Updated/Corrected below
The cause of the mysterious deaths of large numbers of honey bees across the United States that began in 2006 has apparently been discovered.
Scientists from the Army’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Center and the University of California at San Francisco identified both a virus and a parasite that are associated with the massive decline in the honey bee population.
See “Scientists Identify Pathogens That May Be Causing Global Honey-Bee Deaths,” Science Daily, April 26 (thanks to CB).
Update: As a commenter noted, this is old news. The Science Daily story dates from April 2007!
Additional background on the issue is available in “Recent Honey Bee Colony Declines” (pdf), Congressional Research Service, updated August 14, 2007.
No one will be surprised if we end up with a continuing resolution to push our shutdown deadline out past the midterms, so the real question is what else will they get done this summer?
Rebuilding public participation starts with something simple — treating the public not as a problem to manage, but as a source of ingenuity government cannot function without.
If the government wants a system of learning and adaptation that improves results in real time, it has to treat translation, utilization, and adaptation as core functions of governance rather than as afterthoughts.
Coordination among federal science agencies is essential to ensure government-wide alignment on R&D investment priorities. However, the federal R&D enterprise suffers from egregious siloization.