Biology

Statement by Francesca Grifo

April 28, 2009 -- Today, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar rescinded eleventh-hour Bush administration changes to Endangered Species Act regulations that allowed federal agencies to decide for themselves if their own projects—such as roads and dams—would threaten imperiled species. Federal agencies again will be required to consult with expert biologists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or National Marine Fisheries Service before undertaking or permitting new projects.

The rule change was just one of several controversial Bush administration actions that undermined the scientific foundation of the Endangered Species Act, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).    » read more »

Interior and Commerce Secretaries Must Act by May 9

April 27, 2009 -- More than 1,300 federal and independent scientists with biological expertise and three leading scientific societies today called on the Interior and Commerce departments to overturn rule changes made in January that weaken the scientific foundation of the Endangered Species Act.    » read more »

11/15/2007, San Juan, P.R. -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 224-foot research flagship Ocean Survey Vessel, the OSV BOLD is working in the waters of Puerto Rico this week conducting exciting marine biology studies of the San Juan Bay to protect and improve the environment of the Caribbean. The San Juan Bay Estuary is the only tropical estuary to be included in the EPA’s National Estuary Program.    » read more »

5-Sep-2007 -- IRD researchers (1) showed that Epinephilus maculates, a fairly abundant species of grouper off New Caledonia, was parasitized by 12 species of microscopic monogenean worms. This diversity of parasites has just been confirmed also in the malabar grouper, Epinephilus malabaricus, another the coral reef species. If such a level of parasite diversity prevails in all coral-reef fish, tens of thousands of parasite species are in this ecosystem waiting to be discovered.    » read more »

5-Sep-2007 -- A new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder indicates biologists trying to save Colorado's native greenback cutthroat trout from extinction over the past several decades through hatchery propagation and restocking efforts have, in most cases, inadvertently restored the wrong fish.    » read more »

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, NY - 15 Aug 2007: The National Center for Biomedical Computing at Columbia University, in collaboration with the IBM (NYSE: IBM) Computational Biology Center at IBM T.J. Watson Labs, today announced a call for participation at its yearly workshop for the assessment of methods for reverse engineering of biological circuits.
The Dialogue for Reverse Engineering Assessments and Methods (DREAM) workshop is intended to provide a forum for researchers to discuss a framework for the evaluation of experimental and computational tools used to reverse engineer biological pathways.    » read more »

Ruling Means State and Federal Water Projects May Be Required to Reduce Pumping to Protect Fish from Extinction, Say Conservation Groups

San Francisco, CA -- A federal judge ruled today that a government assessment of risk to threatened fish from massive pumps in the San Francisco Bay Delta is illegal and must be rewritten. State and federal water project managers relied on the "biological opinion" by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to justify increased water exports to farms and cities south of the delta.    » read more »

May 24, 2007 -- (AUGUSTA) – With open water recreation now underway throughout Maine, officials at the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) are urging all boaters to inspect their watercraft and trailers to prevent invasive plants from hitchhiking from lake to lake. Invasive non-native aquatic plants like Variable milfoil, Eurasian milfoil and Hydrilla are aggressive species that displace native habitat, compromise water quality and diminish economic and recreational value of inland waters.    » read more »

May 2, 2007 -- BERKELEY, CA —In recent years, the science of biology has been dominated by genomics – the study of genes and their functions. The genomics era is now making way for the era of proteomics – the study of the proteins that genes encode.    » read more »