A CLARION CALL TO ALL INDIANS TO FACILITATE INTENSE RESEARCH ON NATURAL PRODUCTS

More than 100 years before India was recognised as the “Generic Capital” or “Pharmacy of the World, India was acclaimed for the “Materia Medica” and the extensive research on natural products by Sir Col. Dr. Ram Nath Chopra, the father of Indian Pharmacology. In fact, Dr. M.L. Shroff got inspired from Sir R.N. Chopra and started the first Pharmacy course at Banaras Hindu University in 1932. Every student (even veterans) of Pharmacy should know that Drugs Act, 1940 (later renamed as Drugs and Cosmetics Act) as well as formal courses in Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani were started under his mentorship. DTAB (Drugs Technical Advisory Committee) was set up under his stewardship. The first edition of the Indian Pharmacopoeia (evolved from Indian pharmacopoeial list 1946) 1955 was published with his contributions. “We are reaping the fruits of the plant grown by their sown seeds. We should make the same available to our future generations” said the biographer, Roja Rani. Prof.Harkishan Singh in J.Young Pharm, 2009 (Vol.1/No.3) had profiled Dr.R.N. Chopra (which is reproduced herein). Later Dr. K.M. Nadkarni came out with “Indian Materia Medica” in two volumes in 1908 with Foreword by Dr. R.N. Chopra. These are extremely valuable reference books for further research in Indian Natural Products.

The Living Atlases Community of Practice

The power and configurability of the the Atlas of Living Australia tools have enabled more and more institutions and participants of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility adapt and install biodiversity platforms. For six years, we have demonstrated that the community around this platform was needed and ready for its adoption. During the symposium organized for the SPNHC+TDWG 2018, we started a discussion that has led us to the creation of a more structured and sustainable community of practice. We want to create a community that follows the structure of open-source technical projects such as Linux or Apache foundation. After the GBIF Governing Board (GB25), the Kilkenny accord was agreed among 8 country or institution partners and early adopters of ALA platform to outline the scope of the new Living Atlases community. Thanks to this accord, we have begun to set up a new structure based on the Community of Practice (CoP) model. In summary, the governance will be held by a Management committee and a Technical advisory committee. Adding to these, the Living Atlases community will have two coordinators with technical and administrative duties. This presentation will briefly summarise the community history leading up to the agreement of the Kilkenny accord and provide information and context of the key points contained. Then, we will present and launch the new Living Atlases Community of Practice . Through this presentation, we aim to collect lessons learned and good practices from other CoP in topics like governance, communications, sustainability, among others to incorporate them in the consolidation process of the Living Atlases community.

Addressing procedural bias in municipal planning governance: A case for incorporating citizen participation within technical advisory committees

This essay presents models of multiparty negotiation as a means to compare the conventional public meetings format of planning to a preliminary process, the technical advisory committee. A metric of market concentration, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, is used to quantify the structural advantages in each, and presented within the context of municipal planning processes. In doing so, this work advances several propositions: First, open meetings expand power differentials between parties, which lead to outcomes that reflect the political efficacy of participants over the regulatory purpose of government. Second, such meetings create substantial transaction costs for the public, creating a barrier to the expression of community values. Finally, preliminary processes constitute a more effective forum for citizen participation than open meetings.