BioScience articles from May 2005

BioScience archives from May 2005

Safety in numbers?(Editorial)
May 1, 2005... Editors attending editors' conferences like to scare each other with (sometimes apocryphal) horror stories. One perennial favorite goes along these lines: a manuscript with a large authorship roster was submitted to a journal for publication....

Species limits in birds: a response to Watson.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2005... David M. Watson (2005) purports to propose a whole new set of methods for avian taxonomic studies, but his arguments actually amount to a misguided attempt to bolster the phylogenetic species concept (PSC). His first claim, that bird taxonomy...

Publish or perish.(Viewpoint)
May 1, 2005... The physicist Wolfgang Pauli reportedly once told a colleague, "I don't mind your thinking slowly. I mind your publishing faster than you can think." Certainly, biology has its share of individuals whose zeal for publication exceeds the...

Finding a mate for lonesome George.
May 1, 2005... Genetic sequencing has revolutionized biology. It all began with the massive Human Genome Project, which sequenced the human genome in less than its initially estimated 15 years. Now, on a nearly daily basis, articles in Nature, Science, and...

FY 2006 research funding: boost or bust?(Washington Watch)
May 1, 2005... Although President George W. Bush's controversial plans to partially privatize Social Security may grab more headlines, a battle is brewing on Capitol Hill over the administration's retreat from its promised support for science budgets. ...

Trophic dynamics in urban communities.
May 1, 2005... Human activities dramatically change the abundance, diversity, and composition of species. However, little is known about how the most intense human activity, urbanization, alters food webs and trophic structure in biological communities....

Nitrogen cycling and the spread of shrubs control changes in the carbon balance of Arctic tundra ecosystems.
May 1, 2005... Decomposition in the Arctic has been slower than plant growth, causing an accumulation of detritus in tundra soils. Climate warming may result in carbon (C) loss by accelerating the decomposition of soil organic matter (SOM). Nitrogen (N)...

Physiological adaptation in desert birds.
May 1, 2005... We call into question the idea that birds have not evolved unique physiological adaptations to desert environments. The rate at which desert larks metabolize energy is lower than in mesic species within the same family, and this lower rate of...

Fugitive salmon: assessing the risks of escaped fish from net-pen aquaculture.
May 1, 2005... The farming of salmon and other marine finfish in open net pens continues to increase along the world's coastlines as the aquaculture industry expands to meet human demand. Farm fish are known to escape from pens in all salmon aquaculture...

Does scientific collaboration increase the impact of ecological articles?(Professional Biologist)
May 1, 2005... We examined the effects of different types of collaboration on the citation rates of 837 research papers published in Oecologia from 1998 through 2000. Multiauthored papers had higher annual citation rates, but also higher self-citation rates,...

Animal behavior in introductory textbooks: consensus on topics, confusion over terms.(Education)
May 1, 2005... I surveyed chapters on animal behavior in 11 introductory textbooks to see how well textbooks introduce current research in the field. Chapters on animal behavior were placed in or near the sections on ecology and often near sections on...

When scoundrels rule.
May 1, 2005... The Last Refuge: Patriotism, Politics, and the Environment in an Age of Terror. David W. Orr. Island Press, Washington, DC, 2004. 172 pp. $20.00 (ISBN 1559635282 cloth). Like most scientists, I like to think of myself as politically...

A tale of two species.
May 1, 2005... On the Wings of Checkerspots: A Model System for Population Biology. Paul R. Ehrlich and Ilkka Hanski, eds. Oxford University Press, New York, 2004. 371 pp., illus. $64.50 (ISBN 019515827X cloth). Forty-five years ago, Paul Ehrlich was...

Producing food, protecting biodiversity.
May 1, 2005... Agrodiversity: Learning from Farmers across the World. Harold Brookfield, Helen Parsons, and Muriel Brookfield, eds. United Nations University Press, New York, 2003. 343 pp., illus. $32.00 (ISBN 9280810871 paper). This book from the United...

New titles.(Books)
May 1, 2005... DNA Amplification: Current Technologies and Applications. Vadim V. Demidov and Natalia E. Broude, eds. Horizon BioScience, New York, 2004. 331 pp., illus. $157.00 (ISBN 0954523296 cloth). Evolution of Fossil Ecosystems. Paul Selden and John...

Winners of 2005 AIBS Media Awards announced.(AIBS news)
May 1, 2005... The American Institute of Biological Sciences is pleased to announce the winners of the 2005 AIBS Media Awards. The awards, established in 1995 to recognize outstanding reporting on biology to a general audience, are limited to nontechnical...

Policy office expands focus, hires public affairs representative.(AIBS news)
May 1, 2005... For the past four years, Adrienne Sponberg served as public policy representative and then director of public policy for the American Institute of Biological Sciences and the American Society for Limnology and Oceanography. The joint...

AIBS at the 2005 NSTA national convention.(AIBS news)
May 1, 2005... The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) held its 53rd national convention in Dallas, Texas, 31 March through 3 April 2005. About 12,000 science educators from the United States and other countries, notably Mexico, participated in more...

NEON approaches planning milestone.(AIBS news)
May 1, 2005... Members of the NEON Design Consortium (NDC) will convene in Estes Park, Colorado, in June 2005 for the third and final planning meeting for the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). More than 160 scientists, educators, and...

New education and outreach program assistant.(AIBS news)
May 1, 2005... Abraham Parker is the new education and outreach program assistant at AIBS. He comes to AIBS from Cornell University, where he recently completed a graduate degree in science education. He also has a strong background and interest in ecology...

New NESCent education programs manager.(AIBS news)
May 1, 2005... Kristin Jenkins has been hired by AIBS to be education programs manager for the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent; www.nescent.org) in Durham, North Carolina. Under the National Science Foundation grant to NESCent, AIBS provides...

ActionBioscience.org and BEN, the biological science education portal.(AIBS news)
May 1, 2005... The articles and lessons found on AIBS's ActionBioscience.org Web site are now part of the searchable collection of biology teaching resources at the BiosciEdNet.org (BEN) portal. The BEN portal, managed by the American Association for the...

Recent articles online at www.actionbioscience.org.(AIBS news)
May 1, 2005... Original articles in English. * "Resurrecting Extinct Megafauna" by Larry D. Agenbroad, professor emeritus, Northern Arizona University * "Natural History Museum Collections in the Twenty-first Century," by Keith S. Thomson, professor...

Recent public policy reports online at www.aibs.org.(AIBS news)
May 1, 2005... Public Policy Report for 11 April 2005 * Florida "Academic Freedom" bill could censor faculty, trigger lawsuits * Intelligent design legislation introduced in Pennsylvania House * AIBS Policy Office expands focus, hires public...

Recent education reports online at www.aibs.org.(AIBS news)
May 1, 2005... * ActionBioscience.org and the Biological Science Education portal, BEN * Call for collaborators: Study the effectiveness of TIEE * Animal Behavior Society's Children's Book Award * NAS president issues letter in support of...

Calendar of meetings.(Calendar)
May 1, 2005... May 15-18 Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Society, St. Paul, MN; Web site: http://ellipse.inhs.uiuc.edu/ fmcs/symposium/ 17 Mid Atlantic Chapter of Laboratory ...

Unorthodox defense in a model plant.(BioBriefs)
May 1, 2005... Thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) may be a small weed, but it s a big deal in the world of plant genetics. Its compact size, short life cycle, relatively small genome, and supposed dearth of genetic redundancy made Arabidopsis the model...