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An Agenda for Our Science?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Biologists of all stripes may be grateful for the powerful support the National Research Council, the operating arm of the National Academies, has recently given to a new interagency biological research program. In its study A New Biology for the 21st Century (www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12764), the council concludes that biology has reached an inflection point that could allow rapid progress in multiple biological fields. The program it envisages would involve better coordination and integration of research, as well as substantial new financial support. The "New Biology," the report says, has the potential to deli...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - October 29, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

Genes for the PlanetEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Two articles in this issue of BioScience illustrate the power of new molecular techniques to give wings to very different types of biology. Both articles discuss, in part, how information from genetic sequences might guide urgently needed planetary ecological management. In the article that begins on page 745, Christopher W. Dick and W. John Kress describe how DNA diagnostic tools can be used to achieve insights into the dynamics of tropical forests. The extraordinary biological diversity of tropical forests has become recognized in recent decades as one of the wonders of the world. The importance of the gargantuan amoun...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - October 20, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

Spreading the WordsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In the Forum article that begins on page 699, Stephen R. Carpenter and 18 distinguished coauthors argue for a national program focusing on synthesis in environmental sciences. This influential group, representing an array of specialties, argues that ecologists and scientists in closely connected disciplines—the biological, computational, atmospheric, hydrological, geological, oceanic, and social sciences—can, by working together better, accelerate discovery and research in basic and applied environmental science. The article urges spreading the culture of synthesis more extensively to undergraduate and postgrad...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - September 8, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

Something Like This?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In 1974, Thomas Nagel famously grabbed the attention of philosophers by asking, “What is it like to be a bat?” In the article starting on p. 737, Gerald Kerth finally provides some answers. The answers are probably more complicated than Nagel envisaged. Nagel was pondering whether we could ever provide an objective account of a subjective experience. The question still resonates, but biologists as well as philosophers have clarified some relevant matters over the past three-and-a-half decades. In particular, biologists have revealed previously uncharted complexity in the social relationships of many animals, especiall...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - July 14, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

Glimpses of a Hidden RealmEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Charismatic they are not, but fungi have a vastly larger impact on the flow of essential elements through ecosystems than do most more appealing organisms. Gaining an understanding of their diversity and spatial variability, and the implications of these for fundamental ecological processes such as decomposition, has to be a high priority if biologists are to predict the consequences of habitat and climate change. Only in recent years have techniques existed to allow the systematic exploration of patterns of fungal diversity, as Kabir Peay, Peter Kennedy, and Thomas Bruns explain in the 21st Century Directions in Biology ...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - July 14, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

Preventing Patent PurgatoryEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The idea of a state license that allows an inventor to prevent others from copying an invention for a fixed period—otherwise known as a patent—has seemed a sensible one to enlightened governments since the 15th century. The public benefits by having the details of the invention disclosed, and the inventor’s right to profit from the invention is preserved. But times have changed since the rulers of Venice issued the first such documents. Today the international patent system is a nightmarish mire of broad yet uncertain rights. Wealthy corporations purchase patent rights they have little intention of exploiting to im...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - July 14, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

New Year, New Administration, New OpportunitiesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The economy took a nose-dive in the fall of 2008, with all indicators showing a free fall: inflation at nearly 6 percent—its highest level in 17 years—unemployment at 6 percent, no net job growth in the private sector for most of 2008, plummeting housing prices, and record losses in the banking industry. Public investments in technology, a major component of which is the Internet, have reaped huge benefits for the economy in the past. Remember, however, that it is science that supports the technology we need to keep America great in the 21st century. Within a few short years, an estimated seven billion people...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - July 14, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

Revving Up for the Year of ScienceEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The year 2009 has been designated the Year of Science (www.yearofscience2009.org). The Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS) and AIBS, together with the Geological Society of America, the National Science Teachers Association, and the University of California Museum of Paleontology (home of the new Understanding Science Web site; see p. 91)—are fully engaged in the effort to attain the goal of the Year of Science: to empower Americans "to appreciate the pragmatic outcomes of science, to distinguish science from non-science, and to participate in social discourse that provides insight into the natur...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - July 14, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

