scholarly journals Different Approaches between First and Second Mass Digitisation Project for the Herbarium (BR) at Meise Botanic Garden

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofie De Smedt ◽  
Ann Bogaerts ◽  
Henry Engledow ◽  
Quentin Groom
Keyword(s):  
Vascular Plants ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Specimen Preparation ◽  
Herbarium Specimens ◽  
Botanic Garden ◽  
The World ◽  
Label Information ◽  
Additional Funding ◽  
Macro Algae

The Herbarium of Meise Botanic Garden is in the top 15 herbaria worldwide. The collection comprises some four million specimens, which are important for scientific research. Digitisation of specimens includes imaging, transcription of label information, linking data and making the results publicly accessible online. In addition to facilitating researchers’ access to specimens, digitisation also brings new possibilities for analysis and discovery of new data, such as the vast amount of information on handwritten labels. In the DOE! project (Digitale Ontsluiting Erfgoedcollecties), funded by the Flemish Government, 1.2 million herbarium sheets from the African and Belgian collections were digitised. We have received additional funding to digitise a further 1.4 million specimens for the remaining vascular plants and macro-algae collections, by October 2021. These include the historic collections of Von Martius and Van Heurck. Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius (1794–1868) was a pioneering explorer whose expeditions led to the discovery of many species. He amassed over 300,000 specimens, some of which were used to compile the first Flora of Brazil. Henri Van Heurck (1838–1909) also gathered herbarium specimens from all over the world, including a specimen originally from the collection of Linnaeus. Despite this being our second mass digitisation project, there are significant differences in our approach. This is partly due to lessons learned from the first project and partly to the nature of the collections themselves. The differences in the tendering process, specimen preparation, workflow and data capture will be explained. Making these specimens openly available online through www.botanicalcollections.be is valuable to scientific research as well as valorising of our collections. Currently, the site attracts 7000 users a year, which adds up to 15,000 sessions a year and the average session is more than 8 minutes. This means that people are actively using our website and these numbers can be expected to grow as we add more specimens and functionality.

scholarly journals Engaging Children with Herbarium Specimens at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew’s Science Festival

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. e25933
Author(s):  
Melissa Bavington
Keyword(s):  
Plant Material ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Specimen Preparation ◽  
Herbarium Specimens ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Plant Parts ◽  
Herbarium Collection ◽  
Herbarium Sheet ◽  
Royal Botanic Gardens

The Kew and Wakehurst Science Festivals consists of five days of activities over two weekends. Workshops and tours allow visitors to engage with the scientists and their research. We designed an interactive experience, so children could understand what a herbarium sheet is and the process of making one. The Herbarium accessions an average of 30,000 specimens per year and because specimens need to have a long life and be able to withstand being handled for hundreds of years they need to be ‘mounted’ according to strict protocols and guidelines. Botanical specimens are vital to research at Kew and beyond, providing key scientific data. Once mounted onto herbarium sheets botanical specimens are added to the Herbarium and made widely available to visiting scientists and researchers. Digitising these specimens increases access further through online portals. To achieve a specimen that can be handled for many years the specimens are mounted onto archival paper, along with their labels, before being added to the collection. There are 6 members in RBG Kew’s Specimen Preparation team who work full time to prepare botanical specimens for accession into the Herbarium collection; which currently stands at 7 million specimens and the oldest dates from the 1700s. We simplified this specimen preparation process down to the basic component parts of paper, glue, plant material and pressing. Using material and tools that visitors would be able to find for themselves; art paper, child friendly glue and plant material used in flower crafts we created a hands-on experience for mounting a herbarium specimen. The Science Festival is now in its 3rd year and each year the activity has been modified based on lessons learned over the course of the festival and each year. The stall is immensely popular going from 300 participants in the first year to over 700 in 2017. In the second year we added a new dimension and allowed visitors to image the specimens they created allowing them to zoom in and see plant parts and structures in further detail to highlight the importance of digitisation. These images can be viewed on the Kew Science Flickr group.

scholarly journals Ferns at the digital herbarium of the Central Siberian Botanical Garden SB RAS

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nataliya Kovtonyuk ◽  
Irina Han ◽  
Evgeniya Gatilova
Keyword(s):  
Vascular Plants ◽  
Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽  
Botanical Garden ◽  
Herbarium Specimens ◽  
Diverse Group ◽  
Type Specimens ◽  
Siberian Branch ◽  
The World ◽  
Herbarium Collections ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

