From blay at PONDSIDE.UCHICAGO.EDU Thu Aug 1 07:45:18 1996 From: blay at PONDSIDE.UCHICAGO.EDU (Jorge A. Santiago-Blay) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 7:45:18 Subject: Tribolium Message-ID: 2 Dear Colleagues: 3 4 Bill Ballard (Field Museum of Natural History), Mike Wade, and 5 I (both at the University of Chicago) are collaborating on a 6 molecular project on Tribolium (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae). 7 We need to get recently (= five year or less) 8 alcohol-preserved material (adults or larvae) of any Tribolium 9 (except the common stored-product pests species) with adequate 10 collection data from all over the World. The described species 11 involved, as far as we know, are: 12 13 T. carinatum (America) 14 T. parallelus (America) 15 T. gebieni (America) 16 T. linsleyi (America) 17 T. giganteum (Africa) 18 T. semele (Africa) 19 T. sulmo (Africa) 20 T. indicum (Africa) 21 T. thusa (Africa) 22 T. downesii (Africa) 23 T. alcine (Madagascar) 24 T. dolon (Madagascar) 25 T. ceto (Madagascar) 26 T. waterhousi (Australia) 27 T. parki (Australia) 28 T. cylindricum (Malaysia and East Indies) 29 T. politum (Riouw Islands) 30 T. myrmecophilum (Australia) 31 32 and 33 34 T. antennatum (Australia) 35 36 Of course, there may be undescribed species. 37 Any leads as to how to get a hold of specimens will be greatly 38 appreciated as well. Many thanks. 39 40 41 Cordially, 42 43 44 Jorge A. Santiago-Blay 45 46 P.S. Apologies for the possible cross-posting. From dessart at D5100.KBINIRSNB.BE Thu Aug 1 15:07:32 1996 From: dessart at D5100.KBINIRSNB.BE (Paul Dessart) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 15:07:32 Subject: Andrena delta 'Kby' Message-ID: Dear Colleagues Hymenopterists, Since many years, I unsuccessfully try to solve the following nomenclatural problem. Personal letters to specialists rarely got an answer, or it was "I don't know"; public question in a newsletter produced no reaction. Here are the facts: 1903 Viereck describes a bee as _Andrena delta_ Viereck, 1903. 1908 Viereck briefly mentions the existence of an _Andrena delta_ Kby, the reason why he coins for his own species the new name _Andrena didelta_ Viereck, 1908. 1908 Curiously (without consequence for my problem), the same year, appears the description of another homonym, namely _Andrena delta_ Saunders, 1908. My problem is that I cannot find the *date* of _Andrena delta_ Kby despite the many catalogues consulted; I suppose, as an apid is concerned, that Kby is William Kirby (1759-1850) (not William Forsell Kirby, 1844-1912). Who could give me the solution? Many thanks to any colleague who will consider the question. Paul Dessart, Chef honoraire de la Section Insectes & Arachnomorphes a' l'Institut royal des Sciences naturelles de Belgique. dessart at kbinirsnb.be From lcjbrick at ANTELOPE.WCC.EDU Thu Aug 1 09:44:57 1996 From: lcjbrick at ANTELOPE.WCC.EDU (Jerry Bricker) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 9:44:57 Subject: Destruction of smallpox Message-ID: Dear all: I recently read that the World Health Organization has postponed the destruction of the the last vials of the smallpox pathogen until 1999 (the third stay so far received). My question to all of those studying and working to preserve biodiversity is what stand, if any, should the systematics community take (or has it taken)? If it is agreed that a species that has caused immeasurable human suffering and wholescale destruction to entire cultures (i.e., native American communities) should be eliminated then where do we draw the line? Does one species have the right to determine whether another should be allowed to exist? If so, what criteria will be used in making the decision for or against forced extinction? If the species is percieved as cute and cuddly (pandas and wolves) it will be protected but if it is ugly, slimy, smelly or dangerous does it get the boot? I don't recall seeing this topic discussed on TAXACOM, although it may have come up before I subscribed. In any case, it seems like a good one to consider as it seems to me that it goes right to the heart of what biosystematics is all about. Any ideas? JB From 23274MJC at MSU.EDU Thu Aug 1 12:54:00 1996 From: 23274MJC at MSU.EDU (Michael.Chamberland) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 12:54:00 Subject: Destruction of smallpox Message-ID: > From: Jerry Bricker > > I recently read that the World Health Organization has postponed the > destruction of the the last vials of the smallpox pathogen until 1999 > (the third stay so far received). My question to all of those studying > and working to preserve biodiversity is what stand, if any, should the > systematics community take (or has it taken)? If it is agreed that a > species that has caused immeasurable human suffering and wholescale > destruction to entire cultures (i.e., native American communities) should > be eliminated then where do we draw the line? Does one species have the > right to determine whether another should be allowed to exist? If so, Perhaps a comprehensive Bill of Rights for Earth Species will be drafted at the next Inter-species Congress? :-) But then that pesky question "what is a species?" rears its ugly head again... as in "that darned owl is just a subspecies!" > what criteria will be used in making the decision for or against forced > extinction? If the species is percieved as cute and cuddly (pandas and > wolves) it will be protected but if it is ugly, slimy, smelly or > dangerous does it get the boot? I don't know how many species are "targetted" for forced extinction. But there are many species just hanging on in cultivation (as cultures, zoo exhibits, or botanical garden specimens). These we're trying to keep alive, but like the smallpox pathogen, they're completely dependent on human support. One small management mistake could give them the ax. Sounds like the move to eradicate the smallpox culture is a management mistake. We save horrible weapons in museums. I would say smallpox has similar "historical value" beside the possibility of future research that may need to be done on the disease. But then I'm not a pathologist. Michael Chamberland Beal-Darlington Herbarium Michigan State University (Hi, Jerry!) From VINCENMA at CASMAIL.MUOHIO.EDU Thu Aug 1 13:16:14 1996 From: VINCENMA at CASMAIL.MUOHIO.EDU (Michael@Mizzou1.Missouri.edu A.@Mizzou1.Missouri.edu VincentDr.@Mizzou1.Missouri.edu Michael@Mizzou1.Missouri.edu A.@Mizzou1.Missouri.edu Vincent@Mizzou1.Missouri.edu, Curator TEL: 513-529-2755) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 13:16:14 Subject: Destruction of smallpox Message-ID: I do not think that keeping the smallpox virus alive is a wise choice. If the genetic code of the virus is needed for future research, then isolate the genetic material and destroy the organism. Why keep something around that could destroy the next generation of (unvaccinated) people? Should we ever decide to completely destroy atomic weapons, who would argue in favor of keeping a few around "for future research"? Dr. Michael A. Vincent, Curator TEL: 513-529-2755 W.S. Turrell Herbarium (MU) FAX: 513-529-4243 Department of Botany Miami University Oxford, Ohio 45056 USA Email: Vincenma at MUOhio.edu From dyanega at DENR1.IGIS.UIUC.EDU Thu Aug 1 12:31:19 1996 From: dyanega at DENR1.IGIS.UIUC.EDU (Doug Yanega) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 12:31:19 Subject: Destruction of smallpox Message-ID: Michael A. Vincent wrote: > >If the genetic code of the virus is needed for future >research, then isolate the genetic material and destroy the organism. Is there a functional difference between these in the case of a virus? >Should we ever decide to completely destroy atomic weapons, who would >argue in favor of keeping a few around "for future research"? In one sense, this is a poor example; we can recreate atomic weapons any time the mood strikes us. We have plenty of blueprints. We cannot recreate an extinct species. We can't create a functioning virus from scratch even if we know its complete genetic code, can we? How can we possibly know now what future use that virus could be put to? I doubt many of us here are qualified to speculate. Any virologists on line here? I'd certainly defer to their opinion, if there were a consensus. Doug Yanega Illinois Natural History Survey, 607 E. Peabody Dr. Champaign, IL 61820 USA phone (217) 244-6817, fax (217) 333-4949 affiliate, Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Dept. of Entomology http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu:80/~dyanega/my_home.html "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82 From anamaria at GRINNELL.BERKELEY.EDU Thu Aug 1 11:03:57 1996 From: anamaria at GRINNELL.BERKELEY.EDU (Peter Rauch) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 11:03:57 Subject: Destruction of smallpox Message-ID: Like some say, the Earth Spirits work in strange and devious ways. What if humanity is as inept at controlling our population size as we are at controlling our tempers? The implication might be that we shouldn't try to be too successful in attempting to remove those agents and means which might be other Earthlings' near term salvation, if not our own.... On the other hand, Mother Nature doesn't care. Peter > Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 13:16:14 -500 > From: "Michael A. Vincent" > > I do not think that keeping the smallpox virus alive is a wise > choice. If the genetic code of the virus is needed for future > research, then isolate the genetic material and destroy the organism. > > Why keep something around that could destroy the next generation of > (unvaccinated) people? > Should we ever decide to completely destroy atomic weapons, who would > argue in favor of keeping a few around "for future research"? From weiler at ERS.UNR.EDU Thu Aug 1 10:49:07 1996 From: weiler at ERS.UNR.EDU (James Lyons-Weiler) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 10:49:07 Subject: Destruction of smallpox In-Reply-To: <12A4051B50@casmail.muohio.edu> Message-ID: My vote is to keep smallpox around. I for one would argue also to keep at least a few thousand nuclear devices handy. Weapons of destruction at one scale may be simple, useful tools for the prevention of destruction at another scale. My position is that because we are not capable of forecasting future events, the things we destroy today could turn out to be highly useful and critically so in the future. For smallpox, we can't be sure that some protein it encodes wouldn't serve as an essential building block for a living cocktail cure for some nasty plague. Keeping its genetic material around cannot be accomplished indefinitely; both DNA and RNA degrade (however slowly in the superfreeze), any how could we be sure that we kept "enough"? Random evolution occurs during PCR, so keeping the original information intact would be a difficult thing to do over thousands of human generations. For nuclear devices, they provide an option for moving comets and asteroids out of a collision course with the planet. There are fewer than two dozen astronomers scanning solar space for killer objects, and their tools are not well fitted to the job. Although we might retain the knowledge of how to put such deplorable things together, would there be time? Who knows. James _______________________________________________________________________________ \ / / \ / JAMES LYONS-WEILER ______________ \/ / \/ |..............| \ / / |..............| \/ / DOCTORAL PROGRAM IN |..............| \ / ECOLOGY, EVOLUTION, AND |...***........| \ / CONSERVATION BIOLOGY |..*****.......| \ / |.******.......| \/ 1000 VALLEY ROAD/186 |********......| ______________ THE UNIVERSITY OF -------------- | will perform | NEVADA, RENO | statistical | RENO, NEVADA 89512-0013 | phylogenetic | | analyses for | "(Biology) is not religion; if it were, we'd | food | have a much easier time raising money." -------------- -Leon Lederman _______________________________________________________________________________ From tdunc at BUTTERCUP.MIP.BERKELEY.EDU Thu Aug 1 13:50:39 1996 From: tdunc at BUTTERCUP.MIP.BERKELEY.EDU (Thomas Duncan) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 13:50:39 Subject: SMASCH World Wide Web site Message-ID: The Museum Informatics Project and the SMASCH project have completed a redesign of the SMASCH World Wide Web site. The URL is: http://ucjeps.Herb.Berkeley.EDU/smasch/ Through the SMASCH home page, you can: o Query the SMASCH database of California accessions by taxonomic name, collector, county in Caliifornia, or voucher kind; o Check data entry progress through monthly updates on the number of accessions in the SMASCH database; o Obtain documentation for the data entry software, database structures, and data entry procedures; o Download SMASCH data entry software and database structures. Comments and suggestions appreciated. ________________________________________________________________________________ Tom Duncan 510-642-6533 (voice) Museum Informatics Project ` 510-643-8856 (fax) 378 Doe Library tdunc at buttercup.mip.berkeley.edu University of California Berkeley, CA 94720 ________________________________________________________________________________ From mbrzeski at LINUX.INWARZ.SKIERNIEWICE.PL Fri Aug 2 00:00:29 1996 From: mbrzeski at LINUX.INWARZ.SKIERNIEWICE.PL (Michal Brzeski) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 0:00:29 Subject: (no subject) Message-ID: How about if these last vials with smallpox will end in terrorists hands ... From stracey at DIRCON.CO.UK Fri Aug 2 01:09:00 1996 From: stracey at DIRCON.CO.UK (Steve Tracey) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 1:09:00 Subject: Destruction of smallpox Message-ID: James Lyons-Weiler writes: >My vote is to keep smallpox around. I for one would argue also to keep at >least a few thousand nuclear devices handy. Weapons of destruction at one >scale may be simple, useful tools for the prevention of destruction at >another scale. My position is that because we are not capable of >forecasting future events, the things we destroy today could turn out to >be highly useful and critically so in the future. >For smallpox, we can't be sure that some protein it encodes wouldn't serve >as an essential building block for a living cocktail cure for some nasty >plague. Nuclear devices have always been useful for those who need such things. If you could eliminate them (difficult) they would probably just be rebuilt again anyway. Smallpox has never been of use, as such, and is highly dangerous. The nightmare scenario of a group of scientists extracting bits from a smallpox virus to build some sort of living cocktail is what first gave genetic research a bad name. Conserving a bit of everything there is, on the grounds that one day it might be useful, is generally a bad idea, I find. If and when that day comes and I don't have whatever-it-was, I just use something else. Steve Tracey School of Earth Sciences Greenwich University, UK. From Bronwen.Scott at JCU.EDU.AU Fri Aug 2 10:28:08 1996 From: Bronwen.Scott at JCU.EDU.AU (Bronwen Scott) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 10:28:08 Subject: Destruction of smallpox In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.16.19960802010804.0b27bc46@popmail.dircon.co.uk> Message-ID: On Fri, 2 Aug 1996, Steve Tracey wrote: > Nuclear devices have always been useful for those who need such things. If > you could eliminate them (difficult) they would probably just be rebuilt > again anyway. The difference between a living organism and a machine is that blueprints, components and the ability to put them all together in a workable form are available for one and not the other. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Bronwen Scott Department of Zoology e-mail: Bronwen.Scott at jcu.edu.au James Cook University phone: (077) 81 4171/4540 Townsville fax: (077) 25 1570 Queensland 4811 Australia * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * From weiler at ERS.UNR.EDU Thu Aug 1 19:10:17 1996 From: weiler at ERS.UNR.EDU (James Lyons-Weiler) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 19:10:17 Subject: Destruction of smallpox In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.16.19960802010804.0b27bc46@popmail.dircon.co.uk> Message-ID: On Fri, 2 Aug 1996, Steve Tracey wrote: > Nuclear devices have always been useful for those who need such things. If > you could eliminate them (difficult) they would probably just be rebuilt > again anyway. But the question is, In time to avert a mass extinction? > Smallpox has never been of use, as such, and is highly dangerous. The > nightmare scenario of a group of scientists extracting bits from a smallpox > virus to build some sort of living cocktail is what first gave genetic > research a bad name. This is where ends do indeed justify means. If the cocktail prevented wanton loss of human life, saving the beasty would have been justified. It is my position that we, in our infinite ignorance, shouldn't pretend to be so arrogant as to be able to be certain that destroying biodiversity won't come back to haunt us. What is true of the potential of one genome is true of another. Of course, there are risks when dangerous things are about (weapons, etc). Modern science is still quite young on the timescale of technological development; one would hope that wisdom would come with age. We should face the risks we can control now to better mitigate those risks in the future that we know nothing about and might better handle with our nuclear and biological toolboxes. I generally find the global fight against entropy is better fought by reducing, not increasing, destruction. James _______________________________________________________________________________ \ / / \ / JAMES LYONS-WEILER ______________ \/ / \/ |..............| \ / / |..............| \/ / DOCTORAL PROGRAM IN |..............| \ / ECOLOGY, EVOLUTION, AND |...***........| \ / CONSERVATION BIOLOGY |..*****.......| \ / |.******........| \/ 1000 VALLEY ROAD/186 |********......| ______________ THE UNIVERSITY OF -------------- | will perform | NEVADA, RENO | statistical | RENO, NEVADA 89512-0013 | phylogenetic | | analyses for | "(Biology) is not religion; if it were, we'd | food | have a much easier time raising money." -------------- -Leon Lederman _______________________________________________________________________________ From bopp at HIPPO.RU.AC.ZA Fri Aug 2 10:04:04 1996 From: bopp at HIPPO.RU.AC.ZA (P.B. Phillipson) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 10:04:04 Subject: Virtual excursions Message-ID: This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------5DC92FA39CE Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Finn N. Rasmussen wrote: > > Hi taxacomers: > > I am planning to demonstrate the usefulness of the internet in an > introductory lecture in systematic botany. I will show the students > Lampinen's extremely useful "botany related URL's", some of the > colourful institutional pages like MoBot and Kew, the "Tree of Life" > and I will of course mention lists like Taxacom and Darwin. > > However, none of the plant things include sound effects. I wonder if > not there are some 'virtual excursion' pages to nice rainforest > sites where you can click on some of the critters and hear what they > have to say. It would sure startle the auditory. > > Thank you very much in advance, Finn > > Finn N. Rasmussen > Botanical Laboratory, University of Copenhagen > Gothersgade 140, DK-1123 Copenhagen K., Denmark > Phone: +45 35 32 21 55 Fax: +45 33 13 91 04 > Web homepage: http://www.bot.ku.dk > Email: FinnR at bot.ku.dk I don't know of any all singing all dancing sites as you ask, but I have given a short course to our students on internet resources for botanists and a workshop to southern African herbarium people, and suggest you might find the following Australian site interesting for resources such as distribution mapping and other plant taxonomic databases: http://kaos.erin.gov.au:80/life/species/species_flora.html You may also be interested to know that we (Schonland Herbarium/Rhodes University Botany Department/Southern African Herbarium Working Group) maintain a few modest pages that may be of interest: http://www.ru.ac.za/departments/herbarium/index.html http://www.ru.ac.za/departments/botany/index.html http://www.ru.ac.za/departments/herbarium/SAHWG/index.html For a review of South African educational sites put up recently by the Mail and Guardian Newspaper you might like to look at: http://www.mg.co.za/mg/pc/96aug/30jul-schools.html Peter Phillipson. ______________________________________________________________________ Lecturer and Curator (GRA) Botany Dept, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, 6140, South Africa. tel.: (27) (461) 318598(work) 25351(home) fax: (27) (461) 25524. ______________________________________________________________________ --------------5DC92FA39CE Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline; filename="index.html" Selmar Schonland Herbarium

SELMAR SCHONLAND HERBARIUM

Incorporating the Albany Museum Herbarium (GRA) and the Rhodes University Herbarium (RUH)

P.O. BOX 101, GRAHAMSTOWN, 6140, SOUTH AFRICA
Tel.: (0461) 22638 Fax.: (0461) 25524

Staff

Logo

Our logo is Euphorbia bupleurifolia Jacq. one of the many succulent species of the genus found around Grahamstown. It was suggested and drawn by Albany Museum artist and succulent enthusiast Gerhard Marx. Click here for more information about this plant.

History

The Selmar Schonland Herbarium (GRA) was formed in 1993 by the amalgamation of the Albany Museum Herbarium (GRA) and the Rhodes University Herbarium (RUH). It is named in honour of the distinguished botanist who did much to establish botany in South Africa, at Rhodes University and the botanical collections at the Albany Museum in the late 19th century. The herbarium is affiliated to Rhodes University, the Albany Museum and the Range and Forage Institute (formerly Roodeplaat Grassland Institute) of the Agricultural Research Council. Click here for more information about the herbarium.

Coverage

Today the herbarium houses just under 200 000 plant specimens, making it the 4th largest herbarium in South Africa and the 9th largest on the whole African continent. Taxonomic coverage is broad, and although the majority of specimens are Angiosperms, the herbarium has a very large collection of algae based on M.A. Pocock's work. Geographically GRA focuses on the flora of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, although collections from most parts of southern Africa are also available, including the Jacot-Guillarmod Lesotho material. The herbarium also has a limited number of specimens from other regions of Africa and other continents. Collections of several historically important collectors are present, including Burchell, Ecklon, Flanagan, Galpin, MacOwan, Pappe, Pegler, Rogers, Schlechter, Sim and Zeyher. The herbarium is exceptionally rich in type specimens. Click here for more information about the herbarium

Loans

Specimens are normally available for loan to bona fide research institutions. Loan requests should be made to the Curator in writing.

Database

An electronic database is being developed for the herbarium, which is available on-line throughout the University and the Museum, but is not yet available on-line to outside users.

