BioScience articles from March 2006

BioScience archives from March 2006

Catastrophe in the wings?(Editorial)
March 1, 2006... Authorities on avian influenza are close to united in believing that a global pandemic of the H5N1 strain of that disease, thought to have a 50 percent mortality rate in humans, is possible, if not likely. Emerging facts leave little room for...

Bird flu outbreak in United Kingdom reveals global vulnerabilities.(Viewpoint)
March 1, 2006... An outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza ("bird flu") in a bird-import quarantine facility in the United Kingdom in October 2005 met nearly all of the requisite enabling conditions for a human pandemic. Two people living on property where the bird...

Ode to a codfish.
March 1, 2006... Cod--A species of fish too well known to require any description. It is amazingly prolific. Leewenhoek counted 9,384,000 eggs in a cod-fish of a middling size--a number that will baffle all the efforts of man to exterminate. Cyclopedia of...

Metagenomics reveals microbial diversity: faster sequencing machines and computers are opening up new vistas for genomics. Better understanding of environmental processes could be one result.
March 1, 2006... A glorious Indian summer was having its last hurrah this past October as 400 research leaders gathered at a beachside resort in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, for the annual conference organized by genomics innovator J. Craig Venter....

J. Craig Venter: taking Genomics into the Environment.(Interview)
March 1, 2006... J. Craig Venter, scientific iconoclast and cosequencer of the human genome, has hosted a conference on genome sequencing and analysis annually for the past 17 years. The 2005 conference, held at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, last October,...

The cost of doing business: should the United States create incentives for STEM labor?(Washington Watch)
March 1, 2006... Academics, business leaders, and policymakers have all issued the warning: The United States is facing an imminent workforce shortage in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) that threatens the country's economic...

The concept of organisms as ecosystem engineers ten years on: progress, limitations, and challenges.
March 1, 2006... The modification of the physical environment by organisms is a critical interaction in most ecosystems. The concept of ecosystem engineering acknowledges this fact and allows ecologists to develop the conceptual tools for uncovering general...

Ecosystem engineering across environmental gradients: implications for conservation and management.
March 1, 2006... Ecosystem engineers are organisms whose presence or activity alters their physical surroundings or changes the flow of resources, thereby creating or modifying habitats. Because ecosystem engineers affect communities through environmentally...

Vascular plants as engineers of oxygen in aquatic systems.
March 1, 2006... The impact of organisms on oxygen is one of the most dramatic examples of ecosystem engineering on Earth. In aquatic systems, which have much lower oxygen concentrations than the atmosphere, vascular aquatic plants can affect oxygen...

Physical ecosystem engineers as agents of biogeochemical heterogeneity.
March 1, 2006... Physical ecosystem engineers are organisms that physically modify the abiotic environment. They can affect biogeochemical processing by changing the availability of resources for microbes (e.g., carbon, nutrients) or by changing abiotic...

Animal ecosystem engineers in streams.
March 1, 2006... An impressive array of animals function as ecosystem engineers in streams through a variety of activities, ranging from nest digging by anadromous salmon to benthic foraging by South American fishes, from the burrowing of aquatic insects to the...

Media coverage of "intelligent design".(Professional Biologist)
March 1, 2006... News media coverage of the controversy surrounding recent attempts to insert creationism into public school science curricula--this time in the form of "intelligent design"--has generated miles of copy and hours of television footage. The...

Tools for the edge: what's new for conserving carnivores.(Biologist's Toolbox)
March 1, 2006... The loss of large carnivores at the edges of parks, preserves, and human habitations threatens the conservation of many species. Thus, effective predation management is a conservation issue, and tools to mitigate conflicts between humans and...

The trouble with rivers.(Spring Spotlight on Books)
March 1, 2006... Rivers give us a lot, but not without a cost. The biological and physical resources that rivers provide sustain life, culture, and economies. But sometimes rivers rise, move, dry, or simply give in to neglect, destroying what they once...

Understanding tropical forests.(Spring Spotlight on Books)
March 1, 2006... Biologists visiting Portland, Oregon, always try to budget some serious browsing time at Powell's City of Books. When I had the good fortune to move to Portland a couple of years ago, several colleagues told me I would love Powell's, and indeed...

Evolution for the community ecologist.
March 1, 2006... The Geographic Mosaic of Coevolution. John N. Thompson. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2005. 400 pp. $28.00 (ISBN 0226797627 paper). With the exception of consumerprey interactions, the study of ecological communities has resisted...

Rethinking the gene.
March 1, 2006... The Epistemology of Development, Evolution, and Genetics: Selected Essays. Richard M. Burian. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 2005. 288 pp. $32.99 (ISBN 0521545285 paper). Richard Burian, although not as well known as...