According to the data in Index Herbariorum as of 1 December 2020, there are 3426 active herbaria in the world, containing 396,204,891 specimens and 124 herbaria in Russia with more than 16,175,000 specimens. The Central Siberian Botanical Garden of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (CSBG SB RAS, Novosibirsk), founded in 1946, historically has two herbarium collections (NS and NSK). Currently these collections contain about 800,000 herbarium specimens comprising vascular plants, mosses, lichens and fungi gathered from all over the world. Digitisation of the NSK type specimens of vascular plants began in 2014 by using the special scanner Herbscan. In 2018, we started digitisation of the NS and NSK collections by using ObjectScan 1600. Pteridophytes (ferns, lycophytes and their extinct free-sporing relatives) are a diverse group of plants that today comprises approximately 12,900 species and plays a major role in terrestrial ecosystems. All herbarium specimens of ferns, collected over 170 years between 1851 and 2021 and stored in the NS and NSK collections, were digitised in 2021, placed at the CSBG SB RAS digital Herbarium (http://herb.csbg.nsc.ru:8081) and published through GBIF. Twenty families of Polypodiopsida, but not Equisetaceae, were included in this dataset. Family Ophioglossaceae was digitised and published in GBIF as a separate dataset. By August 2021, more than 62,600 specimens with good quality images and fully-captured label transcriptions had been placed at CSBG SB RAS Digital Herbarium. A total of 7,758 records of fern occurrences of 363 taxa in the world with 92% geolocations including 5100 records from Russia with 98.7% geolocations that are new for GBIF.org in 2021 were entered. In the dataset specimens from 43 countries of Europe, Asia, America, Africa and Australia (Oceania), 89% of them from Russia, are presented.

scholarly journals An Evaluation of In-house versus Out-sourced Data Capture at the Meise Botanic Garden (BR)

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. e26514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Engledow ◽  
Sofie De Smedt ◽  
Ann Bogaerts ◽  
Quentin Groom
Keyword(s):  
Data Quality ◽  
Democratic Republic Of Congo ◽  
Data Cleaning ◽  
Data Entry ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Data Capture ◽  
Herbarium Specimens ◽  
Botanic Garden ◽  
Label Information ◽  
Minimal Data

There are many ways to capture data from herbarium specimen labels. Here we compare the results of in-house verses out-sourced data transcription with the aim of evaluating the pros and cons of each approach and guiding future projects that want to do the same. In 2014 Meise Botanic Garden (BR) embarked on a mass digitization project. We digitally imaged of some 1.2 million herbarium specimens from our African and Belgian Herbaria. The minimal data for a third of these images was transcribed in-house, while the remainder was out-sourced to a commercial company. The minimal data comprised the fields: specimen’s herbarium location, barcode, filing name, family, collector, collector number, country code and phytoregion (for the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda & Burundi). The out-sourced data capture consisted of three types: additional label information for central African specimens having minimal data; complete data for the remaining African specimens; and, species filing name information for African and Belgian specimens without minimal data. As part of the preparation for out-sourcing, a strict protocol had to be established as to the criteria for acceptable data quality levels. Also, the creation of several lookup tables for data entry was necessary to improve data quality. During the start-up phase all the data were checked, feedback given, compromises made and the protocol amended. After this phase, an agreed upon subsample was quality controlled. If the error score exceeded the agreed level, the batch was returned for retyping. The data had three quality control checks during the process, by the data capturers, the contractor’s project managers and ourselves. Data quality was analysed and compared in-house versus out-sourced modes of data capture. The error rate by our staff versus the external company was comparable. The types of error that occurred were often linked to the specific field in question. These errors include problems of interpretation, legibility, foreign languages, typographic errors, etc. A significant amount of data cleaning and post-capture processing was required prior to import into our database, despite the data being of good quality according to protocol (error < 1%). By improving the workflow and field definitions a notable improvement could be made in the “data cleaning” phase. The initial motivation for capturing some data in-house was financial. However, after analysis, this may not have been the most cost effective approach. Many lessons have been learned from this first mass digitisation project that will implemented in similar projects in the future.

Data Capture Project at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

2009 ◽  
pp. 77-82
Author(s):  
Natacha Frachon ◽  
Martin Gardner ◽  
David Rae
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Resources ◽  
Research Community ◽  
Royal Botanic Garden ◽  
Data Capture ◽  
Plant Biodiversity ◽  
Botanic Gardens ◽  
Botanic Garden ◽  
The World ◽  
Plant Collections ◽  
Field Notes

Botanic gardens, with their large holdings of living plants collected from around the world, are important guardians of plant biodiversity, but acquiring and curating these genetic resources is enormously expensive. For these reasons it is crucial that botanic gardens document and curate their collections in order to gain the greatest benefit from the plants in their care. Great priority is given to making detailed field notes and the process of documentation is often continued during the plants formative years when being propagated. However, for the large majority of plants this process often stops once the material is planted in its final garden location. The Data Capture Project at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is an attempt to document specific aspects of the plant collections so that the information captured can be of use to the research community even after the plants have died.

