BioScience articles from August 2005

BioScience archives from August 2005

What Is Bioscience?(Editorial)
August 1, 2005... Credible answers to the question posed above--which refers to a term of art, not this journal--are varied and becoming more so. We declare an interest. New techniques and concepts continue to expand the scope of investigations aimed at...

Dollars without sense: a response to Volpe.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2005... John Volpe's concern about the possible bad effects of aquaculture (BioScience 55: 301) is interesting and raises important issues. However, I do wish to correct the record in two areas concerning bluefin tuna in the Pacific Ocean. First,...

Persistence in adversity: lessons from the ivory-billed woodpecker.(Viewpoint)
August 1, 2005... The thing about extinction is that it is by definition permanent. We will never again have the opportunity to see a passenger pigeon or a great auk, much less a Tyrannosaurus rex, despite the Fantasy of reconstituting such a beast from bits of...

Tiff over Tamarisk: can a nuisance be nice, too?
August 1, 2005... Robert Webb gazes up and down the Gila River in southeastern Arizona looking for tamarisk trees. Some places Webb looks, he sees a few. Other places, however, the trees line the river with their dense branches and billowing canopies, often...

NSF funding still lags behind, but more in congress show concern.(Washington Watch)
August 1, 2005... President Bush is in a tight spot. He faces a burgeoning national deficit and a crop of aging baby boomers who will soon require trillions in Medicare and Social Security benefits. Disinclined to curtail his tax cuts, the president has turned...

Hydrogenosomes: one organelle, multiple origins.
August 1, 2005... Hydrogenosomes, membrane-bounded organdies that compartmentalize the terminal reactions of cellular energy metabolism, were first described in the parabasalid flagellate Tritrichomonas foetus as subcellular compartments that produce hydrogen...

Gene flow from genetically modified rice and its environmental consequences.
August 1, 2005... Within the next few years, many types of transgenic rice (Oryza sativa) will be ready for commercialization, including varieties with higher yields, greater tolerance of biotic and abiotic stresses, resistance to herbicides, improved...

Pseudomonas versus Arabidopsis: models for genomic research into plant disease resistance.
August 1, 2005... The interaction between plants and their pathogens is complex. Plant pathogens have evolved a broad set of proteins that enable a stealthy entry into the plant cell and facilitate the evasion of host defenses. Among other defenses, plants have...

The relative ineffectiveness of bibliographic search engines.(Professional Biologist)
August 1, 2005... The increasing number of scientific publications has made bibliographic search engines essential tools in all disciplines. These software-based devices, however, are far from perfect. Comparisons of software-based bibliographic search engines...

New amphibians and global conservation: a boost in species discoveries in a highly endangered vertebrate group.(Forum)
August 1, 2005... Amphibians are characterized both by a strongly increasing number of newly discovered species and by a high degree of decline. The observed increase in species numbers, over 25 percent in 11 years, is largely due to the intensified exploration...

A synthesizer's parting words: Ernst Mayr reflects on evolutionary biology as science.
August 1, 2005... We biologists rejoice in biological diversity, in all its complexity, unpredictability, and even messiness. To physicists and philosophers raised on physics as the paradigmatic science, it might sometimes look as though we are merely fumbling...

Biodiversity and the climate change coup de grace.
August 1, 2005... Climate Change and Biodiversity. Thomas E. Lovejoy and Lee Hannah, eds. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2005. 418 pp., illus. $65.00 (ISBN 0300104251 cloth). If in the mind's eye one can envision all the animals (including humans),...

The genesis and maintenance of phenotypic plasticity.
August 1, 2005... Phenotypic Plasticity: Functional and Conceptual Approaches. Thomas J. DeWitt and Samuel M. Scheiner, eds. Oxford University Press, New York, 2004. 247 pp., illus. $59.95 (ISBN 0195138961 cloth). Understanding the evolution of phenotypic...

Unintended consequences.
August 1, 2005... Fishes and Forestry: Worldwide Watershed Interactions and Management. T G. Northcote and G. F. Hartman, eds. Blackwell, Ames, IA, 2004. 789 pp., illus. $249.99 (ISBN 0632058099 cloth). Fishes and Forestry: Worldwide Watershed Interactions...

New titles.(Books)
August 1, 2005... Carpenter Ants of the United States and Canada. Laurel D. Hansen and John H. Klotz. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2005. 224 pp., illus. $35.00 (ISBN 0801442621 cloth). Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the...

AIBS and BioOne team with JSTOR to put BioScience archives online.(AIBS news)
August 1, 2005... AIBS and BioOne are working with JSTOR, the not-for-profit online digital archive, to digitize all back issues of BioScience. Full-text PDF volumes of BioScience, dating from the journal's inception as the AIBS bulletin in 1951 up to the most...

AIBS cosponsors "Science @ Work" on Capitol Hill.(AIBS news)
August 1, 2005... AIBS recently joined other scientific societies and universities to cosponsor "Science @ Work," the 11th annual Coalition for National Science Funding exhibition and reception on Capitol Hill. This year's event included poster presentations by...

NEON design process on schedule.(AIBS news)
August 1, 2005... The NEON Design Consortium (NDC) completed its third planning meeting in Estes Park, Colorado, 7-9 June 2005. The agenda included discussions ranging from which science questions NEON should address and how NEON, Inc., should be governed, to...

NEON note: next stop, Canada.(AIBS news)
August 1, 2005... NEON will be featured in a special session at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America, in Montreal, Canada, 7-12 August 2005. Codirectors Bruce Hayden and William Michener will present an overview of the planning process and an...

Recent articles online at www.actionbioscience.org.(AIBS news)
August 1, 2005... Original article in English * "The State of Ecosystems," an interview with Cristian Samper, director of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC Lessons for classroom activities * "Evolution...

Recent public policy reports online at www.aibs.org.(AIBS news)
August 1, 2005... Public Policy Report for 5 July 2005 * Appropriations update * Interior spending moves forward * Science on Capitol Hill * Evolution update: Kansas and Pennsylvania * New in BioScience: "The Summers Affair: Has It Prompted...

Calendar of meetings.(Calendar)
August 1, 2005... August 7-12 Ecological Society of America, Montreal, Canada; www.esa. org/meetings 13-17 Botanical Society of America, Austin, TX; www.2005.botany conference.org 13-19 Phycological Society of America, Durban, South Africa;...

Surprising salamander find.(Hidden in Plain Sight)
August 1, 2005... When Stephen Karsen takes his students at the Taejon Christian International School, in Korea, on field trips, they look under rocks to see what they might find. In April 2003, he discovered a new species of salamander while hiking alone in the...

New family of rodents discovered.(Hidden in Plain Sight)
August 1, 2005... Roughly 3000 kilometers to the southwest of Karsen's discovery (and five years earlier), two scientists independently surveying the Khammouan province in the south of the Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR) made another remarkable find....