BioScience articles from May 2003

BioScience archives from May 2003

NEON illuminated. (Editorial).
May 1, 2003... Since last summer, AIBS has been playing a central role in organizing the scientific community's activities related to the National Science Foundation's (NSF) proposal for a National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). These efforts, which...

Letters.
May 1, 2003... Japan's proper Whaling Research. Responses to Aron, Burke, and Freeman's Forum article, "Scientists versus Whaling: Science, Advocacy, and Errors of Judgment" (BioScience 52: 1137--1140), by Clapham and colleagues, Orians and colleagues,...

Correction.
May 1, 2003... Holt also writes that "readers might be surprised at seeing the word 'anglers' in the antepenultimate line of my letter on pp. 204-206 of the [March 2003] issue of BioScience. That conjures the entirely inappropriate image of old men sitting on...

Four-winged dinosaurs, bird precursors, or neither? (Viewpoint).
May 1, 2003... New fossil specimens from the Early Cretaceous lakebeds of Liaoning, in northeastern China, are once again bridging and even overturning what we thought we knew about various aspects of vertebrate evolution. Or are they? The latest finds are of...

Regulating biotechnology as though gene function mattered. (Viewpoint).
May 1, 2003... Although nearly every aspect of agriculture with genetically engineered crops seems to generate some kind of controversy, scientists agree on one score: The diversity of genes, the phenotypes they give rise to, and the biology of crops make...

NEON: planning for a new frontier in biology. (Feature).
May 1, 2003... In the past century we learned an enormous amount about individual species and about ecological processes at the scale of watersheds and landscapes, but there is much we do not understand. In this century we must further our understanding of...

The phantom forest: research on gene-altered trees leaps ahead, into a regulatory limbo. (Feature).
May 1, 2003... At an industrial park in Walnut Creek, California, technicians and robots are sorting through the 550 million base pairs of genetic code in poplar DNA to sequence a tree genome for the first time. They are poised to unlock a fine, full toolbox...

The evolving taxonomy of biological research. (Washington Watch).
May 1, 2003... It's that time again. The National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences is preparing to assess and rank the quality of United States research doctoral programs. Previous exercises, in 1982 and 1995, have been widely cited...

African and Asian dust: from desert soils to coral reefs. (Articles).
May 1, 2003... Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain the decline of coral reefs throughout the world, but none adequately accounts for the lack of recovery of reefs or the wide geographical distribution of coral diseases. The processes driving the...

Landscape restoration: moving from generalities to methodologies. (Articles).
May 1, 2003... Large-scale, landscape-level restoration actions are widely implemented but receive little attention from academic ecologists. We review the methods used to assess the role of these processes in past studies, and suggest ways to use past and...

Vertical-looking radar: a new tool for monitoring high-altitude insect migration. (Biologist's Toolbox).
May 1, 2003... Many insect species engage in high-altitude, wind-borne migration, often several hundred meters above the ground. At these heights they can use the wind to travel tens or hundreds of kilometers in a single flight, and hence a knowledge of their...

A Framework for assessing the risk of transgenic crops. (Forum).
May 1, 2003... The environmental risks of many transgenic crops can be evaluated without additional experimentation by using already available information on the biology of the crop, the presence of compatible relatives, and the transgene phenotype. The level...

Taking the mystery out of natural resource policy. (Books).
May 1, 2003... The Policy Process: A Practical Guide for Natural Resource Professionals. Tim W. Clark. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2002. 215 pp. $35.00 (ISBN 0300090110 cloth). How is natural resource policy made? "It is a riddle wrapped in a...

All life is chemical. (Books).
May 1, 2003... Ecological Stoichiometry: The Biology of Elements from Molecules to the Biosphere. Robert Warner Sterner and James J. Elser. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2002.440 pp., illus. $75.00 (ISBN 0691074909 cloth). Ecology struggles...

Exploring evolution, ecology, breeding, bioinformatics, and biopreservation. (Books).
May 1, 2003... Life at the Limits: Organisms in Extreme Environments. David A. Wharton. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom. 2002. 320 pp., illus. $25.00 (ISBN 0521782120 cloth). Life at the Limits was a refreshing reminder of why I...

IBRCS white paper released. (AIBS News).
May 1, 2003... AIBS released a 68-page report titled "IBRCS White Paper: Rationale, Blueprint, and Expectations for the National Ecological Observatory Network" (NEON) as part of the Infrastructure for Biology at Regional to Continental Scales (IBRCS)...

Executive summary of the IBRCS white paper. (AIBS News).
May 1, 2003... This white paper was developed by the Infrastructure for Biology at Regional to Continental Scales Working Group (IBRCS Working Group) as part of an American Institute of Biological Science's IBRCS project. The aim was to further advance the...

AIBS presents distinguished scientist, outstanding service, education, and other awards at annual meeting. (AIBS News).
May 1, 2003... The AIBS Distinguished Scientist Award was presented at the 2003 AIBS Annual Meeting to Harold A. Mooney of Stanford University. Since 1972, the AIBS Distinguished Scientist Award (previously called the Distinguished Service Award) has been...

Calendar of meetings.
May 1, 2003... May 2-5 46th Annual Meeting of the Council of Science Editors, Pittsburgh, PA; Web site: www.councilsciencceditors.org/events.03annualMtg.shtml 11-14 Annual Meeting of the Society for Sedimentary Geology, Salt Lake City, UT; Web site:...

How to prepare a manuscript for BioScience. (Information for Contributors).
May 1, 2003... THE BIOSCIENCE STAFF The editors of BioScience welcome original manuscripts written for a broad audience of professional biologists, biology teachers, advanced students, and policymakers. Overview articles summarize recent advances in...

Fish flounder through captive breeding. (BioBriefs).
May 1, 2003... Hatchery breeding programs may inadvertently produce deleterious traits in fish. For salmon in British Columbia, Canada, it is estimated that about 550 million hatchery-reared fry are released into rivers every year. Raising large numbers of...