BioScience articles from March 2009

BioScience archives from March 2009

Stimulating conservation.(Editorial)
March 1, 2009... It may be cold comfort to struggling alternative-energy entrepreneurs, but it is now close to a done deal that investment in wind and solar energy will increase dramatically in coming years. Although many sectors are clamoring for federal...

Conveying the values of science and biology.(Viewpoint)
March 1, 2009... Creationists regularly make the accusation that secular science and evolutionary theory take a worldview lacking in values, morals, and ethics in general. Like so many other of their claims--such as the one that evolution violates the second...

[Cartoon].(Cartoon)
March 1, 2009... "LOOKS LIKE FERGUSON SOLD A GAS-GUZZLER." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Environmental science after Bush: scientists reflect on what the recent change in US administration means.
March 1, 2009... When Barack Obama was elected president of the United States on 4 November 2008, he immediately faced an abundance of suggestions, demands, and wish lists from his new constituents. The requests rolled in from advocates of new roads and safer...

US struggles to clear up confusion left in the wake of Rapanos.(Washington Watch)
March 1, 2009... For two decades, Michigan developer John Rapanos battled the US government over the extent of protection for wetlands and streams under the Clean Water Act (CWA). Now, more than two years after the Supreme Court issued its 4-1-4 split decision,...

Molecular biology and genomics: new tools for weed science.(21st Century Directions in Biology)
March 1, 2009... Some plant species are particularly well adapted to environments disturbed by humans. Often such species are invasive and problematic, and thus are classified as weeds. Despite our best efforts to manage weeds, they continue to interfere with...

Why we have field stations: reflections on the cultivation of biologists.(Field Stations)
March 1, 2009... For a resident of the state of Nebraska, the Cedar Point Biological Station (CPBS), located in scenic limestone bluffs below Kingsley Dam, an earthfilled artificial mountain that impounds a lake 35 kilometers long and 5 kilometers wide, is a...

Quantifying the contribution of organisms to the provision of ecosystem services.(Report)
March 1, 2009... Research on ecosystem services has grown rapidly over the last decade. Two conceptual frameworks have been published to guide ecological assessments of organisms that deliver services--the concepts of service-providing units (SPUs) and...

Do changes in connectivity explain desertification?
March 1, 2009... Arid and semiarid regions cover more than 40% of Earth's land surface. Desertification, or broadscale land degradation in drylands, is a major environmental hazard facing inhabitants of the world's deserts as well as an important component of...

Nonindigenous species of the Pacific Northwest: an overlooked risk to endangered salmon?
March 1, 2009... Nonindigenous species, which are associated with the decline of many threatened and endangered species, are a major threat to global diversity. This risk extends to salmonids, the most widespread threatened and endangered species in the Pacific...

It's not easy being green: wind energy and a declining grassland bird.(Forum)(Report)
March 1, 2009... The lesser prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) is an umbrella species for the short- and mixed-grass prairie ecosystem of the southcentral United States. This species has suffered large population declines over the last century that...

Big fleas have little fleas.(Infectious Disease Ecology: Effects of Ecosystems on Disease and of Disease on Ecosystems)(Book review)
March 1, 2009... Infectious Disease Ecology: Effects of Ecosystems on Disease and of Disease on Ecosystems. Richard S. Ostfeld, Felicia Keesing, and Valerie T. Eviner, eds. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2008. 504 pp., illus. $45.00 (ISBN...

Bones well picked.(Major Transitions in Vertebrate Evolution)(Book review)
March 1, 2009... Major Transitions in Vertebrate Evolution. Jason S. Anderson and Hans-Dieter Sues, eds. Indiana University Press, 2007. 432 pp., illus. $49.95 (ISBN 9780253349262 cloth). In this day of virulent creationist assaults on science, especially...

Accounting for nature.(The Law and Policy of Ecosystem Services)(Book review)
March 1, 2009... The Law and Policy of Ecosystem Services. J. B. Ruhl, Steven E. Kraft, and Christopher L. Lant. Island Press, Washington, DC, 2007. 360 pp., illus. $35.00 (ISBN 9781559630955 paper). Two publications in 1997--Nature's Services (Daily 1997)...

New titles.(List)
March 1, 2009... Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas. Stefan Helmreich. University of California Press, Berkeley, 2009. 464 pp., illus. $24.95 (ISBN 9780520250628 paper). Animalcules: The Activities, Impacts, and Investigators of...

AIBS annual meeting to feature NAS reception, Penneck lecture.(AIBS News)(American Institute of Biological Sciences)
March 1, 2009... The 2009 AIBS annual meeting, "Sustainable Agriculture: Greening the Global Food Supply,' will be held 18-19 May at the Westin Arlington Gateway Hotel in Arlington, Virginia. The program chair is 2009 AIBS President May R. Berenbaum, of the...

ASM-AIBS graduate student public policy internship.(AIBS News)(American Society of Mammalogists and American Institute of Biological Sciences)
March 1, 2009... AIBS and the American Society of Mammalogists (ASM) are pleased to announce the availability of an internship in the AIBS Public Policy Office in Washington, DC. The internship is open to ASM members who are currently enrolled in a graduate...

Calendar of meetings.(Brief article)(Calendar)
March 1, 2009... March 22-26 National Shellfisheries Association, Savannah, GA; http://shellfish.org/101stannualmeeting April 1-4 Association of Southeastern Biologists, Jacksonville and Birmingham, AL; www.asb. appstate.edu/meeting.php 10-15...

Evolving ideas on the origins of parental care.(BioBriefs)
March 1, 2009... As little as 30 years ago, ornithologists did not accept that birds could be considered feathered reptiles. Although it was logical to herpetologists, who saw characteristics linking the two classes of vertebrates--scales on birds' legs and...