Leaf herbivores decrease fitness of a tropical plant

Damage by insect herbivores to neighboring individuals of the shrub Piper arieianum in a neotropical wet forest varies greatly. This differential damage has a genetic basis and results in a 2-year decrease in growth, seed production, and seed viability, with larger plants recovering before smaller plants. The results provide evidence that leaf herbivores represent a potentially strong selective force for the evolution of plant defenses.     

Polychlorinated Dibenzo-p-dioxins and Dibenzofurans in Sediments from Siskiwit Lake, Isle Royale

Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans were found in sediment from Siskiwit Lake on Isle Royale, Lake Superior, a location which can receive only atmospheric inputs. The source of these compounds is the atmospheric transport of dioxins and furans formed by combustion of domestic and chemical waste.     

Early eocene vertebrates from baja california: evidence for intracontinental age correlations

Newly discovered fossils support a Wasatchian (early Eocene) age for the Punta Prieta vertebrate fauna of Baja California and reveal the utility of land mammal ages on a continental scale. Dispersal scenarios for late Paleocene and early Eocene vertebrates usually invoke heterochrony for similar, but geographically separated, faunas or taxa. Such heterochrony is not supported by independent geochronologies or adequate geographic samples.     

The open society

The open society, unlike the closed society, requires constant citizen thought and action to ensure that it will continue to survive and prosper. Today in the United States we should give particular attention to three immediate problems. We should reinvigorate our national economic health and international competitiveness, particularly by reducing our unprecedented budget deficits and reforming our tax system. We must strengthen our scientific and engineering vitality, particularly in graduate engineering education and in secondary school instruction in science and mathematics. And we should work with our allies in the free industrialized world to keep our international open society as open as possible, encouraging a flow of people and information and ideas across national boundaries while instituting sensible and efficient safeguards against leakage of critical military technology to the Soviet Union.