When a new species emerges following adaptive changes to its local environment, the process of choosing a mate can help protect the new species' genetic identity and increase the likelihood of its survival. But of the many observable traits in a potential mate, which particular traits does a female tend to prefer?

Republicans in the US House of Representatives want NASA out of the climate-change business.

A bill floated by leaders of the House Science Committee seeks to restore “proper balance to NASA’s science portfolio” by slashing roughly US$500 million from the agency’s Earth science division, which received $1.785 billion this year. The move is part of a broader push by Republicans to replenish NASA’s planetary science division, which has seen drastic cuts in recent years.

But the severity of the Earth science cuts even shocked Steven Squyres, a planetary scientist at Cornell University in New York, who led the planetary community’s 2011 decadal survey. He told lawmakers today that the proposed cut to Earth science research is “alarmingly deep”.

But Republicans dismissed such concerns. “Over the last five years, the Earth science programme has grown by over 40% at the expense of other critical missions,” said Representative Steve Palazzo (Republican, Mississippi). “There are 13 agencies within the government that fund over $2.5 billion in climate change research, but only one agency in the government does space exploration.”

The bill would allow NASA to continue developing satellites and sensors for other government agencies — including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Department of the Interior — as long as those agencies pay for the work. But it would block a White House plan to give NASA the responsibility of developing three climate sensors for the NOAA Joint Polar Satellite System, a new series of climate and weather probes.

The legislation is not the final word on NASA’s funding. As an ‘authorization bill’ it is intended to guide the process by which Congress determines the agency’s budget each year, but it does not itself determine how much money NASA will receive.

And it has not been enacted into law, which would require approval from the House and the Senate, a body that has been friendlier to climate-change research programmes in recent years. The Senate is expected to introduce its own NASA authorization bill later this summer.

Science publishers are sending out decidedly mixed messages about how seriously they take the impact factor — the much-maligned measure of how often the average research paper in a journal is cited.

A record number of journals — 66 of them, including 33 new offenders — have been banned from this year’s impact-factor list (released today) because of excessive self-citation or because of ‘citation stacking’ (in which journals cite each other to excessive amounts). This year, the named-and-shamed titles include the International Journal of Crashworthiness and the Iranian Journal of Fuzzy Systems. Only 51 were banned last year (28 new offenders), and 34 the year before that. Along with the record numbers, Thomson Reuters has posted a new explanation of why it decides to ban journals — essentially because the self-citations distort the rankings.

But while these journals (just 0.5% of the total 10,853) appear to have taken the impact-factor game far too seriously, other publishers have pledged to ‘reduce emphasis on the impact factor as a promotional tool’. That came as part of a May statement called DORA (the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment), which more broadly deplored the fact that the impact factor is used not only to judge journals, but also to judge individual scientists and the quality of their research papers.

In the middle of these two stances — the don’t-care and the care-too-much — come the vast bulk of journals, whose editors will have been waiting keenly to see their new scores, even though they recognize the limitations of the metric. As has been pointed out many times — and again in DORA — the impact factor judges only how much a journal is cited on average and bears little relation to the individual papers within a journal.

According to one recent paper, moreover, the variance of research papers’ citations around their journal’s impact factor is widening, making the metric an even poorer judge of journal impact, as George Lozano argued earlier this month on the London School of Economics blog.

For what it’s worth, Thomson Reuters says that 55% of journals increased their impact factor this year, and 45% decreased. Among those declining is the world’s largest journal by number of papers published, PLoS ONE, which has dropped 16% from an average impact factor of 4.4 in 2010 (when it published 6,749 articles), to 3.7 in 2012 (when it published 23,468 articles). Since the journal’s publisher, PLoS, is a signatory of DORA, it probably does not mind.

Indeed, Damian Pattinson, the editorial director of PLoS ONE, wrote in a blog post about impact factor yesterday: “The more notable achievement is that we really are publishing all kinds of research, regardless of its estimated impact, and letting the community decide what is worthy of citation … it’s a good time to remember that it is the papers, not the journals they´re published in, that make the impact.”

Young women who have cancer treatment often lose their fertility because chemotherapy and radiation can damage or kill their immature ovarian eggs, called oocytes. Now, Northwestern Medicine® scientists have found the molecular pathway that can prevent the death of immature ovarian eggs due to chemotherapy, potentially preserving fertility and endocrine function.

Ocean acidification due to rising carbon dioxide levels will reduce the density of coral skeletons, making coral reefs more vulnerable to disruption and erosion, according to a new study of corals growing where submarine springs naturally lower the pH of seawater.

Discovery of a mutant gene responsible for a disease is a milestone, but for most conditions, it may be only a first step towards a treatment or cure. Understanding Rett Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder, is further complicated by the fact that the implicated gene controls a suite of other genes. Two papers, published in today's Nature Neuroscience and Nature, reveal key steps in how mutations in the gene for methyl CpG-binding protein (MECP2) cause the condition. The Rett Syndrome Research Trust (RSRT) funded this work with generous support from partners Rett Syndrome Research Trust UK and Rett Syndrome Research & Treatment Foundation.

This photo shows the brick-and-mortar pattern of simulated bone and nacre against the backdrop of real nacre found in the inner shell of many molluscs. Researchers working to design new materials that are durable, lightweight and environmentally sustainable are increasingly looking to natural composites, such as bone, for inspiration: Bone is strong and tough because its two constituent materials, soft collagen protein and stiff hydroxyapatite mineral, are arranged in complex hierarchical patterns that change at every scale of the composite, from the micro up to the macro.