Boosting BiologyEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
When I first studied—if that is the word—biology, in high school in the 1970s, it seemed uncompelling: the lab demonstrations could not compare for spectacle or danger with more vivid offerings in chemistry and physics. Only an encounter with The Ecologist magazine persuaded me that biology had gravity. Today's biology teachers have at hand not only better demonstrations of biology's power but also more convincing arguments for its importance. As Thomas Lovejoy, biodiversity chair of the Heinz Center, remarked recently, humanity has finally come to the point where daunting rates of species loss and the challen...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - July 14, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

Stimulating ConservationEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 financial assistance in these troubled economic times, the administration and Congress seem agreed that low-carbon energy sources need boosts. Not only will these energy alternatives reduce US dependence on foreign oil, but they also promise to provide new jobs. Moreover, pressure for a federal carbon tax, or some similar measure, is likely to be ultimately successful in Congress, which p...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - July 14, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

The Individual Benefits of EvolutionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, widely and properly celebrated last 12 February, was a gratifying event for biologists. The founding father of modern biology was feted in articles, broadcasts, and gatherings, and evolution was even a pictorial motif on Google's home page. The public recognition was a notable plus for biology's image, especially as 12 February was also the 200th birthday of another great benefactor of human freedom, Abraham Lincoln. Charles Darwin a benefactor of freedom? Yes. Even aside from the case argued by Adrian Desmond and James Moore in Darwin's Sacred Cause (Houghton Mifflin Harco...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - July 14, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

Forward Steps for ScienceEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The century of biology is almost a tenth complete, and its first decade seems to have delivered more pain than progress. Yet in March, biologists of all stripes were relieved when two scientists with impeccable credentials and broad experience in energy and marine policy—John P. Holdren and Jane Lubchenco—were confirmed as director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Despite the national preoccupation with the country's economic woes, the Senate finally recognized the pettiness of further delay in approving these crucial...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - July 14, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

Beyond the EnvelopeEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Biologists are familiar with studies that estimate the range of temperatures that must prevail for a species to survive and then examine where those temperatures might be found under various scenarios for the future climate. The approach, which allows a rough estimate of how a species' geographic range might change with global warming, has provided important insights: the expected shifts in the ranges of many organisms, animals and plants, seem drastic. In many cases, ranges seem likely to be smaller in the future as biota move toward the poles and higher up mountains (where that option exists). Bioclimatic envelope model...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - July 14, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

Malawi as MicrocosmEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
One talk at the AIBS meeting in May on sustainable agriculture stood out both for its immediacy and for the challenge it represents to established wisdom. Pedro A. Sanchez, recipient of the 2002 World Food Prize and director of the Tropical Agriculture and the Rural Environment Program at Columbia University's Earth Institute, told rapt attendees about the latest results from an initiative that is being called the "Malawi miracle." Malawi, a landlocked country of poor farmers, faced a food crisis in 2005, the result of drought, floods, and a disastrous maize harvest. Huge amounts of food aid, costing more than $100 millio...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - July 14, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

Penguins in PerilEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Global circulation models have long predicted that greenhouse warming would be greatest in polar regions, and abundant data confirm strong warming there. Not surprisingly, in recent decades there have been pronounced effects on wildlife in polar regions. The plight of the polar bear, the Arctic wildlife poster species facing the disappearance of its habitat, was officially recognized in May when the US Department of the Interior designated the animal “threatened” (a designation challenged, however, by the State of Alaska). Penguins, which play a similarly iconic role for the Antarctic (though they are found throughout ...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - June 8, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

Something Like This?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In 1974, Thomas Nagel famously grabbed the attention of philosophers by asking, “What is it like to be a bat?” In the article starting on p. 737, Gerald Kerth finally provides some answers. The answers are probably more complicated than Nagel envisaged. Nagel was pondering whether we could ever provide an objective account of a subjective experience. The question still resonates, but biologists as well as philosophers have clarified some relevant matters over the past three-and-a-half decades. In particular, biologists have revealed previously uncharted complexity in the social relationships of many animals, especiall...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - June 8, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

Glimpses of a Hidden RealmEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Charismatic they are not, but fungi have a vastly larger impact on the flow of essential elements through ecosystems than do most more appealing organisms. Gaining an understanding of their diversity and spatial variability, and the implications of these for fundamental ecological processes such as decomposition, has to be a high priority if biologists are to predict the consequences of habitat and climate change. Only in recent years have techniques existed to allow the systematic exploration of patterns of fungal diversity, as Kabir Peay, Peter Kennedy, and Thomas Bruns explain in the 21st Century Directions in Biology ...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - June 8, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

