BioScience articles from July 2007

BioScience archives from July 2007

Enlightening self-interest.(Editorial)(Editorial)
July 1, 2007... With long-term policymaking apparently gridlocked on even such a vital topic as global warming, it is heartening to learn that political consensus around an environmental issue has led to timely progress in a few instances. In the Forum essay...

Journal impact factors are inflated.(Viewpoint)(ecology journals)(Report)
July 1, 2007... Scientific articles produced by for-profit publishers cost consumers five times more, per page, than articles published by nonprofit presses (Bergstrom and Bergstrom 2006). This finding is disturbing, given that library budgets are constrained...

Running hot and cold: are rainforests sinks or taps for carbon? Conventional wisdom has long held that tropical rainforests act as a sink for carbon dioxide, cleansing the atmosphere of a major greenhouse gas. However, biologists studying the forests of Costa Rica are finding that rising temperatures are causing trees to grow less and to pump out more carbon dioxide, adding to an accelerating pattern of global warming.(Report)
July 1, 2007... Below me, toucans and green macaws squawk, now and then bursting out of the foliage to show their splendid colors. A half-kilometer away, the topmost branches of a tall tree wave in the still air as a troop of white-faced capuchin monkeys moves...

National Wildlife Refuges: death by a thousand cuts?(Washington Watch)(National Wildlife Refuge Association)(budget cuts on National Wildlife Refuge system)
July 1, 2007... There's no other wildlife conservation network like it in the world--547 reserves covering nearly 100 million acres (40.5 million hectares) of wetlands, forests, grasslands, islands, and deserts that support thousands of plant and animal...

Mentoring women in the biological sciences: is informatics leading the pack?(Eye on Education)
July 1, 2007... Across the landscape of informatics, particularly biological and ecological informatics, are quite a few women in leadership positions at important organizations, such as the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, the National...

Patterns and power of phenotypic selection in nature.(Cope's rule)(Report)
July 1, 2007... Phenotypic selection occurs when individuals with certain characteristics produce more surviving offspring than individuals with other characteristics. Although selection is regarded as the chief engine of evolutionary change, scientists have...

Marine ecoregions of the world: a bioregionalization of coastal and shelf areas.(marine biogeography)(Report)
July 1, 2007... The conservation and sustainable use of marine resources is a highlighted goal on a growing number of national and international policy agendas. Unfortunately, efforts to assess progress, as well as to strategically plan and prioritize new...

Detective work in the West Indies: integrating historical and experimental approaches to study island lizard evolution.(Teaching Biology)(Report)
July 1, 2007... Evolutionary biology is a historical science, like astronomy and geology. Understanding how and why evolution has occurred requires synthesizing multiple lines of inquiry. Historical studies, such as those that estimate phylogenetic trees, can...

Watersheds and coral reefs: conservation science, policy, and implementation.(Forum)(Report)
July 1, 2007... Coral reefs worldwide are being degraded by human-induced disturbances, resulting in ecological, economic, and cultural losses. Runoff and sedimentation are among the greatest threats to the coastal reefs surrounding high islands and adjacent...

Revisiting Chamberlin: multiple working hypotheses for the 21st century.(Thinking of Biology)(T.C. Chamberlin's multiple working hypotheses method)(Report)
July 1, 2007... The method of multiple working hypotheses, developed by the 19th-century geologist T. C. Chamberlin, is an important philosophical contribution to the domain of hypothesis construction in science. Indeed, the concept is particularly pertinent...

Crocodile tears: and thei eten hem wepynge.(Biology in History)(parareflexes)(prandial lacrimal ebullition)(Report)
July 1, 2007... Whether crocodiles shed tears while eating has been fodder for fable and controversy for hundreds of years. We present the first unequivocal evidence that crocodilians lacrimate during meals and that they do so in a peculiar fashion. ...

The cost implications of open-access publishing in the life sciences.(Professional Biologist)(journals in cell biology )(Report)
July 1, 2007... Open-access journals are growing in number and importance. Because they rely on revenue from publication fees rather than subscriptions, these journals have important economic implications for the institutions that sponsor, produce, and use...

A closer look at the Endangered Species Act.(The Endangered Species Act at Thirty, vols. 1 and 2)(Book review)
July 1, 2007... The Endangered Species Act at Thirty, vols. 1 and 2. Dale D. Goble, J. Michael Scott, and Frank W. Davis, eds. Island Press, Washington, DC, 2006. 432 and 450 pp. $35.00, $40.00 (ISBN 9781597260084 and 9781597260558 cloth). In this...