Newsletter

The Herbarium produces a newsletter A Leaf from the Herbarium. It is available online.
Return to:

This page was prepared by Peter Phillipson, last revised 10 June 1996 --------------5DC92FA39CE-- From lammers at TFM.FMNH.ORG Fri Aug 2 06:18:00 1996 From: lammers at TFM.FMNH.ORG (Thomas G. Lammers) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 6:18:00 Subject: Smallpox Message-ID: As re: whether to retain smallpox cultures or not, there is another consideration I haven't seen expressed: To what extent do we undermine our efforts to conserve biological diversity by defending patently unpopular and dangerous (from an anthropocentric view) organisms? The general public -- moderately educated working middle class families -- often percieve scientists as odd ducks, and ecologists often have the worst reputation with such folks. For the systematics community to champion smallpox would, I think, get us a lot of very bad PR. I have often thought that (to look for analogies) the ACLU has done itself a disservice as regards public opinion by championing the rights of groups such as the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan. I understand and agree that an important principle, our First Amendment rights, are at stake and that they must be defended; nonetheless, many people who might support the group are now lost to it. We, too, have an important principle: that all organisms are an integral part of the biosphere and thus of value. But if we push that principle to the fullest extent, we may appear foolish or worse, dangerously loonie, to ordinary (non-academic) folks. Afdter all, consider how many folks find us stupid for caring about cute little vertebrates like the snail darter or pretty flowers like the Furbish lousewort. What will they say if we take a stand in defense of a bit of nucleic acid with a protein coat that has killed millions of humans? So I vote to do it in. Eradicate it. I see far more potential for evil uses of the last remaining cultures than benigh ones. Granted, we can't see the future; maybe smallpox could someday be our salvation. But as a wise man once said: "The race isn't *always* to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet your money." And in any case, we have an escape clause: we can claim that viruses aren't really alive anyway. That they aren't organisms because they aren't cellular. Somewhere in my education, I recall being told that viruses may not be a monophyletic group, but rather than human viruses would be more closely related to primates than to, for instance, tobacco mosaic virus, which would be more closely related to tobacco and other solanaceous angiosperms. Is that right, or is that completely nuts? (Geez, where's a virologist when you really need one?). Thomas G. Lammers lammers at tfm.fmnh.org Department of Botany Field Museum of Natural History Chicago IL 60605-2496 USA From jablake at IX.NETCOM.COM Fri Aug 2 06:00:50 1996 From: jablake at IX.NETCOM.COM (JAMES ALAN BLAKE) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 6:00:50 Subject: Re, Smallpox Message-ID: Dear Taxocomers, The recent round of discussion about the plight of the last known remaining cultures of smallpox is to my mind somewhat preposterous. Smallpox has decimated whole civilizations, for example, the Carbib Indians, the Aztecs, not to mention numerous other tribes of native Americans and other cultures that were at one time isolated from the organism. I susepect that the number of deaths attributed to smallpox far and away exceed those from other famous deseases including plague or nuclear weapons for that matter. The fight against smallpox is one of the greatest successes of medical science and the W.H.O. We should completely erradicate this organism. I wonder about the content of a similar discussion at some point in the distant future if we come to the same fork in the road with HIV. James A. Blake (jablake at ix.netcom.com) From bmoc at UMICH.EDU Fri Aug 2 11:02:00 1996 From: bmoc at UMICH.EDU (Barry M. OConnor) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 11:02:00 Subject: Smallpox Message-ID: At 6:18 AM 8/2/96, Thomas G. Lammers wrote: >So I vote to do it in. Eradicate it. I see far more potential for evil >uses of the last remaining cultures than benigh ones. Granted, we can't >see the future; maybe smallpox could someday be our salvation. But as a >wise man once said: "The race isn't *always* to the swift, nor the battle >to the strong, but that's the way to bet your money." > At its most basic biological level, the smallpox debate boils down to the issue of coevolution. The body of theory in this area regarding host-parasite associations developed by Anderson & May and others supports the notion of an "arms-race" between host and parasite. The simplest case, exemplified by the smallpox virus-human system, involves only two parties, the parasite evolving to best exploit the host and the host evolving to minimize or eliminate the effects of the parasite. If the latter causes the extinction of the parasite, so be it (evolution has no ethics). An example of the latter comes from the psoroptid mites, best known to dog & cat owners (pet ear mites) and livestock managers (itch mites, scab mites, etc.). The Psoroptidae are also very diverse on primates, with many highly host-specific species. I developed a cladogram, published a few years ago, showing a high degree of congruence between the phylogeny of the primate-associated Psoroptidae and the order Primates itself. The only two primate groups to lack psoroptid parasites are tarsiers and humans. The most parsimonious explanation for this absence is extinction. I suspect in the case of humans, the mites lost out when we lost the majority of our fur. So in the case of smallpox, there has been an evolutionary "arms-race" and we won. Just because the mechanism leading to the extinction of the parasite was cultural/technological and not genetic doesn't change the outcome. We evolved large brains and a pleiotropic effect of that condition is that we can use technology to eliminate a specific parasite. I don't see the difference between that and our ancestors having eliminated their psoroptid parasites. Barry M. OConnor phone: (313) 763-4354 Museum of Zoology FAX: (313) 763-4080 University of Michigan e-mail: bmoc at umich.edu Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1079 USA From weiler at ERS.UNR.EDU Fri Aug 2 08:24:14 1996 From: weiler at ERS.UNR.EDU (James Lyons-Weiler) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 8:24:14 Subject: Smallpox In-Reply-To: <3201e7fa0.64cf@tfm.fmnh.org> Message-ID: On Fri, 2 Aug 1996, Thomas G. Lammers wrote: > So I vote to do it in. Eradicate it. I see far more potential for evil > uses of the last remaining cultures than benigh ones. Granted, we can't > see the future; maybe smallpox could someday be our salvation. But as a > wise man once said: "The race isn't *always* to the swift, nor the battle > to the strong, but that's the way to bet your money." > > And in any case, we have an escape clause: we can claim that viruses aren't > really alive anyway. That they aren't organisms because they aren't cellular. > Somewhere in my education, I recall being told that viruses may not be a > monophyletic group, but rather than human viruses would be more closely > related to primates than to, for instance, tobacco mosaic virus, which would > be more closely related to tobacco and other solanaceous angiosperms. > Is that right, or is that completely nuts? (Geez, where's a virologist > when you really need one?). > I'm not a virologist, but the phylogeny of viruses at large would seem to me to be a near-impossible task; there have been billions of opportunity for host->pathogen horizontal transfer of genetic code (the damns things insert themselves into our genetic sequences), and the body's defense system can work to cause extremely rapid (real time and generational time) convergence to a sequence that when transcribed looks, smells, and acts just like a host protein. For some sequences in HIV, for example, it seems to me that the protein coat sequences might better reflect the geneaological relationships between the hosts than the tranmission history. As for the eradication of smallpox, how does any group defend to the public the fact that they are responsible for the persistence of factors that kill so many people? If there is money to be made, they by-pass the people and go to their government. They lobby. James _______________________________________________________________________________ \ / / \ / JAMES LYONS-WEILER ______________ \/ / \/ |..............| \ / / |..............| \/ / DOCTORAL PROGRAM IN |..............| \ / ECOLOGY, EVOLUTION, AND |...***........| \ / CONSERVATION BIOLOGY |..*****.......| \ / |.******.......| \/ 1000 VALLEY ROAD/186 |********......| ______________ THE UNIVERSITY OF -------------- | will perform | NEVADA, RENO | statistical | RENO, NEVADA 89512-0013 | phylogenetic | | analyses for | "(Biology) is not religion; if it were, we'd | food | have a much easier time raising money." -------------- -Leon Lederman _______________________________________________________________________________ From panzar at CLPGH.ORG Fri Aug 2 12:11:06 1996 From: panzar at CLPGH.ORG (Robin Panza) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 12:11:06 Subject: destruction of smallpox Message-ID: >Should we ever decide to completely destroy atomic weapons, who would >argue in favor of keeping a few around "for future research"? > >In one sense, this is a poor example; we can recreate atomic weapons any >time the mood strikes us. We have plenty of blueprints. We cannot recreate >an extinct species. We can't create a functioning virus from scratch even >if we know its complete genetic code, can we? How can we possibly know now Another wrinkle in this argument is whether a virus is even an organism. I have met virologists who say viruses are not living things. In this case, the proper analogy would be more like destroying all samples of a mineral. It's not covered by the biodiversity ethics, but neither can we recreate it. Robin Panza panzar at clpgh.org Section of Birds Carnegie Museum of Natural History Pittsburgh PA USA 15213 From rjensen at SAINTMARYS.EDU Fri Aug 2 12:13:32 1996 From: rjensen at SAINTMARYS.EDU (Richard Jensen) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 12:13:32 Subject: Re, Smallpox In-Reply-To: <199608021300.GAA03808@dfw-ix1.ix.netcom.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 2 Aug 1996, JAMES ALAN BLAKE wrote: > Smallpox has decimated whole civilizations, for example, the Carbib > Indians, the Aztecs, not to mention numerous other tribes of native > Americans and other cultures that were at one time isolated from the > organism. I susepect that the number of deaths attributed to smallpox > far and away exceed those from other famous deseases including plague > or nuclear weapons for that matter. > I hate to bring this into the argument, but I think I could frame a similar scenario using good,old Homo sapiens as the villian. Who introduced smallpox to these cultures? Who has probably destroyed the lives of more humans than any other organism? I vote for saving the smallpox genome - there may come a time when we discover it has some property that will be of benefit to many in the future. From bmoc at UMICH.EDU Fri Aug 2 13:30:56 1996 From: bmoc at UMICH.EDU (Barry M. OConnor) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 13:30:56 Subject: Re, Smallpox Message-ID: At 12:13 PM 8/2/96, Richard Jensen wrote: >On Fri, 2 Aug 1996, JAMES ALAN BLAKE wrote: > >I hate to bring this into the argument, but I think I could frame a >similar scenario using good,old Homo sapiens as the villian. Who >introduced smallpox to these cultures? Who has probably destroyed the >lives of more humans than any other organism? Again from a parasitological point of view, when smallpox was introduced into a host population which had no genetic experience, the parasite did very well, i.e. it won the "arms-race". From the point of view of the host species as a whole, though, it has lost. > Barry M. OConnor phone: (313) 763-4354 Museum of Zoology FAX: (313) 763-4080 University of Michigan e-mail: bmoc at umich.edu Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1079 USA From 76711.1261 at COMPUSERVE.COM Sat Aug 3 02:55:59 1996 From: 76711.1261 at COMPUSERVE.COM (GB:'X0B$4fAB92GB5) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 1996 2:55:59 Subject: Re, Smallpox Message-ID: ....Smallpox has decimated whole civilizations, for example, the Carbib Indians, the Aztecs, not to mention numerous other tribes of native Americans and other cultures that were at one time isolated from the organism. I susepect that the number of deaths attributed to smallpox far and away exceed those from other famous deseases including plague or nuclear weapons for that matter. The fight against smallpox is one of the greatest successes of medical science and the W.H.O. We should completely erradicate this organism.... The same thing I can tell about man and Dodo bird, Tasmanian Tiger and others animals decimated by man... what will be your answer if some extraterrestrial ask you the same question about you... I still remember when I was in school thirty five years go how I have been taught that wolf, shark and other bad animals has to be wipe out from the earth... and how our science will be powerful to command winds and rains.... looks to me there is always someone who in the name of "something" like to destroy or wipe of from earth some nations or animals.... From my point of view it is easy to destroy something by some mentally retarded man, but built it back is often impossible.. From jablake at IX.NETCOM.COM Sat Aug 3 07:48:10 1996 From: jablake at IX.NETCOM.COM (JAMES ALAN BLAKE) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 1996 7:48:10 Subject: Re, Smallpox Message-ID: You wrote: > >....Smallpox has decimated whole civilizations, for example, the Carbib >Indians, the Aztecs, not to mention numerous other tribes of native >Americans and other cultures that were at one time isolated from the >organism. I susepect that the number of deaths attributed to smallpox >far and away exceed those from other famous deseases including plague >or nuclear weapons for that matter. >The fight against smallpox is one of the greatest successes of medical >science and the W.H.O. We should completely erradicate this organism.... > >The same thing I can tell about man and Dodo bird, Tasmanian Tiger and others >animals decimated by man... what will be your answer if some extraterrestrial >ask you the same question about you... > >I still remember when I was in school thirty five years go how I have been >taught that wolf, shark and other bad animals has to be wipe out from the >earth... and how our science will be powerful to command winds and rains.... > >looks to me there is always someone who in the name of "something" like to >destroy or wipe of from earth some nations or animals.... From my point of view >it is easy to destroy something by some mentally retarded man, but built it >back is often impossible.. > It was not my intention to enter a debate on the pros and cons of keeping deadly organisms extant or not, but there are moral issues here that go far beyond preserving biodiversity. These days our children are not being vaccinated against smallpox and in fact, there are no longer stockpiles of the vaccine so that even if you wanted to have your children immunized agains smallpox, you cannot. That is what happens when you destroy stocks of the agent--you need it produce the vaccine. Imagine a terrorist group getting hold of some stocks of the virus, developing cultures, and then dropping a biological weapon of the virus over Prague, Paris, London, or New York. Will you say the same thing when your children die a painful death? Somehow, I don't have the same cuddly feeling about a deadly virus as I do about our four legged friends. Viruses are relatively simple life forms (if they really are life forms) and it should be no problem to preserve the genetic code and recreate it at some point in the future if the specific gene sequences were to prove important in some line of research. But given the relative lack of immunity to smallpox in individuals of about 20 yrs or younger in our population, we really can't take the chance of the virus being accidentally or intentionally released at some point in the future. The result of such a terrorist act would make recent bombings seem like childs play. Jim Blake (jablake at ix.netcom.com) From zander at AG.NET Sat Aug 3 13:25:10 1996 From: zander at AG.NET (Richard Zander) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 1996 13:25:10 Subject: Re, Smallpox Message-ID: It is my understanding that there are 3 million stockpiled vaccines against smallpox, the genetic code has been completely analyses, and a similar but relatively harmless virus (cowpox?) is still extant and more vaccine can be made from that. From that, one might say why not keep smallpox around? Probably someone could re-invent it or something essentially the same from the code, anyway, so why not keep it as a curiosity or for heuristic purposes? On the other hand, smallpox is *our* disease and we should eradicate it on principle. Think of the myriad cases of personal pain and loss over the years...SURELY we have a duty in this case. Let's prove to the postmodernists that scientists aren't guided solely by scientism. ******************************************************* Richard H. Zander, Buffalo Museum of Science 1020 Humboldt Pkwy, Buffalo, NY 14211 USA zander at ag.net ******************************************************* From zander at AG.NET Sat Aug 3 15:11:50 1996 From: zander at AG.NET (Richard Zander) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 1996 15:11:50 Subject: Big glitch in computerdom Message-ID: I recently searched for my name on altavista.digital.com which has a web spider that indexes web sites automatically. I found several mail messages (one attached below) that incorrectly ascribed to me the words of others. Apparently the "On (date) (name) wrote:" phrase that quotes previous email messages can automatically cite someone other than the actual quote, if quotes are buried in quotes as is usual in long threads. I did not say those things now archived on the Taxacom log. I would like these messages deleted--in fact I would like to have deleted all messages quoting anything I am supposed to have said. This is a general message to all participants in Taxacom (and it probably is true for other listservers, too) since you probably have all been misquoted for posterity. Check it out.... The web is wonderful, but we are the guinea pigs. -- ******************************************************* Richard H. Zander, Buffalo Museum of Science 1020 Humboldt Pkwy, Buffalo, NY 14211 USA zander at ag.net ******************************************************* FROM TAXACOM ARCHIVES http://muse.bio.cornell.edu/archive/gophtax.mar.96/0100.html e: Binomial elimination Stephen P. Rae (srae at COMMUNITY.NET) Fri, 17 Mar 1995 09:20:03 -0800 Messages sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ] Next message: Curtis Clark: "Re: Botanical Code Article 71" Previous message: Stephen P. Rae: "Re: Identification Software" Stephen P. Rae (srae at community.net) Research Biologist 1130 Cayetano Court Environmental Resource Analyst Napa, CA 94559-4137 Bryologist USA Forester - Land Management Planner (707) 255-7546 (residence) (707) 257-2487 (MUSCI - BITS, BYTES & BUZZWORDS) (707) 257-2487 (modem) (FAX) On Fri, 17 Mar 1995, Richard H. Zander wrote: > Many have complained that eliminating the genus name makes for confusion, > like eliminating a person's last name. Not so. Say you know somebody named > Jack. No problem. The *government* has no problem either, since Jack > is known by his soc. security number. Thus, the tomato is a tomato, unless > you definitely need to distinguish it from rare, unusual, exotic > tomato relatives in a scientific paper, at which time you can refer to > it as tomato (3488966600881-B) as an individual, and place it in the > group Solanum or Lycopersicon for the benefit of your fellow scientists, > who are the only ones who might care. > > Richard Zander >Strictly as a matter of process, how do you see us leading a class on plant id where we use the name Mustard-123456789? I know that the character Ralph 124C was well known in a book, but such a plant name is a real killer for the novice. So, now what? Next message: Curtis Clark: "Re: Botanical Code Article 71" Previous message: Stephen P. Rae: "Re: Identification Software" From zander at AG.NET Sat Aug 3 15:31:37 1996 From: zander at AG.NET (Richard Zander) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 1996 15:31:37 Subject: On saying things you know nothing about Message-ID: On second though, after tracing my archived messages through Taxacom log, I see...I must have said what I complained about in lastest tirade! With the Net, it is so easy to be so certain one actually has something to say for those few seconds it takes to type a message. Say, take a few moments to check out the things *you've* typed for posterity. You'll be surprized how easy it will be that generations of college kids are going to cite your every unconsidered thought here on the Web. http://altavista.digital.com -- ******************************************************* Richard H. Zander, Buffalo Museum of Science 1020 Humboldt Pkwy, Buffalo, NY 14211 USA zander at ag.net ******************************************************* From dyanega at DENR1.IGIS.UIUC.EDU Sat Aug 3 16:10:35 1996 From: dyanega at DENR1.IGIS.UIUC.EDU (Doug Yanega) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 1996 16:10:35 Subject: On saying things you know nothing about Message-ID: Richard Zander wrote: >Say, take a few moments to check out the things *you've* typed for >posterity. You'll be surprized how easy it will be that generations of >college kids are going to cite your every unconsidered thought here on >the Web. http://altavista.digital.com Altavista isn't the worst of it - DejaNews archives every single posting to the Usenet newsgroups, so those of us who post to groups in the sci.bio.* hierarchy will have our old postings around to haunt us forever, as well as our mailing list archives. Frankly, that is not so much a problem as the VOLUME of stuff that can result, making it impossible or anyone interested in your postings to actually find important material therein. These archives can be and are being used by advertisers to target people. The only thing I've been informed will stop it is to place the line "x-no-archive: yes" as the first line of any postings you don't want archived. I don't know if this works for mailing list archives like taxacom. A similar thing applies to ALL users of Netscape - most people are unaware that Netscape automatically saves files recording your use of the Web, and that these files are NOT PRIVATE. Apparently anyone with the know-how can obtain complete logs of all the Web sites you visit, without your ever knowing that this information has been made available to them, and this feature is regularly exploited by marketing research people. There is precious little privacy in the electronic age. Doug Yanega Illinois Natural History Survey, 607 E. Peabody Dr. Champaign, IL 61820 USA phone (217) 244-6817, fax (217) 333-4949 affiliate, Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Dept. of Entomology http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu:80/~dyanega/my_home.html "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82 From 23274MJC at MSU.EDU Sat Aug 3 17:42:00 1996 From: 23274MJC at MSU.EDU (Michael.Chamberland) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 1996 17:42:00 Subject: Herbarium News? ASPT? Message-ID: I've subscribed to both Herbarium News and Systematic Botany/ASPT. It has been many months since I've seen a new journal/newsletter from either. Does anyone know the status of these publications? I worry that the infrastructure of the plant systematics communtity is disappearing! Should I be aware of any other publication(s) mirroring the role of Herbarium News and ASPT? Michael Chamberland From liushus at LEROY.CC.UREGINA.CA Sat Aug 3 15:57:20 1996 From: liushus at LEROY.CC.UREGINA.CA (Shunguo Liu) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 1996 15:57:20 Subject: Herbarium News? ASPT? Message-ID: At 05:42 PM 8/3/96 EDT, Michael.Chamberland wrote: >I've subscribed to both Herbarium News and Systematic Botany/ASPT. >It has been many months since I've seen a new journal/newsletter from >either. Does anyone know the status of these publications? I worry >that the infrastructure of the plant systematics communtity is >disappearing! Should I be aware of any other publication(s) mirroring >the role of Herbarium News and ASPT? > >Michael Chamberland Systematic Botany/ASPT: No hardcopies distributed, web site at: http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/FLORA/aspt/aspthome.htm Herbarium News: http://www.reading.ac.uk/AcaDepts/sb/Herb/herb_news_index.html Cheers, Shunguo Biology Univ. of Regina From gagne at CLIC.NET Sun Aug 4 12:24:44 1996 From: gagne at CLIC.NET (Alain Gagn=?iso-8859-1?Q?