Pandora's Box, in so many ways
I love Pandora, the free online radio that plays music that you would like to hear and can rate. I am currently listening to my "The Clash" station, and it is so good.
This morning I had the opportunity to sit in on the sorting of some plants with one the botanists here at the research center. He catalogs alllllllllll of the South American and Latin American collections that comes in from the fields. Most everyone who gets hired (who doesn't already have a PhD) sits with BotanyMan for a few sessions. There is soooo much to learn from him! The guy I have been working with most days to organize the Madagascar collection had tried to prepare me for sitting with BotanyMan, and it really paid off.
As soon as I arrived to BotanyMan's workspace, we began to sort. The process is simple. When out in the field collecting plants, you place each specimen in a fold of newspaper. Usually you want to collect parts of the plants that are flowering and fruiting, and multiple samples from each plant.
Dr. Schultes collecting from the field. This guy literally wrote the book on ethnobotany.
Everytime you collect a specific plant, you write it in your field book and assign a number to it. Then, you must enter all of the data on the plant into our database. When it arrives to us at the plant research center we can look up those specimen by number, print off labels and double check you identified it was the right thing. That was what we were doing today. We just got a shipment in from Ecuador. BotanyMan opens up the first fold of newspaper to reveal the pressed dead plant matter. It was one I was familiar with, but you always start at the basics.
"What can you tell me about this plant?" he asks.
"Opposite leaves. Simple leaves. Inferior ovary..."
"Yes, and what is it?"
"A Rubiaceae."
"Correct."
Sweet, I got the Rub, but that is very easy to identify. The next 3 hours were full of plants I have never heard of, never seen, he had never seen, and a few that were new species. So cool! By the end of it he complimented my eye for characteristics and I left for lunch feeling very good with my first attempt to sort with the best of them.
This morning I had the opportunity to sit in on the sorting of some plants with one the botanists here at the research center. He catalogs alllllllllll of the South American and Latin American collections that comes in from the fields. Most everyone who gets hired (who doesn't already have a PhD) sits with BotanyMan for a few sessions. There is soooo much to learn from him! The guy I have been working with most days to organize the Madagascar collection had tried to prepare me for sitting with BotanyMan, and it really paid off.
As soon as I arrived to BotanyMan's workspace, we began to sort. The process is simple. When out in the field collecting plants, you place each specimen in a fold of newspaper. Usually you want to collect parts of the plants that are flowering and fruiting, and multiple samples from each plant.
Dr. Schultes collecting from the field. This guy literally wrote the book on ethnobotany.
Everytime you collect a specific plant, you write it in your field book and assign a number to it. Then, you must enter all of the data on the plant into our database. When it arrives to us at the plant research center we can look up those specimen by number, print off labels and double check you identified it was the right thing. That was what we were doing today. We just got a shipment in from Ecuador. BotanyMan opens up the first fold of newspaper to reveal the pressed dead plant matter. It was one I was familiar with, but you always start at the basics.
"What can you tell me about this plant?" he asks.
"Opposite leaves. Simple leaves. Inferior ovary..."
"Yes, and what is it?"
"A Rubiaceae."
"Correct."
Sweet, I got the Rub, but that is very easy to identify. The next 3 hours were full of plants I have never heard of, never seen, he had never seen, and a few that were new species. So cool! By the end of it he complimented my eye for characteristics and I left for lunch feeling very good with my first attempt to sort with the best of them.
Labels: big institution
A blog about life, plants and the pursuit of zombies.
1 Comments:
Pandora is brilliant in its simplicity.
I think Amazon does a good job with their recommendations, as well. It's amazing what you can do with that much raw data. One thing I really like about their system is that they give you a lot of control over what gets used for recommendations and what doesn't. If Justin Timberlake is your guilty pleasure, but you have no interest in N'Sync or Britney Spears, you can omit his CD from the catalog that your recommendations are based on.
Netflix is offering a $1 million prize to any person or team of people who can come up with a better algorithm for their recommendations. (www.netflixprize.com). Hopefully someone will win it, because their recommendations usually suck.
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