Understanding evolution.(The Evolving World: Evolution in Everyday Life)(Book review)
July 1, 2007... The Evolving World: Evolution in Everyday Life. David P. Mindell. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2006. 341 pp. $24.95 (ISBN 9780674021914 cloth). The world is changing. Every day we hear alarming reports of shifting temperature...

Not a four-letter word.(Darwinian Reductionism: Or, How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology)(Book review)
July 1, 2007... Darwinian Reductionism: Or, How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology. Alex Rosenberg. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2006. 268 pp. $40.00 (ISBN 9780226727295 cloth). Reductionism is a four-letter word, from which all manner of...

Vavilov's harvest?(Darwin's Harvest: New Approaches to the Origins, Evolution, and Conservation of Crops)(Book review)
July 1, 2007... Darwin's Harvest: New Approaches to the Origins, Evolution, and Conservation of Crops. Timothy J. Motley, Nyree Zerega, and Hugh Cross, eds. Columbia University Press, New York, 2006. 390 pp., illus. $73.00 (ISBN 9780231133166 cloth). ...

New titles.(Books)
July 1, 2007... Albatrosses, Petrels, and Shearwaters of the World. Derek Onley and Paul Scofield. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2007. 240 pp., illus. $29.95 (ISBN 9780691131320 paper). Analyzing Ecological Data. Alain E Zuur, Elena N. Ieno,...

AIBS expands collaborations in public understanding of science projects.(AIBS news)(Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS) and Year of Science 2009)(American Institute of Biological Sciences)
July 1, 2007... AIBS began work last year with other organizations--primarily the Arizona Geological Survey, the American Institute of Physics, the Geological Society of America, the National Science Teachers Association, and the University of California...

Free online lectures from 2007 AIBS annual meeting.(AIBS news)
July 1, 2007... The AIBS Media Library at www.aibs.org/ media-library contains videos, audio recordings, slides, and transcripts of plenary lectures recorded at AIBS annual meetings from 2000 onward. The eight lectures from the 2007 AIBS annual meeting...

AIBS and COPUS sponsor science communications workshop with ESA.(AIBS news)
July 1, 2007... AIBS and the Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science are cosponsoring a student-run workshop, "Communicating Science to the Public: The Where, Why, and How of Engaging Nonscientists," at the Ecological Society of America annual meeting...

AIBS education director at EnvironMentors Fair.(AIBS news)
July 1, 2007... Samantha Katz, AIBS director of education and outreach, was a judge at the 15th annual EnvironMentors Fair, held in Washington, DC, on 23 May. EnvironMentors is an environment-based mentoring program aimed at preparing high school students...

AIBS member society announces grant.(AIBS news)
July 1, 2007... On 20 June, the St. Louis-based Botanical Society of America, an AIBS member organization, announced that the Monsanto Fund has awarded the PlantingScience educational outreach program a two-year, $81,730 development grant. PlantingScience...

NEON partners with the Science and Engineering Alliance.(AIBS news)(National Ecological Observatory Network)
July 1, 2007... The Science and Engineering Alliance (SEA), a coalition of minority-serving institutions founded in 1990, has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to engage underrepresented faculty and students in the research initiatives of...

The first wave of NEON founding members.(AIBS news)
July 1, 2007... The Science and Engineering Alliance has been approved by the NEON, Inc., Board of Directors as a founding member of the National Ecological Observatory Network. It joins an initial group of founding institutions that includes the following:...

Recent articles online at www.actionbioscience.org.(AIBS news)
July 1, 2007... Original interviews in English * "Scientific Literacy in the Classroom," with Carol A. Brewer, professor of biological sciences, University of Montana, and 2007 AIBS Education Award recipient * "Slowing the Aging Process," with Douglas...

Recent AIBS public policy reports online at www.aibs.org.(AIBS news)
July 1, 2007... Public Policy Report for 11 June 2007 * FY 08 science funding update * It is summertime: Meet with your member of Congress * Bush goes global: Plenty of talk, any action? * Is there still room for science at NASA? * More...

Calendar of meetings.(Calendar)
July 1, 2007... July 1-5 Society for Conservation Biology, Port Elizabeth, South Africa; www.nmmu.ac.za/scb/ 7-11 American Society of Plant Biologists, Chicago; www.aspb. ...

Building a better bat detector.(BioBriefs)
July 1, 2007... Deborah Buecher studies bats in the Sabino Canyon Recreation Area and the San Pedro River Valley, both near Tucson, Arizona. Instead of using mist nets to capture the bats, however, Buecher--a graduate student in wildlife biology at the...