Science topic
Museums - Science topic
Museums and Museum Studies
Questions related to Museums
I need it for research for my doctoral student. We would have found an opportunity to visit this place.
Dear Colleagues,
Zoological gardens are public spaces in which animal species from the region, as well as from other parts of the world, are exhibited. Therefore, their main function is to entertain society (according to common sense). The ease of finding many species concentrated in a unique place is ideal for the public who visit, providing moments to enjoy and learn about the importance of ecosystem preservation and involving everyone from children to the elderly.
Nonetheless, zoological gardens may also be established for scientific research or animal recovery, in an attempt to energize activities in this place.
Given the current lack of investment in natural history museums, zoological gardens can be used to create scientific collections, both for research and for exhibiting material to the public, as well as raising environmental awareness regarding the preservation of bio-paleontological material and the material and immaterial heritage of humanity. In this way, zoological gardens could offer a suitable space for establishing scientific collections, fitting into the context of a Natural History Museum exhibiting biological, paleontological, ethnographic, archaeological, mineralogical and artistic collections, for example.
Therefore, in this Special Issue, we welcome contributions that address the following topic: “The Management of Zoological Collections in Zoological Gardens and Museums”.
We acknowledge Ms. Gabrielle Diniz dos Santos's contribution to this Special Issue.
Thank you in advance!
Dr. Dimítri De Araújo Costa,
Dr. Flavio de Almeida Alves Junior,
Dr. Karina Massei
Guest Editors
Hi all,
I am looking for type material of fossil terrestrial gastropods described by August Reuss. Specifically I want to find the syntypes of Vertigo callosa Reuss, 1849 from the Early Miocene of Tuchorice (CZ). Reuss worked, amongst others, in Prague and Vienna, and parts of his collections (microfossils) were purchased in 1891 by the Natural History Museum in Vienna. However, the mollusks aren't there, and I couldn't find any information on their whereabouts, apart from a few author's statements that the collection "might be lost". It remains uncertain though if anyone actually made a serious effort to locate it.
Any hint or suggestions would be most welcome!
Best wishes,
Thomas
I would like to confirm some information on the type specimens of fishes deposited in the British Museum of Natural History (BMNH) and Australian Museum Sydney.
Thank you.
90% of museum objects worldwide are in storage.
Dear Colleagues,
I'm currently researching the relationships between participation in creative-cultural activities, the mental well-being of individuals and the influence of this link on the individuals' work/study performance.
To do so, I developed a questionnaire which combines already validated and well-known scales into a unique framework.
However, to proceed further with this investigation, I need thousands of answers to the questionnaire to perform statistical analyses properly.
Thus, I would be immensely grateful if you could spend a few minutes of your time completing the questionnaire (https://forms.gle/J5ey26y5nmFbEfhE8) and if you could share your observations and suggestions with me.
Thank you in advance for your precious help!
Regards,
Luna
Maybe I should start my own museum for all my unique ideas. I could be the curator and professor.
Hi, I've incorporated the use of iNaturalist (via creating projects with the orientation of areas) in specific areas that combine outstanding natural and cultural beauty. Specifically, I developed two different tours in different locales, that include the generation of narratives (based on local legends, historic and mythoplastic, that also connect the story with certain museum artifacts) in the context of treasure hunt through geocaching. Each tour consists of a number of stations where each geocache is hidden containing puzzles and information that once solved lead the participant to a new station until they get to the final resolution of the mystery. During their journey along the different stations, they read the narratives, and they also record biodiversity via iNaturalist and at some point they conduct river measurements with the aid of certain organology and record their results, regarding physicochemical parameters and also qualitative elements of the river, etc. Any ideas on how could I also incorporate citizen science also for cultural heritage as well? I was thinking as a next step of my research to expand, through organizing workshops introducing my elements for developing my two tours, and then having small teams (possibly an educator, museum personel, personel of centres of environmental education, local people), generating their own material about their own region. Further, if any relevant literature cross your mind, please send me, thank you.
For a project I am looking for a Museum collection, that is both well tidied, has high standards concerning preservation and organisation of specimens. It should be open (publicly available search books) and welcoming to visiting researchers. A digital database with preferably openly available pictures should exist. I am looking for a collection state to strive for so to say.
Museum specimens sometimes get damaged by accidents, negligence, natural catastrophes, and so on. However, even if damaged, museum specimens can be useful for research. Do you know of published examples were valuable data has been obtained from damaged recent (not fossils) specimens?
Dear colleagues.
The management of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle recently decided to relocate the collection to a different place, namely Dijon approx. 250 km away from Paris.
While for collection staff a journey of 2 hrs to travel to the proposed site may only be seen as a nuisance by many, the main point is that research teams of the museum will be disconnected from the collection.
In their day-to-day work curators and collection staff need immediate access to collections in order to respond to external enquiries in a timely manner. Equally research staff, PhD and master students working with specimens deposited in the collection need unrestricted access to accomplish the tasks of their projects. They all will work in Paris while the collection is in a distant location.