=E9?=) Date: Sun, 4 Aug 1996 12:24:44 Subject: Re, Smallpox Message-ID: I think the problem with Smallpox is that we have two viewpoints. The first one is an inside species viewpoint: As a species we have the ethical obligation to destroy our mortals parasites to save lives. The second viewpoint is an outside species viewpoint: As the ruler species on earth, we have the ethical obligation to maintain biodiversity. We have to reconcile that two viewpoints to make the best political decision. For the smallpox and other human viruses it's not realy difficult. Their survival in nature is ethicaly impossible because the natural environment of the human viruses is the human cells themselves and that imply our death. To keep it in a "ZOO" (a freezer) is too risky, the possibility of a human error or a human crime is too great. To keep just the DNA or the RNA is today difficult, that biochemical material was too unstable in the very long term. But we can keep all informations about the virus in a computer databank and, that way, you can study it or, in the future, recreate the whole virus or just one of its protein if you need it. I think this solution is the best one for all acellulars organisms because you have just to put artificially synthezised genes in a culture of host's cells to recreate the whole virus (To keep the virus biodiversity, you have to save more than just one copy of the virus's genes in the databank or maybe you can recreate diversity by making computerized artificials mutations if needed). The real problem will appears when we will have to decide about to destroy or to preserve cellulars parasites (bacteria, fungi, protozoans...) some are as deadly as viruses, just think about Yersinia pestis (Plague). = This is a future but a real ethical problem! ________________________________________________________ Tel le sphinx =E9nigmatique, gardien du voile des t=E9n=E8bres, toute chose, si humble soit-elle, cache en son intime essence, tout les myst=E8res du monde. Alain Gagn=E9, gagne at qbc.clic.net Loretteville, Qu=E9bec, Canada From jablake at IX.NETCOM.COM Sun Aug 4 11:51:59 1996 From: jablake at IX.NETCOM.COM (JAMES ALAN BLAKE) Date: Sun, 4 Aug 1996 11:51:59 Subject: Smallpox Message-ID: More things, On this nice summer weekend, I encountered two neighbors who are both physicians. One, a general surgeon, the other a cardiologist who also has a general practice and is what we call a Primary Care Physician. I mentioned to them that there was some on-going discussion on the internet regarding the fate of the last stocks of the smallpox virus and whether or not they should be destroyed or retained for possible research or simply retained in order to preserve another piece of biodiversity. Both seemed surprised about the issue, but admitted they had not thought about smallpox in a very long time. Both were not too concerned about keeping stocks of the organism because a vaccine was available to ward it off. Neither knew the whereabouts of any vaccine, but were confident that sufficient stockpiles were around or if not, could be easily produced because it is made from a related virus. They noted the annual production of different enfluenza vaccines as examples of the capacity to produce vaccines rapidly if needed. Between us, we estimated that smallpox vaccinations more or less ceased or were no longer required in the U.S.about 20-25 yrs ago. The surgeon noted that he was less concerned about communicable diseases, which could be either vaccinated or isolated against, but that cancer was beginning to overwhelm his surgical practice in terms of percentages. The cardiologist noted the same thing in his general practice. While conducting physical examinations, he expends a great deal of effort to ensure that all methods of early detection are made available and known to his patients. He indicated that communicable diseases could be avoided, that he could prescribe programs to avoid heart trouble, but that there was nothing similar available to avoid cancer except a variety of early detection techniques. Both physicians expressed a certain amount of dismay about what appears to them an increasing incidence of cancer encountered in their patients. Last evening, I got a call from my cousin, a researcher, who has conducted studies on malaria and is well versed in some of the traditional diseases. He knew about the smallpox stockpile issues, and felt very strongly that some of the virus should be retained for future research. So, I guess the issue of destruction of smallpox stocks is not such a big deal. If once controlled, it could be again if necessary. I change my tune, keep it around, but ensure that it will not accidentally or intentionally be released from confinement. However, this discussion may be moot, because I think the decision to destroy the stocks may have already been made. Jim Blake (jablake at ix.netcom.com) From g.read at NIWA.CRI.NZ Mon Aug 5 11:08:07 1996 From: g.read at NIWA.CRI.NZ (Geoff Read) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 11:08:07 Subject: On saying things you know nothing about Message-ID: Doug Yanega wrote: > Richard Zander wrote: > >Say, take a few moments to check out the things *you've* typed for > >posterity. You'll be surprized how easy it will be that generations of > >college kids are going to cite your every unconsidered thought here on > >the Web. http://altavista.digital.com To take that seriously I wonder whether taxacom archive 1996 will be interesting enough to be kept online in ten years time. Also I assume its continued existence is somewhat fragilely dependent on the voluntary good work of one or two individuals. (AFAIK the muse.bio.cornell.edu site doesn't exist anymore and Richard's archived messages were actually (seamlessly) coming from the same machine now at www.keil.ukans.edu.) > Altavista isn't the worst of it - DejaNews archives every single posting to > the Usenet newsgroups, so those of us who post to groups in the sci.bio.* > hierarchy will have our old postings around to haunt us forever, as well as > our mailing list archives. Frankly, that is not so much a problem as the > VOLUME of stuff that can result, making it impossible or anyone interested > in your postings to actually find important material therein. That is very true, although you can limit the search on date which helps. But searching for anything on a specialist topic on the net these days means a great deal of plunging through waves of stuff of tenuous relevancy. For instance the Altavista indexing of taxacom picks up messages with my name in the "next message" part of the html. We will have to get better skilled at complex search technique and be given better tools to cope with it all. -- Geoff Read |\ | | \ /\ / /\ Nat. Inst. Water & Atmos. Res., Wellington NZ | \| | \/ \/ /--\ Taihoro Nukurangi Annelida resources => http://www.keil.ukans.edu/~worms/annelid.html ANNELIDA mailing list => annelida at net.bio.net & biosci-server at net.bio.net List Archives => http://www.bio.net:80/hypermail/ANNELIDA/ -- From anamaria at GRINNELL.BERKELEY.EDU Sun Aug 4 21:25:52 1996 From: anamaria at GRINNELL.BERKELEY.EDU (Peter Rauch) Date: Sun, 4 Aug 1996 21:25:52 Subject: On saying things you know nothing about Message-ID: > Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 11:08:07 +12 > From: Geoff Read > > To take that seriously I wonder whether taxacom archive 1996 will be > interesting enough to be kept online in ten years time. Historians find anything interesting. So do junk collectors. So, not to worry.... ;>) > Also I > assume its continued existence is somewhat fragilely dependent on > the voluntary good work of one or two individuals. I suspect that some two of the other 1000 subscribers to Taxacom would be able to immediately fill in the breach if needed. Also, Taxacom _really_ depends on the contributions of its subscribers; that's the important issue. > (AFAIK the > muse.bio.cornell.edu site doesn't exist anymore and Richard's > archived messages were actually (seamlessly) coming from the same > machine now at www.keil.ukans.edu.) It's true that the Taxacom webified archive is now at UKAN (if you http your way to muse.bio.cornell, you end up at ukan, during this transition. "Seamless" Julian Humphries was at that helm. Peter From 76711.1261 at COMPUSERVE.COM Mon Aug 5 02:27:10 1996 From: 76711.1261 at COMPUSERVE.COM (GB:'X0B$4fAB92GB5) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 2:27:10 Subject: The Natural Life Cycle Of a Mailing List Message-ID: THE NATURAL LIFE CYCLE OF MAILING LISTS Every list seems to go through the same cycle: 1. Initial enthusiasm (people introduce themselves, and gush alot about how wonderful it is to find kindred souls). 2. Evangelism (people moan about how few folks are posting to the list, and brainstorm recruitment strategies). 3. Growth (more and more people join, more and more lengthy threads develop, occasional off-topic threads pop up). 4. Community (lots of threads, some more relevant than others; lots of information and advice is exchanged; experts help other experts as well as less experienced colleagues; friendships develop; people tease each other; newcomers are welcomed with generosity and patience; everyone -- newbie and expert alike -- feels comfortable asking questions, suggesting answers, and sharing opinions). 5. Discomfort with diversity (the number of messages increases dramatically; not every thread is fascinating to every reader; people start complaining about the signal-to-noise ratio; person 1 threatens to quit if *other* people don't limit discussion to person 1's pet topic; person 2 agrees with person 1; person 3 tells 1 & 2 to lighten up; more bandwidth is wasted complaining about off-topic threads than is used for the threads themselves; everyone gets annoyed). 6a. Smug complacency and stagnation (the purists flame everyone who asks an 'old' question or responds with humor to a serious post; newbies are rebuffed; traffic drops to a doze-producing level of a few minor issues; all interesting discussions happen by private email and are limited to a few participants; the purists spend lots of time self-righteously congratulating each other on keeping off-topic threads off the list). OR 6b. Maturity (a few people quit in a huff; the rest of the participants stay near stage 4, with stage 5 popping up briefly every few weeks; many people wear out their second or third 'delete' key, but the list lives contentedly ever after). From 23274MJC at MSU.EDU Mon Aug 5 08:33:00 1996 From: 23274MJC at MSU.EDU (Michael.Chamberland) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 8:33:00 Subject: Dot matrix vs. laser printed labels Message-ID: I have heard that herbarium labels printed with inkjet or laser printers will eventually smudge and become unreadable. Dot matrix printers "hammer" ink onto the paper, and supposedly produce a more durable label. Has this been confirmed or refuted by any tests? Michael Chamberland From stuartf at PEGASUS.CC.UCF.EDU Mon Aug 5 09:46:50 1996 From: stuartf at PEGASUS.CC.UCF.EDU (Stuart Fullerton) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 9:46:50 Subject: On saying things you know nothing about In-Reply-To: Message-ID: just think. someday some student will be doing PhD research on all our banterings. will this in fact "water down" the importance of the PhD aqny more than it is now??? and will it in fact change the world any more that some of the more esoteric subjects researched by the same have already??? cheers!!! rof Stuart M Fullerton ROF, Research Associate in charge of Arthropod Collections (UCFC), Biology Dept. University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, 32816, USA. stuartf at pegasus.cc.ucf.edu From stuartf at PEGASUS.CC.UCF.EDU Mon Aug 5 09:48:29 1996 From: stuartf at PEGASUS.CC.UCF.EDU (Stuart Fullerton) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 9:48:29 Subject: On saying things you know nothing about In-Reply-To: <199608042304.LAA08397@storm.greta.cri.nz> Message-ID: some days we take ourselves entirely to seriously!!! not myself, or course, you understand. cheers!! rof Stuart M Fullerton ROF, Research Associate in charge of Arthropod Collections (UCFC), Biology Dept. University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, 32816, USA. stuartf at pegasus.cc.ucf.edu From K.PAINTING at CGNET.COM Mon Aug 5 15:54:00 1996 From: K.PAINTING at CGNET.COM (Painting, Kevin) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 15:54:00 Subject: FW: Dot matrix vs. laser printed labels Message-ID: Reply received from a work colleague Brigitte Laliberte, B.LALIBERTE at CGNET.COM I am not sure about dot matrix versus lazer printed labels. But my experience has been that in order to avoid smudging, we photocopied the plant labels (that is display labels to go outside). A photocopied label would last a very long time under outdoor conditions. I tend to believe that dot matrix would be the same as lazer print plus the fact that you don't get the quality. A photocopy uses heat and the ink is much more resistant. ---------- From: owner-taxacom[SMTP:owner-taxacom at CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU] Sent: Monday, August 05, 1996 8:33 AM To: Multiple recipients of list TAXACOM Subject: Dot matrix vs. laser printed labels I have heard that herbarium labels printed with inkjet or laser printers will eventually smudge and become unreadable. Dot matrix printers "hammer" ink onto the paper, and supposedly produce a more durable label. Has this been confirmed or refuted by any tests? Michael Chamberland From bmoc at UMICH.EDU Mon Aug 5 11:00:00 1996 From: bmoc at UMICH.EDU (Barry M. OConnor) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 11:00:00 Subject: FW: Dot matrix vs. laser printed labels Message-ID: >I have heard that herbarium labels printed with inkjet or >laser printers will eventually smudge and become unreadable. >Dot matrix printers "hammer" ink onto the paper, and supposedly >produce a more durable label. Has this been confirmed or refuted >by any tests? > >Michael Chamberland We've used both laser and dot-matrix printers for insect labels and haven't had any problem with labels which are kept dry. People had lots of problems with laser printed labels for alcohol specimens so I don't think most people are using that technique for wet labels. We do use a 24-pin dot matrix printer for alcohol labels and, other than a little initial fading, these are holding up well. Barry M. OConnor phone: (313) 763-4354 Museum of Zoology FAX: (313) 763-4080 University of Michigan e-mail: bmoc at umich.edu Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1079 USA From desnyder at PICEA.CNR.COLOSTATE.EDU Mon Aug 5 11:25:55 1996 From: desnyder at PICEA.CNR.COLOSTATE.EDU (Darrel E. Snyder) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 11:25:55 Subject: Dot matrix vs. laser printed labels Message-ID: Mr. Chamberland: As I understand the technology, the laser printers work essentially like photocopy machines in that the ink is fused with heat to the surface of the paper. Very expensive laser printers also use pressure so presumably that ink is not fused only to the surface but effectively pressed into the paper. Inkjet type printers apply a surface ink that is not fused, just dried, and most will wash or smudge if wet. We used laser jet (HP Laser-jet 4) printed labels (Bryon-Weston Resistall) for in both formalin and alcohol without any notable problem. The ink does not leach, bleed, fade or smudge since it is heat fused. However, since it is fused only to the surface and not pressed in the paper, it can be scratched or abraided off the paper and I believe this is the essense of the problem many curators have with the use of laser printed labels. The degree to which this might be a problem probably depends somewhat on the nature of the paper used for labels--fused ink might adhere better on some paper than on others. I have older labels that were done on dot-matrix printers that have faded a bit in fluid preservative but remain quite readable. Aside from the potential abrasion problem, I prefer the laser printed labels for clarity and appearence. Darrel E. Snyder Research Associate Larval Fish Laboratory Curator, LFL Collection 33J Wagar Building Telephone:(970)491-5295; Fax:(970)491-5091 Colorado State University http://www.CNR.ColoState.edu/~desnyder/desnyder.html Fort Collins, Colorado 80523 E-mail: DESnyder at picea.CNR.ColoState.edu From panzar at CLPGH.ORG Mon Aug 5 14:03:29 1996 From: panzar at CLPGH.ORG (Robin Panza) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 14:03:29 Subject: dot matrix vs. laser printer Message-ID: >that dot matrix would be the same as lazer print plus the fact that you >don't get the quality. A photocopy uses heat and the ink is much more >resistant. A laser printer *is* a photocopier. To make a laser printer, a Cannon photocopier "engine" was combined with a mechanism for converting wire-borne data into the image. The placement of the image on the paper uses the same mechanism and the same ink. On cardstock, laser printers and photocopiers do not produce a permanent image. The ink is relatively easy to abrade off. Since there is no impact, there is nothing whatever left on the paper when this happens. It may be water- and weather-resistant, but it won't stand up to rubbing or scraping. Robin Panza panzar at clpgh.org Section of Birds Carnegie Museum of Natural History Pittsburgh PA USA 15213 From dyanega at DENR1.IGIS.UIUC.EDU Mon Aug 5 13:15:25 1996 From: dyanega at DENR1.IGIS.UIUC.EDU (Doug Yanega) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 13:15:25 Subject: Dot matrix vs. laser printed labels Message-ID: Darrel E. Snyder wrote: >The degree to which this might be a problem >probably depends somewhat on the nature of the paper used for labels--fused >ink might adhere better on some paper than on others. To toss in my two cents, this has been precisely my experience; I have laser-printed labels on one type of paper which are quite intact after nearly 10 years in alcohol now, but found that labels printed on the same printer - but on different paper - floated off the minute they were placed in alcohol. Clearly, the paper is one of the primary factors determining how durable the lettering will be. Sincerely, Doug Yanega Illinois Natural History Survey, 607 E. Peabody Dr. Champaign, IL 61820 USA phone (217) 244-6817, fax (217) 333-4949 affiliate, Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Dept. of Entomology http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu:80/~dyanega/my_home.html "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82 From pwong at MAN.NET Mon Aug 5 13:26:21 1996 From: pwong at MAN.NET (Pooi-Leng Wong) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 13:26:21 Subject: book Message-ID: -- [ From: Pooi-Leng Wong * EMC.Ver #2.5.02 ] -- I am interested in purchasing a copy of "Malay Archipelago" by Albert Russell Wallace. Does anyone know where I could get one and whether the price is too steep for my pocket. Thanks. Pooi-Leng Wong e-mail: pwong at man.net From q at SN.PU.RU Mon Aug 5 00:08:50 1996 From: q at SN.PU.RU (Alexey V. Kuprijanov) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 0:08:50 Subject: Nov. Friburg -- Where is it? Message-ID: Dear netters, looking through an old collection of tropical Lepidoptera my colleague and I have found many specimens labelled Nov. Friburg We failed to find out what it means. (It is of course a geografic location) Any suggestions are appreciated. Sorry for possible crossposting. Yours sincerely Alexey From david at SIMSC.SI.EDU Mon Aug 5 16:26:43 1996 From: david at SIMSC.SI.EDU (David Bridge) Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 16:26:43 Subject: FW: Nov. Friburg -- Where is it? Message-ID: From: "Alexey V. Kuprijanov" >looking through an old collection of tropical Lepidoptera my colleague >and I have found many specimens labelled > >Nov. Friburg > >We failed to find out what it means. (It is of course a geografic >location) >Any suggestions are appreciated. Sorry for possible crossposting. Dear Alexey: Have you considered Nova Friburgo, Brazil about 60 miles NE of Rio de Janerio ?? yours David Bridge Smithsonian Institution David at simsc.si.edu From marcod at RUBENS.ITS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU Tue Aug 6 10:47:55 1996 From: marcod at RUBENS.ITS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU (Marco Duretto) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 10:47:55 Subject: small pox $$ Message-ID: Dear taxacomers I wonder how much it costs to keep smallpox in those labs? After all they would want pretty good security. Could this money be better spent elsewhere in the conservation of of the worlds biodiversity? I am sure it could. Marco Duretto Systematic Botanist Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne duretto at botany.unimelb.edu.au From h9492040 at HKUSUB.HKU.HK Tue Aug 6 15:34:37 1996 From: h9492040 at HKUSUB.HKU.HK (Utteridge Timothy Michael Arthur) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 15:34:37 Subject: DCA Message-ID: Dear Taxacomers, Having read Parnell & Waldren's paper about Detrended correspondence analysis (Taxon 45(1): 71-84. 1996) I was wondering if anyone has any experience of using DCA with taxonomic data. Parnell & Waldren list only advantages, there must be a few disadvantages or problems with using DCA. Comments on 'friendliness' of computer programs would be appreciated. Tim Utteridge Dept. of Ecology & Biodiversity University of Hong Kong Tel: +852 2857 9912 Fax: +852 2559 5984 From monique at BIO.TAMU.EDU Tue Aug 6 08:23:45 1996 From: monique at BIO.TAMU.EDU (Monique D. Reed) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 8:23:45 Subject: dot-matrix vs. laser printer labels Message-ID: Cheers, My $0.02--even on dry herbarium labels which almost never see the light of day, we have had significant fading of dot-matrix printed labels. I think it has something to do with the quality of the *ribbon* used in the printer, as well as the paper. We still have the best luck with old-fashioned hand-typed labels done with a carbon film ribbon on 100% cotton paper. If in doubt about the toughness of papers and inks, one can always do the "Texas Torture Test"--work up a sample and leave it on the dashboard of your car for a summer. If it survives--you've got a winner. Monique Reed Texas A&M University ________________________ There should be no monotony to studying your botany. It helps to train and spur the brain (unless you haven't got any...) From weiler at ERS.UNR.EDU Tue Aug 6 07:56:35 1996 From: weiler at ERS.UNR.EDU (James Lyons-Weiler) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 7:56:35 Subject: DCA In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 6 Aug 1996, Utteridge Timothy Michael Arthur wrote: > Dear Taxacomers, > > Having read Parnell & Waldren's paper about Detrended correspondence > analysis (Taxon 45(1): 71-84. 1996) I was wondering if anyone has any > experience of using DCA with taxonomic data. Parnell & Waldren list only > advantages, there must be a few disadvantages or problems with using DCA. > Comments on 'friendliness' of computer programs would be appreciated. > > Tim Utteridge > Dept. of Ecology & Biodiversity > University of Hong Kong > > Tel: +852 2857 9912 > Fax: +852 2559 5984 > There are two opinions on DCA: the second axis arch should be flattened, or you shouldn't use an algorithm that causes such non-independence between axes. Wartenberg et al. 1987 (Am Nat 129:434-444) point to some negatives, and see numerous references in Tausch et al. 1995 for other detractors. A more general issue is what do the results of any ordination mean, and how much confidence can one place in the results? Ordination science does not use inferential statistics, so true confidence intervals ae hard to come by. So far as what the results mean, Tausch et al. (1995) J. Veg. Sci 6:897-902 have shown that any software package that conducts ordination analyses like PCA, DCA, and classification (cluster) analyses such as UPGMA or TWINSPAN have a MAJOR problem: their results depend on data entry order (which species comes first in the matrix, or which character is character #1). That means that the software may settle on a different answer depending on a completelty arbitrary characteristic of the data. The problem is due to the fact that multidimensional analyses are computationally complex, so the programmers have to use various estimation steps for eigenvalues. If they didn't, the programs would take much longer to give an answer. So, before settling on any classification or ordination with your data, it is wise to randomize it a couple of hundred times or so to see what kind of diffferent results you'd get with different entry order. So much time is spent collecting data of all types; we shouldn't produce or accept potentially arbitrary results. James Tausch, R.J., D.A. Charlet, D.A. Weixelman, and D.C. Zamudio. 