昆虫数字化博物馆科普功能分析

为了进一步完善昆虫数字化博物馆的建设,我们于2006年至2008年对北京自然博物馆昆虫数字化博物馆的浏览情况进行了调查,并对观众的特点和观众对昆虫数字化博物馆的评价进行了分析。从昆虫数字化博物馆的科普对象、科普手段及功能实现等方面分析了昆虫数字化博物馆的优势和不足,并对不足之处提出改进措施。     

新世纪的中国昆虫系统学

对未来我国昆虫系统学在能力建设、物种编目、理论研究、技术创新和国际合作等方面提出一系列建议。在昆虫系统学能力建设方面,政府和科学家应该在生物分类学能力评估、基础硬件建设、各级生物标本馆中建立伙伴关系（包括标本采集、标本馆管理、 科学研究、 知识共享和标本与资料交换）等方面重点开展工作。在物种编目方面,我国的昆虫物种编目有赖于各级政府和机构继续关注标本的收集和保藏,继续启动一些考察项目,以满足发现和认识昆虫物种的实际需求。在物种水平上研究以往昆虫系统学家的工作,进行地区性和世界性的昆虫类群的订正更是非常必要的。在理论研究方面,我国昆虫系统应该在下列方面积极探索：物种概念、进化理论、比较生物学理论和高级分类系统研究。在技术创新方面,我国的昆虫系统学家应该在数据库与网络技术应用、图形图像处理技术、专家鉴定系统技术、分类性状分析技术、分子生物学技术、系统发育推断程序、信息统一管理技术和知识传播技术等方面进行深入研究,以满足昆虫系统学的发展需求。在国际合作方面,要进一步推动我国昆虫系统学研究机构加入生物分类学全球战略联盟、加入各种相关国际相关组织,要促进物种信息管理系统的建立与共享,要推动研究项目国际化。     

昆虫数学形态学研究及其应用展望

数学形态学是用数学方法描述或分析一个物体图象的形状的理论和方法,是图象处理和图象识别技术的发展,但在生物学当中的应用还很有限。本文介绍了一个新的分支学科——昆虫数学形态学,包括三方面的内容：①昆虫数学形态学技术研究,涉及昆虫图象数字化技术和昆虫图象处理与识别技术;②昆虫数学形态学理论研究,主要以昆虫图象的解释和理解研究及昆虫数学形态学与分类学等学科的关系研究为主;③昆虫和昆虫数学形态学应用基础研究,涉及昆虫数学形态学数据库及其分析软件开发,昆虫图象的机器学习和计算机视觉等内容。昆虫数学形态学理论和方法与计算机视觉技术相结合,在害虫虫情监测、昆虫多媒体专家系统的构建等方面具有广阔的应用前景。     

试分析古生物博物馆的科学传播

古生物博物馆透过自身的内容和功能向公众展示了以人类历史为主的地球生命进化过程。在46亿多年的地球进化过程中,有不少的规律和历史都给现代人类许多的启示。尤其是对"保护环境、珍爱生命"这一主题的彰显,对现代社会的持续发展具有相当的现实意义,更以此激发了公众对于自然历史和环境的认识动力,在拓展知识体系的同时普及了环保概念。本文对古生物博物馆科学传播的价值和意义作了分析,然后分析其实现途径。     

