scholarly journals A Collaborative Effort toward an Integrative Web Portal at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. e27084
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Leith

The University of Wisconsin (UW) Madison's five main natural history collections (Anthropology, Entomology, Geology, Herbarium, and Zoology) have joined together to begin digitizing our collections and disseminating information online via an integrated web portal. This two-year project, currently beginning its second year, is the result of a UW2020 grant, "Development of the Wisconsin Integrated Biodiversity, Human, and Environmental Specimen Portal." The first objective of the grant is to initiate, or assist with current, digitizing efforts within each collection. This step includes photographing, inventorying, and/or cataloging specimens and either entering new records or updating existing records in collection-specific databases. The remaining objective is to design and implement a web presence (in the planned format of a web portal) to allow the ability to search a limited number of fields from all of the collections' databases. This step, currently still in the planning stages, involved hiring a temporary employee to liaise between all of the collections, perform the web design, and write the background scripts to pull needed data from each collection's database program. This presentation will outline the grant goals and progress to date by each collection, although the primary focus will be on the successes and limitations in the Anthropology collection.

1999 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 557-561 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis P. Stimart

The Allen Centennial Gardens are instructional gardens managed by the Department of Horticulture, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Twenty-two garden styles exist on the 2.5-acre (1.0-ha) campus site with a primary focus on herbaceous annual, biennial and perennial ornamental plants. The gardens are used for instruction mostly by the Department of Horticulture and secondly by departments of art, botany, entomology, landscape architecture, plant pathology, and soils. Class work sessions are limited due to the gardens' prominence on campus, high aesthetic standards, space restrictions, and large class sizes. Undergraduate students are the primary source of labor for plant propagation, installation and maintenance; management; and preparation of interpretive literature. Work experience at the gardens assists students with obtaining career advances in ornamental horticulture. Future challenges include initiating greater faculty use of the gardens for instruction and creating innovative ways to use the gardens to enhance instruction.


2008 ◽  
pp. 46-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E. Roth ◽  
Mark Harrower

These are exciting days for cartography, as emerging technologies have greatly expanded the possibilities of online, interactive maps. These developments, however, now require cartographers to think about issues that only a few years ago fell solely in the domains of human-computer interaction (HCI) and web design. Further, given how fast these changes have occurred, there are few tried-and-true guidelines for building digital maps. This paper reports on the design, development, and evaluation of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Lakeshore Nature Preserve Interactive Map (www.lakeshorepreserve.wisc.edu) and outlines many of the insights gleaned from this process. The purpose of this article is to strengthen the important bridge between cartography and usability evaluation (i.e., how we study the way in which users interact with their maps and how we measure the success of those interactions) so that the efforts of a team of developers and stakeholders can be coordinated in a way that ensures the map works equally well for all potential end users. We outline the relative merits of two broad categories of evaluation techniques, arguing that there is no single, correct evaluation technique appropriate for all evaluation scenarios, and then detail the specific strategy adopted for evaluation of the Lakeshore Nature Preserve Interactive Map. We conclude by offering four design guidelines for online, interactive maps revealed during the evaluation of the Lakeshore Nature Preserve Interactive Map: two positive strategies we recommend for consideration when designing map interfaces (inclusion of cascading interface complexity and provision of map browsing flexibility) and two pitfalls we caution to avoid (minimalist design of interface widgets and employment of a lorem ipsum map during development).


Author(s):  
Hans Ris

The High Voltage Electron Microscope Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin has been in operation a little over one year. I would like to give a progress report about our experience with this new technique. The achievement of good resolution with thick specimens has been mainly exploited so far. A cold stage which will allow us to look at frozen specimens and a hydration stage are now being installed in our microscope. This will soon make it possible to study undehydrated specimens, a particularly exciting application of the high voltage microscope.Some of the problems studied at the Madison facility are: Structure of kinetoplast and flagella in trypanosomes (J. Paulin, U. of Georgia); growth cones of nerve fibers (R. Hannah, U. of Georgia Medical School); spiny dendrites in cerebellum of mouse (Scott and Guillery, Anatomy, U. of Wis.); spindle of baker's yeast (Joan Peterson, Madison) spindle of Haemanthus (A. Bajer, U. of Oregon, Eugene) chromosome structure (Hans Ris, U. of Wisconsin, Madison). Dr. Paulin and Dr. Hanna are reporting their work separately at this meeting and I shall therefore not discuss it here.


Author(s):  
Patricia N. Hackney

Ustilago hordei and Ustilago violacea are yeast-like basidiomycete pathogens ofHordeum vulgare and Silene alba respectively. The mating type system in both species of Ustilago is bipolar, with alleles, A,a, (U.hordei) and a1, a2 (U.violacea) at a single locus. Haploid sporidia maintain the asexual phase by budding, while the sexual phase is initiated by conjugation tube formation between the mating types during budding and conjugation.For observation of budding, sporidia were prepared by culturing the four types on YEG (yeast extract glucose) broth for 24 hours. After centrifugation at 5000g cells were either left unmated or mated in a1/a2,A/a combinations. The sporidia were then mixed 1:1 with 4% agar and the resulting 1mm cubes fixed in 8% gluteraldehyde and post fixed in osmium tetroxide. After dehydration and embedding cubes were thin sectioned with a LKB ultratome and photographed in a Zeiss 9s transmission electron microscope or in an AE1 electron microscope of MK11 1MEV at the High Voltage Electron Microscopy Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 44-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. I. Anikina ◽  
A. S. Babkov ◽  
A. V. Malyshev

Russian Federal State Educational Standards of 3+ generation impose serious requirements to resource support of educational and training process, including electronic information-educational environment of the University. In the Southwest State University (SWSU), a unified multimedia information and educational environment based on Internet-broadband access technologies was created; it successfully operates and keeps developing. The main concept of this environment construction is the idea of integrating data, applications, and business processes. SWSU Electronic information-educational environment (EIEE) is designed to provide information transparency of the University activities in accordance with the requirements of the current legislation of the Russian Federation in the sphere of education, to organize educational activities of the University and to ensure access of students and research and academic-staff of the University to information and educational resources. The main components of SWSU EIEE are: the actors of the education and training process (teachers, students, etc.), external digital library systems, internal automated information library system, “SWSU academic courses” subsystem, “Southwest State University Web portal” subsystem, and the official web site of the Southwest State University. “Southwest State University Web portal" subsystem makes it possible to automate traditional basic functions of Dean's office of the University, such as managing student conduct systems for students of Bachelor and Master Degree Programs of full-time and correspondence forms of training; recording and statistical processing of the data on students’ progress; recording students’ achievements; managing Dean's office workflow. As prescribed in Federal State Educational Standards of 3+ generation, Portal Modules are used to record the results of formative and summative assessment of students in accordance with SWSU current score rating system for learning outcomes.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document