BioScience articles from May 2004

BioScience archives from May 2004

A warning in the west.(Editorial)
May 1, 2004... West Nile virus began its season early this year, with infected dead birds recorded in April in California. Indications are that the pathogen will hit the state hard in coming months, moving north as it infects mosquitoes and birds in farming...

Another threat to Prairie Streams.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... I read with great interest "Life on the Edge: The Ecology of Great Plains Prairie Streams," by Walter K. Dodds and colleagues, in the March 2004 issue (BioScienee 54: 205-216). This article does the community a service by pointing out the...

Use of collections can be broadened.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... Many thanks for the Forum article by Andrew Suarez and Neil Tsutsui, "The Value of Museum Collections for Research and Society" (BioScience 54: 66-74). This article addressed many issues that are of great concern. The importance of the upkeep...

Bio2010: unintended consequences?(Viewpoint)
May 1, 2004... In the fall of 2000, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) funded a review of undergraduate education by the National Research Council (NRC), with an eye to modernizing biomedical education. Last...

Strepsipterans: parasitic insects that may help eradicate pests.
May 1, 2004... Most people have never heard of strepsipterans and almost no one has knowingly seen one. Last year, when an article appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (24 June 2003) describing how this parasitic insect eludes the...

Colorado River Delta.
May 1, 2004... Osvel Hinojosa paddles his canoe across the Cienega de Santa Clara one bright, warm fall day. The cienega, a 14,000-acre lake and marshland, lies near where the Colorado River flows into the Gulf of California in Mexico. Thick rows of cattails...

Expanding access to natural history collections.(Washington Watch)
May 1, 2004... At universities throughout the United States, tight budgets are threatening the continued vitality of research based on natural history collections (see "Are University Natural Science Collections Going Extinct?" BioScience 53: 550). In...

West Nile virus and wildlife.
May 1, 2004... West Nile virus (WNV) has spread rapidly across North America, resulting in human deaths and in the deaths of untold numbers of birds, mammals, and reptiles. The virus has reached Central America and the Caribbean and may spread to Hawaii and...

At the crossroads of genomics and ecology: the promise of a canary on a chip.
May 1, 2004... The application of technologies from functional genomics to ecological research will add new power to the tools that are currently available for the study of an organism's response to the environment. One particularly important area in which...

The network dynamics hypothesis: how channel networks structure riverine habitats.
May 1, 2004... Hierarchical and branching river networks interact with dynamic watershed disturbances, such as fires, storms, and floods, to impose a spatial and temporal organization on the nonuniform distribution of riverine habitats, with consequences for...

Changing perspectives on pearly mussels, North America's most imperiled animals.
May 1, 2004... Pearly mussels (Unionacea) are widespread, abundant, and important in freshwater ecosystems around the world. Catastrophic declines in pearly mussel populations in North America and other parts of the world have led to a flurry of research on...

A new kind of ecology?(Thinking of Biology)
May 1, 2004... Mathematical models have a long history of use for understanding ecological systems. In a recent book, A New Kind of Science, Steve Wolfram calls into question traditional modeling approaches and calls for the increased application of cellular...

PIT tagging: simple technology at its best.(Biologist's Toolbox)
May 1, 2004... Since their first use in the mid-1980s, passive integrated transponder devices (PIT tags) have allowed innovative investigations into numerous biological traits of animals. The tiny, coded markers injected into individual animals allow...

Natural history museums in a postbiodiversity era.(Forum)
May 1, 2004... Biodiversity research has been the mainstay of natural history museums, but the traditional uses of biological collections in taxonomy, systematics, and evolutionary biology account for only part of these collections' value. Biological...

Never apologize, always explain.
May 1, 2004... A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love. Richard Dawkins. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 2003. 263 pp. $24.00 (ISBN 0618335404 cloth). Richard Dawkins is one of those responsible for the current ferment of ideas that...

Life histories and social strategies: from development to evolution.
May 1, 2004... Primate Life Histories and Socioecology. Peter M. Kappeler and Michael E. Pereira, eds. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2003. 395 pp., illus. $30.00 (ISBN 022642634 paper). Life-history analysis involves a host of variables that...

Gene flow under water.
May 1, 2004... Population Genetics: Principles and Applications for Fisheries Scientists. Eric Hallerman, ed. American Fisheries Society, Bethesda, MD, 2003. 458 pp., illus. $69.00 (ISBN 1888569271 cloth). Population Genetics: Principles and Applications...

New titles.(Books)
May 1, 2004... Alcamo's Fundamentals of Microbiology, 7th ed. Jeffrey C. Pommerville. Jones and Bartlett, Sudbury, MA, 2004. 1001 pp., illus. $99.95 (ISBN 0763700673 cloth). A Beginner's Guide to Microarrays. Eric Blalock, ed. Kluwer Academic, Boston,...

AIBS plans NEON workshops.(AIBS news)
May 1, 2004... In the past year AIBS, through its Infrastructure for Biology from Regional to Continental Scales (IBRCS) project, has been engaging the ecological community in more fully developing the concept for a National Ecological Observatory Network...

BioOne to provide access to science journals to 481 institutions in 53 countries.(AIBS news)
May 1, 2004... Since last year, the AIBS partnered project BioOne (www.BioOne.org) has been a part of the World Health Organization's Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI) program. HINARI is part of the Health InterNetwork, introduced in...

NatureServe joins AIBS.(AIBS news)
May 1, 2004... In March 2004, the AIBS Board of Directors welcomed the organization NatureServe to membership in AIBS. NatureServe carries on a legacy of conservation work that began when The Nature Conservancy helped to establish the first state natural...

Allison Vogt and Heidi Weiskel emerge as policy leaders.(AIBS news)
May 1, 2004... As part of its focus on engaging scientists in the public policy process, AIBS recently awarded the 2004 Emerging Public Policy Leader Awards to Allison Vogt, University of Georgia, and Heidi Weiskel, University of California at Davis. The AIBS...

AIBS cosponsors breakfast for award-winning biology teachers.(AIBS news)
May 1, 2004... AIBS, the Biotechnology Institute, and the National Association of Biology Teachers cosponsored a breakfast recently in honor of twelve of the nation's most inspiring biology teachers. On 19 March, these teachers and approximately 80 of their...

Plenary lectures from 2004 AIBS annual meeting to go online.(AIBS news)
May 1, 2004... The 2004 AIBS annual meeting, held in Washington, DC, in March, proved to be a great success. Attendees heard distinguished plenary speakers and panelists present synthesizing lectures on invasive species (the meeting's theme), and then joined...

Recent public policy reports online at www.aibs.org.(AIBS news)
May 1, 2004... AIBS Public Policy Report for 15 March 2004 * Congressman challenges Department of Treasury restrictions on publishing papers from embargoed countries * ACTION ALERT: Ask your representative to cosponsor legislation recognizing the...

Calendar of meetings.(Calendar)
May 1, 2004... May 4-9 74th Annual Meeting of the Cooper Ornithological Society, La Crosse, WI; Web sites: www. cooper.org/ and www.umesc.usgs. gov/cooper/ 22-26 11th International Conference on Invertebrate Cell and Tissue Culture, San Francisco,...

2004 Ocean Research Conference.(BioBriefs)
May 1, 2004... Addressing topics ranging from the Caribbean coral reefs to the Arctic ice cap, scientists at the 2004 Ocean Research Conference in Honolulu emphasized the need for crossing the traditional boundaries of species, geography, and scientific...