The African dung beetle genera.
Adrian L.V. Davis, Andrey V. Frolov and Clarke H. Scholtz. 1st ed. Pretoria: Protea Book House, 2008. HOLLIS# 013688702
QL596.S3 D38 2008

Animal personalities: behavior, physiology, and evolution.
Edited by Claudio Carere and Dario Maestripieri. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013. HOLLIS# 013672746
QL751.A667 2013

The biology of hover wasps.
By Stefano Turillazzi. Berlin; New York: Springer, c2012. HOLLIS# 013672754
QL568.V5 T87 2012

Colored atlas of Chinese amphibians and their distributions.
Written by Fei Liang, Ye Changyuan, Jiang Jianping. Chengdu Shi: Sichuan Publishing Group, Sichuan Publishing House of Science & Technology, [2012]. HOLLIS# 013699002
QL661.C6 Z47 2012

Faunal assemblages, stratigraphy and taphonomy of the Late Miocene localities in the Republic of Moldova.
By Aleksandru Lungu and Barbara Rzebik-Kowalska. Kraków: Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals, Polish Academy of Sciences, 2011. HOLLIS# 013697255
QE739.L85 2011

Gliding mammals of the world.
By Stephen Jackson; illustrated by Peter Schouten. Collingwood, Vic.: CSIRO Pub., c2012. HOLLIS# 013691671
QL739.J33 2012

Guimarota: a Jurassic ecosystem.
Thomas Martin & Bernard Krebs (editors). München: Verlag Dr. Friedrich Pfeil, 2000. HOLLIS# 013705235
QE733.G955 2000 (gift of Farish Jenkins)

Handbook of the mammals of the world. Volume 3, primates.
Chief editors, Don E. Wilson, Russell A. Mittermeier; associate editors, Sue Ruff, Albert Martínez-Vilalta; authors, Paolo Cavallini … [et al.]. Barcelona: Lynx, c2009-. HOLLIS# 012111668
Ref. QL701.2.H25 2009 v. 3

A history of Polish birds.
By Zygmunt Bocheński, Zbigniew M. Bocheński, and Teresa Tomek. Kraków: Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals, Polish Academy of Sciences, 2012. HOLLIS# 013697257
QL690.P7 B63 2012

House dust mites and storage mites (Acari, Oribatida, Astigmatina): identification keys.
By Krzysztof Solarz. Kraków: Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals, Polish Academy of Sciences, 2012. HOLLIS# 013697251
QL458.S59 2012

Illustrated keys to free-living invertebrates of Eurasian Arctic seas and adjacent deep waters. Volume 3, Cnidaria, Ctenophora.
Moskva: T-vo nauch. izd. KMK, 2009- HOLLIS# 012566222
QL365.57.I55 2009 v. 3

In the light of evolution. Volume 6, brain and behavior.
John C. Avise and Francisco J. Ayala, editors. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, c2007-. HOLLIS# 011964899
QH359.I55 2009 v. 6

The lone wolverine: tracking Michigan’s most elusive animal.
By Elizabeth Philips Shaw and Jeff Ford. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, c2012. HOLLIS# 013691686
QL737.C25 S49 2012

The nine-banded armadillo: a natural history.
By W.J. Loughry and Colleen M. McDonough. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, [2013]. HOLLIS# 013691673
QL737.E23 L68 2013

Penguins: natural history and conservation.
Edited by Pablo Garcia Borboroglu and P. Dee Boersma. Seattle: University of Washington Press, [2013]. HOLLIS# 013691691
QL696.S473 P4527 2013

Phylogenomics of the flowering plant clade Malpighiales.
A dissertation presented by Zhenxiang Xi to the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology in partial fulfillment for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of biology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 2013. HOLLIS# 013673175
QK495.M26 X4 2013

Relentless evolution.
By John N. Thompson. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013. HOLLIS# 013672826
QH366.2.T54 2013

Science and conservation in the Galapagos Islands: frameworks & perspectives.
Stephen J. Walsh, Carlos F. Mena, editors. New York: Springer, c2013. HOLLIS# 013672829
QH198.G3 S35 2013

The second atlas of breeding birds of Vermont.
Edited by Rosalind B. Renfrew. Hanover: University Press of New England, [2013]. HOLLIS# 013691683
QL684.V5 S43 2013

Spiny lobsters: through the eyes of the giant packhorse.
By John Booth. Wellington [Vic.]: Victoria University Press, c2011. HOLLIS# 013691688
QL444.M33 B69 2011

Starfish: biology and ecology of the Asteroidea.
Edited by John M. Lawrence. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. HOLLIS# 013672831
QL384.A8 S73 2013

The story of Asia’s elephants.
By Raman Sukumar. Mumbai: The Marg Foundation, 2011.
QL737.P98 S8577 2011

Strickberger’s evolution.
By Brian K Hall & Benedikt Hallgrimsson. 5th ed. Burlington, Mass.: Jones & Bartlett Learning, c2013. HOLLIS# 013672834
QH366.2.S78 2013

Swordfish: a biography of the ocean gladiator.
By Richard Ellis. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013. HOLLIS# 013691679
QL638.X5 E45 2013

Texas waterfowl.
William P. Johnson and Mark W. Lockwood. 1st ed. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, c2013. HOLLIS# 013691675
QL696.A52 J68 2013

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