1995. Patterns of ordination and classification instability resulting from changes in input data order. J.Veg. Sci. 6:897-902. Robin Tausch can be sent reprint requests at USDA Forest Service Intermountain Research Station 920 Valley Road Reno, NV 89512 USA _______________________________________________________________________________ \ / / \ / JAMES LYONS-WEILER ______________ \/ / \/ |..............| \ / / |..............| \/ / DOCTORAL PROGRAM IN |..............| \ / ECOLOGY, EVOLUTION, AND |...***........| \ / CONSERVATION BIOLOGY |..*****.......| \ / |.******.......| \/ 1000 VALLEY ROAD/186 |********......| ______________ THE UNIVERSITY OF -------------- | will perform | NEVADA, RENO | statistical | RENO, NEVADA 89512-0013 | phylogenetic | | analyses for | "(Biology) is not religion; if it were, we'd | food | have a much easier time raising money." -------------- -Leon Lederman _______________________________________________________________________________ From fredr at HENSON.CC.WWU.EDU Tue Aug 6 08:17:38 1996 From: fredr at HENSON.CC.WWU.EDU (Fred Rhoades) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 8:17:38 Subject: book In-Reply-To: <199608051805.NAA15926@mars.man.net> Message-ID: Hi Pooi-Leng Wong, Malay Archipelago is available as a Dover Publications (New York) Reprint in soft cover edition and is often available in used book stores and should not cost much (< $US20). It is probably still available from the publisher also. Fred Rhoades, Research Associate Biology Department, WWU Bellingham, WA 98225 USA FAX: (360) 650-3148 Voice: (360) 733-9149 email: fredr at henson.cc.wwu.edu On Mon, 5 Aug 1996, Pooi-Leng Wong wrote: > -- [ From: Pooi-Leng Wong * EMC.Ver #2.5.02 ] -- > > I am interested in purchasing a copy of "Malay Archipelago" by Albert > Russell Wallace. Does anyone know where I could get one and whether the > price is too steep for my pocket. Thanks. > > > Pooi-Leng Wong > e-mail: pwong at man.net > From panzar at CLPGH.ORG Tue Aug 6 11:51:45 1996 From: panzar at CLPGH.ORG (Robin Panza) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 11:51:45 Subject: small pox $$ Message-ID: >I wonder how much it costs to keep smallpox in those labs? After >all they would want pretty good security. The cost of maintaining the smallpox "vials" (or whatever the cultures are in) may well be zilch. If they're being stored with other high-security materials, then the cost is, at most, whatever space they are taking up--e.g., 10% of the freezer, than no more than 10% of the cost of maintaining and keeping secure that freezer. If freezer space is not at a premium (it's big enough to accommodate everything necessary, with space left over for the smallpox), then the cost of maintaining the smallpox is essentially zero. Even the glassware it's stored in isn't a cost, if the vials would be destroyed with the virus anyway. I'm not advocating maintaining smallpox cultures, but neither do I advocate destroying them,either. I *am* strongly in favor of finding more money to fund conservation programs. However, let's not blame the pox for the scarcity of biodiversity funding unless someone has evidence that it is, in fact, costing significant amounts. Robin Panza panzar at clpgh.org Section of Birds Carnegie Museum of Natural History Pittsburgh PA 15213 From lcjbrick at ANTELOPE.WCC.EDU Tue Aug 6 11:42:58 1996 From: lcjbrick at ANTELOPE.WCC.EDU (Jerry Bricker) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 11:42:58 Subject: Smallpox revisited Message-ID: Dear one and all: I posted the question regarding the destruction of the remaining smallpox stocks and left for a week of backpacking in the Wind River Range near Lander, WY. It is amazing to see how a thread develops on the internet, especially if you can follow it one sitting as I've done since my return from the hinterlands. My primary question surrounding smallpox had little to do with the virus itself and seems to have been lost in the resulting discussion. I was interested in knowing what criteria are used to decide which organisms are worthy of protection and preservation. It seemed to me at the time that smallpox highlights several key problems. Organisms that are destructive to our species are generally agreed upon to be worthy of destruction. So far, most of these have been viruses and few would argue that we want to re-establish the biodiversity of smallpox or polio to their previous levels. My question is then how do we decide what "species" should be encouraged to maintain large population sizes and which should be slated for destruction. My short residence in Wyoming indicates this is no small issue. A large segment of the population of this state is against wolf reintroduction in the Yellowstone basin. Their posistion is that species was properly exterminated from the wild in North America and shouldn't be allowed to return. Does their position on wolves really differ all that much from those stated in the smallpox thread? I am a botanist. I have always been a bit irritated that when preservation of species diversity and habitat is presented to the public it is done using a fuzzy animal. The public clearly identifies with wolf pups, cheetahs, and lions. I just want to know what policies are in place to ensure that all organisms are given proper and careful consideration in their maintenance and preservation? Once we cross the line of exterminating one species when do we stop? JB From tmoritz at CAS.CALACADEMY.ORG Tue Aug 6 11:26:30 1996 From: tmoritz at CAS.CALACADEMY.ORG (Tom Moritz) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 11:26:30 Subject: No subject Message-ID: SYSTEMATIC HERPETOLOGIST CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES The California Academy of Sciences invites applications for the faculty position of Assistant Curator of Herpetology. The Department of Herpetology seeks applicants with primary interests in, and commitment to, collection-oriented research in systematic herpetology who are familiar with and capable of employing both morphological and molecular techniques. Individuals are sought who will contribute to the growth and curation of a major research collection. Interest in field work would be desirable. Candidates must have a Ph.D. and an active research program. Responsibilities include curatorial, administrative and public educational activities at the Academy. Applicants should forward a curriculum vitae, description of research goals, and the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of three references to: Human Resources, California Academy of Sciences, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA 94118-4599. Deadline for applications is 1 Nov. 1996. From pwong at MAN.NET Tue Aug 6 14:44:21 1996 From: pwong at MAN.NET (Pooi-Leng Wong) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 14:44:21 Subject: book Message-ID: -- [ From: Pooi-Leng Wong * EMC.Ver #2.5.02 ] -- A sincere thanks to all who responded to my interest in the Malay Archipelago. I am looking forward to reading it. Thanks again. Pooi-Leng Wong e-mail: pwong at man.net From jjimenez at NS.OTS.AC.CR Tue Aug 6 16:27:08 1996 From: jjimenez at NS.OTS.AC.CR (Jorge A. Jimenez) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 16:27:08 Subject: Seeking a Data Base Expert Message-ID: The Organization for Tropical Studies is seeking A Biologically Oriented Computer Scientist Position objective: To oversee the design and implementation of an international project that seeks the development and testing of guidelines for data management and accessibility at neotropical field stations. Location: Based in Costa Rica, with international travel to other sites. Duration: 22 months starting as soon as the position is filled; possible renewal. Requirements: *Strong networking and database management skills *Willingness to work on the development of biological and ecological databases under field station conditions *Capacity to provide connectivity solutions for LAN and WAN *Capacity to work on multiple platforms (Unix for Solaris, Windows, Macintosh) *Ability to initiate plans and attract outside expertise *Expertise in dealing with theory as well as applied aspects of data management and accessibility *Excellent interpersonal skills working in a multicultural setting *Proficiency in Spanish and/or English *A graduate degree (Ph.D. level preferred) in biology, computer science, or other relevant field If you are interested, please send your C.V. and letter of interest to Dr. Jorge A. Jim=E9nez Organization for Tropical Studies Apdo. 676-2050 San Pedro Costa Rica =46ax: (506) 240-6783 e-mail: jjimenez at ns.ots.ac.cr Dr. Jorge A. Jimenez Director Scientific Programs Organization for Tropical Studies P.O.Box 676-2050 San Pedro de Montes de Oca San Jose, Costa Rica Ph (506) 240-6696 =46ax: (506) 240-6783 From g.read at NIWA.CRI.NZ Wed Aug 7 11:53:20 1996 From: g.read at NIWA.CRI.NZ (Geoff Read) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 11:53:20 Subject: Ephemeral or permanent net archives? Message-ID: Peter Rauch noted [re 1996 taxacom msgs in ten years]: > Historians find anything interesting. So do junk collectors. So, not to > worry.... ;>) > > Also I > > assume its continued existence is somewhat fragilely dependent on > > the voluntary good work of one or two individuals. > I suspect that some two of the other 1000 subscribers to Taxacom would > be able to immediately fill in the breach if needed. I'm not worried actually :-) just realistic. The Taxacom archive is great but much of today's stuff is unlikely to be vitally useful to biologists in a couple of years. I willingly give it to the junk collectors. But talking about net resources generally -- we know they can wink out as easily as they wink in. They usually exist as only ONE set of files in one physical place, controlled by one organisation or individual, despite any multitude of referencing links. Access to that information, and also the information itself, will be more easily lost (one fire or flood or malicious person or policy change or job change will do it) than if hundreds of identical & complete copies existed (as in books & journals). So, at least for today's state of technology (there are no duplicate copies of the entire net yet, though someone apparently wants to attempt it), I do not think our ramblings are quite as securely online as they may appear from links within Altavista indices. (Sorry taxacomers, there are probably other more appropriate venues for dissecting this issue. Tell me offlist if you wish :-)) -- Geoff Read |\ | | \ /\ / /\ Nat. Inst. Water & Atmos. Res., Wellington NZ | \| | \/ \/ /--\ Taihoro Nukurangi Annelida resources => http://www.keil.ukans.edu/~worms/annelid.html ANNELIDA mailing list => annelida at net.bio.net & biosci-server at net.bio.net List Archives => http://www.bio.net:80/hypermail/ANNELIDA/ -- From petryp at CR-AM.RNP.BR Tue Aug 6 23:33:20 1996 From: petryp at CR-AM.RNP.BR (Paulo Petry) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 23:33:20 Subject: labels and printers the endless quest Message-ID: Folks, I'd like to add to this discussion two important issues about the labels. First, there was an extensive discussion about this issue a few years ago, and several people made tests with laser printed labels. There are many empirical examples of performance of labels around. If you realy want to get into this, take a look at gopher://kaw.keil.ukans.edu:70/00/curation/ichs_herps/news10 or gopher://kaw.keil.ukans.edu:70/77/.indices/asih/curation_info?labels Second, I contacted the ink chemists at HP some time ago and asked them about the problem. They said that our particpation in the printing market is so small that they could not justify putting time into the issue. The oil from the carcasses seem to react with the binding agent of the ink, which makes the characters fall of the paper. One major issue for large collections is the reliability on the printer labels, and according to most of the collection managers that I talked to, they still reccomend using dot matrix printers with Permanent, non-bleeding ink. I doubt that there a final word to this issue, but caution is recommended with the laser printed labels, they surely look nice, but I am not sure if they have the disired attributes that we are looking for. There is a suplier for non-bleeding ink impact printer ribbons: Automated Office Products, Inc. 9700-A Martin Luther King Jr. Hwy. Lanham MD 20706-1837 1.800.673.8553 PH. for customer service contact: Charley Chapman This is not a commercial for AOP, I am just passing the information along to whom it may be of interest. Best Fishes, Paulo From jsimmons at KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU Tue Aug 6 23:41:17 1996 From: jsimmons at KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU (John Simmons) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 23:41:17 Subject: labels and printers the endless quest In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I would like to thank Paulo for a good summary of the ink/label issue and second his suggestion that anyone interested in this check the Curation Newsletter archives. A couple of other points: the loss of ink from a label is not simply a question of what kind of ink, it is a rather complex question of the kind of ink, the kind of paper, and the combination of ink and paper. For example, we are having good success with a laser printer on Parson's Linen Ledger (although this is not a great solution). Also, there are two advantages to a dot matrix printer that need to be stressed. (1) As with all impact printers, if the ink fades, you should still be able to read the label in raking light as impact printers leave a mark on cellulose fibers which laser printers do not; (2) it is possible to re-ink ribbons with a permanent ink for labels. This was described in Palacios, F. and J. Gisbert, 1990. An indelible printing system for permanent records in natural history collections. Collection Forum 6(1):38-39. For more discussion on this issue, you might also want to check the following references: Child, R.E. 1994. Labelling of specimens preserved in spirit collections. Biology Curators Group Newsletter 6(4):42 Pitkin, B. 1995. Labelling specimens in the Life Science Departments at the Natural History Museum, London using computers. The Biology Curator #4, pp 24-27 John E. Simmons Natural History Museum University of Kansas From CHRIS at WWG3.UOVS.AC.ZA Wed Aug 7 14:22:55 1996 From: CHRIS at WWG3.UOVS.AC.ZA (CHRIS VILJOEN - STUDENT) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 14:22:55 Subject: Small Pox Message-ID: I have been following the debate as to whether the small pox virus should be maintained in terms of keeping bio-diversity, danger of release and cost of maintainence etc. If the virus is maintained there is a danger of release BUT better the devil you know than the devil you don't know. One important consideration in science is NEVER destroy material. The fact that the pox virus played such an important role in health science and may again sometime in the future makes it critical to preserve this virus in some form. Albeit genetic material or something. Future generations may need to re-study the virus in order to supply answers for other questions. Hindsight is wonderful but has no use in the present. From jjimenez at NS.OTS.AC.CR Wed Aug 7 08:32:37 1996 From: jjimenez at NS.OTS.AC.CR (Jorge A. Jimenez) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 8:32:37 Subject: ATB/OTS meeting & symposium, 1997 Message-ID: > > >> >TROPICAL DIVERSITY: >> >ORIGINS, MAINTENANCE, AND CONSERVATION >> > >> >Symposium and Annual Meeting >> > >> >Association for Tropical Biology >> > >> >Organization for Tropical Studies >> > >> >San Jose, >> >Costa Rica >> >15-20 June 1997 >> > >> >For further information: >> > >> >OTS >> >P.O. Box 676-2050,San Pedro >> San Jose, Costa Rica >> >e-mail: atbots at ns.ots.ac.cr >> >www: http://www.ots.ac.cr >> >www: http://www.ots.duke.edu >> >________________ >> >"Tropical Diversity, Origins, Maintenance, and Conservation" >> > >> >ATB and OTS will jointly host a symposium and annual meeting June 15-20 >> >1997 in San Jose, Costa Rica >> > >> >The symposium will honor the contributions of Donald E. and Beverly L. >>Stone to the growth of biology in the Neotropics on the occasion of their >> >retirement from the Organization for Tropical Studies. In the 20 years >> >since Donald Stone assumed its leadership, OTS has become a world leader >> >in training graduate and professional students in tropical biology. >> >Contributions to knowledge of the biology of tropical organisms and >>ecosystems by researchers working at OTS field stations,in particular La >>Selva Biological Station, and throughout the country have made Costa Rica >>a leader in the investigation of tropical diversity. >> > >> >Long a leader in the preservation of its natural diversity, Costa Rica >> >boasts one of the best systems of protected areas in the world, with >> >nearly 27 percent of its territory under some degree of protection. These >> >wilderness areas protect most of the nation's 850 species of birds, 208 >> >species of mammals, 160 species of amphibians, 200 species of reptiles, >> >130 species of freshwater fishes, and 11,000 species of plants as well >>as an estimated 225,000 species of insects! All of this diversity in an >>area >similar to West Virginia's allows the visitor to travel to contrasting >biological environments in only few hours. >> > >> >Highlights of the meeting will include a plenary symposium, a symposium >> >celebrating the 40th anniversary of the University of Costa Rica School >>of Biology, contributed papers and posters, scientific field excursions, >>a gala mixer and banquet, and the first-ever reunion of participants in >>OTS tropical biology courses. >> > >> > Call for Symposium Proposals > Those interested in organizing a half-day symposium for the meeting may >contact ATB or OTS at the e-mail addresses below for details on symposium >> >guidelines and proposal preparation. >> > >> >To receive future mailings, please write or e-mail to the >> >meeting organizers at the address below. >> > >> >The World Wide Web will be a ready source of information, >> >registration forms, schedules, and addresses. For further information >> >check out the sites for either ATB or OTS: >> > >> > ATB: http://ecology.umsl.edu/atb/ >> > OTS: http://www.ots.ac.cr/ http://www.ots.duke.edu/ Dr. Jorge A. Jimenez Director Scientific Programs Organization for Tropical Studies P.O.Box 676-2050 San Pedro de Montes de Oca San Jose, Costa Rica Ph (506) 240-6696 Fax: (506) 240-6783 From lcjbrick at ANTELOPE.WCC.EDU Wed Aug 7 09:33:38 1996 From: lcjbrick at ANTELOPE.WCC.EDU (Jerry Bricker) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 9:33:38 Subject: GPS systems Message-ID: Dear all: I plan on purchasing a GPS system in the next month or so. Can anyone out there suggest a system that they've had good results with? Any suggestions on what features I should look for? Jerry Bricker From w.wuster at BANGOR.AC.UK Wed Aug 7 16:54:50 1996 From: w.wuster at BANGOR.AC.UK (Wolfgang Wuster) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 16:54:50 Subject: GPS systems In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 7 Aug 1996, Jerry Bricker wrote: > Dear all: > > I plan on purchasing a GPS system in the next month or so. Can anyone > out there suggest a system that they've had good results with? Any > suggestions on what features I should look for? I recently used a Magellan GPS 2000 (small, hand-held unit) - despite statements in the user instructions manual that it is water resistant, it malfunctioned after the first mild shower it was exposed to. I have no idea whether this is typical, but I would certainly stay clear of that particular model! -- Wolfgang Wuster School of Biological Sciences, University of Wales, Bangor, UK e-mail: w.wuster at bangor.ac.uk Thought for the day: If you see a light at the end of the tunnel, it is probably a train coming your way. From dyanega at DENR1.IGIS.UIUC.EDU Wed Aug 7 11:29:34 1996 From: dyanega at DENR1.IGIS.UIUC.EDU (Doug Yanega) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 11:29:34 Subject: GPS systems Message-ID: Jerry Bricker asked: >I plan on purchasing a GPS system in the next month or so. Can anyone >out there suggest a system that they've had good results with? Any >suggestions on what features I should look for? There is a GPS newsgroup on Usenet, sci.geo.satellite-nav, where all your questions can be answered - when I was looking into GPS units, I spent quite some time there, and got all sorts of useful info. The take-home message I got was this: the kind of unit you'll want to get *does* vary with what you intend to use it for, as each type has its limitations. For field biology, where one is usually trying to get lat/long coordinates for maps and locality labels, most any of the available models is suitable - folks "in the know" seem to like the Garmin units for a number of reasons, including durability and ease of data storage and downloading. Be warned, however, that unless you really want to sink megabucks into the project, you'll have to deal with two problems: (1) even if you get a unit that cuts through the incessant signal scrambling (courtesy of the US Govt.), you will *still* typically get more accurate altitude data from an altimeter than you will from *any* GPS unit...I think the most accurate readings any of the manufacturers claimed (and who knows how true the claims were) was +/- 150 meters, and most were worse. (2) there are lots of combinations of times and places where you will *not* be able to get a "fix" due to the positions of the satellites relative to your own. While I was in Mexico once using a GPS, we couldn't get any readings between 11 AM and 1 PM, for example, over the three weeks we were in the field. In other words, it still helps to get good topo maps and an altimeter, no matter what the electronic age promises... ;-) Cheers, Doug Yanega Illinois Natural History Survey, 607 E. Peabody Dr. Champaign, IL 61820 USA phone (217) 244-6817, fax (217) 333-4949 affiliate, Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Dept. of Entomology http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu:80/~dyanega/my_home.html "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82 From sbungard at ZENECABP.DEMON.CO.UK Wed Aug 7 19:10:44 1996 From: sbungard at ZENECABP.DEMON.CO.UK (Stephen J Bungard) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 19:10:44 Subject: GPS systems In-Reply-To: Message-ID: In article , Wolfgang Wuster writes > >I recently used a Magellan GPS 2000 (small, hand-held unit) - despite >statements in the user instructions manual that it is water resistant, it >malfunctioned after the first mild shower it was exposed to. I have no >idea whether this is typical, but I would certainly stay clear of that >particular model! For what it is worth, I bought one of these recently, too - and have had no problems with it in the Hebrides - an area not renowned for its aridity. -- Stephen J Bungard aka stephenb at zenecabp.demon.co.uk If there are opinions in the above, they are mine all mine..... unless, of course, they are yours..... or someone else's..... From 76711.1261 at COMPUSERVE.COM Wed Aug 7 16:21:55 1996 From: 76711.1261 at COMPUSERVE.COM (GB:'X0B$4fAB92GB5) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 16:21:55 Subject: listservers Message-ID: Dear friends. I am wonder how to find listserver for example dedicated to business. Is there any search engine? For example for www I can use yahoo... Regards Richard From rjensen at SAINTMARYS.EDU Wed Aug 7 21:10:41 1996 From: rjensen at SAINTMARYS.EDU (Richard Jensen) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 21:10:41 Subject: Herbarium News? ASPT? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: All members of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, which publishes Systematic Botany, and all libraries that subscribe to the journal were notified that publication has been delayed because of changes in the editorial office. The first issue for 1996 (21(1)) was shipped last week and the journal should be back on schedule by the end of the year. Additionally, the ASPT Newsletter currently exists only in electronic format, but members will be able to request hard copy in the future. Richard Jensen Treasurer, ASPT Richard J. Jensen | E-MAIL: rjensen at saintmarys.edu Dept. of Biology | TELEPHONE: 219-284-4674 Saint Mary's College | FAX: 219-284-4716 Notre Dame, IN 46556 | On Sat, 3 Aug 1996, Michael.Chamberland wrote: > I've subscribed to both Herbarium News and Systematic Botany/ASPT. > It has been many months since I've seen a new journal/newsletter from > either. Does anyone know the status of these publications? I worry > that the infrastructure of the plant systematics communtity is > disappearing! Should I be aware of any other publication(s) mirroring > the role of Herbarium News and ASPT? > > Michael Chamberland > From dessart at D5100.KBINIRSNB.BE Thu Aug 8 12:22:03 1996 From: dessart at D5100.KBINIRSNB.BE (Paul Dessart) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1996 12:22:03 Subject: Knack of processing accents Message-ID: Dear Taxacomers, This is not a taxonomic matter, but it could be useful (also in private mail) to many taxacomers when they don't write in English. Most messages are written in English; when French and Italian are used, or any language with letters marked with an accent; many 'servers' translate them into cabalistic formula ( =E8, =E9, etc., or even more complex). When words must be written in italics, they are bordered with the <_> sign (for instance: _Homo sapiens_). Personally, I use and suggest some other conventions/agreements. I substitute the acute accent by an apostrophe, the grave accent by quote mark, the circunflex accent by a majuscule, the cedilla by a virgule. And to make the text more readable, I set 2 spaces between each word. This is easy and quick to do on a normally written text if one uses a of the word processing to realize all changes automatically. I exemplify my suggestion with its translation into French. Ceci n'est pas un sujet taxonomique, mais cela pourrait Etre utile (mEme dans leur courrier prive' ) a" de nombreux lorsqu'ils n'e'crivent pas en anglais. La plupart des messages sont e'crits en anglais; lorsque le franc,ais et l'italien sont utilise's, ou n'importe quelle langue avec des lettres accentue'es, de nombreux 'serveurs' les traduisent en une formule cabalistique ( =E8, =E9, etc, ou mEme plus complique'e). Quand des mots doivent Etre e'crits en italique, on les entoure du signe <_> (par exemple: _Homo sapiens_). Personnellement, j'utilise et je sugge"re quelques autres conventions. Je remplace l'accent aigu par une apostrophe (e', i'), l'accent grave par des guillemets droits (e", a", u"), l'accent circonflexe par une majuscule (piqUre), la ce'dille par une virgule (lec,on). Et pour rendre le texte plus lisible, je se'pare les mots par deux espaces. Ceci est facile et rapide a" faire sur un texte e'crit normalement si l'on utilise une du traitement de texte pour re'aliser tous les changements automatiquement. Merci de votre attention et mes excuses aux nombreux anglophones que ceci n'inte'resse pas. Paul Dessart, Chef honoraire de la Section Insectes et Arachnomorphes a" l'Institut royal des Sciences naturelles de Belgique. From w.wuster at BANGOR.AC.UK Thu Aug 8 12:14:08 1996 From: w.wuster at BANGOR.AC.UK (Wolfgang Wuster) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1996 12:14:08 Subject: Knack of processing accents In-Reply-To: <9608081022.AA07129@d5100.kbinirsnb.be> Message-ID: On Thu, 8 Aug 1996, Paul Dessart wrote: > Most messages are written in English; when French and Italian are used, > or any language with letters marked with an accent; many 'servers' > translate them into cabalistic formula ( =E8, =E9, etc., or even more > complex). When words must be written in italics, they are bordered with > the <_> sign (for instance: _Homo sapiens_). > Personally, I use and suggest some other conventions/agreements. I > substitute the acute accent by an apostrophe, the grave accent by quote > mark, the circunflex accent by a majuscule, the cedilla by a virgule. And > to make the text more readable, I set 2 spaces between each word. > This is easy and quick to do on a normally written text if one uses a > of the word processing to realize all changes > automatically. > I exemplify my suggestion with its translation into French. > > Ceci n'est pas un sujet taxonomique, mais cela pourrait Etre utile > (mEme dans leur courrier prive' ) a" de nombreux > lorsqu'ils n'e'crivent pas en anglais. > > La plupart des messages sont e'crits en anglais; lorsque le > franc,ais et l'italien sont utilise's, ou n'importe quelle langue > avec des lettres accentue'es, de nombreux 'serveurs' les traduisent > en une formule cabalistique ( =E8, =E9, etc, ou mEme plus > complique'e). Quand des mots doivent Etre e'crits en italique, on > les entoure du signe <_> (par exemple: _Homo sapiens_). > Personnellement, j'utilise et je sugge"re quelques autres > conventions. Je remplace l'accent aigu par une apostrophe (e', > i'), l'accent grave par des guillemets droits (e", a", u"), l'accent > circonflexe par une majuscule (piqUre), la ce'dille par une > virgule (lec,on). Et pour rendre le texte plus lisible, je se'pare > les mots par deux espaces. > Ceci est facile et rapide a" faire sur un texte e'crit normalement > si l'on utilise une du traitement de texte > pour re'aliser tous les changements automatiquement. Pour rendre le texte encore plus lisible, il serait bien plus facile d'oublier les accents et cedilles entierement. En plus, ceci nous evitera beaucoup de travail de traitement de texte. This may be politically incorrect, or offend linguistic purists, but as someone who can read French, German, Spanish and Portuguese, I find it MUCH easier to read text written without any accents, rather than text with contrived accents as suggested here. The number of times that the absence of accents is likely to lead to misunderstandings is very small indeed, so I am not sure that it is worth the fuss. Furthermore, many other languages have different diacritical marks, and if everyone insisted on inventing codes for the diacritical marks in their language, tremendous confusion would be inevitable. Thus, the use of " to denote the acute accent is likely to confuse Germans and Scandinavians, since they may misinterpret it as representing Umlauts. Thus, I might want to write my own surname as Wu"ster to denote the presence of an Umlaut on the u (I realise that the correct way of denoting the Umlaut would be to write Wuester, but this causes even more confusion, as I have found out on a number of occasions), and this might then be misinterpreted as denoting an acute accent. Let's just accept that most servers were not designed with diacritical marks in mind, and content ourselves with the 26 letters that are accepted universally. -- Wolfgang Wuster School of Biological Sciences, University of Wales, Bangor, UK e-mail: w.wuster at bangor.ac.uk Thought for the day: If you see a light at the end of the tunnel, it is probably a train coming your way. From JEFF.OLLERTON at NENE.AC.UK Thu Aug 8 12:59:25 1996 From: JEFF.OLLERTON at NENE.AC.UK (Jeff Ollerton) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1996 12:59:25 Subject: lepidoptera genera Message-ID: Dear Taxacomers, Can any of the lepidopterologists out there tell me the families to which the following African genera belong: Closterus Limnas Please reply direct to me. Many thanks in advance. Jeff Ollerton Nene College UK From smcleod at BCF.USC.EDU Thu Aug 8 08:26:03 1996 From: smcleod at BCF.USC.EDU (Samuel A. McLeod) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1996 8:26:03 Subject: government recall of collections Message-ID: In the United States, governmental agencies managing public lands, and issuing permits for scientific collecting on those parcels, typically retain official ownership of the specimens collected under those permits so that such collections are technically on loan to repository institutions. Is anyone aware of an instance where a governmental agency, at any level from local to federal, has recalled scientific collections obtained legally under valid permits (excluding human associated materials) while those collections were still being properly conserved at an accredited repository institution? SAM Samuel A. McLeod Vertebrate Paleontology LACM Natural History 900 Exposition Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90007 (213) 744-3325 [voice] (213) 746-7431 [fax] smcleod at bcf.usc.edu [e-mail] From dyanega at DENR1.IGIS.UIUC.EDU Thu Aug 8 11:14:18 1996 From: dyanega at DENR1.IGIS.UIUC.EDU (Doug Yanega) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1996 11:14:18 Subject: Warren U. Brigham, 1942-1996 Message-ID: This memo has been distributed within the INHS, and I've been authorized to distribute it publicly. Please note that I do not yet have any details on plans for memorial services, etc., but when I obtain such information, I will post it here: In Memoriam Warren U. Brigham Feb. 27, 1942 - Aug. 7, 1996 It is my sad duty to inform you of the untimely death of our colleague, Dr. Warren U. Brigham, on Wednesday, August 7, 1996. Warren joined the survey in 1961 as a Technical Assistant. He was promoted to Assistant Professional Scientist in 1972, Associate Professional Scientist in 1976, and Professional Scientist in 1982. Warren served as Principal Investigator on numerous federal and state grants and contracts. From 1989 to 1992, he served as Director of the Center for Biogeographic Information, subsequently he served in the Office of the Chief. His professional scientific research interests were focused primarily on aquatic Coleoptera. Warren was largely responsible for introducing the use of Geographic Information Systems to the Survey. His friendship, leadership, vision, and advice will be greatly missed by me, the Survey, and the scientific community at large. Lorin I. Nevling, Chief Illinois Natural History Survey Champaign, Illinois Doug Yanega Illinois Natural History Survey, 607 E. Peabody Dr. Champaign, IL 61820 USA phone (217) 244-6817, fax (217) 333-4949 affiliate, Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Dept. of Entomology http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu:80/~dyanega/my_home.html "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82 From YPNekrut at MBAT.FREENET.KIEV.UA Thu Aug 8 19:42:20 1996 From: YPNekrut at MBAT.FREENET.KIEV.UA (Yuri P. Nekrutenko) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1996 19:42:20 Subject: Knack of processing accents Message-ID: Paul Dessart on Aug 08, 12:12 wrote > This is not a taxonomic matter, but it could be useful (also in private > mail) to many taxacomers when they don't write in English. > > Most messages are written in English; when French and Italian are used, > or any language with letters marked with an accent; many 'servers' > translate them into cabalistic formula ( =E8, =E9, etc., or even more > complex). When words must be written in italics, they are bordered with > the <_> sign (for instance: _Homo sapiens_). > Personally, I use and suggest some other conventions/agreements. I > substitute the acute accent by an apostrophe, the grave accent by quote > mark, the circunflex accent by a majuscule, the cedilla by a virgule. And > to make the text more readable, I set 2 spaces between each word. > This is easy and quick to do on a normally written text if one uses a > of the word processing to realize all changes > automatically. > I exemplify my suggestion with its translation into French. The system proposed above sounds to be both too complicated and innatural in use (because of innatural derivation). Following are suggested tricks hoped to be of some use for languages with additional signs (Slavic languages worthy of special consideration). French: ' - accent aigu: e' ` - accent grave: e` - le'pidopte`res ^ - accent circonflexe: a^ - ma^le, me^me , - ce'dille: Franc,ais German " - Umlaut: a", o", u", e" & - Eszett - wei& Spanish ~ - Espan~a Swedish a* - Va*r (a circle over a) a" and o" - as in German (same in Finnish) Norvegian, Danish a* - Istga*rd = Istgaard o/ - o/st {ae} - ligature: Aakj{ae}r Rumanian a`' - Fa`'ca`'ni a^ - Ca^mpeni (old orthography) i^ - Ci^mpeni (recent orthography) t, - T,a`'rani s, - s,tiint,a Portugal - as in French and Spanish: Monc,a~o, Sa~o Paulo If the above text is displayed on your scereens as it looks on mine, then proposed system works - please, use it. - Yuri. Yuri P. Nekrutenko Institute of Zoology UA-252601 Kiev 30, MSP U K R A I N E ypnekrut at mbat.freenet.kiev.ua From Muisca at AOL.COM Thu Aug 8 13:20:15 1996 From: Muisca at AOL.COM (Jacques Rifkind) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1996 13:20:15 Subject: Knack of processing accents Message-ID: Paul Dessart makes some good suggestions regarding a way to standardize punctuation and accent marks as a "work around" to the current, sub-ideal system. However, I think that we can preach tilde cows come home, without effect: artificial conventions such as this are hard to propagate, no matter how desirable they might be. Sincerely, Gena Gulamentum Author: "Bacteria are from Mars; Women are from Venus"--this fall from Ferruginous Canal Press. PS. I think that that is great that the Belgian's have a chef dedicated to preparing arachnids and insects--something to eat with the moules and Stella Artois--and those sprouts they have over there. From stracey at DIRCON.CO.UK Fri Aug 9 00:29:20 1996 From: stracey at DIRCON.CO.UK (Steve Tracey) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 0:29:20 Subject: Knack of processing accents Message-ID: Paul Dessart writes: >Most messages are written in English; when French and Italian are used, >or any language with letters marked with an accent; many 'servers' >translate them into cabalistic formula ( =E8, =E9, etc., or even more >complex). When words must be written in italics, they are bordered with >the <_> sign (for instance: _Homo sapiens_). >Personally, I use and suggest some other conventions/agreements. I >substitute the acute accent by an apostrophe, the grave accent by quote >mark, the circunflex accent by a majuscule, the cedilla by a virgule. And >to make the text more readable, I set 2 spaces between each word. >This is easy and quick to do on a normally written text if one uses a > of the word processing to realize all changes >automatically. Perhaps the only reason for using such a convention might be for accurate citation of names or references. If we are talking about general discussion which aims to be understood, I suggest that French correspondents leave out the accents altogether. As an English-speaker I don't find French any more difficult to understand without the accents (and it's a lot easier to write that way). The conventions suggested, on the other hand, make the text look quite unfamiliar. Presumably a natural French speaker would be able to read accentless text with no difficulty or ambiguity at all. I'd guess the same might also apply to other European languages. >I exemplify my suggestion with its translation into French. > >Ceci n'est pas un sujet taxonomique, mais cela pourrait Etre utile > (mEme dans leur courrier prive' ) a" de nombreux >lorsqu'ils n'e'crivent pas en anglais. So do I... Ceci n'est pas un sujet taxonomique, mais cela pourrait etre utile (meme dans leur courrier prive) a de nombreux taxacomers lorsqu'ils n'ecrivent pas en anglais. [etc.] Steve Tracey University of Greenwich, UK. From melot at ITN.IS Fri Aug 9 00:30:39 1996 From: melot at ITN.IS (Jacques Melot) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 0:30:39 Subject: Knack of processing accents Message-ID: >Dear Taxacomers, > >This is not a taxonomic matter, but it could be useful (also in private >mail) to many taxacomers when they don't write in English. > >Most messages are written in English; when French and Italian are used, >or any language with letters marked with an accent; many 'servers' >translate them into cabalistic formula ( =E8, =E9, etc., or even more >complex). When words must be written in italics, they are bordered with >the <_> sign (for instance: _Homo sapiens_). >Personally, I use and suggest some other conventions/agreements. I >substitute the acute accent by an apostrophe, the grave accent by quote >mark, the circunflex accent by a majuscule, the cedilla by a virgule. And >to make the text more readable, I set 2 spaces between each word. >This is easy and quick to do on a normally written text if one uses a > of the word processing to realize all changes >automatically. >I exemplify my suggestion with its translation into French. > >Ceci n'est pas un sujet taxonomique, mais cela pourrait Etre utile > (mEme dans leur courrier prive' ) a" de nombreux >lorsqu'ils n'e'crivent pas en anglais. > >La plupart des messages sont e'crits en anglais; lorsque le >franc,ais et l'italien sont utilise's, ou n'importe quelle langue >avec des lettres accentue'es, de nombreux 'serveurs' les traduisent >en une formule cabalistique ( =E8, =E9, etc, ou mEme plus >complique'e). Quand des mots doivent Etre e'crits en italique, on >les entoure du signe <_> (par exemple: _Homo sapiens_). >Personnellement, j'utilise et je sugge"re quelques autres >conventions. Je remplace l'accent aigu par une apostrophe (e', >i'), l'accent grave par des guillemets droits (e", a", u"), l'accent >circonflexe par une majuscule (piqUre), la ce'dille par une >virgule (lec,on). Et pour rendre le texte plus lisible, je se'pare >les mots par deux espaces. > Le fait de ne pouvoir en pratique ecrire qu'en ASCII sur TAXACOM est provisoire (il faudrait convaincre l'administrateur -- par Jim Beach? -- d'employer MIME ou un equivalent au plus vite). En realite, meme si le serveur de Taxacom utilise MIME, certains abonnes a TAXACOM continueront a recevoir les messages comportant des caracteres non ASCII sous une forme difficilement lisible, car, sauf erreur de ma part, il faut aussi que le serveur de l'abonne ait mis en place MIME (ou equivalent). En attendant, il me semble que le seul interet de recourir au systeme preconise par Paul tient dans sa derniere phrase: >Ceci est facile et rapide a" faire sur un texte e'crit normalement >si l'on utilise une du traitement de texte >pour re'aliser tous les changements automatiquement. ou si l'on dispose d'un logiciel de filtrage. Par contre, en pratique, la lecture n'est pas facilitee par l'usage de ce systeme (ni celui de Yuri P. Nekrutenko) et je partage completement l'opinion de Wolfgang Wuster, sauf en ce qui concerne: >Let's just accept that most servers were not designed >with diacritical marks in mind, and content ourselves with the 26 letters >that are accepted universally. il faut faire pression pour que des dispositions soient prises universellement pour permettre d'ecrire sur Internet dans tous les systemes d'ecriture. Les progres techniques dans ce domaine sont d'ailleurs tres rapide et nul doute qu'a terme il en sera ainsi. Autant que cela se fasse le plus vite possible. >[...] mes excuses aux nombreux anglophones >que ceci n'inte'resse pas. vous n'avez surement pas a vous excuser de cela. A-t-on jamais vu la situation inverse? >Paul Dessart, >Chef honoraire de la Section Insectes et Arachnomorphes >a" l'Institut royal des Sciences naturelles de Belgique. From anamaria at GRINNELL.BERKELEY.EDU Thu Aug 8 18:51:41 1996 From: anamaria at GRINNELL.BERKELEY.EDU (Peter Rauch) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1996 18:51:41 Subject: Knack of processing accents Message-ID: > Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 00:30:39 +0000 > From: Jacques Melot > > Le fait de ne pouvoir en pratique ecrire qu'en ASCII sur TAXACOM est > provisoire (il faudrait convaincre l'administrateur -- par Jim Beach? -- > d'employer MIME ou un equivalent au plus vite). I'm not sure what you are asking for here. Do you know of some feature of LISTSERV (by L-Soft) which would take undefined character sets and decide what set they are and proceed to encode them in a way that would then make them readable to the variety of software in use by each of the subscribers of Taxacom? I don't. Let me know and I'll turn it on! ;>) (If you send a MIME-encoded message to Taxacom, it will be sent out to the subscribers with all your MIME encoding. If the reader (i.e., subscriber) has a MIME-compliant mail reader, those encoded messages will be decoded; they may or may not decode into 100% readable text, depending on what display character sets you have on your system. The listserver has no role in that process.) And, what do we do with all the subscribers who don't have access to MIME-compliant readers? MIME encodings are surely less readable than a "ascii-fied" French alphabet. Peter From kms at MAILBOX.FSH.UKM.MY Thu Aug 8 23:56:06 1996 From: kms at MAILBOX.FSH.UKM.MY (Pakdin) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1996 23:56:06 Subject: listservers Message-ID: At 04:21 PM 8/7/96 EDT, GB:'X0B$4fAB92GB5 wrote: >I am wonder how to find listserver for example dedicated to business. Is there >any search engine? For example for www I can use yahoo... send email to listserv at listserv.net and include in the first line of message list global business. If I were you, I would try list global botany, or lis global plant If you want to use www, go to http://www.liszt.com/ K. Mat Salleh Curator, Herbarium UKMB pakdin at mailbox.fsh.ukm.my http://www.fsh.ukm.my/fsh/pakdin.htm From bailly at CIMRS1.MNHN.FR Fri Aug 9 08:37:09 1996 From: bailly at CIMRS1.MNHN.FR (Nicolas Bailly) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 8:37:09 Subject: Knack of processing accents Message-ID: >On Thu, 8 Aug 1996, Paul Dessart wrote: > >> Most messages are written in English; when French and Italian are used, >> or any language with letters marked with an accent; many 'servers' >> translate them into cabalistic formula ( =E8, =E9, etc., or even more >> complex). The only correct way to solve the problem is to build a computer system that manage these diacritical marks. Computer engineers have to think about that, it is not always the human being that must follow the "computer ones". So, ask them. Even now, we have many possibilities to configure our systems so they manage the problem. Ask your computer administrator. Computerely. Nicolas Bailly ____________________________________________________________ Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Laboratoire d'Ichtyologie Generale et Appliquee 43, rue Cuvier, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France Tel: (33 1) 40 79 37 63 / 40 79 37 49 Fax: 40 79 37 71 Telex: MUSNAHN 202 641 F E-Mail: bailly at mnhn.fr ____________________________________________________________ Look at the Museum server http://www.mnhn.fr From melot at ITN.IS Fri Aug 9 14:24:39 1996 From: melot at ITN.IS (Jacques Melot) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 14:24:39 Subject: Knack of processing accents Message-ID: Peter Rauch, co-list manager de TAXACOM, ecrit (8/8/1996): [...] >(If you send a MIME-encoded message to Taxacom, it will be sent out to >the subscribers with all your MIME encoding. If the reader (i.e., >subscriber) has a MIME-compliant mail reader, those encoded messages >will be decoded; they may or may not decode into 100% readable text, >depending on what display character sets you have on your system. The >listserver has no role in that process.) > >And, what do we do with all the subscribers who don't have access to >MIME-compliant readers? MIME encodings are surely less readable than a >"ascii-fied" French alphabet. >Peter La reponse de Peter Rauch est satisfaisante: la question est complexe et les solutions sont encore partielles. Steve Tracey ecrit (8/8/1996, 23H28): >Perhaps the only reason for using such a convention might be for accurate >citation of names or references. Tout a fait d'accord! Ce serait un progres reel que de pouvoir fournir sous une forme parfaitement exacte des noms et des references sur TAXACOM, sans oublier les discussions a teneur typographique, linguistique ou philologique (pas rares en nomenclature; cf. par exemple Art. 60-62 du Code de Nomenclature Botanique). Un autre progres sera de pouvoir utiliser les caracteres italiques, gras, soulignes, etc. >If we are talking about general discussion which aims to be understood, I >suggest that French correspondents leave out the accents altogether. As an >English-speaker I don't find French any more difficult to understand without >the accents (and it's a lot easier to write that way). The conventions >suggested, on the other hand, make the text look quite unfamiliar. >Presumably a natural French speaker would be able to read accentless text >with no difficulty or ambiguity at all. [...] Entierement d'accord. On sait (cf. theorie de l'information) qu'un texte reste lisible si l'on supprime au hasard un certain pourcentage de caracteres, la perception globale (contextuelle) aidant a reconstituer le message original. Les cas d'ambiguite sont rares ou meme exceptionnels. Remarque importante. Pour les personnes s'exprimant dans une langue ayant un systeme d'ecriture a caracteres accentues (ou comportant des ligatures) il est prejudiciable d'utiliser directement l'ASCII pur, car cela oblige a acquerir de nouveaux mecanismes d'ecriture qui, en retour, ont un effet desastreux par alteration des mecanismes normaux. C'est egalement tres troublant pour ceux qui apprennent la langue en question. Si des efforts reels sont faits par les specialistes pour resoudre le probleme, je pense toutefois que nous pouvons nous montrer patient. Une solution partielle consiste a utiliser des macros ou un programme de transliteration. Malheureusement, cette solution ne marche qu'a l'emission, non a la reception. Une autre solution, plus lourde mais efficace, consisterait a sauvegarder ("Save as...") un double du texte dans le format RTF ("Rich Text Format" ou "Interchange Format") a l'aide du traitement de texte que l'on utilise (Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, etc.) et le joindre au texte en ASCII pur. A titre d'exemple vous pouvez copier le fragment RTF suivant (fait sur Macintosh) et le sauvegarder comme TextOnly puis le rouvrir dans un programme de traitement de texte (Word, etc.): {\rtf1\mac\deff2 Une solution partielle consiste \'88 utiliser des macros ou un programme de translit\'8e ration. Malheureusement, cette solution ne marche qu'\'88 l'\'8emission, non \'88 la r\'8eception.