BioScience articles from December 2006

BioScience archives from December 2006

A new era for the public understanding of science.(2009 to be the "Year of Public Understanding of Science.")(Editorial)
December 1, 2006... As the Civil War raged--just four months before the battle of Gettysburg--President Abraham Lincoln, recognizing the importance of science in public policy, founded the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). In the more than 140 years since its...

Why not consider the commercialization of deer harvests?(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... Overabundance of white-tailed deer in eastern North America is as much, or more, of a conservation issue today than was the near absence of the deer in the same landscape only 70 years earlier. As Sharon Levy's (2006) review of the problem in...

Reproducibility and repeatability in ecology.(Viewpoint)
December 1, 2006... The quantitative synthesis of research results is of fundamental importance in seeking to develop ecological generalities and construct refutable theories. It is thus critical that published studies contain sufficient detail to allow their...

Madagascar defiant: conservationists have long proclaimed the economic value of biodiversity and the services it provides. The point may be proved in Madagascar, where a determined president and an international conservation coalition are struggling to transform a country noted for its past environmental mismanagement into a new role model for green development.
December 1, 2006... Rainer Dolch knows that the tens of thousands of young trees in his organization's care are only the beginning of a beginning. The seedlings, representing over a hundred species native to Madagascar, have been diligently tended in simple...

Supreme Court ruling leaves future of Clean Water Act Murky.(Washington Watch)
December 1, 2006... In early 2006, more than 50 briefs were submitted to the Supreme Court in connection with two cases challenging the federal government's authority to regulate streams and wetlands under the Clean Water Act (CWA). At issue in Rapanos v. United...

Oscillating populations and biodiversity maintenance.
December 1, 2006... Species persistence in the face of competitive or predatory pressure has long been assumed to be a consequence of either dynamic equilibrium or stochastic longevity. More recently, however, the complex intersection of nonlinear dynamics with...

Biodiversity, ecosystem function, and investment risk.
December 1, 2006... Biodiversity has the potential to influence ecological services. Management of ecological services thus includes investments in biodiversity, which can be viewed as a portfolio of genes, species, and ecosystems. As with all investments, it...

A Global crisis for seagrass ecosystems.
December 1, 2006... Seagrasses, marine flowering plants, have a long evolutionary history but are now challenged with rapid environmental changes as a result of coastal human population pressures. Seagrasses provide key ecological services, including organic...

The social resonance of competitive and progressive evolutionary metaphors.(Thinking of Biology)
December 1, 2006... Metaphors of competition and progress have played a key role in the scientific conception and public understanding of evolution. These scientific and public aspects have been in continual tension, however, since these metaphors have been...

Securing economic benefits and promoting conservation through bioprospecting.(Roundtable)
December 1, 2006... Bioprospecting has frequently been cited as a sustainable use of biodiversity. Nevertheless, the level of bioprospecting in biodiversity-rich tropical regions falls below its potential, with the result that bioprospecting has produced only...

Molecular evolution for the masses.(The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution)(Book review)
December 1, 2006... The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution. Sean B. Carroll. Norton, New York, 2006. 288 pp., illus. $25.95 (ISBN 0393061639 cloth). In his new book, Sean Carroll summarizes the molecular evidence for...

Insects for everyman.(Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity)(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity. Stephen M. Marshall. Firefly Books, Richmond Hill, Canada, 2006. 718 pp., illus. $95.00 (ISBN 1552979008 cloth). Book reviewers typically wait until the last paragraph to reveal their overall...

Smoothing the rocky road to seashore insight.(Monitoring Rocky Shores)(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Monitoring Rocky Shores. Steven N. Murray, Richard F. Ambrose, and Megan N. Dethier. University of California Press, Berkeley, 2006. 240 pp. $49.95 (ISBN 0520247280 cloth). Monitoring Rocky Shores presents the cumulative how-to guidance...

