Plant Genetic Resources (PGRs) are one of the most valuable natural resources of anycountry. Biotechnology through genetic engineering of plants and the creation of new plantvarieties can increase the value of these resources. Different technical and legalmechanisms such as ex situ/in situ collection of PGRs, and Intellectual Property Rights(IPRs...

Systematic planning for biodiversity conservation is being conducted at scales ranging from global to national to regional. The prevailing planning paradigm is to identify the minimum land allocations needed to reach specified conservation targets or maximize the amount of conservation accomplished under an area or budget constraint. We propose a more general formulation for setting conservatio...

Monumental tombs reflect various social, cultural, architectural, religious, economic, and engineering features of a community. However, environmental weathering, natural disasters, poor maintenance, vandalism, and misuse unfortunately pose serious threats to these cultural assets. Historic monuments are often exposed to the highest risk due to their vulnerability. The Ottoman-style Nişancı Ham...

The high conservation value (HCV) concept, originally developed by the Forest Stewardship Council, has been widely incorporated outside the forestry sector into companies' supply chain assessments and responsible purchasing policies, financial institutions' investment policies, and numerous voluntary commodity standards. Many, if not most, of these newer applications relate to production practi...

P genetics is a historical discipline in the sense that it analyzes the distribution of genetic variants in populations to make inferences about evolutionary processes and events in the past. But it is time trapped, because population geneticists, unlike for example paleontologists or archaeologists, are limited to the analysis of contemporary materials and cannot go back in time to study direc...