Developing Charity Web Application to Eradicate Poverty in Bhutan

This paperdescribes the designsand features deduced from the extensive literature reviewsthat helped us to build the prototype of the charity web application. Literature review on poverty helped us to understand feasibility and the need of building charity web applicationto uplift the poor communities in Bhutan.The prototype had been built considering the Human Computer Interaction(HCI) domain such as navigability, visual and page design. Navigability is achieved by providing thelinks on the side bar, breadcrumbs for a complex site and search tools for the ease of use. Visual design includes the logical structuring of contents and appropriate use of fonts, graphics, space and colors. Successful user friendly website with the possibility to minimize the access time issue is defined in page design.The HCI concepts are considered while building the prototype to achieve overall effectiveness, efficiency of charity web application and user satisfaction

Systematics of eastern Australian Phebalium Vent. sect. Phebalium (Rutaceae; Zanthoxyloideae) -Dataset

Raw data and processed data sets used for the three data chapters of PhD thesis "Systematics of eastern Australian Phebalium Vent. sect. Phebalium (Rutaceae; Zanthoxyloideae)". 
 
 There are four cvs, one Excel and four zip files. CVS and Excel files are named with relevant chapter names. Excel file "PATN_Input"; csv files "dataset1 and dataset 2" are the final processed data used for analyses in the indicated chapters.
 
 cvs file named "Meta_data_Chap4" and "Meta_data_Chap5" are metadata files of the three zip files: "orderappendix_1 to 3", which are raw data of genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data of Phebalium from throughout Australia.
 
 The zip file "Phebalium_Phytodata is raw data from GC-MS analysed in Chapter 3

Bhutan’s Challenges in Biodiversity Informatics

Access to reliable and updated data and information on the status of biodiversity for effective conservation and sustainable use has been one of the major challenges in Bhutan. The current scenario of inaccessibility is due to the fact that biodiversity inventories and documentation are carried out within the context of individual projects and institutions, guided by their specific objectives and collection standards, often in isolation. More critical is the fact that these data hardly get shared nor are they easily accessible, resulting in either duplication of efforts or underutilization of the existing data. It has been duly noted that despite the global recognition of Bhutan’s protected areas system and its conservation achievements, information on the existing biodiversity of these protected areas is not easily accessible. There is also inadequate information on the critical biodiverse areas of the country, making it difficult to make informed decisions for either initiating developmental activities or prioritizing the area for conservation. These gaps are acknowledged and discussed in national documents (NBSAP 2014). In order to provide easy access to comprehensive biodiversity data and information of the country and to ensure the judicious use of our scarce resources, there is a compelling need to establish a coordination mechanism for sharing data on a common platform, not only to overcome the existing gaps but also to enable consolidation and analysis of the data in order to generate information for broader use such as conservation planning or education. Thus in 1994, Bhutan, along with the South-South Cooperation (PSC 2009), which included Benin and Costa Rica, initiated a basic biodiversity information system in each country, funded by the Kingdom of Netherlands. In 2008, the National Biodiversity Centre (NBC) developed a web-based biodiversity portal, which was subsequently upgraded to the status of a national biodiversity information clearing house in 2010. However, because of the vastness and variety of biodiversity data, it was not feasible for a single agency to collect as well as curate these vast data. Thus, in early 2013, the Centre proposed the formation of a consortium to manage biodiversity data through a strengthened and an improved version of a web-based portal. In addition, this initiative to form a consortium amongst different biodiversity stakeholders, was also to address the issue of duplicative efforts in developing and managing isolated information systems and databases. The Bhutan Biodiversity Portal (www.biodiversity.bt) was launched on 17th December 2013. Currently, the observation data has crossed 63,000 of all taxa owing mostly to the efforts of a mass campaign across the country. However, one of the major challenges is the availability of active taxonmic curators especially for the understudied taxonomic groups such as invertebrates. In addition, some users prefer social media over the portal due to its user-friendliness

Development of a National Repository for Aquatic Biodiversity in Bhutan

In response to a request from the Royal Government of Bhutan, the World Bank commissioned a study on the sustainable development of hydropower in Bhutan. The study identified loss and decline of aquatic biodiversity as one of the major potential environmental impacts of hydropower development in Bhutan. Access to information on aquatic biodiversity is of utmost importance in planning and designing of new hydropower projects in Bhutan. This data is essential for planners to avoid, minimize and effectively mitigate potential adverse impacts on aquatic biodiversity. However, access to this information is not easy. With the objective of making aquatic biodiversity data accessible, key stakeholders within Bhutan have taken the initiative to create and maintain a national data repository for aquatic biodiversity within the country. An inventory and gap analysis of aquatic biodiversity data in Bhutan was done to summarize the available data and information on aquatic biodiversity, stakeholder meetings were held to obtain feedback for the repository and a plan of action has been formulated for creating the repository. Bhutan already maintains a rich biodiversity information repository - the Bhutan Biodiversity Portal (BBP, http://biodiversity.bt/), under the aegis of the National Biodiversity Centre (NBC), Ministry of Agriculture and Forests, Serbithang, Thimphu. The platform is powered by the open source Biodiversity Informatics Platform that also powers the India Biodiversity Portal (IBP) and a portal on Weed Identification and Knowledge in the Western Indian Ocean (WIKWIO). Additional data fields and functionality were identified to extend the functionality of BBP to cover the needs of the stakeholders. Primarily, interfaces will be built to upload already available datasets on organisms that have been surveyed and identified, as well as newer aquatic biodiversity data that will be generated by surveys and monitoring in future. The portal will facilitate upload of data that captures observed characteristics, e.g., life stage, body size, reproductive state; environmental variables of the locality of occurrence; and other sampling data such as sampling gear and mode of observation. It will also enhance species knowledge by adding the ability to link existing species pages with international databases such as IUCN and FishBase, as well as fields to store voucher specimen details and ecological status. All tabular data that is added will be synchronised to either standard observation fields, custom observation fields that are relevant to aquatic biodiversity or to species traits. Data that cannot be categorised under any of the above will stored as key value pairs. The data upload module will have metadata marked up to the Ecological Metadata Language (EML) metadata specification and data will be available for exchange using the Darwin Core (DwC) standards. The platform will be enabled with an enhanced search and serve function through easy-to-use query panels. Uploaded data will be aggregated and visualised on the portal along spatial, temporal and taxonomic axes. Furthermore, it will be available for stakeholders to download under Creative Commons licences for further processing and planning. The creation of the repository will be complemented by training the stakeholders in data curation and developing a campaign to build awareness of the portal within the community of stakeholders. The establishment of this repository will provide a guide to conserve aquatic biodiversity, maintain ecosystem functioning, and protect livelihoods and food security dependent upon aquatic biodiversity. It will also contribute to the open source biodiversity informatics platform and be available to all other instances of the portal. This will help in enriching the functions of the open source platform and provide value to conservation of biodiversity in other areas of the world

