Category Archives for Seminars

NatSCA Digital Digest

Chameleon

Events

  • The iDigBio 4-part webinar series, The Value of Digitizing Vertebrate Collections, starts on Tuesday 8th September. The first session is on mammal collections (delivered by Cody Thompson, University of Michigan), and will be held at 3 – 4pm EDT (that’s 8 – 9pm in the UK!). You can access it here: https://idigbio.adobeconnect.com/vertdigitization. The following three sessions will be at the same time each Tuesday (at the same link):

September 15: The Value of Digitizing Fish Collections, Andy Bentley, University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute and President of SPNCH
September 22: The Value of Digitizing Herpetology Collections, Chris Phillips, Illinois Natural History Survey, University of Illinois
September 29: The Value of Digitizing Bird Collections, Carla Cicero, UC Berkeley and Lead PI for Vertnet.

Around the Web

What to do when someone gives you a giant squid.

A technological revolution in museums? 3D printing and virtual reality.

A visit to Microbia, the world’s first microbe museum!

CT scan reveals fossils within fossils.

19th century Ecuadorian snail specimen is a new species.

NatSCA Digital Digest

A mounted skeleton of a fruitbat leers at the cameraYour weekly round-up of news and events happening in the world of natural sciences

Jobs

Research Assistant, Vertebrate Palaeontology – University of Birmingham. 12 month post researching 375 million years of the diversification of life on land!

Curator of Microlepidoptera – NHM, London. A great opportunity for any fans of minimoths!

Curator of Natural Sciences and Collections Access Manager – Tullie House Museum. Still a couple of days to apply for these two. The deadline is 10th August.

As always, see out jobs page for more opportunities.

Events

‘Digitisation’ seems to be the keyword for September…

NBN Crowdsourcing Data Capture Summit. The National Biodiversity Network is holding a one-day meeting on digitising specimen data through crowdsourcing, at Manchester Museum on 25th September.

iDigBio Vertebrate Digitization Interest Group will be holding a 4-part webinar series entitled The Value of Digitizing Vertebrate Collections. They will be held on Tuesdays in September at 3 – 4 p.m. EDT (7 – 8 pm GMT).

All webinars are 3-4 p.m. EDT and accessible at https://idigbio.adobeconnect.com/vertdigitization. Here is the schedule:
September 8: The Value of Digitizing Mammal Collections, Cody Thompson, University of Michigan
September 15: The Value of Digitizing Fish Collections, Andy Bentley, University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute and President of SPNCH
September 22: The Value of Digitizing Herpetology Collections, Chris Phillips, Illinois Natural History Survey, University of Illinois
September 29: The Value of Digitizing Bird Collections, Carla Cicero, UC Berkeley and Lead PI for Vertnet

Around the Web

Time to re-curate those canid specimens? Genetic evidence indicates that the African golden jackal is a distinct species from the European golden jackal, and is actually much more closely related to wolves! And new genomic research has clarified the status of Eastern wolves and other North American canids.

'But I'm still a fox, right?'

‘But I’m still a fox, right?’

Working with the Public: How an Unusual Museum Enquiry Turned into Travels Through Time and Space. A great example of how engaging with enquiries can lead to fascinating insights into the past.

…And Finally

A request: We would love you to get involved in the NatSCA blog! It’s been rather quiet of late. I know you’re all probably off enjoying yourselves on holiday, but if you happen to visit a museum or an interesting exhibition while you’re away, why not review it for us? We’d love to hear tales of your adventures! And don’t forget, if you’re working on any projects or specimens that you think other people would be interested in, then the blog is the perfect place to share! Email submissions to: blog@natsca.org

Request for Poster Submissions for Bone Collections Conference

Bone Collections: Using, conserving and understanding osteology in museums.

Tuesday, 8th September 2015
University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge

NatSCA invites you to submit abstracts for short, informal poster presentations to be held at the NatSCA Bone Collections day on the 8th September at the University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge.