Staff of the museum recently started a petition on change.org to nullify the management's decision. They published an open letter in French -courtesy of Alain Dubois (MNHN) an Engish version is attached- detailing their reasoning behind it.
Please follow this link and give your support to their plea:
https://chng.it/sKR4pLZSdJ
Save the Paris Museum collections!
Sauvons les collections du Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle!
Keywords: zoology, botany, paleontology, museum
Industrial and heritage museums around the world serve as important spaces where narratives surrounding oil production are constructed, presented, and contested. These museums offer a platform to investigate the ways in which the discursive politics of oil production are curated, communicated, and interpreted by different actors, ranging from communities to oil companies. My new project will analyse the narratives of progress, power, and national identity associated with oil production and explore how museums portray oil as a symbol of technological advancement, economic prosperity, and national pride. I will be looking at oil museums in Canada, China, Russia, and Scotland.
I am not new to energy politics but have so far struggled to find literature that discusses how museums, whether industrial or heritage-focused, reinforce or challenge dominant narratives about the extractive industries and, particularly, oil extraction. Could you recommend any relevant works?
And if that's your topic, I have more questions for you!
How do museums navigate the balance between catering to different stakeholders, such as local communities, industry representatives, and environmental activists?
What is your favourite example of a museum that has been instrumental in fostering public debate and awareness about the extractive industries?
I know printers in the USA, but I want to have other options.
- How does the usability of the multimodal affect visitors' experience in heritage museum?
- What are the implications of the use of multimodal for visitors' experience in heritage museum?
- How to organise types of functions rather than specific features might be key to separate visual patterns from algorithms?
I need any type of informations (plan , section...
I would love to know anyone's thoughts about types of data that would be useful in an open database. I live in the US, and traveling to museums to measure ammonites is not possible for all of the students I encounter or work with.
The database I've started (ammodata.wordpress.com) is similar to Open Dino and not really like Mindat or PBDB, and it makes data easily shareable so that anyone who downloads it has what they need to do a basic ammonite research project, even without access to travel funds, museums, or the best specimens. It mostly has data I myself already have, but I am looking to add coiling and W/D other data as well.
Hello,
I would like to extract DNA from dried insect museum samples and try to amplify a short mitochondrial gene fragment (short portion of cox1). Reading several articles on this topic, I notice that it is quite common to use high specificity Taq enzyme. However, appears not to be convergence on a specific product or type of enzyme. So I would like to ask for advice, based on your experience, on what might be the best Taq DNA Polymerase and/or best practice for trying to amplify cox1 short fragment from low concentrations and degraded DNA from museum sample extraction (in particular insects).
Just for knowledge, the products that I have seen several times in the newspapers are:
- Platinum™ Taq DNA Polymerase Catalog number: 10966018,
- AmpliTaq Gold™ DNA Polymerase with Buffer II and MgCl2 Catalog number: N8080241
- HotStarTaq DNA Polymerase (250 U) Catalog number: 203203
- TAQKB Roche KAPA Taq PCR KitCatalog number: KK1014
Hello,
I am doing a qualitative study exploring early childhood educators attitudes and perceptions in museum education. My sample is N=10, data collection through semi structured interviews and thematic analysis. However, I am not using any of the qualitative approaches, e.g., narrative, action research, case study, ethnography, phenomenology or phenomenography. Can a new researcher do that? According to my tutor that is possible to not use any of these approaches, however after reading several books I understood that is essential a researcher to follow a approach.
Thank you!
Does anybody know how I could go about connecting with other researchers working in the field of books or literary exhibitions, either in museums or libraries (or elsewhere)?
If this is your area of research, please get in touch:
A few years go I photographed a fossil palaemonid(?), Aeger tiluparius, at the British Museum of Natural History. Does anyone know the age of that fossil or species?
Thanks.
Dear Ma'am/Sir,
I hope this message finds you good.
My name is Shruti Gautam. I am based in Vadodara (India). I am currently pursuing research in museums and storytelling as a PhD student from the Department of Museology, Faculty of Fine Arts, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara.
My research focuses on exploring the possibilities of how storytelling can facilitate meaning making in museums with reference to museum objects based on Hindu mythological stories.
As a part of my data collection, I am conducting a visitor survey. It will be kind of you to participate in the visitor survey.
Your insights will be beneficial for me to shape my research.
Please find the link for the survey below:
Thank you for your time and attention.
With kind regards,
Shruti Gautam
Knowledge can be produced in many places; business, government, broadcasting, entertainment and many self-organised citizen groups. Universities and museums, however, are often referred to as organisational types whose primary purpose is knowledge. In considering how knowledge functions to benefit society, there are two separate but linked processes namely, the generation of knowledge and the transmission of knowledge. The Humboldt model links the two together as interdependent in the academy where research, as the generation of knowledge, informs teaching which can be considered a specialised form of knowledge transmission.
