Long flights, rain and cold weather could not stop the energy and excitement of the SEEDS fellows arriving here in San Jose, CA. Old fellows are excited to be here again with friends and new fellows are excited to meet new friends.

Steve Gliessman, UC Santa Cruz, is organizing an International Agroecology course scheduled for July 8-21, 2007. For more information, please visit the course web site at http://www.agroecology.org/shortcourse.htm. Questions regarding the course can be emailed to vvadakan@nullucsc.edu or contact the course organizer, Bee Vadakan at 831-459-5818, Fax. 831-459-2867.

A group from across the United States will congregate in Washington, DC, February 25-March 2, 2007, to spread awareness about the threat posed by invasive plants.

Recently a number of people on the ECOLOG listserv have either recommended or asked about Ecological Society of America (ESA) activities on the topic of biofuels. ESA is in fact planning several activities on this topic, and we thought readers might appreciate a summary.

As you may know, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is conducting a survey of principal investigators. If you received the survey invitation, we encourage our members to participate.

Last month, ESA invited you to send us photographs of your favorite ecologists and ecosystems for our home page, and a number of you have responded with great shots.

After 12 years of formal education (13 if you count kindergarten) and four years of college, one would think I would be sick of school. However, I saw only two options: get a real job and become a real adult or keep going to school.

Fossil trees in Antarctica show us that climate has changed greatly in the past. Suppose the current warming is just part of a longer trend that we can’t do anything about?

Have you noticed the changing “ecosystem” banner photo on the ESA home page? How about the pictures of ecologists (that’s you!)? We will be featuring a new ecosystem once each month, and changing the other pictures periodically.

I was struck between the parity between the ongoing discussion on this blog about the usage of blogs in academia and Sunday’s New York Times article on how the intelligence community is using blogs and wikis for information synthesis, and a recent post at evolgen asking if there were any ecologists in the blogosphere.

Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio discusses “The role of ecological theory and practice in poverty alleviation and environmental conservation,” in the latest Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

ESA’s News and Views Blog is something that is long overdue. Its mission to engage students is especially valuable. For academics in particular, however, the ESA Blog presents some intriguing and important implications and consequences for the process of publication. I would like to encourage some discussion of this.