“UAH biology faculty describes scene in meeting, tries to come to grips ... - Everything Alabama Blog” plus 3 more

UAH biology faculty describes scene in meeting, tries to come to grips ... - Everything Alabama Blog
Can Climate Shift the Biology of Ecosystems? - YAHOO!
Staggered by a Shooting, a Small Biology Department Tries to Regain ... - New York Times
Maine considers banning biology-based restrooms - WND.com

UAH biology faculty describes scene in meeting, tries to come to grips ... - Everything Alabama Blog

Posted: 16 Feb 2010 05:29 AM PST

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By Steve Doyle

February 16, 2010, 7:22AM

Dave Dieter / The Huntsville TimesStudents wrote words of encourgement in chalk on UAH's sidewalks over the weekend.

HUNTSVILLE, AL -- One of the survivors of Friday's deadly shooting said he is confident the University of Alabama in Huntsville's decimated biology faculty will get past the tragedy and get on with the business of educating students.

But it's going to take time, Dr. Joseph Ng said Monday.

"It's quite devastating," said Ng, who was inside the third-floor conference room at UAH's Shelby Center when three of his colleagues were shot and killed with a 9 mm handgun. Police arrested Dr. Amy Bishop, another member of the UAH biology faculty who had failed to earn tenure several months ago.

"One day, you have all these great people working with you," Ng said. "Next day, they're gone."

Ng sent an e-mail to a friend in California on Sunday describing the chaotic scene inside the conference room. According to his e-mail, Bishop stood up about 30 minutes into the meeting and pulled out a gun.

"She started with the one closest to her and went down the row shooting her targets in the head," Ng wrote. "Six people sitting in the rows perpendicular were all shot fatally or seriously wounded. The remaining 5 including myself were on the other side of the table (and) immediately dropped to the floor.

"During a reload, the shooter was rushed, and we pushed her out the hall way and closed the door. Thereafter we barricaded the door and called 911."

Ng told the Associated Press the charge was led by Debra Moriarity, a professor of biochemistry, after Bishop aimed the gun at her and attempted to fire but it didn't shoot. He said Moriarity pushed her way to Bishop, urged her to stop, and then helped force her out the door.

"Moriarity was probably the one that saved our lives. She was the one that initiated the rush," he told the AP. "It took a lot of guts to just go up to her."

Ng said the survivors worried she would shoot her way through the door, and frantically worked up backup plan in case she burst through. But she never did.

"There was a time when I didn't think I'd come out of the room alive," he said. "I don't think any of us thought we'd come out alive."

Ng said he never intended his e-mail to be made public. But it wound up on the Orange County Register's Web site on Monday, when Ng's friend forwarded it to the California newspaper without asking his permission.

He declined Monday to talk about his thoughts about Bishop.

"We're key witnesses," Ng said. "I don't want to say anything that might compromise the investigation or the whole process that's to come."

Dr. Robert Lawton, another professor who survived the shooting, also declined to talk about the incident when reached at home Monday.

"I just don't want to go into what happened in that room," Lawton said. "Why would you want to describe a car wreck?"

Ng, an associate professor who coordinates UAH's biotechnology doctorate program, said the shooting happened during an otherwise "mundane" faculty meeting about budgets and schedules.

UAH's 13 full-time faculty members are a tight bunch, Ng said, that often has dinner together in each others' homes. He said it's more like a family than the "all business" biology departments where he has worked in the past.

"There's Southern hospitality here, I've got to admit," said Ng, who grew up in Los Angeles.

In the aftermath of the deadliest shooting episode on an Alabama college campus, Ng said the uninjured members of the biology faculty are trying to be strong for the families that are preparing to bury their loved ones. The first funeral, for Dr. Adriel Johnson, is Friday.

Department assistant Stephanie Monticciolo, who suffered a gunshot wound to the face, is listed in serious condition in Huntsville Hospital's surgical intensive care unit. Microbiology professor Dr. Joseph Leahy remains in critical condition in the neuro ICU.

"Right now," Ng said, "we're just trying to find out how we can work best with the families and the ones still in the hospital."

When classes at UAH resume Monday, Ng said he expects biology professors to come from as far as Birmingham and Tuscaloosa to help out. HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology may also play a role in getting the department back on its feet, he said.

Ng, who came to the Rocket City 11 years ago, said he hopes the deadly school shootings on back-to-back Fridays haven't shaken people's confidence in Huntsville. There's a reason this area scores high in just about every national survey of the best places to live, he said.

The UAH shooting "is an outlier," Ng said. "It has nothing to do with the degradation of society here in Huntsville.