How ecology came to be.
March 1, 2006... The Evolution of American Ecology, 1890-2000. Sharon E. Kingsland. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2005. 328 pp., illus. $50.00 (ISBN 0081881714 cloth). Sharon Kingsland, a professor of the history of science at Johns Hopkins,...

The greening of accounting.
March 1, 2006... National Environmental Accounting: Bridging the Gap between Ecology and Economy. Joy E. Hecht. RFF Press, Washington, DC, 2005. 240 pp., illus. $60.00 (ISBN 1891853937 cloth). Academics and the general public have long recognized the...

Bred in the bone: bone microstructure brings dinosaurs to life.
March 1, 2006... The Microstructure of Dinosaur Bone: Deciphering Biology with Finescale Techniques. Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2005. 195 pp., illus. $85.00 (ISBN 080188120X cloth). One hundred years ago, Adolf Seitz...

Meanings of language.
March 1, 2006... The Language of Life: How Cells Communicate in Health and Disease. Debra Niehoff. Joseph Henry Press, Washington, DC, 2005. 309 pp., illus. $27.95 (ISBN 0309089891 cloth). The purpose of The Language of Life is to summarize knowledge and...

Soils considered holistically.
March 1, 2006... Fundamentals of Soil Ecology. 2nd ed. David C. Coleman, D. A. Crossley Jr., and Paul F. Hendrix. Elsevier, London, 2004. 408 pp. $49.95 (ISBN 9264105549 paper). Throughout history, little has mattered more to humans than their relations...

New titles.
March 1, 2006... Aquaculture in the 21st Century. Anita M. Kelly and Jeffrey Silverstein, eds. American Fisheries Society, Bethesda, MD, 2006. 643 pp., illus. $69.00 (ISBN 1888569719 paper). The Avian Pineal Gland: A Model of the Biological Clock. Valer...

AIBS annual meeting scheduled for May.(AIBS news)
March 1, 2006... "Biodiversity: The Interplay of Science, Valuation, and Policy" is the theme of the 2006 MBS annual meeting, to be held 24-25 May 2006. Plenary speakers and discussion groups will approach that topic from several interwoven perspectives. ...

NEON comings and goings.(AIBS news)
March 1, 2006... NEON congratulates Jeffrey Goldman on his new position as director of program development at the Center for Embedded Network Sensing (CENS) at UCLA. Goldman joined MBS in 2002 as project manager for the IBRCS (Infrastructure for Biology at...

New guidelines for AIBS student chapter program.(AIBS news)
March 1, 2006... The guidelines for the AIBS student chapter program have been revised to more effectively meet student chapter needs and to help them become strong representatives of AIBS on their campuses. The new guidelines outline AIBS's goals for the...

See presentations from the 2005 NABT Symposium "Evolution and the Environment".(AIBS news)
March 1, 2006... The Web site for the special symposium "Evolution and the Environment" presented at the 2005 annual meeting of the National Association of Biology Teachers, has been updated. The site now includes downloadable PDFs of the speakers' slide...

Recent articles online at www.actionbioscience.org.(AIBS news)
March 1, 2006... Lesson for classroom activities * "Natural Selection" written by R. Brian Watts, biology professor, Cegep de la Gaspesie et des Iles, Gaspe, Canada, to accompany the interview with Douglas Futnyma, entitled "Natural Selection: How...

Recent education reports online at www.aibs.org.(AIBS news)
March 1, 2006... * New guidelines for AIBS student chapter program * 2006 AIBS annual meeting: Registration and call for posters * Presentations now available from 2005 NABT symposium "Evolution and the Environment" * Evolution clearinghouse * New...

Recent public policy reports online at www.aibs.org.(AIBS news)
March 1, 2006... Public Policy Report for 13 February 2006 * The American Competitiveness Initiative and the FY 2007 budget * FY 2007 budget request for the National Science Foundation * A look at NSF's education program in the FY 2007 budget *...

Calendar of meetings.(Calendar)(Calendar)
March 1, 2006... March 21-26 Cell Stress Society International, Concepcion, Chile; www.cellstress.uconn.edu/ conferences.html 26-30 National Shellfisheries Association, Monterey, CA; http:// shellfish.org/conferences/ 27-April 1 Society for...

Marine Science in Alaska.(BioBriefs)
March 1, 2006... The annual Marine Science in Alaska Symposium traces its roots to the devastating Exxon Valdez oil spill. The first meeting, held in a church building in 1994, was a small workshop hosted by the Exxon Valdez Trustee Council. But a new format...