News

The November/December 2011 online issue of The Scientist published an article by Mark on the High School Barcode Project, Barcode High.

For the 4th International Barcode of Life conference beginning 29 November in Adelaide, Australia, Mark Stoeckle led the preparation of the 2011 DNA Barcoding Highlights report while Jesse worked with David Schindel and Terry Collins on the Adelaide Barcode Conference Press Release. The documents describe well the progress of the barcode movement, which will celebrates its 9 birthday in January 2012.

Mark is interviewed by DNA Learning Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on how barcoding went from an idea in 2003 to more than 1 million barcoded specimens in 2011. T

As chairman of the International Barcode of Life (iBOL) project, Jesse authored a short essay, “Navigating around hazards to barcoding, 2011” published in the iBOL newsletter

The Alfred P. Sloan and Richard Lounsbery foundations have supported the creation of an interactive game to reduce the USA federal government budget deficit. The game has been played more than 150,000 times. It’s fun, more fun than actually reducing the deficit. Try the fantasy version at Budget Hero.

The New York Times created an interactive game “name the scientist” in which Jesse Ausubel is the wrong answer to the 4th question. Richard Dawkins is the right answer. Still we are flattered to be in such company. Enjoy the game.

On 23 August, PLoS Biology published an important paper from the Census of Marine Life, “How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean?” by Camilo Mora, Derek P. Tittensor, Sina Adl, Alastair G. B. Simpson, and Boris Worm. As of 12 September, the paper has been viewed more than 27,000 times, an astonishing number for a scientific paper on biodiversity. The paper attracted more than 1000 news stories around the world in more than 20 languages and 50 countries. Congratulations to Camilo and Company for having made a landmark contribution. For an example of the news coverage, see 8.7 million species exist on Earth, study estimates by Juliet Eilperin in the Washington Post.

On 5 September Version 2 of the Encyclopedia of Life [www.eol.org] became available. A press release describes some of the new features, which include easy ways to build communities and collections. The EOL is also now quite fully available in Spanish and Arabic. About 700,000 species now have webpages with content, remarkable progress since the first release in February 2008. Congratulations to the far-flung EOL team!

A sample of news coverage comes from the Guardian in the UK

An idea we have helped cultivate, the International Quiet Ocean Experiment, was the subject of a conference at the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission in Paris 30 August – 1 September 2011. On 3 September the French newspaper Le Monde ran a good article about the conference.