Recent extinction rates are 100 to 1000 times their pre-human levels in well-known, but taxonomically diverse groups from widely different environments. If all species currently deemed "threatened" become extinct in the next century, then future extinction rates will be 10 times recent rates. Some threatened species will survive the century, but many species not now threatened will succumb. Regions rich in species found only within them (endemics) dominate the global patterns of extinction. Although new technology provides details of habitat losses, estimates of future extinctions are hampered by our limited knowledge of which areas are rich in endemics.

Summary:uncertainty of a cure with high-dose, intensive treatment regimens. While there has been increasing attention paid to QOL issues in BMT patients, [3][4][5][6][7][8][9] there have been few We developed a 12-item bone marrow transplant subscale (BMTS) for the general Functional Assessment of instruments designed specifically to measure quality of life in the transplant patient population. One other available Cancer Therapy (FACT) measure. The subscale combined with the FACT, (FACT-BMT) is a 47-item, valid instrument 10 was developed for post-treatment survivors of bone marrow transplantation, so its appropriateness for and reliable measure of five dimensions of quality of life in bone marrow transplant patients. The three-step patients during transplantation is unknown.Health-related quality of life measurement has evolved validation process involved the generation and selection of BMT-specific items and the testing of the overall meaover the past 25 years to the point where the Food and Drug Administration recommends QOL assessment for any sure. Items were selected from a list produced by seven oncology experts and 15 patients and were designed to new drug therapies developed in cancer medicine. 11,12Initially, general measures of psychological health and assess content not represented in the general FACT items. A total of 182 patients completed the FACT-BMT functional status were used to assess patient response to cancer therapies and other areas such as cardiac care and at baseline, prior to BMT. An analysis measuring sensitivity to change was performed with 74 patients after renal transplantation. Cancer specific instruments were developed to measure the particular issues faced by cancer transplantation and 60 patients over the three timepoints of baseline, hospital discharge and 100 days. The patients. 13,14 Further advancement of QOL measurement technology has produced site-specific scales that FACT-BMT and all subscales were correlated, sensitivity to change was measured, and the internal consistaccompany general cancer measures and are utilized to assess the unique problems faced by patients with differency for each scale was calculated. Coefficients of reliability and validity ranged from 0.86 to 0.89 for the ent diagnoses.14,15While many uses of QOL data have been described, 16 entire FACT-BMT and 0.54 to 0.63 for the BMTS. The BMTS was able to discriminate patients on the basis of there are three primary reasons why QOL measurement is important, especially in a BMT population. 17 First, when performance status rating and also demonstrated sensitivity to change over time. The FACT-BMT has good two treatments are compared in a clinical trial, QOL data may provide additional information upon which to base psychometric properties for use in assessing quality of life in bone marrow transplant patients. The addition treatment decisions. Since BMT regimens are relatively new compared to standard chemotherapeutic and radioof the bone marrow transplant subscale to the general FACT measure makes it an e...

In the face of worldwide habitat fragmentation, managers need to devise a time frame for action. We ask how fast do understory bird species disappear from experimentally isolated plots in the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project, central Amazon, Brazil. Our data consist of mist-net records obtained over a period of 13 years in 11 sites of 1, 10, and 100 hectares. The numbers of captures per species per unit time, analyzed under different simplifying assumptions, reveal a set of species-loss curves. From those declining numbers, we derive a scaling rule for the time it takes to lose half the species in a fragment as a function of its area. A 10-fold decrease in the rate of species loss requires a 1,000-fold increase in area. Fragments of 100 hectares lose one half of their species in <15 years, too short a time for implementing conservation measures.