Museums on the other hand transmit knowledge mostly through exhibition work and informal education programs rather than the structured curriculum of universities. Larger museums will also undertake the generation of knowledge where possible. But most small museums have no, or little, capacity to undertake research. Even larger museums in western nations with neoliberal government agendas are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain a capacity for research. With decreasing government financial support many larger museums have to rely on generating revenue through knowledge transmission activities.
In functional terms should museums be essentially considered as knowledge transmitters rather than knowledge generators? In other words is their most important role is interpreting and communicating knowledge that has been developed elsewhere, such as in universities?
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this question and any links to pertinent literature.
Does the development of online information technologies and the Internet of Things contribute to the popularization of art and culture in society?
More and more museums present their collections of works of art in the form of reproductions published on the Internet. The development of Internet information technologies and the Internet of Things contributes to the popularization of art and culture in society.
Do you agree with me on the above matter?
Please reply
I invite you to the discussion
Thank you very much
Best wishes

Hi, I'm the founder of "Museo dell'Informatica Funzionante" Computer Museum in Palazzolo Acreide, ITALY and I'm asking how to add it as an institution here. Thank you
Colleagues,
A point raised during a discussion with colleagues. As you may know, the higher diversity of plants and animals in the (forest) tropics has been tentatively conceptualized by the Museum hypothesis, with older taxa, different mutation rates, lower extinction rates, larger geographic range sizes than in temperate areas (Moreau and Bell 2013).
Would any evidence exist to suggest that this also apply to viruses, bacteria, parasites ?
Comments, references, suggestions welcome !!
Best,
I'm looking for an easy and reliable way to highlight the veins of butterfly specimen from different families at a museum while taking pictures of them. Thus far, I've only found ways to do so on living organisms, but I'm pretty sure some kind of thermal filters won't help me here. Does anyone have any kind of experience when it comes to different kinds of lenses or something similar?
Editing the pictures afterwards in order to highlight the veins isn't really an option, since I'll be taking hundreds of pictures.
Thanks for your help
Dear all,
I'm currently writing a concept for the future of our own natural history collection and I'm thinking a lot about the question, what material future scientists might need and what should thus be collected now. When you read through the strategic collection plans of other museums, you'll notice that most of them just continue to collect what they've always collected: who collected butterflies in the past, continues to collect butterflies, who collected birds, continues to collect those and so on. As most of you will know, this results in biased collections: some taxonomic groups are only represented by a small number of specimens while other groups (e.g. coleoptera, lepidoptera) are overrepresented. Wouldn't it be good to open up completely new collection sections in one's own Institution (e.g. unattractive, hard to preserve animals, parasites), rather than only sticking to what has always been collected? I'm really interested in your opinions and literature recommendations!
Best regards, Stefan
I had been updating the old collection list from our museum and I found that there is some clash between family taxon for those three genera, some sources put them under Family Lonchodidae while some under Family Diapheromeridae.
Hello everyone,
I am currently writing my master thesis on memorial museums in architecture, and would like to create a new programmatic aspect to museums and a sensorial experience through architecture.
The topic of this discussion revolves around the idea of the future of museums. With the advance of technology and architecture, will the traditional way of building museums change? How do you imagine a visit in a futuristic museum based on a sensorial experience instead of the content its exposing? (Questions from an architectural point of view)
Best regards.
before this, I asked a question about the best lighting application in the museum to prevent as many as possible sensitive artifacts from damage and help more in the conservation. I was thinking of Fiberoptic and OLED, but now I read about graphene light and I think it is used now in the UK and not that much popular around the world. so if anyone has an idea and more information about graphene light and its benefit in conservation please help me as I couldn't find many papers about this topic
There is so much research about Photogrammetry but very little of that research is focus on cultural heritage inside museum settings.
Bonnichen R. Pleistocene bone technology in the Beringian refugium. National museums of Canada. Ottawa, 1979
This research study explores the role of museum marketing departments during the development and benefit of attracting international tourists. Previous research indicates the trend of the museum's marketing departments, which are increasingly involved in the process of developing the tourist's future image. Interviews with museum marketing professionals at each institution highlight how marketing is shared with the development of best practices for this role, and steps to achieve best practices to attract international tourists. Analysis and discussion reveal increased marketing engagement during the future vision process.
I am exploring if teacher students usually design field trips during their upper formation. Field trips or outdoor education can be excursions, visits to museums, aquariums, botanical gardens, etc...
What is the level of compliance to these published standards in textile museums and what is the impact of this compliance on museum budget and infrastructure?
hey everybody, I am very conflused of how to do so. I have collected data from qualitative interviews, and build different profiles that are visiting museums, based on their motivation. So far so good, but can I also answer some of the hypothesis questions that I have such as:
Connection between childhood visit to a museum with having educational purpose when it comes to visiting museum
Connection between hobby and value of experience
Thank you in advance!
I am planning a case-study on inclusion of digital technologies in Indian museums, particularly museums with notable textile collections. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated!
