BioScience articles from May 2008

BioScience archives from May 2008

The right fight for biologists.(Editorial)
May 1, 2008... Deadly food riots in Haiti and Egypt, together with recent price-related unrest in several other countries, are disturbing reminders of the vulnerability of the poorest. Just as it is impossible to ascribe any single weather event to global...

On science and statistics.(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2008... I read "Dualism, Science, and Statistics" (Singer 2007) with great interest and would like to comment on three points. First, I agree that we could do a better job emphasizing the early stages of scientific discovery, and the relationship...

Response from Singer.(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2008... Many thanks to Peter Bednekoff for his comments on my essay "Dualism, Science, and Statistics." I'd like to respond briefly to his second point about how data should be presented and to his third point about confidence intervals. Regarding...

Biologists and carbon neutrality.(Viewpoint essay)
May 1, 2008... Environmental sustainability and climate change are clearly big questions that will engage the entire world over the course of this century and beyond. A key role of colleges and universities is to encourage students to think about such big...

Colony collapse disorder: many suspects, no smoking gun: the cause of colony collapse disorder remains unknown, although some possible explanations for the loss of honey bee colonies can be ruled out.
May 1, 2008... David Hackenberg, a beekeeper who owns large apiaries in Pennsylvania and Florida and sends his hives all over the United States--to California to pollinate almonds, to Maine to pollinate blueberries--was the first to notice that some of his...

Creating a new breed of biology education researchers.(Eye on Education)
May 1, 2008... Introductory undergraduate biology courses often fail to truly engage students in the subject matter, a problem that sometimes causes students to switch out of biology majors. The traditional, lecture-only curriculum has already been shunned in...

Big bucks for biosecurity research--but who's doing what?(Washington Watch)
May 1, 2008... After 11 September 2001 and the anthrax attacks that followed, President Bush made it a government priority to protect human health and food systems from biological attack. Federal agencies have allocated billions of dollars to biological...

Engineering with precision: tools for the new generation of transgenic crops.(21st Century Directions in Biology)(Report)
May 1, 2008... In the past 25 years, a major revolution in agricultural practice and crop production has occurred. Genetically engineered crops with improved agronomic traits have made the transition from laboratory benches and greenhouses to fields all over...

Freshwater ecoregions of the world: a new map of biogeographic units for freshwater biodiversity conservation.(Report)
May 1, 2008... We present a new map depicting the first global biogeographic regionalization of Earth's freshwater systems. This map of freshwater ecoregions is based on the distributions and compositions of freshwater fish species and incorporates major...

Signal cloaking by electric fish.(Report)
May 1, 2008... Electric fish produce weak electric fields to image their world in darkness and to communicate with potential mates and rivals. Eavesdropping by electroreceptive predators exerts selective pressure on electric fish to shift their signals into...

Ready or not, garlic mustard is moving in: Alliaria petiolata as a member of eastern North American forests.(Report)
May 1, 2008... Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) is a nonnative, shade-tolerant forb that was introduced into North America in the mid-1800s. Currently, garlic mustard is spreading across the landscape at a rate of 6400 square kilometers per year. In this...

Plant invasions in China: what is to be expected in the wake of economic development?(Report)
May 1, 2008... Developing and transitional countries undergoing rapid economic development will face growing problems with biological invasions because international commerce will bring new invaders. We assessed the potential for plant invasions in China by...

Wavelets for agriculture and biology: a tutorial with applications and outlook.(Biologist's Toolbox)(Report)
May 1, 2008... Wavelet transforms (WTs) are finding increasing use in the discovery of the scale-specific properties of complex biological data. Although many efforts have been made to explain the main concepts of WT without advanced mathematics, the implicit...

The debate on behavior in conservation: New Zealand integrates theory with practice.(Forum)(Report)
May 1, 2008... Behavioral research is increasingly a part of species conservation, yet the debate over its relevance to conservation continues. We use New Zealand--a world leader in conservation management--as a case study to illustrate the integration of...

