Environment Is at the Heart of Annual AAAS Meeting

Dozens of sessions at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Boston Feb. 14-18, 2008, will focus on environmental topics.

Climate change issues head the agenda, with more than a dozen sessions. Among the topics are ocean acidification, effects on microbial activity, biological adaptation, and our predictive abilities.

About a dozen other sessions cover energy issues, such as coal gasification, biofuels, food supply impacts, nuclear waste, and the latest on the holy grail of fusion energy.

Ten more focus on ecology and resource management issues, including deep-sea coral ecology, delta restoration, and cities in desert settings. About a dozen others cover environmental health topics, such as drug-producing crops, emerging chemical contaminants, and pathogens in food.

Ten sessions address the science-communications-media nexus, covering topics such as the validity of scientific information, conflicts between science and religion, the latest on evolution, and media coverage of climate change. Last but not least, there's a 5-part seminar on marine ecosystem threats, including fisheries bycatch, the economics of marine preserves, and discussion of the first global atlas of human effects on the oceans.

Meeting organizers expect about 10,000 participants to attend more than 170 symposia and other events.

See the AAAS newsroom for details.