I am an student of entomological field, I am interested to work on DNA barconding of beetles, I have some fresh collection and some Museum specimens as well. I am not much clear that whether Museum specimens are suitable for DNA extraction or not. I will appreciate your kind and valuable suggestions.
I have recently extracted genomic DNA from some museum bees for sequencing, and from first look there appears to be some pollen DNA in the extract. I've had a Google but can't find anything solid... Is it possible to carefully remove exterior pollen from the bee without causing too much damage, prior to DNA extraction?
At the museum we are currently dismissing Paradichlorobenzene and Naphtalene.
we are looking for other effective chemical or similar.
I searching for examples of best museum virtual tours and find out that many of big museums close their virtual tours exhibitions. This is just a matter of expired internet pages or museums dissatisfied with idea of virtual tour?
What pros and cons existed?
What do you think - virtual tours useful or just hollow hi-teak show feature?
Hello Science World,
Does anyone have advise for the best way to determine if root exposure in museum specimens is due to premortem fenestration vs an artifact of the preservation process (specifically, thinning of maxillary/mandibular bone) when you have a whole toothrow involved (vs clear evidence of pathology in isolated teeth)?
Thank you so much for any advise!!!
Definition of information system.
What information systems are used in developed countries and around the world?
What is the specificity of information systems in libraries, archives and museums?
Examples of information systems in major libraries, museums and archives around the world.
My question is about the memory policy. After the rehabilitation at Simon Janashia Museum of Georgia (Tbilisi) you won't find anything from medieval Georgian history. Is it normal?

Violins does not develop cracks from vibration, but mainly from humidity cycling, gradients and tension buildup from swelling or shrinking from natural variation in the indoor climate. The oldest violins in regular use are about 320 year old and the owenrs and insurance companies are happy to let players use the fine instruments, possibly also because it adds to value and playing them publicly is promotion.
Now does old er wood, like historic instruments in museums, or other wooden objects like furniture, boats, tools, container and other objects used for keeping food etc. react to vibration different from violins or other musical instruments? Is there evidence for crack formation in museum wood objects from vibration?
There are some literature on museum objects like paintings where a vibration dose response on objects are suggested as a risk factor. The hypothesis say that too many vibrations lead to failure. Often without mentioning the hygroscopic effects of almost all natural biological fibres and materials even found in canvas of paintings or even the painting itself.
The question is relevant to the coming construction of a new building at the Viking ship museum in Oslo.
I"m an anthropologist teaching Design. Some of my work is on academia.edu. I"m affiliated with the National Museum of Kenya and have placed collections of East African material in several museums in the US and Europe. One of my colleagues, Flora Mutere, is working on her PHD about the Railways Musem in Nairobi. I spent some time talking with Yanis Mokri last summer - good guy! You can contact me at pido@africaonline.co.ke . Can you tell me more about your project?
I´m working at the Natural History Museum of Santiago de Cuba and I´m looking for the best fee collection management software for both zoological and botanical collections. We want no just have our collection properly organize but also make it visible through the world. I´ve been hearing about Specify, Symbiota and Biota and I´m not sure which one is the most efficient or if there is any other who can be better.
I spent the past few months interning as an independent researcher at the Field Museum in Chicago. Here, I spent my time observing the design procedure that leads up to the creation of a context-focused exhibition. The term culminated with a paper at the end on the nature of objects in such exhibitions. I'm currently looking for places which can help me review, edit, and publish this work. Any direction would be helpful!
We have lost all of our dermastids due to fly larvae. After a month we had ham beetles appearing and I was wondering if they would do as good of a job to get rid of meat from bones, so that we can put the specimens in the museum
I am modeling the flow of visitors during a working day in a museum.
The main problem is that I don't know how to model in Arena Rockwell the fact that all entities must clear the queue at the end of the simulation, because obviously after the closing time visitors cannot remain inside the museum, but they must absolutely leave.
Some advice?
I am modeling the flow of visitors during a working day in a museum. The main problem is that I don't know how to model in Arena Rockwell the fact that all entities must clear the queue at the end of the simulation, because obviously after the closing time visitors cannot remain inside the museum, but they must absolutely leave.
Some advice?
Kindly share you views/opinions/thoughts over the:
- Disadvantages,
- Drawbacks,
- Description
- Constraints
in implementing technology in a museum.
Hi All,
at the Museum of Nature South Tyrol, in Bolzano / Bozen, Italy, we're keeping in aquarium for more than 10,5 years 3 American horseshoe crabs Limulus polyphemus.
What is the maximum longevity of American horseshoe crab in aquarium?
Thank you!
Sincerely,
Massimo

Hello to everyone,
I'm trying to amplify nuclear markers from old museum specimens of beetle (not very old, sampled 10-15 years ago) , I thought on the Wingless fragment, it's obviously a hard work an I don't expect to see much bands in the gels, anyway, anyone have suggestion about how to set the PCR for this goal?