"It was just an event that was completely unpredictable."

Read all our coverage of the UAH shooting.

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Can Climate Shift the Biology of Ecosystems? - YAHOO!

Posted: 16 Feb 2010 03:41 AM PST

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Scientists have made lots of projections over the past few years about how warming temperatures and a changing climate will affect the planet. Real-world measurements have confirmed at least some of them: sea level is clearly rising, for instance, and the ice that covers the Arctic Ocean is shrinking and thinning - in the latter case, faster than anyone had expected just a few years ago.

Other measurements are a lot more difficult, though. It's reasonable to expect, for example, that ecosystems will change as plants and animals respond to a rising thermometer - but how do you measure the change of an ecosystem that may consist of hundreds or even thousands of species? (See pictures of the effects of global warming.)

The answer, evident in a paper just published in the journal Global Change Biology, is that it isn't easy - but it's possible nevertheless. A team of scientists led by Stephen Thackeray, an expert on lake ecology at the United Kingdom's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, has combed through observations of more than 700 species of fish, birds, mammals, insects, amphibians, plankton and a wide variety of plants across the U.K. taken between 1976 and 2005, and found a consistent trend: more than 80% of "biological events" - including flowering of plants, ovulation among mammals and migration of birds - are coming earlier today than they were in the 1970s.

On average, these events are occurring about 11 days earlier, and the pace of change has been accelerating with every decade. "The pattern is very similar," says Thackeray, "whether you look at marine or freshwater or terrestrial organisms."

But differences in the pattern emerged when scientists looked at species at different levels of the food chain. As part of the analysis, says Thackeray, "we grouped these trends according to organisms' positions." What they found was that the changes in biological events were greater toward the bottom of the food chain than they were at the top. (See the top 10 invasive species.)

In theory, that could prove to be a serious problem. In some cases, predators will be able to adapt to changes in their prey. In others, however, maybe not. A 2006 study in Nature, for example, documented plummeting populations of a bird called the pied flycatcher in the Netherlands. The reason: an earlier spring was speeding up the emergence of caterpillars that were the birds' staple. But because the flycatchers' were leaving their wintering grounds in West Africa at the regular time, their eggs were now hatching in the Netherlands too late in the season, after the caterpillars were nearly gone.

Thackeray is too careful a scientist to speculate about whether that sort of disconnect lies in the future for U.K. species. "I want to be very careful to talk only about what we've formally tested. My feeling is that the impact will vary, but I can't say more," he says. He's even too cautious to state that these changes are necessarily evidence of global warming. "The patterns are coherent across different habitats," he says, "which would suggest a large-scale phenomenon. It would be tempting to conclude that this might be a change in climate. But we need to do further study before we can draw that conclusion, and we have to be rigorous and unbiased."

Nevertheless, biologists have been suggesting for years that species across the board are likely to come under some metaphorical heat as the actual temperature rises - and this new and exhaustive piece of research is at the very least perfectly consistent with those predictions.

Lemonick is the senior science writer at Climate Central.

See TIME's special report on the Copenhagen climate-change summit.

Watch a cartoon video on climate change.

View this article on Time.com

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Staggered by a Shooting, a Small Biology Department Tries to Regain ... - New York Times

Posted: 15 Feb 2010 10:26 PM PST

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HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — When after many months of careful tending, Sarah Cseke reached a milestone in her graduate student research, she went straight to the office of the busy chairman of the biology department at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Gopi Podila, to share the triumphal moment.

"I knocked on his door with a petri dish full of hairy roots, and he actually came to the door and took the time to look at it," she said. "He was just as happy as I was."

On Friday, the biology department at the university lost Dr. Podila, 52, and two other faculty members in a hail of gunfire at an afternoon faculty meeting. A colleague with a Harvard Ph.D., Amy Bishop, is charged with capital murder. Another professor and the department administrator are still in the hospital in critical condition.

The deaths have left a small, close-knit department trying to pick up the pieces without either its leader, Dr. Podila, or the person colleagues described as its "glue," Stephanie Monticciolo, 62, the administrator, who doles out hugs and birthday reminders. Ms. Monticciolo is in the hospital with a gunshot wound to the head.

The two other people killed were Maria Ragland Davis, 50, and Adriel Johnson, 52, described as professors who spent hours of extra time helping students. A colleague, Joseph Leahy, 50, a microbiology professor known for his zesty lectures, remained hospitalized with a head wound.

"They will leave a large hole in our department," said Debra Moriarity, a biology professor and the dean of the university's graduate program.

