ecosystem comprises living and non-living components that interact with each other, such as plants and animals with nutrients, water, air and sunlight. Ecosystems range in size from a few square meters to millions of square kilometers. There are no set ecosystem boundaries, rather they are defined by the particular component(s) that biologists are interested in.

The definition of Conservation Biology that we are using is the one supplied by the Society for Conservation Biology, as described in The Society's journal. Applying this description to our site: "We will provide information on programs that are attempting to develop the scientific and technical means for the protection, maintenance, and restoration of life on this planet - its species, its ecological and evolutionary processes, and its particular and total environment."

We also host a more general sister site, the Directory of Higher Education Environmental Programs, which lists environmental programs in the same interactive fashion as this site does. Additionally, programs may be found through commercial indexes such as Peterson's Guide. However, as our records are maintained by the program affiliates themselves, our information is the most accurate and up-to-date.

ecosystem is a community of plants and animals living and interacting with one another sharing their available resources. An ecosystem encompasses all aspects and elements of this environment. It includes what we normally think of as the living, such as plants and animals, as well as more subtle components, such as air, water, and the sun's energy. Ponds are ecosystems because they host birds, fish, frogs, plants, and microscopic organisms.

The scientific study of self-organizing systems is relatively new, although questions about how organization arises have of course been raised since ancient times. The forms we identify around us are only a small sub-set of those theoretically possible. So why don't we see more variety ? To answer such a question is the reason why we study self-organization. Many natural systems show organization (e.g. galaxies, planets, chemical compounds, cells, organisms and societies).

Which Journals are relevant ? Some journals (both online and printed) which relate to complexity and self-organisation are: This FAQ has been compiled and is maintained by Chris Lucas of the CALResCo Group. Comments, suggestions, requests for additions and particularly criticisms and corrections are warmly welcomed. Please feel free to EMail me at CALResCo or post relevant messages to the Usenet newsgroup comp.theory.self-org-sys for discussion.

Marine conservation is essentially the act of saving our seas for future generations. The word conservation is often misunderstood to mean improving the present conditions, but it works only when all threats are taken away, forever. Conservation is thus impossible without knowing what threatens the environment.

When restoring an ecosystem, we help the land to regain the balance of native plants that were originally found on the site prior to European settlement. With restoration, we are not expecting everything to be exactly as it was 150 years ago since we don't have all of the pieces. By removing exotic plants that have moved in and sometimes taken over an area, we allow for the conditions that let the variety of native plants, and the birds and animals which depend on them, flourish in balance.

Panama's ecosystem is very diverse, and a large number of plant, animal and bird species can be found. In fact, Panama is home to over 900 species of birds, making it a bird watcher's paradise, and there are numerous mammals, amphibians, reptiles and marine life to be found, not to mention its rainforests, that will be the delight for all nature lovers.

A species is a group or population of similar organisms that reproduce among themselves but do not naturally reproduce with any other kinds of organisms. Examples of species include this splashback poison dart frog (right), monarch butterflies, red oak trees, and humans. According to the scientists of the Ecological Society of America, an ecosystem is any geographic area, including the living organisms that live there and the nonliving parts of the physical environment.

Mathematical biology is easier to distinguish from bioinformatics than computational biology. Mathematical biology also tackles biological problems, but the methods it uses to tackle them need not be numerical and need not be implemented in software or hardware. Indeed, such methods need not "solve" anything; in mathematical biology it would be considered reasonable to publish a result which merely establishes that a biological problem belongs to a particular general class.

Computational biologists might object (please do), but, I find that people use "computational biology" when discussing that subset of bioinformatics (in the broadest sense) closest to the field of classical general biology. Computational biologists interest themselves more with evolutionary, population and theoretical biology rather than cell and molecular biomedicine.

Biological sciences include so many approaches to studying living organisms that it is not easy to describe them all. Biologists may specialize on a specific group of organisms or may take a comparative approach to study certain life processes. Life may be studied at various levels - molecular, cellular, organismal, population, community or ecosystem. Some bioscientists are parts of multidisciplinary teams that tackle several aspects of the same problem.

Faculty of 1000 Biology is run by scientists for scientists and provides a rapidly updated consensus map of the important papers and trends across biology.

There are obviously tons of web sites that can sell you what you might need. We find Amazon.com and Varsitybooks.com to be the best sources of books for online learners. If you can't find what you're looking for, send an email to:

Yes. Fundamental to rights transactions are the concepts of unique identification and appropriate structured metadata. DOI System implements the indecs approach, which has at its heart the concept of rights management. IDF has introduced the concepts of the DOI System and indecs into many digital rights management activities such as MPEG-21, OEBF, TV-Anytime, etc.

Sketch out some similar work which you have done in your previous job. It should be something justifiable by you, even though others may think differently.

The fossil record shows that most species of plant and animal today are not terribly disimilar to what they were in the distant past. There is a scientific law that states that something never comes from nothing. There must always be a beginning in time; or put another way, you can not have an infinite series of events. The theory of evolution does not violate any physical or mathematical law, if it did it wouldn't have been accepted.