Do you now any alternative (and cheaper) method to radiocarbon for biological museum samples datation?
Thank you
I'm interested in working on museum collections for my thesis. However, the common problem I encounter in my study organisms (I work on marine fishes) is that specimens are sometimes not well-prepared (i.e., fins are not spread out enough) or are sometimes contorted. Is there a way to somewhat "relax" AKA soften preserved animals, particularly in wet collections? I've read somewhere about soaking them in water to hydrate their tissues, but I can't confirm if that method is actually used by museum workers in zoological collection. Thanks a bunch!
Hi,
I attach an underwater picture of a colony of freshwater bryozoans. I identified it as Cristatella mucedo. I took the picture in a small natural lake in Northern Italy, in the Province of Bolzano / Bozen.
Please could you confirm my identification?
I tried to fix a colony of this species in ethylic alcohol 70 % and another colony in formalin 10%, but they both fell apart. Could you advise me on the right method for fixing a specimen for the museum's zoological collection?
Thank you in advance for your help.
Sincerely,
Massimo
I want to know the current status of women in the field of museums and is there any conference regarding the same topic?
Hi: I´m designing a system to activate around 30 lights and 30 music players located in 4 floors of a museum (maximum distance to the estimated position where the system is controlled is about 70 meters, 229 feet).Every music players sends back a signal to indicate when it´s working (I´m not sure get if it can send it via PSI or I2C).
My idea is to make a SPI or I2C protocol to control the system, but based on this website:
I would have issues with the distance, so I thought to put all together in the control room´s place and send wires only for the audio signals, using buffers on the way to preserve the signal, but I´m pretty sure there could be a better way,
¿Do you know any protocol, device or system that could do this better? I will appreciate your suggestions.
Thanks in advance,
Pablo.
Free for the first 50 readers:
The relationship between collaboration and innovation in cultural organisations is an emerging topic that has drawn particular attention from scholars and practitioners. The main aim of this study is to assess the role of collaboration in the process of innovation in museum organisations. To achieve this aim, first, we develop a four-domain analytical framework by matching innovation types to cultural production processes to reflect the peculiarities of museum innovation. By applying this framework to the multiple case studies from four Spanish museums, we identify three main motivations (supplementing manpower, compensating for the scarcity of knowledge, improving demand-driven innovation) and four forms of collaboration (teamwork, outsourcing, consortium and conversation) and summarise the different modes of collaboration involved in various domains of production and innovation. An assessment is conducted subsequently to evaluate the effectiveness of existing collaborations in achieving technological and cultural innovation in museums. Finally, a list of implications for museums’ innovation management is presented.
After my initial Q&A topic of “what is the future of our Cultural Heritage” of some months ago it is almost a follow-up by asking the next logical question “Would transparency in museum matters stop the illicit trade in Cultural Heritage remains?”
The notion of illicit trade encompasses the purchasing as well as the sale of cultural heritage relics and remains.
People like to hoard things they like and pay for it, whereas there are others who sell whatever they have received in the past by a gift or a purchase. So, CH objects remain in good hands.
However, when it involves public as well as private museums, there are at this moment no ways to get access to what they got, was loaned to them or was purchased from where and when in the past.
What we need is transparency by having a look into the inventory list of every museum in the world. The reason is that there are less exhibited objects above ground than there are in the museum vaults, which no mortal will ever see, discuss and admire. Things have disappeared from the face of the world, but many of them still exist somewhere, but we have no way of knowing where.
The question of transparency is not just a question, because I would like to provide an answer of another type of social behavior that bore fruit until the very present. I have in mind an organization as Interpol that has stored fingerprints of millions around the globe and active collaboration between police forces everywhere can tap into Interpol’s huge database. Criminals can be traced as a result of Interpol’s work.
I suggest that in the footsteps of Interpol an organization will be founded on international level, which will have a data base of ALL museum inventories—large and small--from everywhere, so that we first of all will get a glimpse of what every museum has and secondly, illicit trade in CH goods around the world can be checked if they were stolen from a museum and ended up elsewhere, as well as the new acquisitions of goods in all the countries that will and eventually must be connected with this database.
In a second stage, also antiquarians will be included with their entire inventory so that one would receive a window into legal/illegal transactions from the past and the present.
Of course, as there are sets of fingerprints in Interpol files which are missing in its database, likewise there will always remain CH goods that clandestine will be moved from post to hole. Nevertheless, the newly made database would be a start to keep an eye on the lucrative sales of stolen goods.
Perhaps, even Interpol itself would be highly interested to let share a subdivision of its database so that it—with its super speedy search machines- would get immediate answers on wheel and deal in the antiquity- and Art world.
i have designed an educational framework for ghana museums and monuments board. How do i validate the framework?
In terms of Social aspect, how much feasible ‘Internet of Things (IoT)’ would be for Museums in India and abroad?