A third member of the department, Luis Cruz-Vera, was released from the hospital over the weekend.

When Dr. Podila, a native of India, arrived nine years ago to build the university's biotechnology program, colleagues had to struggle to find him vegetarian meals. He and his wife, Vani, quickly became well known in Huntsville's Indian community, arranging performances and, together, choreographing traditional Indian dances. He had two teenage daughters.

Dr. Podila was described as an enthusiastic administrator with a research interest in biofuels and the symbiotic relationship between fungi and trees. But he was just as interested in human symbiosis, said Joseph Ng, a fellow professor. "He was always encouraging collaborative efforts," Dr. Ng said.

Dr. Johnson, who was married to a veterinarian, was from Tuskegee, Ala. He had two sons, one in college and one in high school, with whom he had recently been visiting colleges. His research focused on diabetes. On campus, he was the director of the Louis B. Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, and he also screened and helped students who wanted to go to medical school.

His desire to make sure minority students succeeded made him a stern but fatherly figure, colleagues said.

Dr. Davis, an enthusiastic gardener who was married and had three stepchildren, came to the campus from one of the city's prominent biotechnology companies, Research Genetics. James Hudson, who started the company, said he had hired her away from Alabama A&M, where she was doing postdoctoral research. He said she had wanted to improve agriculture in developing countries by creating plants that could thrive in inferior soil.

In an interview on "Good Morning America" on ABC, Melissa Davis, Dr. Davis's stepdaughter, said the family had still been recovering from the death of her mother when her father remarried. "We didn't want to open our hearts quickly because we loved our mom so much, and Maria came in with this gentle and kind heart," Ms. Davis said. "She just brought this life back."

On Monday, officials in Massachusetts continued to pore over Dr. Bishop's past, including a 1986 case in which she killed her brother with a shotgun. The shooting was declared accidental, but questions are being raised about it again. The revelation that she and her husband were questioned in the attempted mail bombing of a Harvard colleague has also drawn interest.

John Polio, the former police chief in Braintree, Mass., who came under criticism for not pursuing charges in the shooting, said Monday that while he stood by the decision, he had come to wonder in light of the Huntsville killings and the pipe bomb investigation.

"You put them all together and it does make you doubt just what happened and how it happened," Mr. Polio said. "You have to be more than a psychiatrist to figure that one out. I don't think anybody can really get a handle on it. These things happen, and they happen to people we least suspect they could happen to."

Also Monday, Dr. Bishop's husband, James Anderson, told The Chronicle of Higher Education that his wife had borrowed the 9-millimeter handgun found near the shooting site and that he had gone with her to an indoor shooting range in recent weeks. He had previously said the family did not own a gun.

Shaila Dewan reported from Huntsville, and Katie Zezima from Boston.

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Maine considers banning biology-based restrooms - WND.com

Posted: 15 Feb 2010 09:36 PM PST

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A proposal by the Maine Human Rights Commission to establish a broad right for "transgender" boys to use girls restrooms in all Maine schools will be the subject of a public hearing scheduled by the commission March 1.

The plan, if given ultimate approval by the commission, will establish mandatory transgender restroom access rules for all Maine schools. The proposal was prompted by a decision last year that found a school in Orono, Asa Adams School, discriminated against a boy by denying him access to the girls' restroom.

Christian Civic League of Maine Administrator Mike Hein said it's worrying because he believes the draft of the proposed regulations was developed in a December closed-door session.

"The Maine Human Rights Commission had a secret, closed-door session in December and the public wasn't notified. But Mary Bonauto (director of the Gay and Lesbian Activist and Defenders) was invited to the meeting and she was allowed to present a legal brief at that meeting," Hein said.

(Story continues below)

The commission said, in documents obtained through a Freedom of Access Act request by Maine's Christian Action League, the June determination that a school discriminated against a boy by not allowing him access to the girls' restroom was correct.

"The commission has found reasonable grounds to believe that unlawful discrimination occurred in a complaint alleging that an elementary school had an obligation to allow a transgender student access to common bathrooms consistent with that student's gender identity, and the commission is a party to a court complaint in that case," the commission concluded.

Another document obtained in the same request details the proposal: "Transgender students must be allowed access to bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity or expression or, if they prefer, to existing single stall bathrooms."

It continues: "With respect to locker rooms and shower facilities that involve undressing in front of others, transgender students must be provided with accommodations that meet their needs and that take into account the legitimate privacy concerns of all student involved."

Bonauto has filed a brief with the commission that says the commission is acting properly in trying to deal with students' "identity" issues.

