BioScience articles from January 2008

BioScience archives from January 2008

Silent Sputnik.(Era overview)(Editorial)
January 1, 2008... In the mid-1960s, America was awakened by the beeping of Sputnik, launched by the former Soviet Union. The nation was galvanized into action. Programs were established to attract students to scientific endeavors, and many scientists, engineers,...

Reaping the whirlwind? Human disease from exotic pets.(Viewpoint)
January 1, 2008... Edward Norton Lorenz, mathematician and meteorologist, introduced in 1963 the idea that "one flap of a seagull's wings would be enough to alter the course of the weather forever." This principle, now known as the butterfly effect, reminds...

Correction.(Viewpoint)(Correction notice)
January 1, 2008... The digital object identifier for "The Role of Animal-derived Remedies as Complementary Medicine in Brazil" (BioScience 57: 949-955), by Romulo R. N. Alves, Ierece L. Rosa, and Gindomar G. Santana, is as follows: doi:10.1641/B571107.

The Green Revolution arrives in Africa.
January 1, 2008... The Green Revolution that brought advances in crop genetics to Asia and Latin America completely bypassed the African continent. Africa's smallholder farmers finally joined the movement in 2006, when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation joined...

WEBS: practicing faculty mentorship.(Eye on Education)(Women Evolving the Biological Sciences)
January 1, 2008... More than half of the doctoral degrees in biology are earned by women. The proportion of women in postdoctoral, tenure-track, and tenured faculty positions, however, is not as large. The question is, why? WEBS--Women Evolving the Biological...

FYI: threats remain for evolution education.(Washington Watch)
January 1, 2008... Just over two years ago, intelligent design and creationism (IDC) proponents suffered a stunning legal defeat when a federal judge ruled that intelligent design is no different from religious belief in creationism and has no place in the...

One giant leap: how insects achieved altruism and colonial life.(Report)
January 1, 2008... The advanced colonial state of eusociality has evolved in insects as a defense of nest sites within foraging distance of persistent food sources. In the Hymenoptera, the final step in the approach to eusociality is through a suite of...

Resilience, robustness, and marine ecosystem-based management.(Report)
January 1, 2008... Marine ecosystems provide essential services to humans, yet these services have been diminished, and their future sustainability endangered, by human patterns of exploitation that threaten system robustness and resilience. Marine ecosystems are...

Ecosystems in action: lessons from marine ecology about recovery, resistance, and reversibility.
January 1, 2008... The study of ecosystems in action, by measuring ecosystem recovery from disturbance, resistance to alterations, and the reversibility of ecosystem changes, highlights features of natural communities that contribute to resilience. Examples from...

New tools to meet new challenges: emerging technologies for managing marine ecosystems for resilience.(Report)
January 1, 2008... The goal of this article is to highlight evolving tools, recent advances, and emerging techniques that are being used to understand natural variability in marine ecosystems. These technical approaches range from the tagging of large pelagic...

Marine ecosystem-based management in practice: scientific and governance challenges.(Report)
January 1, 2008... Ecosystem-based management (EBM) in the ocean is a relatively new approach, and existing applications are evolving from more traditional management of portions of ecosystems. Because comprehensive examples of EBM in the marine environment do...

Nonnative species and bioenergy: are we cultivating the next invader?(Forum)(Report)
January 1, 2008... Biofuel feedstocks are being selected, bred, and engineered from nonnative taxa to have few resident pests, to tolerate poor growing conditions, and to produce highly competitive monospecific stands--traits that typify much of our invasive...

Transgene escape monitoring, population genetics, and the law.(Forum)(Report)
January 1, 2008... There has been little discussion about how to apply population genetics methods to monitor the spread of transgenes that are detected outside the agricultural populations where they are deployed. Population geneticists have developed tools for...

A philosopher looks at the units of selection.(Evolution and the Levels of Selection)(Book review)
January 1, 2008... Evolution and the Levels of Selection. Samir Okasha. Oxford University Press, New York, 2006. 288 pp., illus. $55.00 (ISBN 9780199267972 cloth). Do traits evolve because they are good for the group in which they occur? Darwin thought so,...

Humans, disasters, and human disasters.(Environmental Disasters, Natural Recovery, and Human Responses)(Book review)
January 1, 2008... Environmental Disasters, Natural Recovery, and Human Responses. Roger de1 Moral and Lawrence R. Walker. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2007. 220 pp., illus. $48.00 (ISBN 9780521677660 paper). Roger del Moral and Lawrence R. Walker,...

