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SICB Announcements


    Marine Lab and Field Station Opportunities
    If you’re interested in a summer course and research opportunities at a field station, check out http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/marinebio/mblabs.html and http://scilib.vcsd.edu/sio/ for listings of marine labs, or http://Jasper.Stanford.edu/OBFS/ (case-sensitive) for inland field stations. We had intended to create such a site for SICB, but thanks to Daphne Fautin and Alan Kohn, who saved us the effort by finding these!

    ATCC Offers Workshops and Conferences
    The American Type Culture Collection is offering a series of workshops and conferences on subjects as varied as extremophiles, microscopy, recombinant DNA techniques, biosafety, DNA fingerprinting, hybridomas and monoclonal antibodies, cryopreservation, and virus propagation. For further information about these "hands-on" training experiences, contact the ATCC workshop coordinator at 800-359-7370; e-mail: workshops@atcc.org; or visit http://www.atcc.org/workshops/workshop.html.

    Doctoral Scholarships in U.S. National Parks
    The Canon National Parks Science Scholars Program, underwritten by the Canon USA, the NPS, Natural Park Foundation and AAAS, will award four $25,000/year fellowships for up to three years’ dissertation research in national parks. The research area that will be supported in biological sciences is "The Relationship of Fire Regimes to Landscape Processes and Patterns Within Parks and Their Surrounding Areas." For more detailed information and application materials, contact Dr. Gary E. Machlis, Program Coordinator for Canon Scholars, USDI-NPS, 1849 C Street NW (MIB 3127), Washington, DC 20240; 202/208-5391; e-mail gmachlis@uidaho.edu.

    Fulbright Awards
    The competition for 1999-2000 Fulbright Awards opened March 1, with an August 1 deadline for lecturing and research grants worldwide. Requirements include U.S. citizenship and a Ph.D. or comparable professional qualifications. Grants are made to both academic and non-academic professionals, although for lecturing awards college teaching experience is desired. Most lecturing assignments are carried out in English, although skills in other languages are needed in some countries. Deadlines are May 1 for distinguished Fulbright chairs in Western Europe and Canada, August 1 for lecturing and research grants in academic year 1999-2000, and November 1 for international education and academic administrator seminars. For details contact: USIA Fulbright Senior Scholar Program, Council for International Exchange of Scholars, 3007 Tilden Street NW, Suite 5L, Box GNEWS, Washington, DC 20008-3009; 202-686-7877; www.cies.org; e-mail (requests for application materials only): apprequest@cies.iie.org.

    Animal Rights Movement: Skirmish with the National Academy of Sciences, and Other News
    Last year animal rights activists, upset with the NAS’s review of and recommendations for the "NIH Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals," brought suit against the NAS, asserting that it was subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act and had to make all its workings public. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the 1972 law, even while acknowledging that it’s not appropriate for a scientific body that should be able to operate without external pressures. Last November Congress agreed that this was a "whoops" and passed an amendment to the FACA exempting the NAS from its more onerous provisions.

    This information came via the "National Association for Biomedical Research (NABR) Update." Since SICB is a member organization, our members now can get all the NABR Updates and alerts (emphasizing news about the animal rights movement and means to deal with it positively) through the "members only" section of NABR’s web site (www.nabr.org). To gain access privileges, e-mail your request including your full name, title, member institution affiliation (SICB), and your e-mail address to: members@nabr.org.

    EBO Table of Contents
    E-mail Alerts

    You can now subscribe to an alert system that will send you the table of contents for Experimental Biology Online (EBO) or other Springer Verlag journals, whenever they are updated. To subscribe, surf to http://link.springer.de/alert/.

    1998 Summer Course in Sensory Neurobiology
    Chuck Derby and Hank Trapido-Rosenthal will be offering a three week course, "Chemosensory Neurobiology in the Marine Environment," at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research in July. It should be of special interest to advanced undergraduate and graduate students who wish to learn cellular, molecular and systems experimental approaches to the study of nervous systems, and to do so in a beautiful and stimulating setting. A com-plete description can be found at http://www.bbsr.edu, or by contacting either of the instructors: Charles Derby, Department of Biology, Georgia State University, Atlanta GA USA; e-mail: cderby@gsu.edu; 404/651-3058; or Henry Trapido-Rosenthal, Bermuda Biological Station for Research, Ferry Reach, St. George’s GE-01, Bermuda; e-mail: hank@bbsr.edu; 441/297-1880.

    Evolution Education Crisis (Again!)
    Joe Graves, DICI secretary, pointed out that late last year Arizona’s board of education adopted biology standards that did not mention the concept of evolution anywhere in the K-12 curriculum. At least one of the members of the State Board (the lay member) is a creationist. Due to the initial pressure of a few intrepid high school teachers, the standards were amended to include vague language about evolution and "equilibrium" in the preamble. Joe testified before the board, managed to throw enough doubt on the quality of the biology standards to get a new hearing, and has been feverishly soliciting letter-writing and building a coalition of scientists, high school teachers, lay people, clergy, etc. to face this assault on reason and the scientific approach to the universe. Similar conflicts over standards are afoot in New Mexico. Clearly, we must remain vigilant and proactive in teaching the public how scientific thinking works to produce conclusions from information, and what evolutionary theory really is (and isn’t).

    Author/Illustrator/Biologist Institute
    The Center of Children’s Literature and the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) at Woods Hole, Mass. will bring together eminent field and laboratory biologists with about 200 of the world’s most prominent children’s book writers and illustrators in order to inspire the creation of important new children’s books.

    For more information, contact The Center for Children’s Environ-mental Literature, P.O. Box 5995, Washington, DC 20016; 202/966-6110; e-mail: lncherry@aol.com.

    Forum to Discuss Salmon in the Pacific Northwest
    A web site devoted to the ecology and the conflict over restoring salmon in the Pacific Northwest is at http://www.cyberlearn.com. This free commercial site features articles, technical reports, opposing viewpoints and news updates, as well as a "Town Hall Forum."

    AIBS Celebrates 50th Anniversary
    The American Institute of Biological Sciences, of which SICB is a member society, hits the half-century mark this year. It continues to be a voice for all biologists, publishing Bioscience (now 12 issues/year), holding national meetings, lobbying for increased funding for science, cosponsoring Congressional Fellows (scientists as assistants to legislators), and brokering peer reviews, among other services. Its mission statement, since 1947, has been to "be an umbrella organization for all of biology, and for all biologists."

    The New (XVIII) International Congress of Zoology
    In 1889 the First International Congress was organized by P. Blanchard in Paris. It is now 25 years since the last International Congress of Zoology was held in Monte Carlo. The most serious consequence of the cessation of the congresses has been a tacit recognition of the general depreciation of zoology in the academic world. However, today zoology is more alive than ever. The organizers are ready to again bring forward the rich unifying aspects of zoology.

    After the positive reaction of the international community of zoologists and the support of a number of national organizations, the date of the New Congress, "The New Panorama of Animal Evolution," has been set for Sept. 4-9, 2000 at the Faculty of Philosophy, at the University of Athens, Greece, under the auspices of the Hellenic Zoological Society.

    In order to reverse the present trend of fragmentation of zoology and the crisis in the professional zoological education which became rampant after the suspension of the congresses in 1972, this first renewed congress is dedicated to a number of integrative symposia and general discussions.

    Unlike ongoing congresses and conferences, this initiative represents a new start. In order to be able to commit ourselves, a critical mass of positive responses is needed. Before the end of September 1998, visit the International Congress of Zoology web page at: http://www. york.biosis.org/zrdocs/ new_icz.


The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology
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Phone: 703-790-1745 or 800-955-1236
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