"Practically speaking, making a transgender student with a female gender identity use the boys' restroom would be stigmatizing and have a serious, negative, emotional consequence for the student as well. It would be no less stigmatizing for that student to have to use the boys' room than it would be for any non-transgender girl to be singled out and made to use the boys' room," she claims.

Bonauto suggests restroom usage should not be based on biology.

"Applying these rules, it is clear, for example, that an anatomy or biology-based rule for bathroom usage cannot be used to bar transgender students from using a facility consistent with their gender identity," Bonauto said.

"Such a rule would fail to give effect to the non-discrimination mandate for gender identity, a result at odds with the plain meaning of the 'gender identity' portion of the statute," she said.

"In addition, such a rule is at odds with the Human Rights Act as a whole, since the act seeks to remove obstacles to education, not to impose them. Finally, such a construction would render 'gender identity or expression' meaningless surplus usage with no intended consequences for how schools deal with transgender students," Bonauto said.

On the issue of sports, Bonauto supports rules that require the schools to open doors based on the students' sense of identity.

"GLAD supports a rule that allows students the opportunity to play sports consistent with their gender identity, with no exceptions. The guidance provides this rule 'in most cases' and also states that, 'In very rare cases, legitimate questions about fairness in competitive interscholastic sports may need to be resolved on a case-by-case basis," Bonauto said.

Bonauto did not respond to a request for comment.

But Hein said the proposals will have a derogatory impact on Maine's schools.

"What it comes down to is that we are completely getting rid of the concept of gender. Gender is being stricken in all forms in Maine if this proposed guideline is adopted as is," he said.

Hein says the issue of sports competition will be adversely impacted as well.

"It completely turns on its head what we consider boys basketball, girls basketball. Gender normative sports will be completely erased under these guidelines. In addition, if the proposed guidelines are adopted, you will have biological boys in the middle school, high school or college setting showering with girls," Hein said.

The difficulties in sports are also a point of concern with the University of Maine. In a letter obtained through the FOAA request, University of Maine Office of Equal Opportunity Director Karen Kemble said the proposal raises some important questions.

"As the current language acknowledges, there will likely be cases in which allowing a transgender student to participate in gender-segregated sports in accordance with the gender identity or expression will raise legitimate concerns about fairness in competitive interscholastic sports. Although such requests from transgender students may be very rare, among those, fairness of play may become an issue," Kemble said.

The letter obtained in the FOAA request continues.

"The university also wanted to take the opportunity to point out some scenarios that could cause unintended consequences. For example, based on information provided by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) on the issue, a transgendered individual's participation on a gender-segregated team could result in the NCAA's treating that team as a mixed team. This would have a number of serious consequences including potentially impacting the institution's compliance with Title IX," Kemble said.

Hein said the proposed regulations also will have an impact on private and Christian schools.

"Any school in Maine whose authority to grant diplomas is authorized by the state will have to follow these guidelines. That includes Christian and private schools," Hein said.

If the state adopts the proposed regulations, private schools may not have many alternatives.

"What has to occur for Christian schools, religious schools and parochial schools, in Maine under these guidelines is that civil disobedience must occur. This situation really rises to the level of Christian schools, schools that confess morality and decency will have to resist the rules and regulations of the state," Hein said.

Currently, Colorado, Iowa, Washington state, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco have rules, policies or laws dealing with transgender restroom accommodations. The Maine rules would make Maine the first state in the U.S. to adopt the policies for elementary and secondary school students and may make Maine the first to extend the rules to private and sectarian schools.

WND has reported on the Christian Civic League of Maine's call for the public to contact state legislators and oppose imposition of the regulations.

This is not the first time the argument has arisen. WND previously reported when the city council of Tampa, Fla., voted unanimously to include "gender identity and expression" as a protected class under the city's human rights ordinance, leading some to fear the council has opened the city's public bathroom doors to sexual predators masquerading as protected transsexuals.

A statement from the American Family Association explained, "Tampa Police arrested Robert Johnson in February 2008 for hanging out in the locker room–restroom area at Lifestyle Fitness and watching women in an undressed state. The City of Tampa's 'gender identity' ordinance could provide a legal defense to future cases like this if the accused claims that his gender is female."

WND also reported on a similar plan adopted by fiat in Montgomery County, Md., which opponents said would open up women's locker rooms to men who say they are women.

The issue also has come up in Colorado, where Democrat Gov. Bill Ritter signed into law a plan that effectively strikes gender-specific restrooms in the state.

And city officials in Kalamazoo, Mich., only weeks after adopting a "perceived gender" bias plan, abandoned it in the face of massive public opposition.

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