Although they have persisted for tens of millions of years, neotropical lowland forests have changed greatly in extent and composition due to climatic variation and to human impacts. In a symposium at the 2002 meetings of the Association for Tropical Biology, hosted by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), Panama, scientists presented the latest results of research on neotropical forests and their transformations up to the time of Columbus.

Bruce MacFadden, of the University o

A gene thought to keep a single X chromosome turned on in mice plays no such role in humans, Johns Hopkins researchers report in the August issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics.

The finding is likely to relegate the disproven gene to relative obscurity, at least in humans, says Barbara Migeon, M.D., of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, whose laboratory found the human version of the gene in 2001. It also moves the search for the gene from the X chromosome to the

R&D strongest in companies that hire CEO’s who are young, have background in marketing, science, R&D, says O.R. study

Research and Development spending to generate innovative new products is strongest at corporations whose CEO’s are younger, invest heavily in their own firms’ stock, and have experience in marketing, engineering, or R&D, according to a study in a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®).

In contras

First Ground-Based Mid-Infrared Observations of Brown Dwarfs [1]

A team of European astronomers [2] have observed eight Brown Dwarfs, i.e., small and faint objects also known as “failed stars”, with the TIMMI2 infrared sensitive instrument at the ESO 3.6-m telescope on La Silla.

From two of these, mid-infrared radiation is detected – for the first time ever from such objects with a ground-based telescope. While the younger Brown Dwarf, aged a few million years, is found

More Internet information means more disinformation,warns a Dartmouth engineering professor

Why is the stock market fluctuating wildly these days? Is it poor earnings reports? Is it questionable accounting practices or CEO inefficiency? Or do investors trade frantically after they’ve read something on the Internet? If an investor reads a seemingly authoritative report about a company’s performance, he or she might be influenced to buy or sell stock.

Sometimes what

Panama City, Panama-Today the world’s tropical forests are not only being cleared at an extraordinary rate, they are also increasingly being divided into fragments that can rapidly lose their original rich biodiversity. At the 2002 meetings of the Association for Tropical Biology, hosted by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), Panama, this conservation crisis was addressed in a symposium bringing together concerned investigators from throughout the tropics.

Organized by