BioScience articles from January 2009

BioScience archives from January 2009

Revving up for the year of science.(Editorial)
January 1, 2009... The year 2009 has been designated the Year of Science (www.yearofscience2009.org). The Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS) and AIBS, together with the Geological Society of America, the National Science Teachers...

The poverty of citation databases: data mining is crucial for fair metrical evaluation of research performance.(Viewpoint)(Report)
January 1, 2009... For a long time, the journal impact factor has been used to evaluate the scientific performance of authors. It is increasingly recognized, however, that judging an author's scientific performance should take into account that author's...

Infectious diseases subdue Serengeti lions: infectious diseases stalk wildlife in the Serengeti, and climate change may be an accessory.
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It must be the wind, this almost-keening that rises and falls every minute or two. But guards outside the door tell a different story. Here at a lodge in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park, one watchman after another...

A dynamic alternative to the scientific method.(Eye on Education)
January 1, 2009... Open a biology textbook to the table of contents and you will undoubtedly see a chapter devoted to the scientific process. Typically, this is presented as a four- or five-step "scientific method" a recipe that all must follow if scientific...

Nothing average about change.(Washington Watch)
January 1, 2009... On 4 November 2008, a long, expensive, and unprecedented general election finally concluded. By the next morning, one would have been hard-pressed to find a field biologist even in the most remote locale who had not learned of the historically...

Leaf evolution and development: advancing technologies, advancing understanding.(21st Century Directions in Biology)(Report)
January 1, 2009... Classical morphological studies of plant development have provided a sound basis for recent advances in molecular and computational tools for understanding how leaves become leaves. Research on mutants in model organisms has identified networks...

Aquaculture production and biodiversity conservation.(Report)
January 1, 2009... This overview examines the status and trends of seafood production, and the positive and negative impacts of aquaculture on biodiversity conservation. Capture fisheries have been stabilized at about 90 million metric tons since the late 1980s,...

Wet and wonderful: the world's largest wetlands are conservation priorities.(Report)
January 1, 2009... Wetlands perform many essential ecosystem services--carbon storage, flood control, maintenance of biodiversity, fish production, and aquifer recharge, among others--services that have increasingly important global consequences. Like...

Fish, floods, and ecosystem engineers: aquatic conservation in the Okavango Delta, Botswana.(Report)
January 1, 2009... The Okavango Delta, Botswana, is a major wetland surrounded by the Kalahari Desert. The delta supports a diverse fish fauna that depends on highly seasonal flooding from inflowing rivers, and on the actions of ecosystem engineers...

Spurious certainty: how ignoring measurement error and environmental heterogeneity may contribute to environmental controversies.(Report)
January 1, 2009... Disputes over conflicting information from different studies play a prominent role in many environmental controversies. Rather than resulting from flawed or fraudulent science, we suggest that conflicting findings may often result from the...

A framework for implementing biodiversity offsets: selecting sites and determining scale.(Biologist's Toolbox)(Report)
January 1, 2009... Biodiversity offsets provide a mechanism for maintaining or enhancing environmental values in situations where development is sought despite detrimental environmental impacts. They seek to ensure that unavoidable negative environmental impacts...

Between macro and molecular.(The Evolution of Organ Systems)(Book review)
January 1, 2009... The Evolution of Organ Systems. Andreas Schmidt-Rhaesa. Oxford University Press, New York, 2007. 368 pp., illus. $104.99 (ISBN 9780198566694 paper). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When it comes to evolutionary considerations, relationships...

Darwin's finches: multiply and subtract.(How and Why Species Multiply: The Radiation of Darwin's Finches)(Book review)
January 1, 2009... How and Why Species Multiply: The Radiation of Darwin's Finches. Peter R. Grant and B. Rosemary Grant. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2007. 272 pp., illus. $35.00 (ISBN 9780691133607 cloth). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] How and...

Acid rain: readable at last.(Acid Rain in the Adirondacks: An Environmental History)(Book review)
January 1, 2009... Acid Rain in the Adirondacks: An Environmental History. Jerry Jenkins, Karen Roy, Charles Driscoll, and Christopher Buerkett. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2007. 256 pp., illus. $29.95 (ISBN 9780801474248 paper). [ILLUSTRATION...