海洋生物多样性信息资源

海洋生物多样性甚高, 但却饱受人为的破坏及干扰。目前全球最大的含点位数据的在线开放性数据库是海洋生物地理信息系统(OBIS), 共约12万种3,700万笔资料; 另一个较大的数据库世界海洋生物物种登录(WoRMS)已收集全球22万种海洋生物之物种分类信息。除此之外, 以海洋生物为主的单一类群的数据库只有鱼库(FishBase)、藻库(AlgaeBase)及世界六放珊瑚(Hexacorallians of the World)3个。跨类群及跨陆海域的全球性物种数据库则甚多, 如网络生命大百科(EOL)、全球生物物种名录(CoL)、整合分类信息系统(ITIS)、维基物种(Wikispecies)、ETI生物信息(ETI Bioinformatics)、生命条形码(BOL)、基因库(GenBank)、生物多样性历史文献图书馆(BHL)、海洋生物库(SeaLifeBase); 海洋物种鉴定入口网(Marine Species Identification Portal)、FAO渔业及水产养殖概要(FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Fact Sheets)等可查询以分类或物种解说为主的数据库。全球生物多样性信息网络(GBIF)、发现生命(Discover Life)、水生物图库(AquaMaps)等则是以生态分布数据为主, 且可作地理分布图并提供下载功能, 甚至于可以改变水温、盐度等环境因子的参数值, 利用既定的模式作参数改变后之物种分布预测。谷歌地球(Google Earth)及国家地理(National Geographic)网站中的海洋子网页, 以及珊瑚礁库(ReefBase)等官方机构或非政府组织之网站, 则大多以海洋保育的教育倡导为主, 所提供的信息及素材可谓包罗万象, 令人目不暇给。更令用户感到方便的是上述许多网站或数据库彼此间均已可交互链接及查询。另外, 属于搜索引擎的谷歌图片(Google Images)与谷歌学术(Google Scholar)透过海洋生物数据库所提供的直接链接, 在充实物种生态图片与学术论文上亦发挥极大帮助, 让用户获得丰富多样的信息。为了保育之目的, 生物多样性数据库除了整合与公开分享外, 还应鼓励并推荐大家来使用。本文乃举Rainer Froese在巴黎演讲之内容为例, 介绍如何使用海洋生物多样性之数据来预测气候变迁对鱼类分布的影响。最后就中国大陆与台湾目前海洋生物多样性数据库的现况、两岸的合作及如何与国际接轨作介绍。     

商场博物馆公共教育的实践与探索——以广州正佳自然科学博物馆为例

<正>博物馆是一个非正式教育机构,其教育目的是非强制性的,主张学习者依据兴趣自主选择学习内容。当前,博物馆公共教育越来越受到社会各界的广泛关注,但公共博物馆的诞生还是得追溯到文艺复兴时期。1683年,收藏家埃利亚斯·阿什莫尔将他的藏品赠送给大学,阿什莫尔博物馆这个当代第一所公共博物馆开放。在该博物馆的网站上,还写着当年捐赠者阿什莫尔的话,“自然知识对于人类的生命和健康是非常必要的”。可见,博物馆在公共教育方面的重要作用。     

基于IBM DB2的中国寄生性膜翅目昆虫资源数据库构建

以IBM DB2数据库作为开发平台,根据寄生性膜翅目昆虫数据的特点组建了分类地位表、寄主表、形态特征图和生物学特性表,将寄生性膜翅目的中文名、拉丁名、定名人、寄主、形态特征、图形、生物学特性等信息分别存储于这4个表中,构建出中国寄生性膜翅目昆虫资源数据库。用Visual Basic 6.0编制了友好的人机对话界面,即信息的录入和修改界面、信息查询界面和用户管理界面,使数据库的应用与维护更加便捷。     

公众需求推进博物馆数字化

随着科技的发展和信息社会化的推进,博物馆事业避免不了接触到社会化、人众化的需求,博物馆发展过程中,数字化的需求越来越深入,涉及办叫越来越广泛。为了更好地发展博物销事、也满足公众需求,周口店遗址博物馆近几年来在陈列展览、展示方面重视以观众调查的方式,了解公众需求,举办适合大众口味的科普陈列展览,丰要是演示性的动态陈列,普遍实现了陈列的动静结合。采用多种高新科技在陈列中的运用,动态陈列和当代电化教育的设计和应用,改变了观众和博物馆的关系,观众不冉是陈列的旁观者,而是参与进来的共同实验者。     

广东省首届昆虫摄影大赛征稿启事

<正>为大力发展科学摄影事业,普及昆虫摄影知识,提供一个专业科研人员、昆虫摄影家和昆虫摄影爱好者之间交流和互动的机会与平台,使昆虫学研究与摄影艺术创作有机结合,增加全社会对昆虫学研究和昆虫摄影的关注程度,广东省昆虫学会与《环境昆虫学报》决定举办《广东省首届昆虫摄影大赛暨获奖作品展览》。具体活动内容请见我刊网站。网址:     