New species list of plants and lichens of Russia for Turboveg for Windows

2020 ◽  
pp. 151-156
Author(s):  
A. P. Korablev ◽  
N. S. Liksakova ◽  
D. M. Mirin ◽  
D. G. Oreshkin ◽  
P. G. Efimov
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
Vascular Plants ◽  
Russian Literature ◽  
Web Page ◽  
Species List ◽  
Internet Resources ◽  
The World ◽  
A New Species ◽  
The Web

A new species list of plants and lichens of Russia and neighboring countries has been developed for Turboveg for Windows, the program, intended for storage and management of phytosociological data (relevés), is widely used all around the world (Hennekens, Schaminée, 2001; Hennekens, 2015). The species list is built upon the database of the Russian website Plantarium (Plantarium…: [site]), which contains a species atlas and illustrated an online Handbook of plants and lichens. The nomenclature used on Plantarium was originally based on the following issues: vascular plants — S. K. Cherepanov (1995) with additions; mosses — «Flora of mosses of Russia» (Proect...: [site]); liverworts and hornworts — A. D. Potemkin and E. V. Sofronova (2009); lichens — «Spisok…» G. P. Urbanavichyus ed. (2010); other sources (Plantarium...: [site]). The new species list, currently the most comprehensive in Turboveg format for Russia, has 89 501 entries, including 4627 genus taxa compare to the old one with 32 020 entries (taxa) and only 253 synonyms. There are 84 805 species and subspecies taxa in the list, 37 760 (44.7 %) of which are accepted, while the others are synonyms. Their distribution by groups of organisms and divisions are shown in Table. A large number of synonyms in the new list and its adaptation to work with the Russian literature will greatly facilitate the entry of old relevé data. The ways of making new list, its structure as well as the possibilities of checking taxonomic lists on Internet resources are considered. The files of the species list for Turboveg 2 and Turboveg 3, the technique of associating existing databases with a new species list (in Russian) are available on the web page https://www.binran.ru/resursy/informatsionnyye-resursy/tekuschie-proekty/species_list_russia/.

THE LAPBOOK AS A DIDACTIC TOOL TO IMPLEMENT INTEGRATED TRAINING IN NATURAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP AT PRIMARY SCHOOL LEVEL

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 959-963 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yordanka Peycheva ◽  
Snezhana Lazarova
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
School Level ◽  
Integrative Approach ◽  
Educational Goals ◽  
Knowledge And Skills ◽  
Global Issues ◽  
Highly Active ◽  
The World

The formation of comprehensive and in-depth notions of objects and phenomena in the world can be achieved when the mastery of knowledge and skills is carried out in a system realized in the context of integration of different scientific directions. One of the main issues in modern education is related to the contradiction - on one hand between the need to form the skills necessary for the orientation and adaptation of the personality in the dynamics of the globalizing world and on the other - the education which is largely based on unilateral acquiring of knowledge and skills within the different subject areas. This influences the development of a worldview and the formation of an adequate attitude towards the problems under consideration and the world as a whole. The knowledge and skills acquired today are often “locked” in the respective direction. The cross-curricular unity in the curriculum is of a recommended nature, but even if it is realized, it does not fully meet the need for a comprehensive and multifaceted consideration of global issues, as a result of which the student not only understands, reflects, but also applies the lessons learned in the process of creating a product - ideal or material. Combining the intellectual nature of the cognitive process with the practice activity are conditions in which the students are highly active and achieve better learning outcomes. Therefore, it is expedient for the different directions to correspond more closely to each other and to carry out effective cross-curricular integration. The concept of applying an integrative approach in the current paper is based on the idea of creating pedagogical conditions for reconciling the goals and expected outcomes of technology and entrepreneurship and natural sciences studied at the initial stage of the primary education. Integration can take place on two levels - knowledge and skills. We believe that the lapbook as an innovative didactic tool contains the necessary potential for effective realization of the educational goals in both directions in terms of achieving the expected results. In the course of its elaboration, new information is acquired in the field of engineering and technology, specific skills underlying the curricula of technology and entrepreneurship programs are developed. At the same time, a number of subjects from the learning content, which are considered from the natural science point of view, are enriched and perceived in a technological way, after which they find place in an attractive book - a lapbook, made by the students themselves. Its utilitarian value is multiplied by the personal contribution to its creation - not only as an object but also as content. The main topics that are of interest to the students are exploring and preserving nature, jobs, modern technical achievements, holidays and customs. As a result of the adequate integration of competences, tailored to curricula, a number of skills are formed, such as: skills for searching on their own, systematization and presentation of information, and application of the lessons learned in a new situation.