Preventing Patent PurgatoryEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The idea of a state license that allows an inventor to prevent others from copying an invention for a fixed period—otherwise known as a patent—has seemed a sensible one to enlightened governments since the 15th century. The public benefits by having the details of the invention disclosed, and the inventor’s right to profit from the invention is preserved. But times have changed since the rulers of Venice issued the first such documents. Today the international patent system is a nightmarish mire of broad yet uncertain rights. Wealthy corporations purchase patent rights they have little intention of exploiting to im...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - June 8, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

New Year, New Administration, New OpportunitiesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The economy took a nose-dive in the fall of 2008, with all indicators showing a free fall: inflation at nearly 6 percent—its highest level in 17 years—unemployment at 6 percent, no net job growth in the private sector for most of 2008, plummeting housing prices, and record losses in the banking industry. Public investments in technology, a major component of which is the Internet, have reaped huge benefits for the economy in the past. Remember, however, that it is science that supports the technology we need to keep America great in the 21st century. Within a few short years, an estimated seven billion people...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - June 8, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

Revving Up for the Year of ScienceEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The year 2009 has been designated the Year of Science (www.yearofscience2009.org). The Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS) and AIBS, together with the Geological Society of America, the National Science Teachers Association, and the University of California Museum of Paleontology (home of the new Understanding Science Web site; see p. 91)—are fully engaged in the effort to attain the goal of the Year of Science: to empower Americans "to appreciate the pragmatic outcomes of science, to distinguish science from non-science, and to participate in social discourse that provides insight into the natur...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - June 8, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

Boosting BiologyEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
When I first studied—if that is the word—biology, in high school in the 1970s, it seemed uncompelling: the lab demonstrations could not compare for spectacle or danger with more vivid offerings in chemistry and physics. Only an encounter with The Ecologist magazine persuaded me that biology had gravity. Today's biology teachers have at hand not only better demonstrations of biology's power but also more convincing arguments for its importance. As Thomas Lovejoy, biodiversity chair of the Heinz Center, remarked recently, humanity has finally come to the point where daunting rates of species loss and the challen...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - June 8, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

Stimulating ConservationEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 financial assistance in these troubled economic times, the administration and Congress seem agreed that low-carbon energy sources need boosts. Not only will these energy alternatives reduce US dependence on foreign oil, but they also promise to provide new jobs. Moreover, pressure for a federal carbon tax, or some similar measure, is likely to be ultimately successful in Congress, which p...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - June 8, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

The Individual Benefits of EvolutionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, widely and properly celebrated last 12 February, was a gratifying event for biologists. The founding father of modern biology was feted in articles, broadcasts, and gatherings, and evolution was even a pictorial motif on Google's home page. The public recognition was a notable plus for biology's image, especially as 12 February was also the 200th birthday of another great benefactor of human freedom, Abraham Lincoln. Charles Darwin a benefactor of freedom? Yes. Even aside from the case argued by Adrian Desmond and James Moore in Darwin's Sacred Cause (Houghton Mifflin Harco...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - June 8, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

Forward Steps for ScienceEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The century of biology is almost a tenth complete, and its first decade seems to have delivered more pain than progress. Yet in March, biologists of all stripes were relieved when two scientists with impeccable credentials and broad experience in energy and marine policy—John P. Holdren and Jane Lubchenco—were confirmed as director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Despite the national preoccupation with the country's economic woes, the Senate finally recognized the pettiness of further delay in approving these crucial...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - June 8, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info

Beyond the EnvelopeEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Biologists are familiar with studies that estimate the range of temperatures that must prevail for a species to survive and then examine where those temperatures might be found under various scenarios for the future climate. The approach, which allows a rough estimate of how a species' geographic range might change with global warming, has provided important insights: the expected shifts in the ranges of many organisms, animals and plants, seem drastic. In many cases, ranges seem likely to be smaller in the future as biota move toward the poles and higher up mountains (where that option exists). Bioclimatic envelope model...
Source: AIBS BioScience Editorials - June 8, 2009 Category: Biology Authors: BioScience Source Type: info