outcomes. The Barrow Symposium on Sea Ice, the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Restoration Program Synthesis/Information Workshops, and the Alaska Beluga Whale Committee illuminate certain features of the preparation, format, and context of workshops or series of workshops and their eventual outcomes and influence. The examples show the importance of long-term relationships among participants and thorough preparation before the actual workshop. Further research should look more systematically at the factors that influence the success of a given workshop and the various ways in which participants perceive success.     

Zooplankton feeding ecology

Extracts of 19 of 24 species of sponge collected from Queensland. Australia, inhibited the growth of test microorganisms in in-vitro assays. A similar result has been obtained by earlier workers for extracts of species of sponge obtained from temperate waters. Some of the extracts, including extracts of Thorecta vasiforis, Arenochalina mirabilis and Acanthella kleutha, showed activity against bacterial strains that was comparable with that exhibited by penicillin G and streptomycin against these strains. Gram-positive bacteria were expecially sensitive to many extracts. Little activity was exhibited by any extract against four species of fungi tested. Some of the extracts were markedly toxic to one or more of the test organisms (a fish, a crustacean and a hydroid) used, but no clear pattern linking toxicity to these organisms with antimicrobial properties of the extracts emerged. In general, there bas a negative correlation between antimicrobial activity and surface-fouling, raising the possibility of using freedom from surface-fouling as an indicator of antimicrobial activity. Four of five encrusting species from the undersides of coral boulders showed antimicrobial activity. This study confirmed the value of using methanol-toluene extracts in field-based screening programmes, but emphasised the need to use additional extracting media such as methylene chloride in order to augment the number of antimicrobial compounds detected. There are indications that antimicrobial activity may be widespread in the order Dictyoceratida, in the order Verongida and in the order Axinellida, but sporadic in other orders of Porifera.     

Rough Set Rule Induction for Suitability Assessment

The data that characterize an environmental system are a fundamental part of an environmental decision-support system. However, obtaining complete and consistent data sets for regional studies can be difficult. Data sets are often available only for small study areas within the region, whereas the data themselves contain uncertainty because of system complexity, differences in methodology, or data collection errors. This paper presents rough-set rule induction as one way to deal with data uncertainty while creating predictive if–then rules that generalize data values to the entire region. The approach is illustrated by determining the crop suitability of 14 crops for the agricultural soils of the Willamette River Basin, Oregon, USA. To implement this method, environmental and crop yield data were spatially related to individual soil units, forming the examples needed for the rule induction process. Next, four learning algorithms were defined by using different subsets of environmental attributes. ROSETTA, a software system for rough set analysis, was then used to generate rules using each algorithm. Cross-validation analysis showed that all crops had at least one algorithm with an accuracy rate greater than 68%. After selecting a preferred algorithm, the induced classifier was used to predict the crop suitability of each crop for the unclassified soils. The results suggest that rough set rule induction is a useful method for data generalization and suitability analysis.