PLoS Biology | http://biology.plosjournals.org This important book relates much the most optimistic treatise on conservation that I have ever read: many would say naively optimistic. I should say from the outset that I genuinely fear that Michael Rosenzweig’s theories and examples are less broadly applicable than he argues. And yet I want to believe that he is right. If he is right, the conserv...

In 1946 and 1948, three very important papers by Albert Rose [J. Soc. Motion Pict. Eng. 47, 273 (1946); J. Opt. Soc. Am. 38, 196 (1948); L. Marton, ed. (Academic, New York, 1948)] were published on the role that photon fluctuations have in setting fundamental performance limits for both human vision and electronic imaging systems. The papers were important because Rose demonstrated that the per...