Yangtze Dolphin Not Gone Yet!

Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 year 4 months (www.nytimes.com)

A large white mammal, possibly one of the China's rare baiji dolphins, proclaimed extinct just weeks ago, was sighted in the Yangtze River and videotaped. Heartening though this is, the article leaves out one important idea:

Scientists have said, even while they were searching for surviving dolphins, that even if a few individuals remained, they would not be enough to preserve the species.

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Identification of rickettsial isolates at the species level using multi-spacer typing

diefish submitted, created time 1 year 5 months (www.biomedcentral.com)

MST proved to be a reproducible and high-resolution genotyping method allowing clear identification of rickettsial isolates at the species level and further additional differentiation of strains within some species.

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One-sixth of Europe's mammals face extinction

enderyin submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (www.nature.com)

One-sixth of Europe's mammal species are threatened with extinction, according to a comprehensive survey by the World Conservation Union (IUCN). Unless the trend is reversed, conservationists fear that the European Union will not be able to meet its self-imposed target of halting biodiversity loss by 2010. "This new assessment proves that many European mammals are declining at an alarming rate," says IUCN director-general Julia Marton-Lefèvre. "However, we still have the power to reverse that trend, as the case of the European bison which was brought back from extinction clearly shows."

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