Through this question, I want to know your thoughts about how much feasible IoT for Museum will be for the peoples and the society. How much peoples will find museums more entertaining, informative and easy access of artefacts to all kind of peoples.
I´m working at the Natural History Museum of Santiago de Cuba and I´m looking for the best fee collection management software for both zoological and botanical collections. We want no just have our collection properly organize but also make it visible through the world. I´ve been hearing about Specify, Symbiota and Biota and I´m not sure which one is the most efficient or if there is any other who can be better.
Iam in my second semester.Now assigned work to make a framework for storytelling in the museum and see the development and impact of it on the kids.I need help on this.
Respected scientific community,
I am describing a new species of fauna and the papers I am citing/ referring to in my manuscript, seem to contain a bunch of comparative materials that the authors have used when comparing with their new species they were describing. Is it necessary to physically study the type/non type specimens themselves that are stored in national repositories and museums? Will referring to the literature that contains their data be considered legitimate? Maybe even collecting some specimens from the type locality or from personal collections?
Thanking You
Social Butterfly by J. Davidoff 2012 in Museum and it won't give me access. Can you help?
Recently many researchers in the Hungarian Natural History Museum and in other collections uses craniometry with or without mtDNA studies on their same samples. The problem with this, the connection between these two methologies is still debated and good be seen some personal opinion to sort out all these, because it is basically affects the accuracy of scietific results of present Anthropological studies.
Hello,
in 2008 after my epidemiological thesis in biology/ethnomedicine I started the development of the FCMapper. About 2010 I started studying fine arts and worked in the field of Art&Science since then. 2018 I got a one year stipend from the state of Carinthia for developing FCM as an artistc method.
In which kind of fields do you plan to work with FCM in this project? Which kind of scientists and experts will be involved into this project?
It would be great to contribute to a bigger project to bring FCM out of academia - into museums and also public space.
Kind regards, Michael
My case is about the Atlanta Braves baseball stadium which is called Turner Field.
This baseball stadium changed from an old-fashioned baseball stadium to a modern baseball theme park with different services like a hall of fame or museum, also interactive games for the visitors skills and knowledge are offered.
One question is:
"Suppose an executive for the Braves wishes to know whether the stadium has caused employees (including ticket takers, parking attendants, ushers, security personnel, team employees,..) to be more committed to the Braves organization than when they were playing in an old-fashioned stadium. What would a potential research design involve and what data collection and statistical tests, do you think it could be useful? Justify your decision. "
Can anyone help me and tell which statistical test/data collection could be useful?
Thanks a lot in advance!
Works of art are an important element of culture in the social and cultural heritage. The achievements of culture, including works of art, should be cherished for future generations, they can not be allowed to be forgotten, and unfortunately it often happens that in the era of current informational technological revolution, the development of new media, in the pursuit of modernity specific aspects of culture, tradition and art they are often interpreted only in the historical dimension.
On the other hand, new information technologies, new online media should be used to promote traditional values of culture and art. For example, websites have been created for many art and culture. Many works of art, entire collections of many museums are digitized in the form of a digital record of reproduction of works of art so as to increase the accessibility of citizens to cultural and cultural heritage.
Does this type of propagation of culture and art on the Internet should be developed?
I think so.
Do you agree with me?
Please, answer, comments.
I invite you to the discussion.
Best wishes

Fishes collected from Sakhalin in 2000-2002 are available at the Burke Museum. See this website and check the references cited. The database is not currently searchable on the Okhotskia website, but you can search for fishes from Sakhalin on our main fish collection website.
Please contact me if you have any questions. We also have extensive holdings from the Kuril Islands.
Thank you,
Katherine Maslenikov
Some species just exist in collections and museums which taxonomists separated them based on some morphological differences. How we can certificate them in the nature?
Kindly let me know your sincere and valuable opinion on the limitations/problems/difficulties faced by a museum. This question open to everyone so I request you to kindly contribute by enlisting as many points as you can. Thanks !
Looking for a copy of Upper Paleozoic Anomalodesmatan Bivalvia by Morris, Dickins, and Astafieva-Urgaitis (1991) Bulletin of the British Museum of Natural History (Geology), 47(1):51-100. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. I need it for a paper I am writing on Mississippian bivalves.
Should fragmentary Athenian figure-decorated pots be subject to the same due diligence process as complete (or near complete) examples? Are fragments circulating widely in the market? Or are pots being broken to supply the demand?
I am interested to collect information of presence and identity of bee specimens in museums for understand biodiversity and the change to which they were subject during many years. However, I know that there are many problems with the integration of data.
1st. there are many mistakes and bias of the areas sample and identification of specimens. I know about some programs that can make the revision of the data and detect errors.
2nd. However, I will like to know how if is there a general experience or strategy. How to integrate and analyze the data? I want to know if someone has some experience of what are the best tools or what is necessary to create an integrative strategie. Is actually really necessary an integrative strategy or it is something that is not of much interest?
thanks for your opinion,
I am doing a research project where i am stuck in mapping the museum object records in CSV format with CIDOC CRM model. I have tried the mapping using OpenRefine but that doesn't help me acheiving my goal. Can anyone help me, how to do the mapping now?