} Cela fonctionne aussi pour les italiques, les couleurs, et tout le formatage, mais le document RTF devient rapidement tres gros relativement au texte initial. Je renonce a donner ici un exemple plus elabore. CONCLUSION -- Une telle lourdeur ne semble par justifiee: TAXACOM est destine a des communications limitees ou le fond est plus important que la forme, non a transmettre des documents ayant la typographie finale d'un article ou d'un livre. -- Pour ma part, je suis donc d'accord pour continuer a ecrire en ASCII pur, malgre les inconvenients reels. Meilleures salutations, Jacques Melot, melot at itn.is From jcclark at CSUPOMONA.EDU Fri Aug 9 10:19:23 1996 From: jcclark at CSUPOMONA.EDU (Curtis Clark) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 10:19:23 Subject: Knack of processing accents Message-ID: At 12:29 AM 08/09/96 +0100, Steve Tracey wrote: >Perhaps the only reason for using such a convention might be for accurate >citation of names or references. Another method exists that has not been mentioned here: HTML coding. HTML, the _lingua franca_ :-) of web pages, has provision for diacriticals and other symbols. For example, Herr Dr. Wuster would be Wüster, the late Askell Love would be Áskell Löve. In ordinary text, it looks bizarre, but most web browsers will display, and often print, the codes correctly. Few of us will read Taxacom through a web browser (I'm not sure whether Netscape mail translates these codes in e-mail messages), but it does provide a standard method for use with references and the authors of names. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Curtis Clark http://www.sci.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/ Biological Sciences Department Voice: (909) 869-4062 California State Polytechnic University, Pomona FAX: (909) 869-4396 Pomona CA 91768-4032 USA jcclark at csupomona.edu From aarj4421 at CUEYATL.UAM.MX Fri Aug 9 16:46:52 1996 From: aarj4421 at CUEYATL.UAM.MX (Robe Almeyda Artigas) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 16:46:52 Subject: From Mexico In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Mexico City August 9, 1996 Dear Srs, I am a researcher who has been working with a group of species of the genus Gnathostoma, causal agent of a disease called human gnathostomosis, endemic of Southeast Asia and regions of tropical America (Mexico and Equator). Currently, we are trying to distinguish species using molecular techniques (RAPDS, RFLPs, sequencing of ribosomal DNA (genomic and mitochondrial)). We are very interested in having material from USA of two species: G. procyonis (from Procyon lotor) and G. didelphis (= G. turgidum, from Didelphis virginiana). We need fresh material, fixed in 50% ethilic alcohol, conserved at 4 centigrade degrees. With one adult worm of each species we would be greatly indebted. The parasites inhabit the stomachs of their hosts and have a characteristic head bulb, with 7-11 rows of hooklets. They measure between 40 and 90 mm. If you are willing to help us and have any questions, please contact us at: "aarj4421 at cueyatl.uam.mx". Thank you very much. Yours sincerely, Roberto Javier Almeyda-Artigas Professor-Researcher Autonomous Metropolitan University Campus Xochimilco Mexico City, Mexico From blay at PONDSIDE.UCHICAGO.EDU Sat Aug 10 16:38:14 1996 From: blay at PONDSIDE.UCHICAGO.EDU (Jorge A. Santiago-Blay) Date: Sat, 10 Aug 1996 16:38:14 Subject: Molecular markers for closely-related species of fish Message-ID: Dear colleagues: Could I be pointed in the direction of genome regions of fish that vary enough so distinguish very closely related species of fish? Many thanks. Jorge Santiago-Blay From E.J.Gouda at CC.RUU.NL Sun Aug 11 16:57:55 1996 From: E.J.Gouda at CC.RUU.NL (Eric Gouda) Date: Sun, 11 Aug 1996 16:57:55 Subject: Utrecht University Botanic Gardens HomePage Message-ID: The new Utrecht University Botanic Gardens HomePage can be access at URL: http://www.ruu.nl/~botgard The information is given in English and Dutch and will be updated and extended on a regular basis. Hope you will enjoy it. ____ Eric _J. Gouda____ Gouda at cc.ruu.nl _ Phone: +31 30 2539281 / ___|_ __(_) __ / ___| ___ _ _ __| | __ _ Faxnr: +31 30 2535177 | |__ | '__| |/ _| | | _ / _ \| | | |/ _` |/ _` | Prive: Jungfrau 107 | |___| | | | (_ | |_| | (_) | |_| | (_| | (_| | NL - 3524 WJ Utrecht \____|_| |_|\__| \____|\___/ \___/ \__,_|\__,_| THE NETHERLANDS (NL) University Botanic Gardens, PO Box 80.162, NL-3508 TD Utrecht (curator) \ ALPINE-L at nic.SurfNet.NL (The Electronic Rock Garden Journal) / \__ DELTA-L at nic.SurfNet.NL (DEscription Language for TAxonomy) _____/ From aarj4421 at CUEYATL.UAM.MX Mon Aug 12 13:07:13 1996 From: aarj4421 at CUEYATL.UAM.MX (Robe Almeyda Artigas) Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 13:07:13 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Dear colleagues, Could you tell me the e-mail address of Dennis J. Richardson, Wilbur B. Owen and/or Daniel E. Snyder, who work at Department of Biology, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, Arkansas and Animal Parasite Research Laboratory, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Auburn, Alabama? Thank you very much. Yours sincerely, Roberto Javier Almeyda-Artigas From cowan at POSSUM.MURDOCH.EDU.AU Tue Aug 13 13:09:15 1996 From: cowan at POSSUM.MURDOCH.EDU.AU (Roberta Ann Cowan) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 13:09:15 Subject: Email for Herbarium, Montpellier Message-ID: Dear Taxacom Does anyone have the Email address of the Conservateur des Herbiers, Herbier, Institut de Botanique, Montpellier France? Thank you Roberta Roberta Ann Cowan (fmly Townsend) Biological & Environmental Science Murdoch University Murdoch 6150 Western Australia Australia FAX:360 6303 VOICE (09)360 2695 ----------------------------------------------- Hypotheses like cats, have nine lives. ----------------------------------------------- From dessart at D5100.KBINIRSNB.BE Tue Aug 13 12:56:11 1996 From: dessart at D5100.KBINIRSNB.BE (Paul Dessart) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 12:56:11 Subject: V i r u s ! ! Message-ID: Dear Taxacomers, Before summarizing and concluding the numerous messages in reaction to my knack of processing accents (thanks to the many commentators) I thing more urging to spread (even if already done in other way/s) the following warning emanating from the informatica staff of my institute: Paul Dessart Monday the 12th of August 1996 11:58 ---------------------------------- WARNING - Internet Virus ---------------------------------- >---------------Original Message--------------- >There is a computer virus that is being sent across the Internet. If >you receive an email message with the subject line "Good Times", DO >NOT read the message, DELETE it immediately. Please read the >messages below. Some miscreant is sending email under the title >"Good Times" nationwide, if you get anything like this, DON'T DOWN >LOAD THE FILE! >It has a virus that rewrites your hard drive, obliterating anything >on it. > > Please be careful and forward this mail to anyone you care about. > > WARNING!!!!!!! INTERNET VIRUS > >The FCC released a warning last Wednesday concerning a matter of >major importance to any regular user of the Internet. Apparently a >new computer virus has been engineered by a user of AMERICA ON >LINE >that is unparalleled in its destructive capability. Other more well- >known viruses such as "Stoned", "Airwolf" and "Michaelangelo" pale in >comparison to the prospects of this newest creation by a warped >mentality. What makes this virus so terrifying, said the FCC, is the >fact that no program needs to be exchanged for a new computer to be >infected. It can be spread through the existing email systems of the >Internet. > >Once a Computer is infected, one of several things can happen. If >the computer contains a hard drive, that will most likely be >destroyed. If the program is not stopped, the computer's processor >will be placed in an nth-complexity infinite binary loop -which can >severely damage the processor if left running that way too long. >Unfortunately, most novice computer users will not realize what is >happening until it is far too late. Luckily, there is one sure means >of detecting what is now known as the "Good Times" virus. It always >travels to new computers the same way in a text email message with >the subject line reading "Good Times". Avoiding infection is easy >once the file has been received simply by NOT READING IT! The act of >loading the file into the mail server's ASCII buffer causes the "Good >Times" mainline program to initialize and execute. The program is >highly intelligent- it will send copies of itself to everyone whose >email address is contained in a receive-mail file or a sent-mail >file, if it can find one. It will then proceed to trash the computer >it is running on. > >The bottom line is: - if you receive a file with the subject line >"Good Times", delete it immediately! Do not read it" Rest assured >that whoever's name was on the "From" line was surely struck by the >virus. Warn your friends and local system users of this newest >threat to the Internet! It could save them a lot of time and money. > > DO NOT DOWNLOAD ANY FILE NAMED PKZIP300 > REGARDLESS OF THE EXTENSION!! > >A NEW Trojan Horse Virus has emerged on the internet with the name >PKZIP300.ZIP, so named as to give the impression that this file is a >new version of the PKZIP software used to "ZIP" (compress) files. > DO NOT DOWNLOAD this file under any circumstances!!! If you >install or expand this file, the virus WILL wipe your hard disk clean >and affect modems at 14.4 and higher. This is an extremely >destructive virus and there is NOT yet a way of cleaning up this one. > > REPEAT: DO NOT DOWNLOAD ANY FILE NAMED PKZIP300 > REGARDLESS OF THE EXTENSION. >----------End of Original Message---------- > >------------------------------------- >Sent by: Veronika Sperl >USIA, Regional Program Office >1080 Vienna, Schmidgasse 14 >Telephone (+43-1) 31339-73-2635 >Fax (+43-1) 408-8288 >E-mail: vsp at usia.co.at > From melot at ITN.IS Tue Aug 13 12:06:37 1996 From: melot at ITN.IS (Jacques Melot) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 12:06:37 Subject: V i r u s ! ! Message-ID: Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 12:04:40 +0000 To:dessart at D5100.KBINIRSNB.BE From:melot at itn.is (Jacques Melot) Subject:Re: V i r u s ! ! >Dear Taxacomers, > >Monday the 12th of August 1996 11:58 > > ---------------------------------- > WARNING - Internet Virus > ---------------------------------- > > >>---------------Original Message--------------- >>There is a computer virus that is being sent across the Internet. If >>you receive an email message with the subject line "Good Times", DO >>NOT read the message, DELETE it immediately. Please read the >>messages below. Some miscreant is sending email under the title >>"Good Times" nationwide, if you get anything like this, DON'T DOWN >>LOAD THE FILE! >>It has a virus that rewrites your hard drive, obliterating anything >>on it. >> >> Please be careful and forward this mail to anyone you care about. >> >> WARNING!!!!!!! INTERNET VIRUS >> [...] Voici un extrait du journal electronique TidBits: MailBITS/24-Apr-95 ------------------ **Relax, It's Still A Hoax** -- Rumors are circulating once again about a virus called "Good Times" being sent as an email message that will erase your hard disk if you read it. So, we repeat: these warnings are a hoax; further, there are no known viruses that can be spread simply by reading an email message, since actual code must be executed for a virus to spread. Please see TidBITS-256_ for a discussion of the original rumors. [GD] Jacques Melot, Reykjavik melot at itn.is From dessart at D5100.KBINIRSNB.BE Tue Aug 13 15:00:52 1996 From: dessart at D5100.KBINIRSNB.BE (Paul Dessart) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 15:00:52 Subject: virus... Message-ID: Sorry for the disturb... I got the news this very morning. L'enfer est pave' de bonnes intentions. Paul D. From melot at ITN.IS Tue Aug 13 16:47:17 1996 From: melot at ITN.IS (Jacques Melot) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 16:47:17 Subject: Sorbus intermedia vernac. Message-ID: Cher Taxacomiens, je cherche les eventuels noms vernaculaires francais pour Sorbus intermed= ia. Le nom vernaculaire islandais de cette plante nordique est "silfurreynir"= , c'est-=E0-dire "sorbier argente". Qu'en pensent les Canadiens? Merci d'avance pour vos reponses. Jacques Melot, Reykjavik melot at itn.is From James_L_REVEAL at UMAIL.UMD.EDU Tue Aug 13 20:23:00 1996 From: James_L_REVEAL at UMAIL.UMD.EDU (jr19) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 20:23:00 Subject: Publication of Liatrideae (Asteraceae) Message-ID: Martinov (Techno-Bot. Slovar: 365. 1820) proposed the Tribe Liatrideae (Asteraceae), but alludes to a prior use of the name by L.C. Richard. I can not find where Richard used the name. Can anyone help? Jim Reveal (MARY) From bthiers at NYBG.ORG Wed Aug 14 11:29:48 1996 From: bthiers at NYBG.ORG (Barbara M. Thiers) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 11:29:48 Subject: Curatorial Assistant Positions Available at NYBG Message-ID: Three Curatorial Assistant Positions are Available at the New York Botanical Garden CRYPTOGAMIC HERBARIUM. Two full-time Curatorial Assistants needed to catalogue information from herbarium specimens of bryophytes into a computerized database, and perform other curatorial tasks with the catalogued specimens. These positions are funded by the National Science Foundation as part of the development of the NYBG Catalogue of North American Bryophytes. Requirements: B. S. in Botany or Biology, with some courses in Botany, or equivalent experience working with a computerized specimen database. ************************************************************* PHANEROGAMIC HERBARIUM. One full-time Curatorial Assistant needed to enter data from vascular plant herbarium specimens into a computerized specimen database, and process NYBG expedition collections: e.g., enter information from field books into a computerized database; sort specimens by plant family; store and retrieve specimens from shelves as high as 15 ft. and as low as ground level. Requirements: B. S. in Botany or Biology, with some courses in Botany, or equivalent experience working with a computerized specimen database. *************************************************************** TO APPLY for one of these positions, send r sum and names of three referees ASAP to: Human Resources Department, New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY 10458-5126. FOR MORE INFORMATION, contact Barbara M. Thiers -- bthiers at nybg.org NYBG Publications booth in the exhibit area. The New York Botanical Garden is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employe r From browning at BOTANY.UNP.AC.ZA Thu Aug 15 10:18:07 1996 From: browning at BOTANY.UNP.AC.ZA (Jane Browning) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 10:18:07 Subject: Two queries Message-ID: Research has shown that plants of Bolboschoenus (previously Scirpus)(Cyperaceae) from fresh water localities carry spikelets with glumes paler in colour than those of the same species from nearby coastal (brackish) habitats. This has been reported in America and for Eurasia (Koyama, 1962: 932), and in South Africa from my own studies in an estuarine/riverine area. Is anyone prepared to offer an explanation of this? Is it known, perhaps, for cyperaceous genera other than Bolboschoenus? A second query concerns achene conformation. In Bolboschoenus, achenes 2--4 mm long x 1--2 mm wide serve as a food source for migratory and permanently resident birds. Within a species of Bolboschoenus, for example B. maritimus, are populations in which biconvex (lenticular) achenes predominate, as opposed to others in which trigonous (three-angled) achenes are the more frequent. Is there any information on selective forces that might favour either of these achene types? Apart from shape in cross-section, there appear to be no other marked differences in the achenes. Jane Browning E-mail=browning at botany.unp.ac.za From James_L_REVEAL at UMAIL.UMD.EDU Thu Aug 15 06:09:00 1996 From: James_L_REVEAL at UMAIL.UMD.EDU (jr19) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 6:09:00 Subject: Liatrideae Message-ID: Thanks to those who provided me with information on the use of Liatrideae. For the record, F. Marthe (Cat. Pl. Jard. Med. Paris: 89. 1801) proposed the name as a nom. nud. at the rank of section. A.H.G. de Cassini (in G.F. Cuvier, Dict. Sci. Nat. 26: 228. Mai 1823) established the Sect. Liatrideae and while associated with a diagnosis in French, the name was not validly published (Art. 33.5) because of the missapplied rank. The name was validly published by J. Lindley (in J.C. Loudon, Encycl. Pl.: 1073. 1829). I.I. Martinov (Techno-Bot. Slovar: 365, 402. 1820) based his use of Tribe Liatrideae on the Marthe nom. nud. As a result, his name is not validly published as it too is a nom. nud. Both Martinov and Cassini attribute creation of Liatrideae to L.C. Richard, and while this might be true, there is no mention of Richard in Marthe's small book, and thus according to the new provisions in Art. 46 of the ICBN, the 1801 nom. nud. must be attributed to Marthe. Jim Reveal (MARY) From 75331.2654 at COMPUSERVE.COM Fri Aug 16 00:50:49 1996 From: 75331.2654 at COMPUSERVE.COM (Lawrence Janeway) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 0:50:49 Subject: Vaccinium Message-ID: Dear TAXACOM, A colleague of mine is doing research with Vaccinium (Ericaceae) and is looking for location information. Her note follows. I will get any replies to this posting to her immediately, because her time frame is short. Lawrence Janeway, 75331.2654 at compuserve.com "My name is Loren Gehrung. I'm a graduate student at Cal. State University, Chico, doing a research project on several Vaccinium species (V. coccineum, C. membranaceum, and V. deliciosum). During the week of 8/19 I will be travelling to northern California and Oregon looking for V. deliciosum. The Jepson Manual says this species is found in northern California, but so far I haven't found any locations of it south of central Oregon. Does anyone know of this species in California? [Or even southern Oregon] How far south does it come? I would appreciate any info people could get to me fairly soon (before the 19th). Thanks!" From d.quicke at IC.AC.UK Fri Aug 16 11:23:10 1996 From: d.quicke at IC.AC.UK (Donald Quicke) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 11:23:10 Subject: Systematics Association Message-ID: Meeting Announcement THE SYSTEMATICS ASSOCIATION Annual address, entitled: "Biodiversity development: The ATBI of the GCA by Costa Rica's INBio" will be presented by Professor Dan Janzen on Wednesday 4th December at 6pm, in the Linnean Society's rooms, Burlington House, Picadilly, London. The meeting, open to visitors, will be preceded by a poster session on Systematics and Biodiversity in Central and South America. Anyone interested in presenting a poster on this or a closely related topic should contact Donald Quicke (address below). Tea will be available at the poster session and wine will be served after the formal address to members and guests. Department of Biology Imperial College at Silwood Park Ascot Berks SL5 7PY U.K. Tel +44 (0)1344 294238 Home tel. +44 (0)1344 883788 Fax +44 (0)1344 294339 e-mail d.quicke at ic.ac.uk From george_garrity at MERCK.COM Fri Aug 16 07:52:43 1996 From: george_garrity at MERCK.COM (George Garrity) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 7:52:43 Subject: None Message-ID: Subject: Time:6:48 AM OFFICE MEMO None Date:8/16/96 unsubscribe From pstevens at OEB.HARVARD.EDU Fri Aug 16 08:23:45 1996 From: pstevens at OEB.HARVARD.EDU (P. F. Stevens) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 8:23:45 Subject: Ledothamnus, Diplarche, Bryanthus Message-ID: We are trying to get hold of fresh/recently-collected material of species of Ledothamnus (Tepuis), Diplarche (the high Himalayas), and Bryanthus ((N)E Asia, etc.) for DNA analysis - to complement concurrent morphological studies in the Ericaceae. If anybody has access to material of these taxa, could they please contact Kathy Kron? Kathy Kron, Department of Biology, Wake Forest University, PO Box 7325, Winston Salem, NC 27109, phone 910-759-5323 FAX - 910-759-6008 E-mail - kronka at wfu.edu Thanks. Peter Stevens From kgengler at MAGNUS.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU Fri Aug 16 15:14:20 1996 From: kgengler at MAGNUS.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU (Karla Gengler) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 15:14:20 Subject: PHYLIP Message-ID: Dear Taxacomers: We have a bit of a problem with PHYLIP. We need to change the CONSTants because we are trying to run more than the maximum number of species (425 taxa). We're trying to run the neighbor joining and UPGMA programs, but the program says we have too many species. The manual says we can change the number of constants, but so far we haven't been able to figure out how. (We're using version 3.2) If anybody can help us out with this problem, we'd much appreciate it. We're also wondering if anybody knows how many taxa PHYLIP (and NTSYS, for that matter) will accept. Please respond to besselma at osu.edu Thank you in advance. Betsy Esselman Karla Gengler **************************************************************************** ***************************************** Karla Gengler Phone: 614-292-6690 Ohio State University FAX: 614-292-6345 Department of PlantBiology 108 Botany and Zoology Bldg. 1735 Neil Av. Columbus, OH 43210 USA From rjensen at SAINTMARYS.EDU Sat Aug 17 08:43:08 1996 From: rjensen at SAINTMARYS.EDU (Richard Jensen) Date: Sat, 17 Aug 1996 8:43:08 Subject: PHYLIP In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Regarding the number of species (OTUs) that NTSYS-pc can accomodate: the largest problem I have attempted was for 500 OTUs. If I recall correctly, the size of the input data matrix is limited only by the memory constraints of your machine (but this may be a function of whether you are running in protected mode or not). The person who knows the correct answer to this is he program's author: rohlf at life.bio.sunysb.edu Richard J. Jensen | E-MAIL: rjensen at saintmarys.edu Dept. of Biology | TELEPHONE: 219-284-4674 Saint Mary's College | FAX: 219-284-4716 Notre Dame, IN 46556 | From 76711.1261 at COMPUSERVE.COM Sun Aug 18 12:54:31 1996 From: 76711.1261 at COMPUSERVE.COM (GB:'X0B$4fAB92GB5) Date: Sun, 18 Aug 1996 12:54:31 Subject: How to be a Pest by Modem Message-ID: How to be a Pest by Modem Here's how to be a pest-by-modem: *Make up fake acronyms. On-line veterans like to use abbreviations like IMHO (in my humble opinion) and RTFM (read the f...... manual) to show that they're "hep" to the lingo. Make up your own that don't stand for anything (SETO, BARL, CP30), use them liberally, and then refuse to explain what they stand for ("You don't know? RTFM"). *WRITE ALL YOUR MESSAGES IN ALL CAPS AND DON'T USE PERIODS OR RETURNS SO THAT EVERYONE HAS TO SCROLL ACROSS THEIR SCREENS TO READ EVERY LINE ALSO USE A LOT OF !!!!!! AND DDOOUUBBLLEESS TO SHOW THAT YOU'RE EXCITED ABOUT BEING HERE!!!!!!! *When replying to your mail, correct everyone's grammar and spelling and point out their typos, but don't otherwise respond to the content of their messages. When they respond testily to your 'creative criticism," do it again. Continue until they go away. *Software and files offered on-line are often "compressed" so that it won't take so long to travel over the phone lines. Buy a compression program and compress everything you send, including one-word E-mail responses like "Thanks." *Upload text files with Bible passages about sin or guilt and give them names like "SexyHouseWives," then see how many people download them. Challenge your friends to come up with the most popular come-on. Take bets and calculate odds on the results of each upload's popularity. *cc: all your E-mail to Al Gore (vice.president at whitehouse.gov) so that he can keep track of what's happening on the information Superhighway Internet. *Join a discussion group, and tie whatever's being discussed back to an unrelated central theme of your own. For instance, if you're in a discussion of gun control, respond to every message with the observation that those genetically superior tomatoes seem to have played an important role. Within days, all discussion of gun control will have ceased as people write you threatening messages and instruct all other members to ignore you. From scottm at HAWAII.EDU Sun Aug 18 16:52:12 1996 From: scottm at HAWAII.EDU (Scott Miller) Date: Sun, 18 Aug 1996 16:52:12 Subject: New Book: Hawaiian Damselflies Message-ID: Hawaiian Damselflies: A Field Identification Guide by Dan Polhemus and Adam Asquith A Hawaii Biological Survey Handbook, published by Bishop Museum Damselflies are one of the largest and most colorful groups of native Hawaiian insects. This practical field guide, designed to appeal to both scientists and the general public, provides all of the information needed to observe and identify the 26 species and subspecies of damselflies occuring in Hawaii. Generously illustrated with over 60 full color photos and numerous drawings and maps, this convenient, easy-to-use handbook is an essential companion for the amateur naturalist, science professional, or anyone interested in Hawaiian aquatic ecosystems, their biota, and their conservation. Introductory sections contain discussions of damselfy anatomy, behavior, ecology and evolution, along with much additional information on the basic limnology of the Hawaiian Islands. A handy set of "quick keys" aids readers in making preliminary identifications of species on the basis of color and habitat. For precise species identification, the main text includes detailed treatments of each species accompanied by color photographs, distribution maps, and silhouettes showing species size. A glossary of scientific terms is included and an appendix containing more technical keys is provided for readers with scientific backgrounds and access to a microscope. A Hawaii Biological Survey Handbook Bishop Museum Special Publication 90, 1996 Softcover. 