Last week, the Chicago Tribune reported [2], the US Environmental Protection Agency forced the director of its Midwest Office to quit after she refused to let Dow Chemical off the hook for stalling on the cleanup of dioxin-contaminated soil stretching 50 miles from its Midland, Mich., plant. Regional Administrator Mary Gade had ordered Dow to dredge a number of dioxin hotspots over the past year and balked at the company’s attempts to negotiate a more comprehensive cleanup as stalling.
Why Did the EPA Fire a Respected Toxicologist? A Longtime Defender of Scientific Integrity Speaks Out [1]
Submitted by Liza Gross on Mon, 2008-05-12 16:39.
( categories: Publishing [3] )
The Amphibian Extinction Crisis: Will Humans Rise to the Challenge? Guest Blog by Kevin Zippel [4]
Submitted by Micah Dubreuil on Tue, 2008-05-06 15:54.
In a new PLoS Biology article, “The Challenge of Conserving Amphibian Megadiversity in Madagascar [5],” Franco Andreone et al. argue that governments and conservation organizations should invest in proactive efforts to protect amphibians in Madagascar, which harbors some of the richest groups of amphibian fauna in the world, before the populations go into decline. We asked Kevin Zippel [6], program director of the Amphibian Ark [7], created to keep “threatened amphibian species afloat” through captive management programs, to explain the value of the authors’ approach.
( categories: Publishing [8] )
Bioinformatics in China [9]
Submitted by Evie Browne on Fri, 2008-04-25 07:10.
PLoS Computational Biology regional perspective series new article: Bioinformatics in China.
( categories: Publishing [10] )
Hear Harold Varmus on NPR's Science Friday this week. [11]
Submitted by Liz Allen on Wed, 2008-04-09 10:58.
Dr Harold Varmus, Chairman of the PLoS Board, is being interviewed on NPR's Science Friday [12] this week about his PLoS Biology Editorial [13] in which he applauds the newly enacted NH Public Access Policy as a positive step toward ensuring greater access to and better use of the scientific literature. Tune in and feel free to ask questions on the show.
( categories: Publishing [14] )
Raking It In [15]
Submitted by Rebecca Walton on Fri, 2008-04-04 11:11.
This week, we were delighted to discover that PLoS ONE [16] had appeared in the New York Times for the [17] sixth [18] week [19] in [20] a [21] row [22], with an article [23] and part of a podcast [24] on a paper by Iriki and colleagues who trained degus (a type of rodent) to manipulate a rake (“as smoothly and efficiently as croupiers in any Las Vegas casino,” according to the NYT), in their paper, Tool-Use Training in a Species of Rodent: The Emergence of an Optimal Motor Strategy and Functional Understanding [25].
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