BioScience articles from January 2006

BioScience archives from January 2006

Answering challenges to biological research and education.(Editorial)
January 1, 2006... On 2 November 2005, President Bush asked Congress for $7.1 billion to prepare the United States for a global epidemic of influenza. On 6 November, Olivia Judson, writing in the New York Times, reminded us that because flu viruses evolve very...

On Brazilian ethanol and the ecological footprint.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2006... Marcelo Dias de Oliveira and colleagues assess the environmental impacts of ethanol production in Brazil and in the United States (BioScience 55: 593-602), and conclude that "the use of ethanol as a substitute for gasoline proved to be neither...

Conservators of experience.(Viewpoint)
January 1, 2006... At a recent talk on the global extinction crisis, prominent botanist and conservation biologist Peter Raven, in an aside, fondly reminisced about his boyhood plant-collecting trips in then semiwild Napa County, California. As I listened, I...

Jewel in the rough: Pristine prairie on a working ranch.
January 1, 2006... The 300-acre Nash Prairie--or hay meadow, as most locals call it--is the largest surviving remnant of coastal prairie in Texas. The prairie is a haven where tall grasses billow over sedges and wildflowers. "I've never seen any place like this...

Congress likes innovation, but will biology get its due?(Washington Watch)
January 1, 2006... Innovation is the order of the day in Washington, DC. While scientists have been pleased by the attention and by the budget increase that Congress voted to give the National Science Foundation (NSF) for fiscal year 2006, some biologists fear...

Building a diverse biological community.(Eye on Education)
January 1, 2006... Is America's scientific community an accurate representation of America? Most scientists say no. There are several underrepresented minority groups in the sciences--notably African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, and...

Phloem loading: how leaves gain their independence.
January 1, 2006... The transition from sink to source status is one of the key events in leaf development. When a leaf is about half grown, it stops importing phloem-mobile nutrients from the rest of the plant and begins to export its own products of...

Defining recovery goals and strategies for endangered species: the wolf as a case study.
January 1, 2006... We used a spatially explicit population model of wolves (Canis lupus) to propose a framework for defining rangewide recovery priorities and finer-scale strategies for regional reintroductions. The model predicts that Yellowstone and central...

Long-term research at the USDA forest service's experimental forests and ranges.
January 1, 2006... The network of experimental forests and ranges administered by the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service consists of 77 properties that are representative of most forest cover types and many ecological regions in the nation. Established...

Listening for large whales in the offshore waters of Alaska.(Biologist's Toolbox)
January 1, 2006... In 1999, the first phase of a multiyear program was initiated at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Mammal Laboratory and Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory to advance the use of passive acoustics for the...

Good practices for sharing ecological models.(Professional Biologist)
January 1, 2006... As the fields of ecology and conservation biology increasingly rely on models to address pertinent questions, there has been greater sharing of models among scientists. However, many models lack comprehensive documentation, especially in a...

A new method for assessing critical thinking in the classroom.(Education)
January 1, 2006... To promote higher-order thinking in college students, we undertook an effort to learn how to assess critical-thinking skills in an introductory biology course. Using Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives to define critical thinking, we...

Lamarck redux.
January 1, 2006... Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life. Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005. 472 pp. $34.95 (ISBN 0262101076 cloth). In the preface to the...

Memetics by another name?
January 1, 2006... Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2005. 332 pp. $30.00 (ISBN 0226712842 cloth). Whey are Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd so against memes?...

The politics of Science.
January 1, 2006... The Republican War on Science. Chris Mooney. Basic Books, New York, 2005. 342 pp. $24.95 (ISBN 0465046754 cloth). Chris Mooney is an engaging writer and meticulous journalist. The extraordinary claims he makes in The Republican War on...

New books.(Books)
January 1, 2006... Adaptive Herbivore Ecology: From Resources to Populations in Variable Environments. Student ed. Norman Owen-Smith. Wits University Press, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2005.390 pp., illus. $39.95 (ISBN 1868144275 paper). Agents of...

Graduate students: apply now for the AIBS 2006 Emerging Public Policy Leader Award.(AIBS news)
January 1, 2006... AIBS is now accepting applications for the 2006 Emerging Public Policy Leader Award, an opportunity for graduate students in the biological sciences to receive firsthand experience in the policy arena. AIBS will pay travel costs and...

Recent articles online at www.actionbioscience.org.(AIBS news)
January 1, 2006... Lesson for classroom activities * "From Genomes of Species," written by R. Brian Watts, biology professor, Cegep de la Gaspesie et des Iles, Gaspe, QC, Canada, to accompany the article "Species: Comparing Their Genome," adapted from a...

Recent education reports online at www.aibs.org.(AIBS news)
January 1, 2006... * Two new evolution teaching resources * Career resources from AIBS * AIBS diversity programs seek applications and nominations * Call for mentors from MentorNet * Summer internships in Germany for undergraduates * Call...

Calendar of meetings.(Calendar)
January 1, 2006... Calendar of meetings January 4-8 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, Orlando, FL; www.sicb.org/ meetings/2006/index.php3 February 12-17 Society for Range Management, Vancouver, Canada;...

Fish plasticity.(BioBriefs)
January 1, 2006... JAWS AND FEEDING MECHANICS Think "adaptive radiation," and island-dwelling species, such as Galapagos finches and Hawaiian fruit flies, probably spring to mind. Another impressive example of this type of rapid speciation is the cichlid:...