Portal talk:Life Sciences

If you want to experiment with a radical new version of Portal:Life Sciences you can work at Portal:Life Sciencesnew.

If you update featured content on this portal, make sure that you update Portal:Life Sciences/Featured.

Image on the Life Sciences Main Page
For the Phylogenetic Tree Image, shouldn't the first branch be Eubacteria, since the Bacteria are generally split into Archaea and Eubacteria? Heh, sorry to bring up this rather trivial detail. --Relex 13:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The terminology used in the image seems to be the terminology adopted by the Wikispecies project. --JWSchmidt 15:40, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Reorganize
This portal is way too cluttered. There are many recurring topics and lessons, especially in the school of Biology. Somebody needs to try to condense this a little more Crossbow9 01:55, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
 * What do you think about this portal design that spreads the information out over 4 related pages? --JWSchmidt 03:12, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Health sciences?
Maybe we should add "Health sciences" here too? --HappyCamper 02:11, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps rename 'Life Sciences' 'Life, Environmental and Health Sciences' - that way Marine Sciences could be moved into this portal, and Environmental (& Earth?) Sciences could be under this and the Physical Sciences portal? Jimbobalina2005 17:12, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Controversies and questions in ecological science
Scientists in the UK have put together a list of questions for investigation - reflecting the purpose of the exercise it is a little UK-centric, but it might provide some ideas for learning projects in wikiversity. Here are a few questions they've come up with (from :


 * How long does the seabed take to recover from dredging, wind farm construction and oil and gas extraction?


 * How does the ecological impact of UK farming compare internationally?


 * What are the ecological impacts of airports? nothing


 * What are the ecological impacts of faecal matter, pesticides and undigested food flows from aquaculture?


 * How can we better understand diseases within wildlife reservoirs to protect humans and livestock? To maintain stable ecosystem inorder to prevent the emerge of communicable diseases from wild animals to human beings


 * What impact does plastic litter have on the marine environment?


 * How can we measure natural capital (renewable and non renewable resources) and integrate such a measure into GDP?


 * What are the effects of light pollution on wildlife?


 * Which habitats and species might we lose completely in the UK because of climate change?


 * What hedgerow structure and management produce the greatest wildlife benefits?


 * How can flood control be assisted by habitat management and what are the impacts on biodiversity?

The issue of chemicals in the enviroment is an intyeresting one too (e.g. the high levels of Ibuprofen in river waters, affecting the physiology of marine animals).

The full article outlining ecological questions can be found here - it is free access -

If that link doesn't work it is in the August 2006 issue of the Journal of Applied Ecology.

Jimbobalina2005 17:31, 2 September 2006 (UTC)