How India Fights with COVID-19 with Learning from Highly Affected Countries

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pooja Sharma ◽  
Karan Veer
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Gene Sequencing ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
World Health ◽  
Global Risk ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Risk Assessment ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Very High ◽  
Breathing Problem

: It was 11 March 2020 when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the name COVID-19 for coronavirus disease and also described it as a pandemic. Till that day 118,000 cases were confirmed of pneumonia with breathing problem throughout the world. At the start of New Year when COVID-19 came into knowledge a few days later, the gene sequencing of the virus was revealed. Today the number of confirmed cases is scary, i.e. 9,472,473 in the whole world and 484,236 deaths have been recorded by WHO till 26 June 2020. WHO's global risk assessment is very high [1]. The report is enlightening the lessons learned by India from the highly affected countries.

scholarly journals A public health perspective on mental health: lessons for population health in the 21st century

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
James V. Lucey
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Mental Health ◽  
Population Health ◽  
Royal College ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Healthcare Systems ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Public Health Perspective ◽  
The World ◽  
Shared Commitment

In December 2019, clinicians and academics from the disciplines of public health and psychiatry met in Dublin at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), to restate their shared commitment to population health. The purpose of this review is to bring our discussion to a wider audience. The meeting could not have been more timely. Six weeks later, the COVID-19 emergency emerged in China and within 12 months it had swept the world. This paper, the contents of which were presented at that meeting in December recommended that future healthcare would be guided more by public health perspectives and informed by an understanding of health economics, population health and the lessons learned by psychiatry in the 20th century. Ultimately two issues are at stake in 21st century healthcare: the sustainability of our healthcare systems and the maintenance of public support for population health. We must plan for the next generation of healthcare. We need to do this now since it is clear that COVID-19 marks the beginning of 21st century medicine.

Foundations of Advanced Neuroanatomy: Technical Guidelines for Specimen Preparation, Dissection, and 3D-Photodocumentation in a Surgical Anatomy Laboratory

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luciano César PC Leonel ◽  
Lucas P. Carlstrom ◽  
Christopher S. Graffeo ◽  
Avital Perry ◽  
Carlos Diogenes Pinheiro-Neto ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Dynamic Range ◽  
Tap Water ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
High Dynamic Range ◽  
Surgical Anatomy ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Specimen Preparation ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
Key Steps

Abstract Objective This study was aimed to provide a key update to the seminal works of Prof. Albert L. Rhoton Jr., MD, with particular attention to previously unpublished insights from the oral tradition of his fellows, recent technological advances including endoscopy, and high-dynamic range (HDR) photodocumentation, and, local improvements in technique, we have developed to optimize efficient neuroanatomic study. Methods Two formaldehyde-fixed cadaveric heads were injected with colored latex to demonstrate step-by-step specimen preparation for microscopic or endoscopic dissection. One formaldehyde-fixed brain was utilized to demonstrate optimal three-dimensional (3D) photodocumentation techniques. Results Key steps of specimen preparation include vessel cannulation and securing, serial tap water flushing, specimen drainage, vessel injection with optimized and color-augmented latex material, and storage in 70% ethanol. Optimizations for photodocumentation included the incorporation of dry black drop cloth and covering materials, an imaging-oriented approach to specimen positioning and illumination, and single-camera stereoscopic capture techniques, emphasizing the three-exposure-times-per-eye approach to generating images for HDR postprocessing. Recommended tools, materials, and technical nuances were emphasized throughout. Relative advantages and limitations of major 3D projection systems were comparatively assessed, with sensitivity to audience size and purpose specific recommendations. Conclusion We describe the first consolidated step-by-step approach to advanced neuroanatomy, including specimen preparation, dissection, and 3D photodocumentation, supplemented by previously unpublished insights from the Rhoton fellowship experience and lessons learned in our laboratories in the past years such that Prof. Rhoton's model can be realized, reproduced, and expanded upon in surgical neuroanatomy laboratories worldwide.

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