The day will include both a workshop on in-depth case studies of bone cleaning, re-articulation, conservation and restoration as well as presentations on bone identification and preparation, covering a wide variety of museum osteology topics.

Spaces are still available for both workshop and talks. The full programme and booking are available here.

Working with, understanding, using, maintaining and conserving bone collections is a large and complex topic. If you have experience and would like to submit a poster, please follow the guidelines below.

We hope that this poster session will facilitate skills-sharing and friendly discussion among participants, as well as providing an opportunity to exchange tips and tricks. Poster presentations are an ideal format for student projects, case studies, innovative ideas, and tried and tested techniques, as well as research related to this topic.

Abstracts must be submitted by 14th August, 2015. All submissions will be acknowledged within a few days. The posters will be on view throughout the day, with an organised time period for authors to discuss posters with conference attendees. Please ensure posters are no larger than A2 (420 x 594mm).

All abstracts will be printed and made available to attendees, and all posters will be made available on the NatSCA blog in pdf format.

Abstract submission:

  • List all authors: surname first, followed by first and middle names or initials. Separate authors’ names with semicolons
  • List authors’ institutions and addresses
  • Include the title in boldface
  • Abstract

Please send your abstracts and any queries to:

Natalie Jones

E nj273@cam.ac.uk
T 07786 023709

or

Vicky Purewal

E vjpurewal@gmail.com
T 07917533411

NatSCA Digital Digest

ChameleonYour weekly round-up of news and events happening in the world of natural sciences

Events

8th – 15th June: The Dodo Roadshow. To mark the Oxford University Museum of Natural History’s nomination in this year’s Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year, the Oxford Dodo is touring the country, from Land’s End to John O’Groats, in just one week, visiting museums and galleries along the way!

17th – 18th June: Refloating the Ark: Connecting the public and scientists with natural history museums at Manchester Museum. Conference looking at how natural history collections can be used to engage effectively with the public and the scientific research community.

25 June: Collection Standards Infrastructure Project – Environmental Standards at NHM, London. Talk on standards for collections, display and storage and their implications.

 

News

A new species of theropod dinosaur from Wales has been discovered by experts from The University of Manchester, University of Portsmouth, and the National Museum Wales.

A rare meteorite stolen from an Australian museum may have been stolen to order. Scary stuff!

A study using museum collections has found that the world’s biodiversity might not be as diverse as we thought…

The World Museum in Liverpool has added a new Octopus called Polvo to its aquarium!

 

Around the Web

A dinosaur reading list for every dino enthusiast in your life!

David Gelsthorpe of Manchester Museum on how the Page Museum at La Brea Tar Pits tells the story of Ice Age animals.

NHM curator Erica McAlister has been re-curating flies. Big flies.

 

Got a submission for the blog or Digital Digest? Email us at blog@natsca.org

NatSCA Digital Digest

NatSCA polar bear

Jobs

Education Assistant – National Museum of Ireland – Natural History

Duration: Permanent

Closing date: 5th June 2015

To apply, click here

Conferences and Workshops

A few exciting talks are coming up at the Natural History Museum soon, which I thought would be worth highlighting for you. The first is the Annual A. R. Wallace Lecture which this year will take place on the 2nd June 16:30-17:30. The subject is ‘Wallace, Darwin, and Spiritualism: The Trial of the Spirit-Medium Henry Slade, 1876’. For more information, click here.

On the 24th July at 16:30, the SciFri Seminar series brings to you ‘The Greatest Living Naturalist- The Life and Conflicts of Professor Richard Owen’, in celebration of Richard Owen’s birthday. It will be in the Neil Chalmers Seminar Room. For more information, click here.

 

Exhibitions

The long awaited ‘Power of Poison’ exhibition has opened at the Old Truman Brewery in London. The website invites you to ‘discover the alluring, seductive and terrifying role of poison and how it affects our everyday lives through nature, myth, medicine and healing’ and of course, will contain spiders, snakes, and other lovelies. For more information, click here.

Content assembled by Emma-Louise Nicholls