122 pp. ISBN 0-930897-91-9 Price: $19.95 Available at Bishop Museum's Shop Pacifica and bookstores throughout Hawaii in September. Call Shop Pacifica at (808) 848-4134 or Fax orders to Shop Pacifica (808) 841-8968. Bishop Museum Shop Pacifica 1525 Bernice Street Honolulu, HI 96817-0916 USA From timd at ROM.ON.CA Mon Aug 19 12:24:12 1996 From: timd at ROM.ON.CA (Tim Dickinson) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 12:24:12 Subject: DCA Message-ID: On Tue, 6 Aug 1996, Utteridge Timothy Michael Arthur wrote: > Dear Taxacomers, > > Having read Parnell & Waldren's paper about Detrended correspondence > analysis (Taxon 45(1): 71-84. 1996) I was wondering if anyone has any > experience of using DCA with taxonomic data. Parnell & Waldren list only > advantages, there must be a few disadvantages or problems with using DCA. > Comments on 'friendliness' of computer programs would be appreciated. > > Tim Utteridge > Dept. of Ecology & Biodiversity > University of Hong Kong > > Tel: +852 2857 9912 > Fax: +852 2559 5984 the parnell & waldren (p&w) paper struck me as an unfair put-down of principal coordinates analysis, given that resemblance functions like gower's coefficient for mixed data exist, and that biplots of otus and characters can be obtained for any ordination, either by formula or by using a statistics or matrix algebra package to calculate the correlations between 2 matrices (i.e. of data and of scores). all of the common ordination methods (pca, pcoa, cva, cca), and dca as well, start from a resemblance matrix of some kind. contrary to what p&w suggest on p.73, the choice of resemblance function (i.e. similarities, distances, etc.) does not have to be (and should not be) arbitrary; guidelines are provided in legendre & legendre's numerical ecology book (tables 6.3 - 6.5), as well as in a paper by legendre & gower (or vice-versa) in journal of classification, and elsewhere. these points account for three of the four supposed advantages of dca over pca and pcoa listed on p.73 (i don't know much about nmds), so that i can't see rushing out to buy a dca machine just because one has multistate or mixed multistate and continuous data. james lyons-weiler also responded to this posting, as follows (in part): >...So far as what the [ordination] results mean, Tausch et al. (1995) >J. Veg. Sci 6:897-902 have shown that any software package that conducts >ordination analyses like PCA, DCA, and classification (cluster) analyses >such as UPGMA or TWINSPAN have a MAJOR problem: their results depend on >data entry order (which species comes first in the matrix, or which >character is character #1). That means that the software may settle on >a different answer depending on a completelty arbitrary characteristic of >the data. The problem is due to the fact that multidimensional analyses >are computationally complex, so the programmers have to use various >estimation steps for eigenvalues. If they didn't, the programs would take >much longer to give an answer. well, i haven't seen the rausch et al. paper yet (i just sent off for a reprint, and haven't yet looked in the library for j. veg. sci.), but i did write an s-plus function to jumble the rows and columns of a symmetric resemblance matrix and find its eigenstructure each time. as far as i can tell it does what i said it does, and there is no difference in either the eigenvalues or the eigenvectors regardless of the sequence of rows and columns. s-plus is certainly a well-crafted piece of software, so maybe the problem identified by rausch et al. only crops up in less carefully programmed eigenanalysis routines. i can't see how the sequence of rows or columns in a data matrix could affect calculation of the resemblances themselves. if this really is a problem perhaps someone can enlighten me. as far as the "friendliness" of computer pgms goes, that varies a lot. both canoco and s-plus are very powerful pgms in their (very) different ways; neither one, in my opinion, is for the fainthearted. ntsys-pc and syn-tax each do a lot (comparable to what a version of canoco that's 3-5 y old does, but much less than what s-plus does) and _are_ pretty user-friendly: they are driven by well designed, consistent menus. you still have to read the manual, or be shown how to do particular things, but their learning curves are nothing like those of the other pgms mentioned. cheers, ---tad. From dpaulson at MIRRORS.UPS.EDU Mon Aug 19 10:56:33 1996 From: dpaulson at MIRRORS.UPS.EDU (Dennis Paulson) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 10:56:33 Subject: antlion ID Message-ID: If anyone on here is an antlion specialist, there are great photos of one on the web, just collected in Washington State, that the collector would like identified. They can be viewed at : http://www.bluestreak.com/odonata/temp.html As a side issue, note from the above URL how often antlions are identified as dragonflies! The collector's name is Scott Ray, his address: scray at wolfenet.com You can contact him directly if you have further interest in this. The specimen has been preserved. Dennis Paulson, Director phone 206-756-3798 Slater Museum of Natural History fax 206-756-3352 University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu Tacoma, WA 98416 From weiler at ERS.UNR.EDU Mon Aug 19 14:56:59 1996 From: weiler at ERS.UNR.EDU (James Lyons-Weiler) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 14:56:59 Subject: DCA In-Reply-To: <9607198404.AA840483022@ccsmtp.rom.on.ca> Message-ID: On Mon, 19 Aug 1996, Tim Dickinson wrote: > On Tue, 6 Aug 1996, Utteridge Timothy Michael Arthur wrote: > > (some useful stuff on dca deleted> > james lyons-weiler also responded to this posting, as follows (in > part): > > >...So far as what the [ordination] results mean, Tausch et al. (1995) > >J. Veg. Sci 6:897-902 have shown that any software package that conducts > >ordination analyses like PCA, DCA, and classification (cluster) analyses > >such as UPGMA or TWINSPAN have a MAJOR problem: their results depend on > >data entry order (which species comes first in the matrix, or which > >character is character #1). That means that the software may settle on > >a different answer depending on a completelty arbitrary characteristic of > >the data. The problem is due to the fact that multidimensional analyses > >are computationally complex, so the programmers have to use various > >estimation steps for eigenvalues. If they didn't, the programs would take > >much longer to give an answer. > > well, i haven't seen the rausch et al. paper yet (i just sent off > for a reprint, and haven't yet looked in the library for j. veg. > sci.), but i did write an s-plus function to jumble the rows and > columns of a symmetric resemblance matrix and find its > eigenstructure each time. as far as i can tell it does what i said > it does, and there is no difference in either the eigenvalues or the > eigenvectors regardless of the sequence of rows and columns. s-plus > is certainly a well-crafted piece of software, so maybe the problem > identified by rausch et al. only crops up in less carefully > programmed eigenanalysis routines. i can't see how the sequence of > rows or columns in a data matrix could affect calculation of the > resemblances themselves. Data entry order does not influence the calculation of pairwise distances or similarity. The problem comes with the estimation i.e., approximation of eigenvalues. > if this really is a problem perhaps > someone can enlighten me. > Some matrices are worse than others on the entry order side of things. The problem is not knwoing whether or not the problem exist for a particular matrix. James _______________________________________________________________________________ \ / / \ / JAMES LYONS-WEILER ______________ \/ / \/ |..............| \ / / |..............| \/ / DOCTORAL PROGRAM IN |..............| \ / ECOLOGY, EVOLUTION, AND |...***........| \ / CONSERVATION BIOLOGY |..*****.......| \ / |.******.......| \/ 1000 VALLEY ROAD/186 |********......| ______________ THE UNIVERSITY OF -------------- | will perform | NEVADA, RENO | statistical | RENO, NEVADA 89512-0013 | phylogenetic | | analyses for | "(Biology) is not religion; if it were, we'd | food | have a much easier time raising money." -------------- -Leon Lederman _______________________________________________________________________________ From aceska at FREENET.VICTORIA.BC.CA Mon Aug 19 15:45:26 1996 From: aceska at FREENET.VICTORIA.BC.CA (Adolf Ceska) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 15:45:26 Subject: Soldanella experts - where are you? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Apologies misusing this discussion list: I got a specimen of Soldanella (accidental or intentional introduction) from the Mt. Robson area, Rocky Mountains, British Columbia that may be either Soldanella montana, or S. carpatica, or S. hungarica. I tried my best, but without a reference herbarium material I don't trust my identification. Who can help me? Many thanks, Adolf Ceska From CUENOUD at CJB.UNIGE.CH Tue Aug 20 13:40:32 1996 From: CUENOUD at CJB.UNIGE.CH (Philippe Cuenoud) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 13:40:32 Subject: school level Message-ID: Dear all, I need to know to which age corresponds, in countries of the commonwealth, the school level "grade ten". Thanks a lot Philippe Cuenoud Geneva, Switzerland From johnm at ROM.ON.CA Tue Aug 20 08:19:46 1996 From: johnm at ROM.ON.CA (John McNeill) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 8:19:46 Subject: school level Message-ID: On August 19, Philippe Cuenoud (Geneva, Switzerland) wrote: >Dear all, >I need to know to which age corresponds, in countries of the commonwealth, >the school level "grade ten". > >Thanks a lot I hope I am not being to obtuse but: 1) "grade ten" where - in Geneva, or in North America? 2) which "commonwealth" - Commonwealth of Australia, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the British Commonwealth (surely its disparate members do not have anything like a common system of school levels)? To the only question to which I know the answer (as a Brit, long in North America): add 6 to the North American grade number and one gets an approximation of the student's age. So a tenth grader will be around 16 (or maybe 15 if smart, and 17 if a slow learner). John McNeill --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John McNeill, Director, Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queen's Park, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2C6, Canada. Tel.: 416-586-5639 Fax: 416-586-8044 e-mail: johnm at rom.on.ca --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From WCAMPBEL at MUSEUM.NYSED.GOV Tue Aug 20 10:40:51 1996 From: WCAMPBEL at MUSEUM.NYSED.GOV (Wilma A. Campbell) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 10:40:51 Subject: WWW Query Message-ID: I am attempting to compile a list of WWW sites that provide access to information about the vascular plants of the Southeastern United States (specifically North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana). One example would be Wunderlin & Hansen's Atlas of Florida Vascular Plants at the following address: http://www.usf.edu/~isb/projects/hb-atlas.html If you know of any others please respond directly to: wcampbel at museum.nysed.gov Thank you. Wilma Campbell Biological Survey New York State Museum Albany, NY 12230 ------------------------- wcampbel at museum.nysed.gov 518/474-5812 From rjensen at SAINTMARYS.EDU Tue Aug 20 13:15:05 1996 From: rjensen at SAINTMARYS.EDU (Richard Jensen) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 13:15:05 Subject: DCA In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Regarding the effect of input order on the results of various analyses: I don't see how the order would have any effect on an eigenanalysis of a covariance or correlation matrix, as typically used for PCA, or on eigenanalysis of a dissimilarity matrix as typically used for PCOR. And, unless there are programming errors, order of input will have no effect on the calculation of pairwise similarities or distances. Order can have an effect on the results of cluster analysis of a similarity or dissimilarity matrix. The effect will be a function of how ties are resolved. One way around this is to use a program, such as NTSYS-pc, that will allow the user to find all ties and all solutions - this can result in many different phenograms for the same data set, just as there may be many alternative equally parsimonious trees for a data set. Richard J. Jensen | E-MAIL: rjensen at saintmarys.edu Dept. of Biology | TELEPHONE: 219-284-4674 Saint Mary's College | FAX: 219-284-4716 Notre Dame, IN 46556 | From weiler at ERS.UNR.EDU Tue Aug 20 12:11:45 1996 From: weiler at ERS.UNR.EDU (James Lyons-Weiler) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 12:11:45 Subject: DCA In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 20 Aug 1996, Richard Jensen wrote: > Regarding the effect of input order on the results of various analyses: > > I don't see how the order would have any effect on an eigenanalysis of a > covariance or correlation matrix, as typically used for PCA, or on > eigenanalysis of a dissimilarity matrix as typically used for PCOR. And, > unless there are programming errors, order of input will have no effect > on the calculation of pairwise similarities or distances. Entry order will have no influence on simple units solved with deterministic algorithms (e.g., pairwise distances). If, however, approximation alogorithms are employed, entry order can easily influence the "optimal" solution found by that non-deterministic algorithm. The severity of the problem will vary from data set to data set. > > Order can have an effect on the results of cluster analysis of a > similarity or dissimilarity matrix. The effect will be a function of how > ties are resolved. One way around this is to use a program, such as > NTSYS-pc, that will allow the user to find all ties and all solutions - > this can result in many different phenograms for the same data set, just > as there may be many alternative equally parsimonious trees for a data set. People seeking the influence of entry order on finding the mpt quite often search for multiple islands of shortest tree, as prescribed by Maddison in 1991? (reference not to hand). Showing that there may be multiple classes of equally parsimonious trees (note the difference between finding > 1 mpt and islands of mpts) tells the researcher that entry order sensitivity is problem for their data. Solutions to this type of problem can only be found if more time is put into developing deterministic, polynomial-time solutions, which for some problems are thought (perhaps erroneously) to be impossible. The fact that eigenvalues are approximated causes entry order problems in ordination methods as well. James _______________________________________________________________________________ \ / / \ / JAMES LYONS-WEILER ______________ \/ / \/ |..............| \ / / |..............| \/ / DOCTORAL PROGRAM IN |..............| \ / ECOLOGY, EVOLUTION, AND |...***........| \ / CONSERVATION BIOLOGY |..*****.......| \ / |.******.......| \/ 1000 VALLEY ROAD/186 |********......| ______________ THE UNIVERSITY OF -------------- | will perform | NEVADA, RENO | statistical | RENO, NEVADA 89512-0013 | phylogenetic | | analyses for | "(Biology) is not religion; if it were, we'd | food | have a much easier time raising money." -------------- -Leon Lederman _______________________________________________________________________________ From Mike.Crisp at ANU.EDU.AU Wed Aug 21 09:24:57 1996 From: Mike.Crisp at ANU.EDU.AU (Mike Crisp) Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 9:24:57 Subject: school level Message-ID: In New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory, 'year 10' kids are 15-16 years old. I think that this may differ in other states of Australia, however. >Dear all, >I need to know to which age corresponds, in countries of the commonwealth, the >school level "grade ten". > >Thanks a lot > >Philippe Cuenoud >Geneva, Switzerland --------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Michael D. Crisp Senior Lecturer in Plant Systematics Division of Botany & Zoology Australian National University Phone int+ 61 6 249 2882 Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia Fax int+ 61 6 249 5573 WWW http://online.anu.edu.au/BoZo/profiles.html --------------------------------------------------------------- From btan at CAS.CALACADEMY.ORG Thu Aug 22 16:55:28 1996 From: btan at CAS.CALACADEMY.ORG (Bian Tan) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 16:55:28 Subject: Seed Importation Message-ID: My name is Bian Tan, Plant Collections Manager at Strybing Arboretum and Botanical Gardens in San Francisco. I will be collecting seed in Malaysia this September for our Asian Cloud Forest collection, and have been exploring ways of importing seed. I am in need of advice from those of you with experience in this matter: One way of importation is to mail the seeds to the US. Using the USDA yellow and green mailing labels, the seed arrives at the USDA plant inspection office, where they are duly processed, then sent back into the mail. This is where I've heard there are major problems. The US postal service considers the seed package delivered to final destination once the package arrives at the USDA office. When the USDA puts the package back into the postal system after inspection, it very often gets undelivered or lost, because of the "delivered" designation from the postal service. Has anyone had this experience? If so, how can I avoid it? I will probably bring seed with me in my baggage, which will be inspected at customs. I know that if the amount and variety of seed is large, the officials will treat the shipment as a post-entry case, and the seeds will need to be taken off site and inspected over a period of 1-2 weeks, which of course is highly undesirable. How can I know if the amount I'm carrying will require post-entry procedures? I will be arriving in Los Angeles, with a four hour layover, then connecting to another flight to San Francisco. I look forward to your feedback. Regards, Bian Tan btan at cas.calacademy.org From dpaulson at MIRRORS.UPS.EDU Thu Aug 22 17:04:47 1996 From: dpaulson at MIRRORS.UPS.EDU (Dennis Paulson) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 17:04:47 Subject: bee natural history/ID Message-ID: A friend gave me some bees that were collected from _Calochortus macrocarpus_, the sagebrush mariposa lily, in eastern Washington. One species, thought to be the primary pollinator, seems to be an anthophorid. A number of individuals of the other species, which I think is a megachilid, were found dead in the flower, an odd occurrence in the mind of the collector (who's a botanist). Is anyone on this list interested in this? Dennis Paulson, Director phone 206-756-3798 Slater Museum of Natural History fax 206-756-3352 University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu Tacoma, WA 98416 From dyanega at DENR1.IGIS.UIUC.EDU Thu Aug 22 19:42:40 1996 From: dyanega at DENR1.IGIS.UIUC.EDU (Doug Yanega) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 19:42:40 Subject: bee natural history/ID Message-ID: >A friend gave me some bees that were collected from _Calochortus >macrocarpus_, the sagebrush mariposa lily, in eastern Washington. One >species, thought to be the primary pollinator, seems to be an anthophorid. >A number of individuals of the other species, which I think is a >megachilid, were found dead in the flower, an odd occurrence in the mind of >the collector (who's a botanist). > >Is anyone on this list interested in this? There are several "Anthophorids" (the family has been sunk within Apidae now) recorded as Calochortus visitors, but none known to specialize on the genus - the apparent known specialists are a Halicitid, Dufourea calochorti, and an Andrenid, Perdita calochorti. A good resource for anyone with questions such as this, as to whether the association has been documented, is the Krombein, Hurd, et al. "Catalog of Hymenoptera in America North of Mexico", which has an extensive index of floral hosts. I'll gladly attempt to ID your bees for you, but I'm leaving Champaign for a few years studying Halictids in Brasil after Labor Day, so you'd have to send them fast! Sincerely, Doug Yanega Illinois Natural History Survey, 607 E. Peabody Dr. Champaign, IL 61820 USA phone (217) 244-6817, fax (217) 333-4949 affiliate, Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Dept. of Entomology http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu:80/~dyanega/my_home.html "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82 From halser at BCC.ORST.EDU Thu Aug 22 16:34:37 1996 From: halser at BCC.ORST.EDU (Richard Halse) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 16:34:37 Subject: Agrostology textbook Message-ID: I will be teaching a class in Agrostology this coming year. I am looking for a textbook for the class. Hopefully the text will cover such topics as morphology, anatomy, cytology and systematics of grasses. Does such a book now exist? Any information on textbooks currently being used would be appreciated. Richard R. Halse Department of Botany & Plant Pathology Oregon State University 2082 Cordley Hall Corvallis, OR 97331-2902 Phone: 541-737-5297 Fax: 541-737-3573 email: halser at bcc.orst.edu From lammers at TFM.FMNH.ORG Fri Aug 23 06:50:00 1996 From: lammers at TFM.FMNH.ORG (Thomas G. Lammers) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 6:50:00 Subject: Seed Importation Message-ID: A completely unrelated matter, but seeing your e-mail address prompted me to take care of it. When I visited the Arboretum last Jan., I noticed that the plants growing their and labelled as "Lobelia tupa" were actually Lobelia excelsa, another Chilean endemic. You may want to send someone out to correct the label. Thomas G. Lammers Department of Botany Field Museum ofd Natural History lammers at tfm.fmnh.org Chicago IL 60605-2496 USA From Marc.Sosef at PROSEA.PT.WAU.NL Fri Aug 23 12:01:39 1996 From: Marc.Sosef at PROSEA.PT.WAU.NL (marc sosef) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 12:01:39 Subject: Agrostology textbook Message-ID: I would suggest you use: Gould, F.W. & R.B. Shaw, 1983. Grass systematics, 2nd ed. Texas A&M University, College Station. ISBN 0-89-96-153-0. It contains the items you asked for as well as a nice review of U.S.A. grasses. I don't know whether new insights in grass classification were updated in the 2nd edition. Good luck, Marc S.M. Sosef Dept. of Plant Taxonomy Wageningen Agricultural University The Netherlands e-mail: marc.sosef at prosea.pt.wau.nl From brach at OEB.HARVARD.EDU Fri Aug 23 09:21:57 1996 From: brach at OEB.HARVARD.EDU (Anthony R. Brach) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 9:21:57 Subject: Stachyuraceae Message-ID: Our editorial center for the Flora of China Project is looking for an address for Y. Jotani, presumably a Stachyuraceae specialist and possibly in Japan, though not listed in the Index Herbariorum, or any other persons experienced in Stachyuraceae who might be willing to collaborate on a treatment for the Flora. Sincerely, Anthony R. Brach -------------------------------------------------------------------- Anthony R. Brach, brach at oeb.harvard.edu http://www.herbaria.harvard.edu/Research/brach.html FLORA OF CHINA http://flora.harvard.edu/china/ Missouri Botanical Garden http://www.mobot.org/ Harvard University Herbaria http://www.herbaria.harvard.edu/ 22 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-2094 USA ph: 617-495-3646, 495-2365; fax: 617-495-9484 IDB http://herb.biol.uregina.ca/liu/bio/idb.html EcologyPage http://biomserv.univ-lyon1.fr/Ecology-WWW.html -------------------------------------------------------------------- From S1.DAQ at ISUMVS.IASTATE.EDU Fri Aug 23 09:42:08 1996 From: S1.DAQ at ISUMVS.IASTATE.EDU (S1.DAQ at ISUMVS.IASTATE.EDU) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 9:42:08 Subject: Agrostology textbook Message-ID: On Thursday, 22 August 1996, Richard Halse wrote: >I will be teaching a class in Agrostology this coming year. I am looking for >a textbook for the class. Hopefully the text will cover such topics as >morphology, anatomy, cytology and systematics of grasses. Does such a book >now exist? Any information on textbooks currently being used would be >appreciated. >Richard R. Halse >Department of Botany & Plant Pathology >Oregon State University >2082 Cordley Hall >Corvallis, OR 97331-2902 >Phone: 541-737-5297 >Fax: 541-737-3573 >email: halser at bcc.orst.edu Richard, The best book I've seen for grass morphology (and I think I can fairly "tout" a book by my current and former supervisors) is "Agnes Chase's First Book of Grasses: The Structure of Grasses Explained for Beginners (4th Ed.)" by Lynn G. Clark and Richard W. Pohl. It just came out in May of this year, and is published by Smithsonian Press. It doesn't discuss cytology and anatomy, but does have an overview of the subfamilies and many of the tribes. Deb Lewis - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Deborah Q. Lewis, Curator Ph.: [1]515/294-9499 Ada Hayden Herbarium (ISC) FAX: [1]515/294-1337 Department of Botany E-mail: dlewis at iastate.edu Iowa State University (or as in header) Ames, IA 50011-1020 U.S.A. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From desnyder at PICEA.CNR.COLOSTATE.EDU Fri Aug 23 14:22:53 1996 From: desnyder at PICEA.CNR.COLOSTATE.EDU (Darrel E. Snyder) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 14:22:53 Subject: LARVAL FISH (OR HERP) PRESERVATION AND CURATION Message-ID: Alexandra Snyder of the ASIH Collections Committee, I (Darrel Snyder, representing ELHS), and others are organizing a workshop on the preservation and curation of early life stages of fish, amphibians, and reptiles. The workshop is planned for the joint meeting of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, Larval Fish Conference (American Fisheries Society Early Life History Section), and other organizations in Seattle (Univ. Washington), 26 June to 2 July 1997. With regard to fish eggs, embryos, larvae, and early juveniles, the primary objective is to update, re-examine, and supplement information and guidelines provided by Lavenberg, McGowen, and Woodsum in the Ahlstrom Symposium publication (1984. Preservation and Curation. Pages 57-58 in Moser et al. editors. Ontogeny and Systematics of Fishes. ASIH Spec. Publ. 1) and myself in the Fisheries Techniques manual (1983. Fish Eggs and Larvae. Pages 165-197 in Nielson and Johnson. Fisheries Techniques. American Fisheries Society, Bethesda, Maryland--pages 179-181 on sample handling and preservation). We would like to address optimal fixation and preservation (fluids, procedures, containers, storage) for permanently maintaining morphologically life-like specimens (minimal shrinkage, deformation, and loss of pigmentation), but also for subsequent otolith investigations, clearing and staining for skeletal and nervous system studies, histological examination, analysis of otoliths, gut contents, karotyping, biochemistry, allozymes, RNA, and DNA. We could also address the nature, availability, and management of preserved reference, research, and voucher collections and pertinent data standards for reporting and cataloging purposes. All interested persons are invited to participate and share their observations and experience (fish, amphibian, or reptile). Those having conducted experiments or summarized literature or current practices on these matters, or planning such, are especially encouraged to join the workshop. Presentations will likely be limited to 15 or 20 minutes with time for questions and discussion. Related posters are also welcome. Participants will be required to submit a text version of their presentation (manuscript on diskette) for electronic publication under the ASIH Curation web page. Please contact me (or Alexandra -- AMSnyder at unm.edu) as soon as possible to reserve a place in the program or discuss ideas you may have for the workshop. Darrel E. Snyder Research Associate Larval Fish Laboratory Curator, LFL Collection 33J Wagar Building Telephone: (970)491-5295 Colorado State University Fax: (970)491-5091 Fort Collins, Colorado 80523 E-mail: DESnyder at picea.CNR.ColoState.edu WEB: http://www.CNR.ColoState.edu/~desnyder/desnyder.html From desnyder at PICEA.CNR.COLOSTATE.EDU Fri Aug 23 14:50:35 1996 From: desnyder at PICEA.CNR.COLOSTATE.EDU (Darrel E. Snyder) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 14:50:35 Subject: CALLING ALL LARVAL FISH COLLECTIONS Message-ID: I am compiling a list and database of reference, research, voucher, and teaching collections of fish eggs, larvae and early juveniles. These can be portions of fully cataloged museum collections, uncataloged institutional holdings, or informal personal, laboratory, or corporate reference or study collections. My objective is to simply identify who has what. The list will be prepared for an upcoming edition of the American Fisheries Society Early Life History Section Newsletter and future web page, the ASIH Collections web page, and presentation at a workshop on early life stage preservation and curation scheduled for the 1997 joint meeting of the American Association of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, Larval Fish Conference (ELHS), and others. I would like the listing to be as comprehensive as possible but that depends entirely on the cooperation of those associated with such collections. If associated with a Larval Fish Collection, please forward the following information: 1. Name, title, and e-mail address of person who is responsible for the collection. 2. Name of owner, museum, institution, or firm. 3. Correspondence address. 4. Telephone and fax numbers; e-mail address. 5. Formal name (if any) of collection and type (reference, research, voucher, and/or teaching). 6. Is the collection permanent; if not, are there plans to ensure its permanency by depositing it with a permanent collection? 7. Size of collection (approx. numbers of lots or specimens) and if a general collection of all life stages, approximate percentage consisting of early life stages. 8. Freshwater, Estuarine, and/or Marine species; geographic coverages. 9. Is the collection partially or fully cataloged and how (book, file-card, computer)? 10. Additional information about the collection you are willing or able to provide at this time (prepared descriptions, brochures, or manuals on the collection). Darrel E. Snyder Research Associate Larval Fish Laboratory Curator, LFL Collection 33J Wagar Building Telephone: (970)491-5295 Colorado State University Fax: (970)491-5091 Fort Collins, Colorado 80523 E-mail: DESnyder at picea.CNR.ColoState.edu WEB: http://www.CNR.ColoState.edu/~desnyder/desnyder.html From scottm at HAWAII.EDU Fri Aug 23 11:53:36 1996 From: scottm at HAWAII.EDU (Scott Miller) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 11:53:36 Subject: Walter Appleby Message-ID: I am sad to inform you that Walter Appleby, Botany Collections Manager, Bishop Museum, Honolulu, passed away August 13, 1996 following a year long battle with cancer. We have lost a valued friend and colleague in the prime of his career at age 46. The following is excerpted from a memo by Dr. W. Donald Duckworth, Directory, Bishop Museum. Official communications about BISH herbarium matters should be directed to Dr. George Staples, gstaples at bishop.bishop. hawaii.org ======================================================================= Walter came to the Bishop Museum as Botany Collections Manager in October 1993. He remained in that position until advancing cancer forced him to relinquish his duties in the last few months. During his short career at the Museum, he modernized and expanded information management in the botanical collections, and expanded the frontiers of the Hawaii Biological Survey. He was especially interested in promoting the importance of botanical data within the Hawaii Biological Survey. Among his projects for the Museum was coordination of the botanical and vegetation survey of Halawa Valley. He was also active in local and national organizations advancing the use of collections data in understanding and managing biodiversity. Walter was always happy to help out with other Museum activities, especially helping others with their computer problems, at which he was particularly talented. Walter came to the Museum from the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont, California. Prior to that, he worked in the University and Jepson Herbaria at the University of California at Berkeley. His illness prevented the completion of his Ph.D. dissertation on Ficus and their pollinating wasps of Baja California, Mexico. After growing up in the Boston area, he spent a few years growing taro in Waipio Valley, an experience that may have led him back to Hawaii. Walter was a dedicated and talented professional, a sincere and generous person, and a productive and congenial member of our staff -- he will be missed. Bishop Museum will host a memorial service for Walter on September 6th. In lieu of flowers, Walter's family has requested that donations be sent to the Saint Francis Hospice, 24 Puiwa Road, Honolulu, HI 96817 (attention Mr. Gary Simon). From weiler at ERS.UNR.EDU Fri Aug 23 18:46:40 1996 From: weiler at ERS.UNR.EDU (James Lyons-Weiler) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 18:46:40 Subject: DCA In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 20 Aug 1996, Richard Jensen wrote: > Regarding the effect of input order on the results of various analyses: > > I don't see how the order would have any effect on an eigenanalysis of a > covariance or correlation matrix, as typically used for PCA, or on > eigenanalysis of a dissimilarity matrix as typically used for PCOR. And, > unless there are programming errors, order of input will have no effect > on the calculation of pairwise similarities or distances. > > Order can have an effect on the results of cluster analysis of a > similarity or dissimilarity matrix. The effect will be a function of how > ties are resolved. One way around this is to use a program, such as > NTSYS-pc, that will allow the user to find all ties and all solutions - > this can result in many different phenograms for the same data set, just > as there may be many alternative equally parsimonious trees for a data set. To kill a dead horse, I offer the following reference, just recently brought to my attention: Backelijau, T., L. De Bruyn, H. De Wolf, K. Jordaens, S. Van Dongen and B. Winnepenninckx. 1996. Multiple UPGMA and Neighbor-joining trees and the performance of some comupter packages. Molecular Biology and Evolution 13:309-313. This team show that the most popular programs (PHYLIP, MVSP, SAS, SYN-TAX, and NTSYS) recognize the problem of ties, but have different "tie tolerancees" and rounding precisions, and therefore have different efficiencies when dealing with the problem. They also recognize that the the problem of ties can be exacerbated by data entry order. Data without ties can also exhibit entry order sensitivity for the reasons I outlined previously (approximate rather than deterministic solutions). So the points really are, first, how much confidence can one place in classifications and ordinations that have not been shown to be robust to entry order, and what con be done for data sets that do exhibit entry order sensitivity. There seems to be a fuzzy area between data description (exploration) and pattern recovery with some of these procedures, and a dearth of hypothesis testing as well. James _______________________________________________________________________________ \ / / \ / JAMES LYONS-WEILER ______________ \/ / \/ |..............| \ / / |..............| \/ / DOCTORAL PROGRAM IN |..............| \ / ECOLOGY, EVOLUTION, AND |...***........| \ / CONSERVATION BIOLOGY |..*****.......| \ / |.******.......| \/ 1000 VALLEY ROAD/186 |********......| ______________ THE UNIVERSITY OF -------------- | will perform | NEVADA, RENO | statistical | RENO, NEVADA 89512-0013 | phylogenetic | | analyses for | "(Biology) is not religion; if it were, we'd | food | have a much easier time raising money." -------------- -Leon Lederman _______________________________________________________________________________ From Karen_Wilson at RBGSYD.GOV.AU Tue Aug 27 08:59:56 1996 From: Karen_Wilson at RBGSYD.GOV.AU (Karen Wilson) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 8:59:56 Subject: New director at Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney Message-ID: DIRECTOR, ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS SYDNEY A new director is being sought for the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney, Australia. This is Australia's oldest scientific institution. It incorporates 3 gardens sites (Sydney, Mt Annan and Mt Tomah) and the scientific arm, the National Herbarium of NSW. Applications close 20 September 1996. Information is available from Anne Hardman (phone 61-2-9228 3529; fax 61-2-9228 3102), or email Barbara Briggs (bgb at rbgsyd.gov.au) for a copy of the advertisement. From btan at CAS.CALACADEMY.ORG Mon Aug 26 17:32:13 1996 From: btan at CAS.CALACADEMY.ORG (Bian Tan) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 17:32:13 Subject: Executive Director Position Message-ID: Candidates are sought for the position of Executive Director for the Strybing Arboretum Society, San Francisco, California. For more details, please contact: Strybing Search Committee, PO Box 126, Boonville, CA 95415. From bopp at HIPPO.RU.AC.ZA Tue Aug 27 08:15:58 1996 From: bopp at HIPPO.RU.AC.ZA (P.B. Phillipson) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 8:15:58 Subject: EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY Message-ID: Dear Colleagues I would be grateful if you would distribute this notice to relevant plant taxonomists. Peter Phillipson. ______________________________________________________________________ Lecturer and Curator (GRA) Botany Dept, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, 6140, South Africa. tel.: (27) (461) 318598(work) 25351(home) fax: (27) (461) 25524. ______________________________________________________________________ *********************************************************************** EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY LECTURER IN PLANT TAXONOMY DEPARTMENT OF BOTANY RHODES UNIVERSITY GRAHAMSTOWN Applications are invited from suitably qualified candidates, for the following contract post from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 1999: The successful candidate will be specifically required to teach course modules in Plant Taxonomy and related aspects of Botany at undergraduate and honours levels; to participate in the day-to-day running and management of the Selmar Schonland Herbarium, which is run jointly by the Department of Botany, the Albany Museum and the Range and Forage Institute; and to participate fully in the department's active postgraduate training programme. While the successful candidate will have the opportunity to participate in existing research programmes within the Botany Department, the individual will be actively encouraged to initiate his/her own research projects. Application forms, salary particulars and further information may be obtained from Mrs A Orsmond, Personnel Division, Rhodes University, P O Box 94, Grahamstown, 6140 (telephone 0461-318115/318117, telefax 0461-27626, email adao at warthog.ru.ac.za) to whom completed applications should be sent by 27 September 1996. Annette Orsmond Personnel Division, Rhodes University P O Box 94, Grahamstown, 6140, South Africa Phone: +27 461-318115/7 Fax: +27 461-27626 From pedroche at UCJEPS.HERB.BERKELEY.EDU Tue Aug 27 12:19:10 1996 From: pedroche at UCJEPS.HERB.BERKELEY.EDU (Francisco F. Pedroche) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 12:19:10 Subject: Rimo Bacigalupi died Message-ID: Dear friends: Rimo Bacigalupi, first Curator of the Jepson Herbarium and Library (1950-1968), died at his home in Berkeley August 23, 1996, in his 96th year. He had been inactive botanically since suffering a stroke in 1983. From Karen_Wilson at RBGSYD.GOV.AU Wed Aug 28 17:40:00 1996 From: Karen_Wilson at RBGSYD.GOV.AU (Karen Wilson) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1996 17:40:00 Subject: Assessing Scientific Research Message-ID: Assessing the output and impact of scientific research is becoming increasingly important for scientific organisations everywhere, including here. Does anyone have any comments on what they have found to be useful assessment methods, particularly in the area of performance indicators? How, for example, have people found ways to go beyond such crude quantitative measures as number of refereed papers/pages published? If people send their comments direct to me, I will summarise them for TAXACOM - unless people feel that it is a matter of broad interest and therefore wish to put their comments straight on TAXACOM. Cheers Karen Wilson ----------------------------------------------------------------- Karen L. Wilson Royal Botanic Gardens E-mail: karen at rbgsyd.gov.au Mrs Macquaries Road Fax: 61-2-*9251.7231 SYDNEY NSW 2000, AUSTRALIA Phone: 61-2-*9231.8137 * From late July 1996, the '9' has been added in front of the existing numbers (all Sydney phone numbers beginning with '2' to '8' changed then (those beginning with '9' changed last year - in fact, all Australian numbers are gradually being altered over the next few years so that we will only have 4 area codes in the country)) From K.PAINTING at CGNET.COM Thu Aug 29 15:06:00 1996 From: K.PAINTING at CGNET.COM (Painting, Kevin) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1996 15:06:00 Subject: Vavilov-Frankel Fellowships 1997 Message-ID: International Plant Genetic Resources Institute Vavilov-Frankel Fellowships 1997 The International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) has established the Vavilov-Frankel Fellowship Fund to commemorate the unique contributions to plant science by Academician Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov and Sir Otto Frankel. The Fund aims to encourage the conservation and use of plant genetic resources in developing countries through awarding Fellowships to outstanding young scientists to enable them to carry out relevant, innovative research outside their own country for a period of between three months and one year. The research should have a clear benefit to the applicant's home country. Awards can be held concurrently with other sources of support. In 1997, a total of US$60,000 will be available for awards (maximum of $30,000 for any one award), which are intended to cover travel, stipend, bench fees, equipment, conference participation or any other appropriate use. Holders are encouraged to present the results of their research at an international conference. This can take place within one year of termination of the Fellowship. Applications for 1997 are invited from developing country nationals, aged 35 or under, holding a higher degree in a relevant subject area. Application forms may be obtained from: Vavilov-Frankel Fellowships, IPGRI, Via delle Sette Chiese 142, 00145 Rome, Italy. (Fax 39 6 5750309; Email: e.clancy at cgnet.com) and should be returned to this address. Applications, preferably in English (or accompanied by an English translation), should include a completed application form, brief letter of application, full curriculum vitae, research proposal (maximum 1000 words) and letter of acceptance from the proposed host institute. The closing date for receipt of applications is 31 December 1996. The successful applicants will be informed by 31 March 1997 and are required to take up their Fellowships before 31 December 1997. IPGRI is a member of the family of 16 international agricultural research centres which operate under the umbrella of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). IPGRI is the legal successor to the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (IBPGR). Further information on IPGRI can be found at http://www.cgiar.org/ipgri From R.Pankhurst at RBGE.ORG.UK Fri Aug 30 16:15:12 1996 From: R.Pankhurst at RBGE.ORG.UK (RICHARD PANKHURST) Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996 16:15:12 Subject: TDWG descriptors working group Message-ID: The Taxonomic Databases Working Group meets to try and set standards for data in systematic biology. The descriptors working group is working on a standard for lifeform descriptors in plants e.g. herb, shrub, tree, and...??? Anyone who is not on the TDWG circulation list and who would like to receive frm me a copy of a draft essay on how to describe life form, please contact me. Yours Richard Pankhurst Richard J. Pankhurst Royal Botanic Garden 20A Inverleith Row EDINBURGH EH3 5LR Scotland Phone: +44-31-552-7171 ext. 432 Fax: +44-31-552-0382 or 0481 Email: RICHARD at RBGE.ORG.UK Home page: WWW.RBGE.ORG.UK and FTP at FTP.RBGE.ORG.UK From hmartin at XOLO.CONABIO.GOB.MX Fri Aug 30 14:27:50 1996 From: hmartin at XOLO.CONABIO.GOB.MX (Hugo Martinez Paz) Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996 14:27:50 Subject: databases for herbaria In-Reply-To: <818.rscrib@centaur.cc.purduenc.edu_POPMail/PC_3.2.2> Message-ID: On Wed, 30 Oct 1996, Robin Scribailo wrote: > Some time ago there was much discussion about the availability of databases > for cataloging herbarium collections. We have recently established a > herbarium here at Purdue North Central and are looking for some free > programs. I know there was some mention of several programs that were > downloadable. I would really appreciate if those in the know could send me > the information by email. Purchasing a program is not possible since we > have no budget for the herbarium. We keep ourselves in essential supplies > by having plant sales from our greenhouse tropical plant collection. > Robin Scribailo > Biological Sciences Aquatic Restoration Systems, LLC > Purdue University North Central 1555 Coleman Street > 1401 South US 421, Westville Porter, IN 46304 > IN 46391 scribio at niia.net > rscrib at purduenc.edu ph/fax: (219) 879-3629 > ph: (219) 785-5255 > fax: (219) 785-5483 Dear Dr. Scribailo You can find SMASCH (Free) one of the most beter data base system in: http://ucjeps.Herb.Berkeley.EDU/smasch_dist/smasch_dist/software.html if you need more information about SMASCH please contact to Dr. Tom Duncan tdunc at buttercup.berkeley.edu Dr. Randy Ballew randy at violet.berkeley.edu I'll hope you can use SMASCH in your Herbarium, plase contact with Tom or Randy for More information. In the web url you can Download de SMASCH system I'll Hope all is Well Hugo ____________________________________________________________________________ Hugo Martinez Paz Comision Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (CONABIO) Fernandez Leal 43, Col. Barrio de la Concepcion 04020 Coyoacan, D. F., MEXICO e-mail: hmartin at xolo.conabio.gob.mx hmp at xanum.uam.mx Phone: +52 (5) 554 4332, 554 7472, 554 1915 ____________________________________________________________________________