New titles.(Books)
January 1, 2009... Aquatic Ecosystems: Trends and Global Prospects. Nicholas V. C. Polunin, ed. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2008. 512 pp., illus. $160.00 (ISBN 9780521833271 cloth). Between Biology and Culture. Holger Schutkowski, ed. Cambridge...

2009 AIBS Board of Directors takes office.(AIBS news)(American Institute of Biological Sciences)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... The 2009 AIBS Board of Directors, led by President May R. Berenbaum (Department of Entomology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), takes office this month for the calendar year 2009. Joseph Travis (Department of Biological Science,...

2009 AIBS annual meeting on Sustainable Agriculture: Greening the Global Food Supply.(AIBS news)(American Institute of Biological Sciences)
January 1, 2009... The 2009 MBS annual meeting, on "Sustainable Agriculture: Greening the Global Food Supply" will be held 18-19 May at the Westin Arlington Gateway Hotel in Arlington, Virginia. Registration, poster submission forms, and the preliminary program...

Year of Science 2009 begins.(AIBS news)
January 1, 2009... Participants in the Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS) are leading the way in a national celebration of science, the Year of Science 2009, to celebrate "how science works, why it matters, and who scientists are." COPUS is...

AIBS Past-President Rita Colwell to give NAS Gilbert White Lecture on Climate, Oceans, and Human Health.(AIBS news)(American Institute of Biological Sciences)(National Academy of Sciences)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... The Geographical Sciences Committee of the National Academy of Sciences will hold its third annual Gilbert F. White Lecture in the Geographical Sciences at the Keck Center of the National Academies in Washington, DC, on 18 February 2009. AIBS...

NAS Arthur Sackler Colloquium: in the light of evolution III--two centuries of Darwin.(AIBS news)(National Academy of Sciences)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... The year 2009 marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of his most influential publication, On the Origin of Species, in which he developed the revolutionary concept that a natural but nonrandom...

Arachnologists support the AIBS Public Policy Office.(AIBS news)(American Arachnological Society and the American Institute of Biological Sciences)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... The AIBS Public Policy Office (PPO) is pleased to announce that the American Arachnological Society (AAS) is the newest scientific society to become a supporter of the PPO. The AAS's financial contribution to the PPO will help AIBS maintain...

AIBS and NESCent cosponsor the fifth annual evolution symposium and educator workshop at NABT.(AIBS news)(American Institute of Biological Sciences and the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center)(National Association of Biology Teachers)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... AIBS and the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent; www.nescent.org) cosponsored the fifth annual evolution symposium and educator workshop in October 2008 at the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT; www. nabt.org)...

AIBS at FAST.(AIBS news)(American Institute of Biological Sciences as an exhibitor at the Florida Association of Science Teachers' conference)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... AIBS was an exhibitor at a conference of the Florida Association of Science Teachers (FAST), held in Orlando, 22-25 October 2008. The conference theme was "Centering on Science" in recognition of Florida's focus on the "next generation of...

Recent executive director's blog entries online at www.blogs. aibs.org/richardogrady.(AIBS news)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... * Understanding Science Web site preview launches--AIBS endorses

Recent education reports online at www.aibs.org.(AIBS news)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... * Evolution teaching and learning resources online from 2008 symposium and educator workshop at NABT * NABT's 2008 Evolution Education Award presented to Randy Moore * New educator portal at ActionBioscience.org * Call for...

Recent articles online at www.actionbioscience.org.(AIBS news)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... Original interview * "How is Development Connected to Evolution?" with Patricia Wittkopp, assistant professor, molecular, cellular, and developmental biology, University of Michigan "Technology: An Educational Issue?" blog post *...

Recent public policy reports online at www.aibs.org.(AIBS news)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... Public Policy Report for 12 December 2008 * Employment opportunity: AIBS Public affairs associate * Supreme Court rejects DOJ wetlands request * Texas and science education: Here we go again * Hollywood science * Graduate...

Calendar of meetings.(Brief article)(Calendar)
January 1, 2009... January 3-8 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, Boston; www.sicb.org/meetings/ 2009 February 9-12 Weed Science Society of America, Orlando, FL; www.wssa.net/ ...

Ecosystem function and ...(BioBriefs)
January 1, 2009... CONSUMER DIVERSITY We know diversity is essential to a functioning ecosystem, particularly in changing environments, but what isn't known is how many (or which) species an ecosystem can lose before it is altered irrevocably. Is the need...