Since CIDOC-CRM was created for integrating library, archive and museum resources, why it is not used directly by Europeana and DPLA. Why Europeana and DPLA bother to create new metadata models?
I'm looking to use kits instead of Phenol/Chloroform for museum specimens. I have heard about DNeasy/MinElute kits, but am not overly impressed with Qiagen as a company. I'd also prefer something that doesn't require vacuum manifolds and can be done with a bench top centrifuge, or magnetic bead based.
Thanks in advance!
My purpose is to reconstruct 3Ds for arbitrary and complex museum artifacts with the best reconstruction goal, preserving the texture and color exactly. I currently have no hardware (3D scanner) for that and planning to buy. I come to know laser scanner works well with a short range. Would you please suggest me the required lab setup (best equipment, also a 3D printer) instruments for my purpose.
Museums have undergone massive transformations in the last several decades. These changes are said to have made them more democratic, more educational, more interactive. But was something lost in the process? Are these “houses of the Muses” still able to elicit the awe, wonder, and inspiration (sometimes) fostered by the clutter, ecclectism, and relative opaqueness of older museological approaches?
What kind of human/environmental/accidental reasons do you think are the main reasons for the destruction & deterioration of Textile-based artifacts in a museum? Kindly quote your answers/opinions with some real examples and photographs (if possible). The question is open for ALL. Please provide your valuable frank opinion.
Thanking you.
We are currently developing design specifications for a small building to store archival genetics samples, which are predominantly stored in 95% ethanol. What are some design considerations you would recommend? (temperature, humidity, etc.)
This is a small specimen of unknown origin kept in the Museum of Natural History in Siena (Italy). I do not manage to identify it properly. I thought it could be Micrelaps muelleri or M. tchernovi, but the scale pattern of the head does not seem to match and the ventral scales should be dark rather than light. The head pattern recalls that of other atracataspidinae snakes but the colour pattern is very peculiar and apparently does not correspond to any other species in this group. Any suggestion?


At this very moment (2 September; 22h00, local time), the National Museum (MN, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), one of the most important museums of natural history in the world, is burning in flames.
In addition to the exhibitions open to the public, the MN housed some of the largest and most important scientific collections existing in Brazil. The collections of biological items included thousands of types (insects, reptiles, birds, mammals, plants, etc.).
To the taxonomists (and other colleagues): You could say how many specimens (mainly types) collected or described by you were deposited in MN? And to what taxonomic groups (family or above) these specimens belonged?
[In 2016, a coup d’état turned Brazil in a country with no future. Now, in his final months at the head of the Government, the President Michel Temer wants also to ensure that the country erase its own past.]
I ran 48 samples from museum specimens on the MiSeq platform. Unfortunately, each sample has very low coverage (~0.0035x). One of the contributing factors appears to be that the average read size is 38 bp, which may be due to the large amount of sheering present in museum samples.
I was able to extract ~400 SNPs, but cannot produce any supported trees or STRUCTURE results. I know the low coverage is to blame, but I am not sure the minimum coverage that would be usable for an analysis. I typically see papers use coverages of >5x. Papers with lower coverage (the lowest I have seen is 0.5x typically mention that they would like to acquire further coverage).
However, to get that amount of coverage for one sample would require an entire lane of the HiSeq platform, which would provide 30x coverage than the MiSeq. If I went for 0.5x coverage, I could run 10 samples.
Is there a hard rule suggesting the minimum amount of coverage for a phylogenetic analysis? Is running these samples on a HiSeq worth the cost?
My species is Microtus ochrogaster, which has a reference genome (~2.3 billion bp). To prepare the libraries, the EcoR1 enzyme was used in a RAD-Seq protocol designed for degraded museum specimens. The amount of reads per sample varies with some alignment rates between 12 to 80%. Very few of the samples share SNP loci, with each loci missing >85% of the data.
Looking for inspiring case studies on the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage in / by museums!
I would be interested to learn whether North American colleagues in particular find that museums are adopting more rigorous criteria before accepting temporary loans of archaeological material. Should the appropriate law enforcement agencies be contacted if suspect material is identified?
Dear colleagues,
I am looking for this publication:
Jaanusson, Valdar, 1976. Faunal Dynamics in the Middle Ordovician (Viruan) of Balto-Scandia. In: The Ordovician System: Proceedings of a Palaeontological Association Symposium Birmingham, September 1974. University of Wales Press and National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, 301–326.
Does someone have a digital copy that they can share?
Many thanks in advance,
Hendrik
I am working on a project about the Space Center and can't find this information
This skin represent an old museum sample (presumably collected in the late XIX century), the label says "Varanus species - British Guyana", but no Varanidae occur in the Neotropics. I thought it could belong to Tupinambis sp. but the pictures I found on the web do not seem to match.
