Animal Engineers

Animal Ecosystem Engineers Modulate the Diversity-Invasibility Relationship

BACKGROUND Invasions of natural communities by non-indigenous species are currently rated as one of the most important global-scale threats to biodiversity. Biodiversity itself is known to reduce invasions and increase stability. Disturbances by ecosystem engineers affect the distribution, establishment, and abundance of species but this has been ignored in studies on diversity-invasibility rel...

Are software engineers true engineers?

Are software engineers engineers? Or more exactly: Can software engineers legitimately be called engineers? This is an ambiguous question. Its interpretation depends on the situation in which it is asked. It might be asked in a situation in which practice-oriented engineering disciplines have more chances to be sponsored publicly: In this case it would be the question if software engineering sh...

Bringing System Engineers and Software Engineers Together

For system development projects, the proportion of the budget allocated to software development has been continually increasing in response to demand for system flexibility and maintainability. As a result, many technical organizations started by mechanical and electrical engineers now find themselves awash with software engineers. As system engineers see it, software people have different ways...

Handbook for Language Engineers

Bacteria as control engineers.

Bacteria encounter fluctuations in both their external and internal environments, and to manage these conditions, they employ various control mechanisms. In this issue of Molecular Cell, Hart et al. (2011) investigate how E. coli robustly controls nitrogen assimilation.