BioScience articles from March 2004

BioScience archives from March 2004

Opportunities in confinement.(Editorial)
March 1, 2004... Government overseers of biotechnology, as well as developers of genetically engineered organisms, should pay careful attention to the exhaustive January report from the National Research Council (NRC) on biological techniques for preventing the...

Enhancement of survival or abandonment of the endangered species act?(Viewpoint)
March 1, 2004... In a recent set of Federal Register notices, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) proposed to change the rules under which foreign species listed under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) can be imported into the United States (FWS...

California butterflies: at home with aliens.(Feature)
March 1, 2004... Art Shapiro is disarmingly casual in his jeans and T-shirt, looking more like one of his students than like a professor of ecology. But the garb does not conceal what is obviously a piercing and inquisitive mind. Ask him a question and he will...

The ecological benefits of EPA actions: what are they worth?(Washington Watch)
March 1, 2004... What is the economic benefit of preserving and protecting environmental health in the United States? That is the question being asked of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the branch of the...

Tooled for the task: vision in the opossum.(Articles)
March 1, 2004... Comparative analysis of the functional and morphological characteristics of the central nervous system of extant vertebrates can shed light on the evolutionary forces that have shaped different vertebrate brains, which, although sharing similar...

Reconsidering the limits to world population: meta-analysis and meta-prediction.(Articles)
March 1, 2004... We performed a meta-analysis on the basis of 69 past studies that have assessed a limit to the world population. The estimates of this limit range from 0.5 billion to 1 x [10.sup.21] billion people. A meta-analysis allows us to see what overall...

Life on the edge: the ecology of Great Plains prairie streams.(Articles)
March 1, 2004... Great Plains streams are highly endangered and can serve as model systems for studying disturbance ecology and related issues of resistance and resilience in temperate freshwaters. These streams exist in a precarious balance between flood and...

The role of biodiversity scientists in a troubled world.(Plenary)
March 1, 2004... Biotic resources are under all kinds of old and new threats. Ecosystem transformation in many areas of high biodiversity has not diminished, in spite of national and international meetings, agreements, and discussions. The main reasons to...

Determining the spatial scale of species' response to habitat.(Biologist's Toolbox)
March 1, 2004... Species respond to habitat at different spatial scales, yet many studies have considered this response only at relatively small scales. We developed a technique and accompanying software (Focus) that use a focal patch approach to select...

Publication and rejection among successful ecologists.(Professional Biologist)
March 1, 2004... Scientific rejection is a frequent part of the publication process that is rarely explicitly discussed. Peer review is an essential and well-established part of the scientific method. But to what degree is manuscript rejection indicative of...

Understanding environmental complexity through a distributed knowledge network.(Education)
March 1, 2004... Understanding environmental complexity and other dimensions of ecological systems necessitates a holistic approach that can be achieved only by identifying, retrieving, and synthesizing diverse data from distributed sources; by collaborating...

A rising tide of species and literature: a review of some recent books on biological invasions.(Special Book Section)
March 1, 2004... Biological invasions have recently caught the public's attention, as demonstrated by occasional television and radio reports, almost daily newspaper articles, and a presidential executive order in 1999 that established the National Invasive...

Posthuman enough?(Special Book Section)
March 1, 2004... Current developments in genetic engineering, combined with foreseeable developments in nanotechnology and robotics, have the potential to redefine and extend human life. But if we follow this technology along the course favored by its...

Dissecting ghosts?(Special Book Section)
March 1, 2004... Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How It Changed the World. Carl Zimmer. Free Press, New York, 2004. 384 pp., illus. $26.00 (ISBN 0743230388 cloth). The end of the world is imminent, spiraling out of control to unavoidable...

Complexity, like beauty, may lie in the eye of the beholder.(Special Book Section)
March 1, 2004... Animal Social Complexity: Intelligence, Culture, and Individualized Societies. Frans B. M. de Waal and Peter L. Tyack, eds. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2003. 640 pp., illus. $49.95 (ISBN 0674009290 cloth). This multiauthored...

Nourishing humans without diminishing nature.(Special Book Section)
March 1, 2004... World Agriculture and the Environment: A Commodity-by-Commodity Guide to Impacts and Practices. Jason Clay. Island Press, Washington, DC, 2004. 568 pp., illus. $35.00 (ISBN 1559633700 paper). Jason Clay, vice president of World Wildlife...

Uncertainties in river restoration.(Special Book Section)
March 1, 2004... Strategies for Restoring River Ecosystems: Sources of Variability and Uncertainty in Natural and Managed Systems. Robert C. Wissmar and Peter A. Bisson, eds. American Fisheries Society, Bethesda, MD, 2003. 283 pp., illus. $69.00 (ISBN...

An all-encompassing approach to the topic of ecotoxicology.(Special Book Section)
March 1, 2004... Fundamentals of Ecotoxicology. 2nd ed. Michael C. Newman and Michael A. Linger. Lewis Publishers, Boca Raton, FL, 2003. 458 pp., illus. $59.95 (ISBN 1566705983 cloth). Michael Newman, a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine...

New titles.(Special Book Section)
March 1, 2004... Bionanotechnology: Lessons from Nature. David S. Goodsell. Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, 2004. 337 pp., illus. $79.95 (ISBN 047141719X cloth). Conservancy: The Land Trust Movement in America. Richard Brewer. University Press of New England, Lebanon,...

IBRCS workshop on invasive species scheduled for 18 March.(AIBS news)
March 1, 2004... As part of the Infrastructure for Biology at Regional to Continental Scales (IBRCS) project, AIBS will host a workshop to develop initiatives for invasive species research under NEON (National Ecological Observatory Network). The workshop will...

NABT members to write lessons for www.ActionBioscience.org.(AIBS news)
March 1, 2004... AIBS and the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) have partnered to offer NABT members professional development credit for writing lessons for www.ActionBioscience.org, the award-winnning Web site from AIBS. ActionBioscience.org is a...

2004 AIBS annual meeting program and schedule.(AIBS news)
March 1, 2004... The 2004 AIBS annual meeting, which will be held 16-18 March, is entitled "Invasive Species: The Search for Solutions." Register online now at www.aibs.org/annual-meeting-2004/index.html. All sessions will take place at the Westin Grand...

Calendar of meetings.(Calendar)(Calendar)
March 1, 2004... March 15-18 Water Quality and Freshwater Gastropod Workshop, Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Society, Tuscaloosa, AL; Web site: ...

Marine Science flourishes in oil spill's aftermath.(BioBriefs)
March 1, 2004... An event in Alaska this winter demonstrates one of the few welcome legacies of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill: The Marine Science in Alaska Symposium 2004, an annual conference designed to bring together Alaska's marine scientists and the...