Brief Review of Methods and Resources Used in Creating
the
Moth History Site
Queries and comments as to our methods are invited: joe@bio.umass.edu
EQUIPMENT
Five equipment sources were used:
- University of Massachusetts:
- Ethernet, Internet and PPP connection software and hardware:
Credit must be given to our University's Office of Information Technology
which has provided us with the modern infrastructure of information transfer.
- Biology Department:
- Morrill Science Center Ethernet System:
Credit is accorded to Dean Fred Byron for early recognition of the coming
importance of the Internet to science departments in general. With his
encouragement, starting in 1987, a building-wide Ethernet system was established
under the invaluable management of our electronics specialist, George Drake.
In 1988, again with the active intervention of Dean Byron, our Morrill
Science Ethernet was connected to the University Computer Center's Ethernet
(then about 3 years in existence) and we obtained our link to the Internet!
As a result of efforts by these two figures, the science departments in
our local have had an enormous headstart in the field of information transfer.
- Biology Department Computer:
Administered by George Drake, this SPARCstation 10 has served as our mail
and WWW Server as well as main file server for the Biology Department.
This computer also provides a site at which files can be archived onto
tape for backup and long term storage.
- Biological Computer Resource Center:
Funded by a Howard Hughes grant this center provides an enrichment of technical
resources for the educational and research use of the Biological Sciences
which include:
- a SPARCstation 20 with Web Server.
- a Power Macintosh 8100/100AV with attached SprintScan 35 and Polaroid
HR 6000 Slide Printer.
- 2 Power Macintosh 7100/80 with attached UMAX Vista-S8 flatbed scanner.
- an array of 20 Ethernet linked Power Macintosh 7100/80's in a classroom
setting.
- a Kodak DC10 Digital Camera
- Kunkel Laboratory Etherneted PCs:
- ACI Pentium Pro 200 MHz 64Mb RAM, with ATI Graphics Pro Turbo true color video card.
- 80486 DX2 66Mhz PC with Orchid Fahrenheit 1280 Video Board, 8Mb RAM.
(Funded by the Biotechnology Program)
- 80486 33 MHz PC, Weitek coprocessor, 4Mb RAM, with ComputerEyes/1024
frame grabber. (Contributed by Applicable Electronics)
- 80386DX 33 MHz PC, Weitek coprocessor, 4Mb RAM, with Matrox PIP 640
frame grabber.
- 4 Gigabyte disc mounted on the Departmental SPARCstation and accessed
by the Kunkel laboratory computers via Network File Sharing.
- Kunkel Personal Equipment brought to bear:
- Apple QuickTake 100 Digital Camera.
- Pentium 120 MHz PC, 16Mb RAM, 28.8bps modem and PPP connection.
- Sargent Laboratory:
- A Robinson Trap for attracting and catching modern representatives
of the moths described at this site.
- A research collection of moths, with particular emphasis on the
Catocala.
- A personal collection of photographic slides of moths taken by H. Vermes.
IMAGES
Three types of images are used at this site:
- Apple QuickTake 100 Digital Camera Images:
Direct digital images (640x480) were taken with close-up lenses
of mounted specimens in our laboratory or
from plates in our Library's Special Collections and ported
directly to a Pentium based PC using Apple Quicktake Software and saved
as high resolution JPEGS. The JPEGS were further processed in Photo Shop
3.0 for Windows or Photo Shop 3.0 for Win 95 which conveniently can deal
with long file names. In order to display comparable views of moth's wings,
some images were electronicly reflected, providing a mirror image of the
original.
- Sprintscan Slide Scanner
Images were scanned from slides or negatives at 600 dpi, saved as high
resolution JPEG format images and edited in Adobe Photo Shop before porting
to our Web Site on a Sun SPARCStation 10.
- UMAX Vista S8 flatbed Scanner
Images were scanned at 300 or 600 dpi by reflectance in full color from
originals, saved briefly in native file form and subsequently cut, edited
and resized within Adobe Photo Shop before porting to our Web Site. Most
images were adjusted for color, brightness and contrast using Paint Shop
Pro 3.0 optimizing viewing with Netscape on several platforms. Typically
images scanned from old published plates have a yellow caste and needed
about a 10% enhancement of blue in RGB adjust mode and a 10% enhancement
in both brightness and contrast in order to be properly viewed via Netscape.
TEXT
Two types of text are used at this site:
- Manually Entered Hypertext Markup Language (HTML):
A variety of editors have been used since the inception of this site
to manually enter text into HTML files, including
MsWord Internet Assistant, Excel HTML Wizard, Netscape Gold 3.0 beta(s)
all working on a 130 MHz Pentium with Win95. On the SPARCstation, in a
unix setting, editing has been done directly using the vi editor.
- Automated Optical Character Read Text:
Text from classic works on moth taxonomy and phylogeny were scanned at
the Biological Computer Resource Center using the UMAX Vista S8 flatbed
scanner at 600 dpi by reflectance in 256 grey scale. Text images were rotated
to be orthogonal to the page axes using Adobe Photo Shop and reduced to
150 dpi low quality JPEG for porting to a SPARCstation directory. The JPEGS
were further reduced to 1 bit PCX format using Paint Shop Pro 3.0 running
on a 486 66Mhz PC under Windows 3.1 and after ZIP compression transfered
by FTP via a PPP conecton to a 130 MHz Pentium with 16 Mb RAM for Optical
Character Reading using TypeReader Pro 3.0XA. OCR processing on a computer
with smaller memory (8Mb RAM) was found to be unreliable. Initial corrections
of character recognition errors were done most efficiently within the TypeReader
Pro environment. The output from the OCR process was a Rich Text Format
(RTF) file which was further processed and formatted in MsWord 7.0 working
under Win95. In the absence of Internet assistant for MsWord 7.0 the text
was formated as ascii text with line breaks and that text was copied into
an HTML shell using cut and paste methods in the Win95 environment. Some
spelling errors in the original text were corrected to facilitate effective
searching of the text. Original capitalization and character formating were
followed where possible in HTML. The graphic symbols for male and female were
replaced with 'm.' and 'f.'. Unavailable footnote symbols were replace with
convenient alternates from HTML.
INTELECTUAL RESOURCES
Three intellectual resources contributed to this site:
- Ted Sargent, Professor,
has contributed his professional experience
with the genus Catocala and provided access to his professional
specimens and collection of 35mm slides, taken by Harold Vermes and Sargent
himself, from which digital images were
obtained for this site. His notations about the species, text and illustrations
at this site form a modern commentary on the historical and modern material.
- The University of
Massachusetts Library system was developed originally
around the Massachusetts Agricultural College. The purchase
of the early publications on moth taxonomy and phylogeny were done at a
time when the cataloging of the worlds biota were a major occupation of
the biological professionals. We are indebted to the care with which these
resources have been maintained to the present. Ute Bargman of the Library
Special Collections and Larry Feldman of the Biological Sciences Library
have been invaluable links into this resource.
- Professor Joe Kunkel's
interest in pattern formation and in particular
the evolution of wing vein patterns has resulted in an attempt to understand
the diversity of the speciose Catocala genus as a member of the
subfamily Catocalinae and the family Noctuidae. He has led this
attempt to view the history of the illustration, systematics and phylogeny
of the Catocala.
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Page maintained by Joe Kunkel, joe@bio.umass.edu.
Copyright(c) 1996. Created: 96/08/29 Updated: 96/11/17