Systematics of Eastern Australian Phebalium Vent. Sect. Phebalium (Rutaceae; Zanthoxyloideae)

The taxonomy of the Australian endemic Phebalium sect. Phebalium has not been addressed comprehensively for almost half a century. A well-corroborated species-level phylogeny with an updated taxonomy was lacking. This thesis aims to test the taxon boundaries of published and putative new taxa in the Phebalium squamulosum complex, one of the speciose complexes of the eastern Australian Phebalium sect. Phebalium, using multiple lines of evidence: phytochemistry, morphological and molecular data. Using these tested terminal taxa, the study also aims to estimate evolutionary relationships in P. sect. Phebalium. A pilot study allowed early investigation of morphology in the study group and addressed the urgent conservation assessment of an outlying population of P. squamulosum in South Australia. As a result, a new species, P. calcicola S.Dema & I.Telford was published (Chapter 2) and soon after it was listed as endangered. Building on the previous findings, the utility of the leaf essential oil terpene profiles as phenotypic characters for the delimitation of species was tested in the morphologically diverse P. squamulosum complex (Chapter 3). Employing gas-chromatography-mass spectrometry (GS-MS), the leaf terpene profile of 34 taxa of the P. squamulosum complex was analysed. The terpene profile corroborated the recognition of 20 species, either published or those delimited in the current study (Chapter 4). The characterisation of leaf terpene profiles of the P. squamulosum complex into three putative phytochemical groups (elemol/hedycaryol; squamulosone; monoterpene α-pinene dominated but without elemol/hedycaryol or squamulosone) was also novel. Morphological and molecular phenetics were used to test the hypothesis of the species limits in the Phebalium squamulosum complex. The morphological and SNP-based multivariate analyses corroborated the recognition of 15 new species, the reinstatement of 4 species, and the elevation of 4 subspecies to species. The molecular data also supported the species limits of published segregates. Reinstated species and species with change of rank have protologue and typification data presented. For the 15 new species, their diagnoses, descriptions, distributions, habitat information and conservation status are provided (Chapter 4). A reduced representation approach was used with SNP markers to reconstruct the species-level evolutionary relationships in P. sect. Phebalium (Chapter 5). Inferences based on all three phylogenetic methods (maximum likelihood, SVDquartets and maximum parsimony) and network analyses were congruent. A combination of phylogenetic and neighbour-net analyses resolved the monophyly of six south-western and 67 eastern Australian taxa of the current P. sect. Phebalium, most of which are recognised as species according to the explicit definition of such. The inter-specific relationships of most taxa in the eastern Australian clade of P. sect. Phebalium were elucidated. Our results supported the recently described sections, P. sect. Microcybe and P. sect. Uniflorum, as well as the eastern and south-western clades of P. sect. Phebalium. Our results also provided sound evidence for further division of the eastern Australian clade into nine sections. The formalisation of an infrageneric classification is deferred pending further and ongoing morphological characterisation of the clades. A distinct lineage with a unique combination of morphological attributes that merits a new monospecific section is described as P. mirum (Chapter 5). This study provided clues to the identity and affinity of various cultivated plants and cultivars of Phebalium (Chapters 4 & 5). The taxon boundaries and evolutionary relationships of only seven taxa could not be resolved. Potential research areas to address these taxa and limitations in the study are indicated (Chapter 6)

Immigration medical examination at the Regional Referral Hospitals: strengthening health system capabilities

Bhutan has a three-tiered healthcare system with the majority of services remaining Thimphu-centric. At the height of public demand for Immigration Medical Examination services, the two regional referral hospitals put in their efforts to establish the services in Gelephu and Mongar. The Regional Referral Hospitals enabled accessibility to IME services and improved efficiency at the National Referral Hospital by decongesting the number of clients. In this article, we describe how the regional referral hospitals established IME services that meet the standards of the destination country

Phebalium calcicola (Rutaceae: Boronieae): a species described as new, restricted to south-eastern South Australia, is proposed as Critically Endangered

Phebalium calcicola, a multi-stemmed shrub from south-eastern South Australia, is segregated from the P. squamulosum subsp. squamulosum assemblage and described here as new, based on phenetic distinctness, habitat preference and geographical disjunction. It is compared with P. squamulosum subsp. squamulosum s.str. from the Sydney region, as well as the geographically closest populations from Victoria, which are currently referred as P. squamulosum subsp. squamulosum. A recommendation for the conservation status of this species as Critically Endangered is proposed. An amended key to species of Phebalium in South Australia is provided