BioScience articles from December 2004

BioScience archives from December 2004

Who pays for publication?(Editorial)
December 1, 2004... Allow us one end-of-year, self-congratulatory paragraph. BioScience has published 1176 pages in 2004, of which about 800 were peer reviewed. The others included Features, Editorials, Viewpoints, AIBSnews, Washington Watch, Eye on Education,...

Warning: open access may be hazardous to the health of your scientific society.(Viewpoint)
December 1, 2004... For most scientists, the open-access controversy has seemed to come out of the blue. All of a sudden, government policies about free online access to research publications are looming, catching scientific societies by surprise. In fact, the...

Microbial diversity unbound: what DNA-based techniques are revealing about the planet's hidden biodiversity.
December 1, 2004... To see a World in a Grain of Sand"--so begins William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence." What the poet 200 years ago intended to be metaphoric has turned out to be more realistic than he could have realized. The soils, sands, sediments, and...

New ESA amendments: sound science or political shell game?(Washington Watch)
December 1, 2004... The number of species officially listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is 1261 and still rising. Nine species have gone extinct, and only 8 domestic species have been recovered and delisted. On one point,...

The puzzles of population cycles and outbreaks of small mammals solved?
December 1, 2004... Well-known examples of high-amplitude, large-scale fluctuations of small-mammal populations include vole cycles in the boreal zone of-Eurasia, lemming cycles in the high-arctic tundra of Eurasia and North America, snowshoe hare cycles in the...

Coverage provided by the global protected-area system: is it enough?
December 1, 2004... Protected-area targets of 10% of a biome, of a country, or of the planet have often been used in conservation planning. The new World Database on Protected Areas shows that terrestrial protected-area coverage now approaches 12% worldwide. Does...

Global gap analysis: priority regions for expanding the global protected-area network.
December 1, 2004... Protected areas are the single most important conservation tool. The global protected-area network has grown substantially in recent decades, now occupying 11.5% of Earth's land surface, but such growth has not been strategically aimed at...

Mapping more of terrestrial biodiversity for global conservation assessment.
December 1, 2004... Global conservation assessments require information on the distribution of biodiversity across the planet. Yet this information is often mapped at a very coarse spatial resolution relative to the scale of most land-use and management decisions....

Key biodiversity areas as site conservation targets.
December 1, 2004... Site conservation is among the most effective means to reduce global biodiversity loss. Therefore, it is critical to identify those sites where unique biodiversity must be conserved immediately. To this end, the concept of key biodiversity,...

Financial costs and shortfalls of managing and expanding protected-area systems in developing countries.
December 1, 2004... Underfunding jeopardizes the ability of protected areas to safeguard biodiversity and the benefits that intact nature provides to society. In this article, we evaluate the cost of effectively managing all existing protected areas in developing...

Elements of scientific visualization in basic neuroscience research.(Biologist's Toolbox)
December 1, 2004... Scientific imaging systems have undergone a revolution over the last century since Wilhelm Rontgen's discovery of X rays in 1895. However, deciding which imaging system will do the job and assist in solving a scientific question--not just...

There is no denying this: defusing the confusion about atrazine.(Forum)
December 1, 2004... Recent studies from my laboratory, showing the chemical castration (demasculinization) and feminization of amphibians by low but ecologically relevant concentrations of atrazine in the laboratory and in the wild, prompted a critical response...

The metamorphosis of Evo-Devo.
December 1, 2004... Environment, Development, and Evolution: Toward a Synthesis. Brian K. Hall, Roy D. Pearson, and Gerd B. Muller, eds. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2003. 304 pp., illus. $45.00 (ISBN 0262083191 cloth). Ryuichi Matsuda was an insect biologist...

Clear-eyed observation of wild, unrestrained animals.
December 1, 2004... Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival. Bernd Heinrich. Harper-Collins, Ecco, New York. 2003. 368 pp., illus. $24.95 (ISBN 0060197447 cloth), $14.95 paper (ISBN 0060957379 paper). Bernd Heinrich, an emeritus professor of zoology at...

Metapopulation biology goes evolutionary.
December 1, 2004... Ecology, Genetics, and Evolution of Metapopulations. Ilkka Hanski and Oscar E. Gaggiotti, eds. Elsevier Academic Press, London, 2004.696 pp. $54.95 (ISBN 0123234484 cloth). The notion that discrete populations interact through the exchange...

New titles.
December 1, 2004... Bioinformatics: A Practical Guide to the Analysis of Genes and Proteins. 3rd ed. Andreas D. Baxevanis and B. F. Francis Ouellette, eds. Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, 2004. 540 pp., illus. $79.95 (ISBN 0471478784 cloth). Bumblebee Economics. Bernd...

AIBS welcomes NEON writer.(AIBS news)
December 1, 2004... Daniel C. Johnson, a former speechwriter with the National Science Foundation (NSF), joined AIBS in November as the public information representative for the NEON (National Ecological Observatory Network) Design Consortium and Project Office....

AIBS welcomes new member societies.(AIBS news)
December 1, 2004... In October 2004 the AIBS Board of Directors welcomed the Coastal Education and Research Foundation (CERF) and the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences (APLS) as member societies in AIBS. CERF, founded in 1984, is a nonprofit...

AIBS members and staff recognized as national academies education fellows and mentors in the life sciences.(AIBS news)
December 1, 2004... AIBS members Ingrid C Burke (Colorado State University), Martin L. Tracey Jr. (Florida International University), and Michael L. Dini (Texas Tech University) were named National Academies Education Fellows in the Life Sciences for their...

Recent articles online at www.actionbioscience.org.(AIBS news)
December 1, 2004... Original article in English "Urban Heat Islands: Effects and Biological Solutions," by James Voogt, associate professor of geography at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and chair of the American Meteorological Society's Board on...

Recent public policy reports online at www.aibs.org.(AIBS news)
December 1, 2004... Public Policy Report for 8 November 2004 * Election 2004: How will it impact Congress? * USGS coalition sends letter to FY 2005 Interior Appropriations conferees * California voters approve $3 billion stem cell research initiative...

Calendar of meetings.(Calendar)
December 1, 2004... December 6-10 First National Conference on Ecosystem Restoration, Orlando, FL; Web site: http:// conference.ifas.ufl.edu/ecosystem January 4-8 Society for Integrative and ...

How to prepare a manuscript for BioScience.(Information for Contributors)
December 1, 2004... THE BIOSCIENCE STAFF The editors of BioScience welcome original manuscripts written for a broad audience of professional biologists biology teachers, advanced students, and policymakers. Overview articles summarize recent advances in...

More roles for RNA.(BioBriefs)
December 1, 2004... Discoveries about RNA seem to surface periodically and are beginning to add up to something rather revolutionary. For decades, RNAs have been considered little more than intermediary molecules, necessary only for DNA to be expressed as protein....