Size matters.(Sex, Size, and Gender Roles: Evolutionary Studies of Sexual Size Dimorphism)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... Sex, Size and Gender Roles: Evolutionary Studies of Sexual Size Dimorphism. Daphne J. Fairbairn, Wolf U. Blanckenhorn, and Tamas Szekely, eds. Oxford University Press, New York, 2007. 280 pp., illus. $110.00 (ISBN...

Developing a history of evo-devo.(From Embryology to Evo-Devo: A History of Developmental Evolution)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... From Embryology to Evo-Devo: A History of Developmental Evolution. Manfred D. Laubichler and Jane Maienschein, eds. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2007. 577 pp., illus. $55.00 (ISBN 9780262122832 cloth). From Embryology to...

Six legs best?('Six Legs Better: A Cultural History of Myrmecology' by Charlotte Sleigh)(Book review)
May 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Six Legs Better: A Cultural History of Myrmecology. Charlotte Sleigh. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, 2007. 320 pp., illus. $55.00 (ISBN 9780801884450 cloth). Ants have a long...

New titles.(List)
May 1, 2008... Amazon Expeditions: My Quest for the Ice-Age Equator. Paul A. Colinvaux. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2008.384 pp., illus. $32.50 (ISBN 9780300115444 cloth). Analysis of Evolutionary Processes: The Adaptive...

Plan to attend! AIBS annual meeting, 12-13 May, to examine linkages among infectious diseases and climate change.(AIBS news)(American Institute of Biological Sciences)
May 1, 2008... The 2008 AIBS annual meeting will take place at the Westin Arlington Gateway hotel in Arlington, Virginia, a two-minute walk from the National Science Foundation building and the Ballston Metro station. The program chair is AIBS President Rita...

AIBS testifies about need for increased funding for biological research.(AIBS news)(American Institute of Biological Sciences)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... In March, the AIBS Public Policy Office submitted congressional testimony in support of increased funding in fiscal year (FY) 2009 for the National Science Foundation (NSF), the US Geological Survey (USGS), and the Environmental Protection...

AIBS, ESA coauthor budget analysis.(AIBS news)(American Institute of Biological Sciences and Ecological Society of America)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... Robert Gropp, MBS director of public policy, and Nadine Lymn, public affairs director of the Ecological Society of America, teamed together to analyze the fiscal year (FY) 2009 budget request for biological and ecological sciences programs in...

AIBS writes to Oklahoma Senate.(AIBS news)(American Institute of Biological Sciences)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... AIBS recently wrote to members of the Rules Committee of the Oklahoma State Senate to express serious concerns with House Bill 2211, the Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act. If it had been enacted, the legislation would have had serious...

ActionBioscience.org seeks lesson writers.(AIBS news)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... ActionBioscience.org offers original lessons written by science educators specifically to accompany online articles. Each lesson includes article content and extension questions as well as activity handouts for a variety of grade levels....

NEON completes selection of candidate sites.(AIBS news)(National Ecological Observatory Network)
May 1, 2008... Science staff from the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) recently confirmed all 20 locations of candidate core sites chosen for the continental-scale ecological research platform. Each candidate site has been selected to represent...

NEON welcomes its director of procurement and contracts.(AIBS news)(Patti Ashley of the National Ecological Observatory Network)
May 1, 2008... Patti Ashley is the NEON director of procurement and contracts. The position is based at the Science and Education Office in Boulder, Colorado. Ashley and her staff will work to ensure that NEON observes the highest standards and best...

Recent public policy reports online at www.aibs.org.(AIBS news)(American Institute of Biological Sciences)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... Public Policy Report for 14 April 2008 * Evolution, science education still under attack * Congressional support for NSF funding * Climate hearings focus on public health * New in BioScience: "Political Science" * From the...

Calendar of meetings.(Calendar)
May 1, 2008... Calendar of meetings May 12-13 American Institute of Biological Sciences, Washington, DC; wwwaibs.org/annual-meeting 12-13 Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, Washington, DC; ...

Case for biological origins of language grows stronger.(BioBriefs)
May 1, 2008... EvoLang is a series of international conferences held every two years to examine the evolution of language. The first was held in Edinburgh in 1996 in an effort to establish a Darwinian basis for language origins. The project's major difficulty...