Rockefeller University

Program for the Human Environment

News

ABBI issues Inaugural Workshop Report

The All Birds Barcoding Initiative (ABBI) issued its Inaugural Workshop Report. The meeting was attended by 48 participants from 23 countries. At the close of the meeting, co-chair Allan Baker drew a comparison with the Human Genome Project. There was early resistance to and skepticism of the Genome Project that gave way to collaboration and success. Based on his experience and research results to date, Baker predicted that the ornithological community would come to accept and support barcoding and that ABBI would be highly successful.

Secret Forests of El Salvador

In 1992 we began to work on the question “How Much Land Can Ten Billion People Spare for Nature?” that led to our recognition of the Great Reversal of human extension on the land surface and the chance for a Great Restoration of forests. Most colleagues and reviewers fought furiously against these ideas and our papers such as on Lightening the Tread of Population on the Land: American Examples and How Much Will Feeding More and Wealthier People Encroach on Forests?. A standard refrain was, “Maybe in the USA but never in a country such as El Salvador.” Now a report on The Secret Forests of El Salvador from the Center for Forestry Research confirms forests in that country grew almost 40% between 1992-2001.

https://www.cifor.cgiar.org/docs/_ref/polex/english/

The full reference of the article is: Hecht, S.B., S. Kandel, I. Gomez, N. Cuellar, and H. Rosa. 2006. Globalization, Forest Resurgence, and Environmental Politics in El Salvador, World Development, Vol. 34 (2), February.

Barcoding Worries and Limits

DNA barcoding, like other rapidly diffusing technologies, elicits worries. Jesse Ausubel and Paul Waggoner have made a list of Barcoding Worries and Limits 1-9. We think it valuable to recognize and catalogue them. At a later time, we may post our responses to the worries. We think the worries are mostly phantoms, but also accept that humans see phantoms.

Brewster Kahle speech

Back in early 2002, concerned about ways to preserve and keep accessible websites important for history of science and technology, Abby Smith and David Kirsch brought Jesse in contact with the Internet Archive, its founder Brewster Kahle and extraordinarily talented associates such as computer scientist Raymie Stata. Soon after, expert PHE computing advisor Perrin Meyer joined Jesse on a visit to the Archive headquarters at the Presidio in San Francisco, where we were able to appreciate the fantastic concept and excellent early implementation of the Internet Archive. We were pleased to help arrange for the Sloan Foundation to become one of the Archive’s major supporters. The ever-inventive Brewster Kahle has meanwhile progressed with his audacious plan for universal access to all recorded knowledge , and on 25 October 2005 the Archive held a meeting to form the Open Content Alliance to speed the scanning of books into a digital library. Our colleague, Doron Weber, attended the widely reported meeting and is quoted in the Reuters coverage.

History of Marine Animal Populations honors

The History of Marine Animal Populations (HMAP) project of the Census of Marine Life program honored Jesse with the opportunity to present the Keynote address to the HMAP Oceans Past conference 22-25 October in Denmark. Jesse spoke about “Future Knowledge of Life in Oceans Past.” The news release and work presented at the conference attracted worldwide press coverage, including in the New York Times, Economist, and Spanish EFE wire service.

Goobye and Good Luck: It can happen here

Seeing the good new film about Edward R. Murrow, “Goodbye and Good Luck,” reminded Jesse Huntley Ausubel that his godfather, Reverend Joseph Huntley, made the front page of the New York Times for attacking McCarthy in a sermon entitled “It can happen here” in July 1953, more than 3 months before Murrow aired his first show on CBS TV.

Genome Web article

On April 23, 2003 Jesse visited with Craig Venter at the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives in Rockville MD to learn about IBEA’s plans for sequencing the microbial “marine genome”, which would strongly influence and advance the International Census of Marine Microbes of the Census of Marine Life. In response to a not-so-serious remark from Jesse about “What’s next after sequencing the ocean, the atmosphere?”, Craig answered very seriously, “Yes, exactly.” This led to a collaboration, ably implemented by Sloan Foundation colleague Paula Olsiewski and IBEA’s Bob Friedman, to explore the “air genome” in New York City. An October 17 2005 story in Genome Web reports good progress in the project, which was announced in a March 2005 press release.