Previously UK's Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, in A History of the World in 100 Objects. Neil macGregor. The British Museum 2012.
Sacks was discussing the discovery in 1872 of the story of the flood (Noah story but under an entirely different personage, Atrahasis.)As the details are exactly the same, the conclusion has to be that the Hebrews copied the flood story.
Clearly there is a core event behind both narratives.....................................What the ancient texts that tell flood stories do is talk essentially of the great forces of nature being controlled by deities who don't like human beings very much, and for whom 'might makes right'. Now the Bible comes along and retells the story, but does so in a unique way-God brings the flood because the world was filled with violence, and the result is that the story becomes moralised, and that is part of the Bible's programme. This is the radical step from polytheism to monotheism -from a world in which people worshipped power, to the Bible's insistence that power must be just and compassionate, and from a world in which their are many forces, many gods, fighting with one another, to this world in which the whole universe is the result of a single rational creative will. So the more we understand what the Bible is arguing against, the deeper we understand the Bible.
Sacks re-positions the flood as a literary trope, which it is, although possibly true. In the above he makes several historical errors, besides intellectual ones:
1) He claims that the polytheistic gods were continously fighting each other, but such fighting as there was reflected the in-fighting of ancient dynasties. Monotheism reflects Empire institutions, a single stable entity based upon an individual of immense power who has the right of life and death over his subjects. See Book of Job (and feel frightened). Cheerfully, the ancient gods dealt with the cosmos and left humans alone-they were after all the ones sustaining the god's/goddesses' existence through ritual, prayer, and sacrifice.
2) The Epic of Atrahasis shows human-kind were created to help the younger gods, morphing later into angels, with agricultural and building work. In the creation process, the god We-illu is sacrifised and his intelligence, blood, and flesh is added to human beings-infusing thereby divinity within human-beings, creating semi-independent status. Unfortunately, as the human population expands, their chatter and general noise annoy Enlil (in this the chief god) who decides to destroy them. He decides to send a devastating flood to kill them all. Ea or Enki (the clever god) sets out to help them. He tells the wise and good Atrahasis to build an ark, in which are the seeds of life, to save himself, his kin and material creation. Enkil regrets his actions, but is partly angry and relieved when Atrahasis emerges to make a sacrifice. The story reflects on human mortality, but also encourages a new relationship between gods and humankind whereby the gods value human kind more. In the story of Noah, human evil promotes god's decision to send a flood, aiming for a restart or a re-creation. In the first, the fault lies with the gods, in the other with humankind -this Sacks identifies as morality.
This change Sacks considers morality when in fact it serves to redefine power and establish the idea that god can do no wrong. It is a change from multivarious human powers, to one great emperor. It does not concern morality, but power. The story also reinforces the status and power of priests, who interpret god.
Sacks holds that in polytheistic religions the gods worshipped power, but this is far from the case. They worshipped life, acknowledging the fragility of life, and the mutual need of god for human, human for god. The radical leap Sacks sees is one of power, not of justice and compassion-more fully exampled by Enki.
Sack's understanding of polytheism is at fault here; he sees it as many monotheists do, as lacking morality, compassion (surely this is what YHWH lacks, not gods like El?), and fails to see the sheer monstrousness of YHWH's actions-what about persausion, eh? Too complex? Although Sacks underlines god's morality, destroying a violent race, he uses violence himself, thereby insinuating violence into monotheism.
Polytheistic religions had well considered morality and ethical beliefs, of far greater clarity than those of monotheism, which in the end are power-based.
Hello dear researchers. From the time I started studying mechanical engineering and especially automotive engineering during recent two years, I was wondering what would be the possible destiny of cars benefiting from internal combustion engines.
Do you think these cars would be vanished from the streets and go to museum if the oil wells are depleted entirely?
Do you think the automotive engineers can mitigate all faced challenges about utilizing green cars such as hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs)?
The most important question ... Do you trust the statistics who state that oil wells are extractable until 2037 and after that, there would be no oil?
I am looking forward to hearing from you ...
Each reply is kindly appreciated.
Best Wishes.
Yasin Salami
Master student of mechanical engineering.
Hi,
does anyone has experience with taking bird UV photos in field? Do you know about scientific articles that would use UV photography in field? I only found studies conducted on museum specimens. I wonder whether field UV photography was already used in field condiditions and what equipment would be needed? Thank you!
Museums in town tell about history and culture. We need some interesting media to attract them, giving experience beside learning culture and history. especially for children. Any Reference or Information will be help so much. thank you.
Informal learning was once constrained to places like libraries and museums. At one point in time zoos stood little chance of getting grants focused on informal learning. As STEM has risen in prominence I am wondering how informal STEM learning may or may not have changed the definition of informal learning. Where can it take place? Can it happen in schools and if so, under what conditions would it be considered informal, and finally are zoo, businesses, labs, and universities participating as locations for informal STEM learning and under what conditions? What operational definition are you using to include these former bastions of formal education only.