广东省首届昆虫摄影大赛征稿启事

<正>为大力发展科学摄影事业,普及昆虫摄影知识,提供一个专业科研人员、昆虫摄影家和昆虫摄影爱好者之间交流和互动的机会与平台,使昆虫学研究与摄影艺术创作有机结合,增加全社会对昆虫学研究和昆虫摄影的关注程度,广东省昆虫学会与《环境昆虫学报》决定举办《广东省首届昆虫摄影大赛暨获奖作品展览》。具体活动内容请见我刊网站。网址:     

Museum behind the scenes–an inquiry-based learning unit with biological collections in the classroom

The aim of this study was to design and evaluate an inquiry- and activity-based learning unit for the classroom that uses biological collections to teach key evolutionary concepts and to support the understanding and appreciation of the work of a museum. The unit consisted of three parts that focused on the most important tasks of museums: collecting and conserving, researching and exhibiting. The students created their own collection, performed research surrounding it and then designed an exhibition. Seventy-six secondary sixth- and seventh-grade students participated in the testing of the prototype unit. For evaluation, we carried out a pre-/post-test design using a questionnaire that assessed content knowledge and learning enjoyment. The mean knowledge score of the post-test indicated significant learning gains compared to the pre-test results. The test on learning enjoyment showed best mean values for actions that included the collection, compared to results of the theoretical parts of the unit. This approach demonstrates that the learning unit offers the opportunity to experience the tasks of a museum at first hand and to acquire knowledge about evolutionary science and evolutionary principles.     

Torres Strait Islanders Stories from an Exhibition

Preparations for a centenary exhibition to mark the 1898 Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Strait incorporated cross-cultural collaborative work, reflecting the changing roles of museums as sites for contact and research combining curatorial expertise and indigenous knowledge. Specific objects in the collections of the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology continue to be active intermediaries in the relationship between museum staff and Torres Strait Islanders and the museum itself has become an important field site. This paper provides an ethnography of the process of creating the exhibition and explores different ways that many of the objects displayed have resonance for Islanders today.     

Art/Artefact/Commodity: Installation design and the exhibition of Oceanic things at two New York museums in the 1940s

This article documents some of the experimentation in museum installation designs for the exhibition of non‐Western objects during the 1930s and 1940s. This is a period in which ethnographic artefacts were being displayed as artworks in natural history museums and in which the exhibition of such objects in art museums drew on techniques characteristic of not only natural history museums, but also commercial urban window displays (which were themselves enjoying a period of dazzling exuberance). The article focuses on one collection of Pacific Islands objects now housed at the Buffalo Museum of Science and on the installation designs of René d’Harnoncourt and Trevor Thomas. It responds to the provocation of Alfred Gell’s influential writings on art and agency, specifically, his conception of art as entrapment and enchantment—his claim that artworks captivate, and thus exert a kind of (secondary) agency on people (patients).     

Biological Evolution on Display: an Approach to Evolutionary Issues Through a Museum

Biological museums can promote interest in evolution and contribute to its understanding. Modern exhibitions generally emphasize the main concepts of evolutionary theory: biodiversity and adaptation. In 2009 at the Zoological Museum of Rome, to celebrate Charles Darwin, a pilot didactic project was carried out for schools and the general public in order to involve people in evolutionary issues, to stimulate interest and at constructing knowledge about evolution. An exhibition consisting of exhibits and laboratory settings was created. The thematic contexts of the exhibition and the practical experiences were aimed at facing some epistemological obstacles that influence the understanding of evolution and at constructing some “framing concepts” that, on the contrary, could facilitate it. The communicative and didactic strategies were all participative and interactive, based on the personal questioning and restructuring of preexisting knowledge. Behaviors, conversations, and comments by the participants were monitored in order to record any possible change of ideas, interests, attitudes, and learning.     

