Biome

Biomes organize the biological communities of the earth based on similarities in the dominant vegetation, climate, geographic location, and other characteristics. Aspects of the physical environment such as precipitation, temperature, and water depth, have a strong influence on the traits of species living in that environment, and thus biological communities experiencing similar environmental conditions often contain species that have evolved similar characteristics. There is no single classification of biomes that is agreed upon by all scientists because different scientists wish to emphasize different characteristics by their definition. Historically however, biomes have been identified and mapped based on general differences in vegetation type associated with regional variations in climate and terrain.

Terrestrial Biomes:Terrestrial biomes characterize ecosystems on land, and are usually identified by the growth form of the dominant vegetation, climate, and/or where they are located on the earth. The major terrestrial biomes include the tundra biome, the forest biome, the grassland biome, and the desert biome. Note that forests and grasslands are defined based on the growth form of the dominant vegetation whereas deserts are classified based on the dominant climatic conditions. The geographic distribution of terrestrial biomes is mostly influenced by climatic conditions such as rainfall and temperature.
Some people prefer to subdivide these four broad biomes. For example, the forest biome can be subdivided into a temperate forest biome and tropical forest biome. The temperate forest biome and tropical forest biome can then be further divided based on the characteristics of the trees found in the biome. The World Wildlife Fund recommends the following classification scheme of terrestrial biomes.

Grassland Biome. Bison on Konza Prairie
1.Tundra Biome
Tundra
2.Forest Biome
Boreal Forest/Taiga Biome
Temperate Coniferous Forest Biome
Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forest Biome
Mediterranean Forests, Woodlands and Scrub
Tropical Subtropical Moist Broadleaf forests
Tropical and subtropical Dry broadleaf forests
Tropical and subtropical coniferous forests.
3.Grassland Biome
Temperate Grasslands, Savannas and Shrubland Biome
Montane Grassland and Shrublands
Tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas and shrublands
Flooded Grasslands and Savannas
4.Desert Biome
Deserts and Xeric Shrublands

Marine Biomes
Marine biomes are generally distinguished by the depth of the water and whether there is a substrate on which organisms can attach. Important marine biomes include oceans, coral reefs, and estuaries. The ocean biome, the largest of all of the earth's biomes, can be divided into several zones including the shore/intertidal zone, the pelagic zone, the benthic zone, and the abyssal zone.

Coral Reef-Marine Biomes

Anthropogenic Biomes
Humans have fundamentally altered global patterns of biodiversity and ecosystem processes. As a result, vegetation forms predicted by conventional biome systems are rarely observed across most of Earth's land surface. While not a replacement for existing biome systems, anthropogenic biomes provide an alternative view of the terrestrial biosphere based on global patterns of sustained direct human interaction with ecosystems, including agriculture, human settlements, urbanization, forestry and other uses of land. Anthropogenic biomes offer a new way forward in ecology and conservation by recognizing the irreversible coupling of human and ecological systems at global scales, and moving us toward an understanding how best to live in and manage our biosphere and the anthropogenic biomes we live in.

Other Ways of Classifying Habitats and Communities
Ecological communities can share characteristics for a number of reasons. Classifying communities into biomes attempts to highlight the role of the physical environment in determining characteristics of communities.
Communities can also be classified into biogeographical realms (e.g, Australasia, Antarctic, Afrotropic, Indo-Malayan, Neartic, Neotropic, Oceania, Paleartic). Classifying communities into biogeographic realms attempts to highlight the importance of a shared bioegoraphic/evolutionary history in determining the composition of biological communities. It is important to recognize that many different biomes can be found in the same biogeographic realm and that the same biome can be located in many different geographic realms.
The ecoregion, a relatively large unit of land that contains geographically distinct assemblages of natural communities, is a subset of a biome found within a biogeographic realm. The World Wildlife Fund has identified 825 terrestrial ecoregions, 450 freshwater ecoregions, and 229 marine ecoregions. Several distinct ecological communities may be found in a single ecoregion.

Security Technology

Our work in cryptography is making an impact within and outside the Federal government. Strong cryptography improves the security of systems and the information they process. IT users also enjoy the enhanced availability in the marketplace of secure applications through cryptography, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), and e-authentication. Work in this area addresses such topics as secret and public key cryptographic techniques, advanced authentication systems, cryptographic protocols and interfaces, public key certificate management, biometrics, smart tokens, cryptographic key escrowing, and security architectures. This year, the work called for in the Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12) has continued. A few examples of the impact this work has had include changes to Federal employee identification methods, how users authenticate their identity when needing government services online, and the technical aspects of passports issued to U.S. citizens.

CSD collaborates with a number of national and international agencies and standards bodies to develop secure, interoperable security standards. Federal agency collaborators include the Department of Energy, the Department of State, the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Communications Security Establishment of Canada, while national and international standards bodies include the American Standards Committee (ASC) X9 (financial industry standards), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Industry collaborators include BC5 Technologies, Certicom, Entrust Technologies, Hewlett Packard, InfoGard, Microsoft, NTRU, Pitney Bowes, RSA Security, Spyrus, and Wells Fargo.

Videophone

The widest use of video telephony occurs in mobile phones, as nearly all mobile phones supporting UMTS networks work as videophones using an internal camera, and are able to make video calls wirelessly to other UMTS users in the same country or internationally. As of Q2 2007, there are more than 131 million UMTS users on 134 networks in 59 countries
Videophones can also be used by the deaf to communicate with sign language over a distance. In US the FCC pays companies for providing Video Relay Service to deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, where they use a videophone to talk through a sign-language translator to people using audio phones. Videophones are used to do on-site sign-language translation. The relatively low cost and widespread availability of mobile phones with video calling capabilities have given the deaf people new possibilities to communicate with the same ease as others, with some wireless operators even starting up free sign language gateways.
Videotelephony is also used in large corporate conferencing setups, and is supported by systems such as Cisco Unified Communications Manager, and similar systems from companies such as Tandberg, Radvision, and Polycom.