June 2010 Archives

From PHD Comics

Image via Wikipedia

PROFESSOR Hugh Possingham's idea is simple - it is called endangered species lottery.

First, the government creams off $20 million from taxes on gambling revenues as a prize. The names of Australian endangered species are written on balls and put in a barrel. On Melbourne Cup day the environment minister draws a ball from the barrel live on television just before the big race.

Landholders who have populations of the winning species on their property are given a slice of the $20 million pie, with more money apportioned for larger populations

And then there are folks like Toby Bridges, who runs a website called Lobo Watch, which is decidedly anti-wolf.

"I agree that we are going to have some wolves, but I can tell you that if we have more and more wolves, people are going to start doing something about them," said Bridges. "People are going to take things into their own hands and solve the problem."

And what does Bridges think might happen?

Bridges' blog bumped the discussion to a new level June 5 when he posted a warning that hunters might consider using Xylitol artificial sweetener to poison wolves.

"Wolf control now has a new, until now secret, weapon." Bridges wrote. "I have a feeling that if Molloy goes against the wishes of today's hunters, there's going to be a whole lot of very sweet gut piles and wolf-killed carcasses dotting the landscape this fall. Along with some supplemental feeding of wolf pups come next spring."

Xylitol can be lethal to dogs, wolves, foxes and other canines by causing a sudden drop in blood sugar, often followed by fatal seizures or liver damage. Bridges said he wasn't calling for people to poison wolves, but predicting some would.

"The question I would ask, if a guy's not saying or advocating he's going to do it, why would he put it out on his website?" Darrah said. "It would be illegal to put it out purposely to kill wolves or any animal. The standard line from Fish, Wildlife and Parks would be if you take Xylitol or any other poison and lace meat with it and put it out there to kill wolves, that's a crime. This has been put out by Lobo Watch as a way to kill wolves. If wolves start dying as a result of this activity, that's where I'd look first."

Charles Heiser was born in Cynthiana, Indiana in 1920. He received his A.B. (1942) and M.A. (1943) from Washington University in St. Louis and his Ph.D. from the University of California in Berkeley in 1947. In that same year he joined the faculty of Indiana University.

His early research was with sunflowers (Helianthus), a genus that includes several cultivated plants as well as a large number of wild species. Through these studies Heiser first became interested in natural hybridization and its evolutionary significance and later in the origin of domesticated plants. The latter in turn led to consideration of the origin of agriculture. In addition to sunflowers he has also become an authority on a number of other plants, mostly ones of economic importance, such as chili peppers, naranjillas, various gourds and the totora. In recent years much of his research has been involved with plant breeding.

He has served as president of the following organizations: American Society of Plant Taxonomists (1967), Society for the Study of Evolution (1974), Society for Economic Botany (1978) and the Botanical Society of America (1980). He also has received the following honors: Guggenheim Fellowship (1953), Gleason Award of the New York Botanical Garden (1969), Merit Award of the Botanical Society of America (1972), Distinguished Economic Botanist from the Society of Economic Botany (1984), Pustovoit Award from the International Sunflower Association (1985) the Asa Gray Award from the American Society of Plant Taxonomists (1988) and the 2002 Raven Award presented by the American Society of Plant Taxonomists. In 1987 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

In addition to his scientific papers, he has written six semi-popular books dealing with useful plants and related subjects. Twenty nine students have received their doctoral degree under his direction.

What's happening here? I've seen plenty of articles mentioning the Santa Barbara spill. But why aren't there journalists digging into these resources? Don't tell me it's not that big of a story. It has been THE lead story on the evening news of virtually ALL television news shows since late April with segment and after segment, story after story being done.

I think there are two things at work here. First, there are so few science and environmental reporters left that nobody has the resources to afford the time to dig into the past. And second, in the age of the internet, most reporters probably view Wikipedia as good enough.

• Scholarly Communication at Texas A & M
• Mark Kleiman
• Sandwalk (Larry Moran)
• Science Insider
• Knight Science Journalism Tracker
  

• Nature's response

On June 5th the local newspaper in Beeville, a small town in Southern Texas, published a story about a local 4th grade student who had it said had just won the Junior Division of the National Science Fair for a project entitled "Disproving Global Warming." The student, Julisa Castillo, had received a package containing a trophy, medal, and plaque, along with a letter purporting to be from an official at the National Science Foundation and announcing her selection as the first place winner out of 50,000 projects entered from 50 states.

NPG has insisted on increasing the price of our license for Nature and its affiliated journals by 400 percent beginning in 2011, which would raise our cost for their 67 journals by well over $1 million dollars per year.

[T]he gold standard for independent scientific assessment on an international level. Its reports are the outputs of a formal, intergovernmental process.