Nature,Natives, and Nations: Glorification and Asymmetries in Museum Representation,Fiji and Hawaii

The Fiji Museum and Hawaii's Bishop Museum research and represent local indigenes differently, and more extensively, than they do the culture and history of descendants of plantation laborers. While these museums connect Japanese-Hawaiians and Indo-Fijians to themes of economic struggle and multiculturalism, the erstwhile 'natives'are strongly, if implicitly, connected to 'nature.'Against Foucaultian approaches depicting museums as 'modern' institutions of classification, this argument locates museums with a liberal focus on nature, natives and nations (three conceptions, from the same Latin root, for self-constituting objects) as descendants of imperial museum projects, and finds not classification but glorification originally organizing museum representations. The politics of museum representation concern dilemmas in glorification, not classification. The asymmetries traced here follow local will as well as institutional design.     

A Conflicted Legacy: Paul Sidney Martin as Museum Archaeologist, 1925–38

ABSTRACT  Paul Sidney Martin excavated archaeological sites in southwestern Colorado for the State Historical Society of Colorado and the Field Museum of Natural History between 1927 and 1938, although he began working for museums in 1925. His work in three realms—research, exhibition and outreach, and collections—helped redefine the role of the museum anthropologist at a time when archaeological research, particularly that based in museums, was in transition away from the search for exhibition-quality objects and toward research-driven expeditions. With data gleaned from relevant archives, in this article I present previously unpublished details of Martin's work to suggest that Martin leaves behind a conflicted legacy from an important era in the development of North American archaeology.     

Extensible open source content management systems and frameworks: a solution for many needs of a bioinformatics group

A common challenge for bioinformaticians, in either academic or industry laboratory environments, is providing informatic solutions via the Internet or through a web browser. Recently, the open source community began developing tools for building and maintaining web applications for many disciplines. These content management systems (CMS) provide many of the basic needs of an informatics group, whether in a small company, a group within a larger organisation or an academic laboratory. These tools aid in managing software development, website development, document development, course development, datasets, collaborations and customers. Since many of these tools are extensible, they can be developed to support other research-specific activities, such as handling large biomedical datasets or deploying bioanalytic tools. In this review of open source website management tools, the basic features of content management systems are discussed along with commonly used open source software. Additionally, some examples of their use in biomedical research are given.     

Pest control in museums: toxicity of para-dichlorobenzene, ‘Vapona’™, and naphthalene against all stages in the life-cycle of museum pests,Dermestes maculatus Degeer,and Anthrenus verbasci (L.) (Coleoptera: Dermestidae)

Museums, herbaria, libraries and archival collections have traditionally relied on chemicals for the prevention and treatment of pest infestations. While current evidence suggests that the use of chemicals is declining, however, they are still found in many collections. The efficacy of three ‘insecticides’, para-dichlorobenzene, ‘Vapona’ and naphthalene (used in some museums to treat localized infestations and for their apparent residual benefit) against two insect species (Coleoptera: Dermestidae) was evaluated. Despite considerable variation in insect susceptibility, ‘Vapona’ was found in general, to be the most effective of the three chemicals used, particularly against larvae and adults. Naphthalene was the least effective, with low mortality rates recorded in the majority of the insect stages tested. Based on this study, an exposure/mortality relationship is presented for the prevention and treatment of insect infestations in museum and archival collections.     

A Place Containing Many Places: Museums and the Use of Objects to Represent Place in Melanesia

In this paper I discuss a number of incompatible ways of comprehending object meanings, contrasting western ethnographic museum practice with indigenous, specifically ni-Vanuatu, understandings. I discuss these differences as a way of looking analytically at some of the practices of museum ethnography and material culture studies. There are several aspects to this contrast: here I concentrate on ideas about place. Place is a centrally important concept in Vanuatu, but is not privileged in relation to objects. Western museums, however, use provenance as any ethnographic object's defining characteristic, and have developed a sophisticated, though largely unexamined, set of principles and practices for the attribution of provenance on stylistic grounds. On the basis of provenance identification, museums attribute meaning to objects. When enshrined as professional museum practice, such approaches pose dilemmas for Melanesian museums, and are the subject of debate among Pacific region museum professionals. For ni-Vanuatu, the significance of objects on display may represent not places, but the performance of the skills that reveal the maker's place-based identity.