Surendra Singh Negi is the state's minister for alternative medicine, and he says he is worried that continued forest fires in the Himalayas may be wiping out rare and valuable plant life.

He also sees general medical patients at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System, where he serves as a staff physician and associate director of the Center for Health Care Evaluation.

The study — conducted by the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of Minnesota — appears in the Oct. 28 issue of the Journal of Neural Engineering.