BioScience articles from June 2007

BioScience archives from June 2007

Evolution's next move.(Editorial)
June 1, 2007... If a candidate for administrator of NASA disavowed the heliocentric theory of the solar system, the outcry would dispatch his or her bid to oblivion. Yet when three Republican candidates running for president of the United States indicated...

Bio-oil production in the field.(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2007... In the editorial "Green Plants, Fossil Fuels, and now Biofuels" (BioScience 56: 875), David Pimentel and Tad Patzek argue that bioethanol is a nonsustainable way to produce fuel from biomass. Their main argument is that the amount of energy...

What is the role of ecology in understanding ecosystem resilience?(Column)
June 1, 2007... In the article that begins on page 489 of this issue of BioScience, Andrew J. Kerkhoff and Brian J. Enquist make an important synthesis from two hitherto largely separate fields of biological inquiry. One is the conceptually well-established,...

Decrypting biofuel scenarios: an energy-food-environment maelstrom, an a prairie plan.
June 1, 2007... Biofuel's the thing, the new universal solvent, the energy elixir, the great wet hope. Your next car--or maybe the one after--could run on corn, or soybeans, or old pizza boxes. The feds say biofuel will break our addiction to oil from the...

Congress considers NSF authorization.(Washington Watch)(National Science Foundation)
June 1, 2007... Washington, DC, is abuzz with talk about innovation. Leaders in government, business, education, and science are calling for action to enhance the US science and technology enterprise for the 21st century. Both the White House and Congress--the...

Understanding the genetic basis of floral diversity.
June 1, 2007... The major radiations that punctuate angiosperm evolution are often associated with innovations in floral architecture. The field of plant developmental evolution seeks to understand the generation of this diversity using comparative genetic...

The implications of scaling approaches for understanding resilience and reorganization in ecosystems.
June 1, 2007... Managing ecosystems for resilience--the capacity to maintain function in response to perturbation--is among the most pressing ecological and socioeconomic imperatives of our time. The variability of biological and ecological systems at multiple...

Hidden messages: are ultraviolet signals a special channel in avian communication?
June 1, 2007... It is widely known that birds are sensitive to ultraviolet (UV) light, and that they use UV reflecting signals in choosing mates. This led to the proposal that UV signals in birds may represent private channels of communication hidden from...

The fate of wild tigers.(Forum)
June 1, 2007... Wild tigers are in a precarious state. Habitat loss and intense poaching of tigers and their prey, coupled with inadequate government efforts to maintain tiger populations, have resulted in a dramatic range contraction in tiger populations....

Is there any common curriculum for undergraduate biology majors in the 21st century?(Education)
June 1, 2007... A survey of biology departments in 1990 led to publication of a de facto curriculum for the training of undergraduate biology majors. Knowledge of the biological sciences has changed considerably since then, and the present study attempts to...

The role of climatic change in the evolution of mammals.(Teaching Biology)
June 1, 2007... The paleontological record of mammals offers many examples of evolutionary change, which are well documented at many levels of the biological hierarchy--at the level of species (and above), populations, morphology, and, in ideal cases, even...

A graceful naturalist.(Books)(Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man)(Book review)
June 1, 2007... Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man. Dale Peterson. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 2006. 752 pp., illus. $35.00 (ISBN 9780395854051 cloth). Dale Peterson's monumental biography of Jane Goodall, Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man,...

How to save oceanic life.(Books)(Marine Conservation Biology: The Science of Maintaining the Sea's Biodiversity)(Book review)
June 1, 2007... Marine Conservation Biology: The Science of Maintaining the Sea's Biodiversity. Elliott A. Norse and Larry B. Crowder, eds. Island Press, Washington, DC, 2005. 470 pp., illus. $49.95 (ISBN 9781559636629 paper). Conservation biology--that...

Darwin's "abominable mystery" demystified.(Books)(Phylogeny and Evolution of Angiosperms )(Book review)
June 1, 2007... Phylogeny and Evolution of Angiosperms. Douglas E. Soltis, Pamela S. Soltis, Peter K. Endress, and Mark W. Chase. Sinauer, Sunderland, MA, 2005. 370 pp., illus. $62.95 (ISBN 9780878938176 paper). Phylogeny and Evolution of Angiosperms is...

New titles.(Books)
June 1, 2007... Anthropological Genetics: Theory, Methods, and Applications. Michael H. Crawford, ed. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006. 486 pp., illus. $65.00 (ISBN 9780521546973 paper). Biological Invasions. W. Nentwig, ed. Springer, New York,...

Biologists visit lawmakers, advocate greater investment in research.(AIBS news)(Biological and Ecological Sciences Coalition )
June 1, 2007... Nearly 40 scientists and graduate students were in Washington, DC, 18-19 April, to participate in a congressional visits event cosponsored by the Biological and Ecological Sciences Coalition (BESC) and the Coalition on Funding Agricultural...

AIBS public policy office gives congressional testimony in support of biological research.(AIBS news)(American Institute of Biological Sciences)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... In April, AIBS director of public policy Robert Gropp gave testimony to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees in support of increased funding in fiscal year (FY) 2008 for the National Science Foundation (NSF). The president's budget...

A new museum for natural history in Virginia.(AIBS news)(Virginia Museum of Natural History)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... A natural history museum recently opened its doors in Martinsville, Virginia. The Virginia Museum of Natural History (VMNH), a state agency under the secretary of natural resources and the official natural history museum of Virginia, is a...

Executive director's recent blog entry online at http://blogs.aibs.org/richardogrady.(AIBS news)
June 1, 2007... * Encyclopedia of Life Web site project launches

Recent articles online at www.actionbioscience.org.(AIBS news)(American Institute of Biological Sciences)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... "Students Speak Out" article * "Agricultural Biotechnology and Pest Control," by Vitalis Wafula Wekesa, doctoral student, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil Spanish translations of previously posted articles * "Reintroduccion de la...

Recent AIBS public policy reports online at www.aibs.org.(AIBS news)(American Institute of Biological Sciences)(Brief article)
June 1, 2007... Public Policy Report for 11 May 2007 * House authorizes NSF, NIST * Evolution education updates * Savannah River Ecology Laboratory: Gone for good? * American Competitiveness Council releases final report * New in...

Calendar of meetings.(Calendar)
June 1, 2007... June 1-2 Southern California Academy of Sciences, Fullerton, CA; http://scas.jsd.claremont.edu/ annual/annual.html 3-7 North American Benthological ...

Paleozoic forests come into focus.(BioBriefs)
June 1, 2007... WALKING IN A FOSSILIZED RAINFOREST When the Appalachian Mountains--the Himalayas of their day--were nearing completion roughly 300 million years ago, what is now North America was located near the equator. A shallow sea covered several US...