A feast for the initiated.(Astonishing Army Ants: The Most Important Predators in Neotropical Forests)(Video recording review)
January 1, 2008... Astonishing Army Ants: The Most Important Predators in Neotropical Forests. Carl Rettenmeyer. 2007. 55 min. $20.00. DVD (www.armyantbiology.com). Army ants typically conjure images of stinging hordes of insects swarming through exotic...

New titles.(Books)
January 1, 2008... Babies by Design: The Ethics of Genetic Choice. Ronald M. Green. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2007. 288 pp., illus. $26.00 (ISBN 9780300125467 cloth). Biological Invaders in Inland Waters: Profiles, Distribution, and Threats....

2008 AIBS Board of Directors takes office.(AIBS news)
January 1, 2008... The 2008 AIBS Board of Directors, led by President Rita Colwell, takes office this month for the calendar year 2008. The Board thanks the following departing members upon the completion of their terms of service on the Board at the end of last...

2008 AIBS annual meeting adds Newt Gingrich and James Hansen to list of speakers.(AIBS news)
January 1, 2008... The 2008 annual meeting of AIBS has added Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the US House of Representatives, and James E. Hansen, the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, to its list of plenary speakers. The meeting will...

Attention graduate students: 2008 EPPLA applications now available.(AIBS news)
January 1, 2008... AIBS is pleased to announce that it is now accepting applications for the 2008 AIBS Emerging Public Policy Leadership Award (EPPLA). The EPPLA program, established by AIBS in 2003, enables graduate students in the biological sciences to receive...

AIBS encourages Congress to fund NBII.(AIBS news)(American Institute of Biological Sciences, National Biological Information Infrastructure )(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... On 8 November, AIBS wrote to the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, encouraging them to restore funding to the US Geological Survey's National Biological Information Infrastructure...

COPUS receives funding to support meeting of regional hub representatives.(AIBS news)(Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... The Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS) network is working to form regional hubs of activity. A COPUS hub is a locally based community of COPUS participants and science stakeholders who work together within a designated...

AIBS launches Web resource on the federal and congressional budget process.(AIBS news)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... The AIBS Public Policy Office recently launched a new Web resource that will help interested parties gain a better understanding of the federal budget and appropriations process. The Web resource may be viewed at...

AIBS at NAAEE annual conference.(AIBS news)
January 1, 2008... The North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) held its annual conference in Virginia Beach, Virginia, 14-17 November. With 17 workshops, 15 field trips, more than 300 concurrent sessions and presentations, and about 50...

Executive director's recent blog entries online at http://blogs. aibs.org/richardogrady.(AIBS news)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... * AIBS joins EOL and NEON institutional councils * Re: On making scientific research more accessible to the public

Recent articles online at www.actionbioscience.org.(AIBS news)
January 1, 2008... Original article in English * "Pets Gone Wild: Difficulties with the Exotic Pet Trade and Unwanted Animals,' by Kenneth L. Krysko, senior biological scientist in herpetology at the Florida Museum of Natural History Spanish translation...

Recent education reports online at www.aibs.org.(AIBS news)
January 1, 2008... * AIBS and NESCent to host evolution symposium at NABTconference * AIBS, student chapters, DIBS, and COPUS now on Facebook * AIBS 2008 annual meeting on climate, environment, and infectious diseases next May to include BSCS/NABT...

Recent public policy reports online at www.aibs.org.(AIBS news)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... Public Policy Report for 21 December 2007 * Little holiday cheer for federal science agencies: Congress finishes FY 08 appropriations * More trouble in Texas: Institute for Creation Research seeks state approval for grad program *...

Public policy report for 10 December 2007.(AIBS news)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... * Appropriations update: Omnibus on the way * E-mails stir up controversy in Texas, Florida * Members of Congress on the move * Climate talks get under way in Bali * New Green Schools Caucus in Congress * Climate...

Public policy report for 26 November 2007.(AIBS news)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... * Appropriations hit a wall * AIBS launches Web resource on the budget process * UN warns of emissions growth * House member calls for changes to Smithsonian governance Graduate student policy training opportunity: AIBS...

Calendar of meetings.(Calendar)
January 1, 2008... January 2008 26-31 Society for Range Management, Louisville, KY; www. rangelands.org/louisville2008/ louisville2008_index.shtml February 2008 4-7 Weed Science Society of America, Chicago; www.wssa.net/ 25-1 March Society for...

Understanding bacterial crowd control.(BioBriefs)
January 1, 2008... STUDYING BIOFILM FORMATION For more than two centuries, biologists thought that bacteria and other microbes lived a largely solitary existence. But in the past 20 years or so, scientists have learned that bacteria prefer banding together...