New titles.
December 1, 2006... The AFS Guide to Fisheries Employment. 2nd ed. David A. Hewitt, William E. Pine III, and Alexander V. Zale, eds. American Fisheries Society, Bethesda, MD, 2006. 248 pp., illus. $12.00 (ISBN 1888569867 paper). The Alligator Snapping Turtle....

New AIBS Board of Directors members for 2007.(AIBS news)
December 1, 2006... AIBS welcomes the new members of its Board of Directors for 2007. Four of the 13 seats on the board were up for election this year. The president-elect serves a one-year term and automatically succeeds to a one-year term as president, then a...

AIBS/BCSS/NESCent cosponsor evolution symposium.(AIBS news)
December 1, 2006... On 14 October 2006, AIBS continued its tradition of hosting a symposium on evolution at the annual conference of the National Association of Biology Teachers in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The symposium, titled "Macroevolution: Evolution above the...

AIBS and BSCS cosponsor the NABT evolution education award.(AIBS news)
December 1, 2006... On 13 October 2006, Susan Musante, director of the AIBS Education and Outreach Program, and Janet Powell, associate director and chief science education officer at the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, presented the 2006 NABT (National...

AIBS comments on ocean research plan.(AIBS news)
December 1, 2006... On 20 October 2006, AIBS submitted comments on "Charting the Course for Ocean Science in the United States: Research Priorities for the Next Decade," a draft document issued by the National Science and Technology Council Joint Subcommittee on...

AIBS at the 2006 SACNAS conference.(AIBS news)
December 1, 2006... AIBS, together with the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, organized a session entitled "Exploring Careers in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology" at the annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in...

NEON delivers key documents to NSF.(AIBS news)
December 1, 2006... October-November 2006 was an exceptionally busy time for staff at the NEON Project Office. The effort focused on preparing five major project documents for delivery to the National Science Foundation (NSF) in advance of the conceptual design...

NEON exhibits at student technical conference.(AIBS news)
December 1, 2006... NEON staffers attended the 16th Annual Science and Engineering Alliance (SEA) Student Technical Conference, 4-7 October 2006, in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Dan Johnson (NEON public information representative) and Cheryl Solomon (science associate)...

NEON welcomes new board members.(AIBS news)
December 1, 2006... NEON, Inc., is pleased to announce that Jerry M. Melillo and John Aber have been elected to the Board of Directors. Melillo is a senior scientist and co-director of The Ecosystems Center, Marine Biological Laboratory, at Woods Hole,...

Attention graduate students: 2007 EPPLA applications now available.(AIBS news)
December 1, 2006... AIBS is pleased to announce that applications for the 2007 AIBS Emerging Public Policy Leader Award (EPPLA) are now available. The EPPLA was established by AIBS in 2003 to recognize and further the science policy interests of graduate students...

AIBS among sponsors of walk to fight breast cancer.(AIBS news)(American Institute of Biological Sciences)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... AIBS was a corporate sponsor of the 13th annual Walk to Fight Breast Cancer, held in Alexandria, Virginia, on 21 October, under the auspices of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Safeway Food and Drug, and Mix 107.3. The three walkers...

Recent AIBS Public Policy Reports online at www.aibs.org.(AIBS news)
December 1, 2006... Public Policy Report for 6 November 2006 * Applications for 2007 AIBS Emerging Public Policy Leader Award now available * Reminder: November 7 is election day * NSB seeks new members * Hays confirmed as associate director for...

Calendar of meetings.(Calendar)
December 1, 2006... December 10-13 Entomological Society of America, Indianapolis, IN; www.entsoc.org/annual_ meeting/current_meeting/ index.htm January 3-7 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, Phoenix, AZ; www.sicb.org/...

Spread of tropical livestock virus. linked to climate change.(BioBriefs)
December 1, 2006... Scientists have been predicting the spread of pathogens and diseases as the global climate warms and the global economy provides the pathways. But the appearance of a new insect-borne disease of livestock in the Netherlands this past summer...