INQUA-COMMISSION FOR THE STUDY OF THE HOLOCENE Working Group on Data-Handling Methods Newsletter 12 July 1994 NOTE FROM THE COORDINATOR In the Newsletter this time John Keltner and Eric Grimm describe the latest versions of SiteSeer and ShowTime. Both programs work under Microsoft Windowsþ. SiteSeer shows the position of all the core, section, and surface-sample data currently in the North American Pollen Database (NAPD). Not only can one see a summary diagram of the site, but SiteSeer can interact with the NAPD file structure and produce all the data available for the site in files that Tilia can read. The program ShowTime works like a video tape-recorder, showing a map of North America on which is superimposed the retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet over the last 15 ka. You can select any one of 16 different taxa and view its changing distribution recorded at pollen sites shown on the map. Both of these excellent programs are available by anonymous ftp at the World Data Center-A. They are free if you have access to the Internet. Any course in Quaternary studies will benefit from these two pollen database visualization tools. Palynologists will want to take a copy of the NAPD files as well. John Kutzbach and Pat Behling discuss the philosophy of numerical models of earth's climate, and they tell how you can use anonymous ftp to get text files of CCM0 model runs (by time and location) from the World Data Center-A. In the next issue they hope to announce the availability of mapped data from the CCM1 model runs. David Green, Anthony Wesley, and David Peters discuss new ways of conducting database searches by WWW to get tailor-made answers plotted on maps. They use a biological database of the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service as an example. There is a new supply of Lycopodium marker tablets, and Bj”rn Berglund and Thomas Persson tell you how to order. Jean-Pierre SUC asks for help in securing modern surface samples from selected parts of the world to serve as references for a PhD thesis aimed at quantifying the Pliocene climate in West Europe and the Mediterranean region. A number of tropical plants in the Pliocene no longer exist in Europe. Geoff Hope announces progress in compiling the Southwest Pacific Pollen Atlas, which he and others are issuing on CD-ROM. In this issue I include information about a number of Listservers on the Internet, some of which may interest you. I also include a short note on problems associated with trying to e-mail text characters with diacritical markings that are common in certain European languages, and which commonly do not cross international borders successfully. Dana Naldrett provides the second of his very informative articles about on-line library searches, this time sampling resources for Quaternary scientists in Scandinavia and the UK. John Birks provides another of his handy lists of new publications. These always seem to cost me money buying books I had not known I needed. Ian Walker sent me some comments on the emulation of DOS-based programs on the PowerMacþ PowerPCþ, and I asked him to write down his opinion for this issue. Malcolm Clark sent a note reporting a new version of PCSLOT (v. 1.5b) which fixes a few bugs; the revised version can be found in the INQUA File Boutique. Clark also talks about new features he is adding to v. 1.6 which he will discuss in the next issue. I describe a simple program for keeping track of site locations for northern Europe. I made it for dealing with sites in Scandinavia, and I call it Sitescan. Robert Webb and Bruce Bauer list the holdings now at the World Data Center-A's paleoclimate database, and also mention the information found necessary for documenting data. And Dr. Triage is back to answer questions about psimpoll, Tilia and TiliaùGraph. My sabbatical year is over. I thank my many colleagues in Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand who made me feel welcome while teaching me about computers and geology. I ask the readers of the Newsletter to send me information on any of the data-handling techniques that you have used which could be helpful to others. Please check your regular and e-mail addresses for accuracy. Send any corrections/suggestions to: Louis J. Maher, Jr. Department of Geology & Geophysics University of Wisconsin 1215 W. Dayton Street Madison, WI 53706 USA Phone: (608) 262-9595 FAX: (608) 262-0693 E-mail: maher@geology.wisc.edu [* p. 1 / p. 2 *] SiteSeer & ShowTime: POLLEN DATABASE VISUALIZATION TOOLS John Keltner NOAA Paleoclimatology Program NGDC E/GC 325 Broadway Boulder, CO 80303 E-mail: jkeltner@ngdc.noaa.gov Eric Grimm North American Pollen Database Illinois State Museum 1011 East Ash Street Springfield, Illinois, USA E-mail: grimm@museum.state.il.us The North American Pollen Database (NAPD) began operation in late 1990. We started by designing a relational database for pollen data and initially populated this schema with the COHMAP fossil pollen dataset. Now, with the addition of sites from many contributors, the size of the database has nearly tripled, and a backlog of data awaiting preprocessing has developed. Although the development of a relational database for pollen data was fundamental, such a database is not necessarily the friendliest nor the most practical way for palynologists or other researchers to approach the data it contains. Purchasing Paradox or Microsoft Access (or similar database management software), investing the time to learn how to use the software, and then downloading all 17 Mb worth of pollen database tables is not a trivial pursuit - even for someone eager to justify the purchase of new computer hardware. With the intention of making the pollen databases more approachable as well as demonstrating their utility, we have developed two Windows 3.1 applications that are available free of charge (see the section on Availability, below). The requirements for running these programs are minimal: a PC running Windows 3.1, about 5 Mb of available disk space, and a mouse. SiteSeer SiteSeer is a tool to allow you to explore a selected subset of the contents of a pollen database. To display this summary information you click on a site on the map in SiteSeerþs main window (Fig. 1). SiteSeer then displays the siteþs name; the contact person for the data; the latitude, longitude, and altitude; the number of samples, variables, and radiocarbon dates reported; the age range; and the sources for the data and the chronology. Fig 1. SiteSeerþs main window showing North American sites and summary site information for the Ontario site: Marais de Keswick. Once a site is selected (and SiteSeer has displayed the summary information), clicking the Diagram button causes SiteSeer to display a summary pollen diagram for that site (Fig. 2). The pollen diagram displays percentages for the top 15 pollen types for that site with remaining taxa lumped as Other trees and shrubs and Other herbs. Clicking the Publications button causes SiteSeer to display any recorded publications for that site. SiteSeer initially displays maps at a continental scale (Fig. 1). By clicking and dragging the mouse you can draw a box that describes a zoom region. When you release the mouse button, SiteSeer redraws the map, zooming in on the area you have framed (Fig. 3). After the map has been zoomed, you can use the Initial and Previous buttons to return to the initial map or to just the last image. SiteSeer has a number of additional features (Figs. 3 and 4). You can: * Change SiteSeer databases to examine different regions of the world. Besides North America, we have small, initial datasets for South America, Beringia, and Asia. European data will be added once they are made public by the European Pollen Database. We hope soon to have data from southeast Asia and Australia as well. [* p. 2 / p. 3 *] Fig. 2. Summary pollen diagram displayed by clicking the Diagram button after selecting a site. Fig. 3. SiteSeerþs File menu. (The map has been zoomed, and Lake Minnie, Minnesota has been selected.) Fig. 4. SiteSeerþs Open Database dialog box. Select a region of the world for display (currently, Beringia, Europe, South America, North America, or Asia). * Export data from the Paradox database tables to Tilia files. This assumes that you have the Paradox database tables on your PC; Paradox itself is not required. * Print summary diagrams or data. * Search for sites by name or contact person. * Create filters to select subsets of the data (by type, age, taxon, or contact person - individually or in combination). * Change the national language (currently, SiteSeer supports English, French, or German). * Get on-line and context sensitive help. * Test yourself with the SiteSeer Quiz, where you identify the pollen site given its summary pollen diagram (the depth of your knowledge is confirmed when you subsequently return to the main window). After browsing the pollen database with SiteSeer you may indeed decide to retrieve the entire pollen database. Alternatively, you may decide that you only want data for selected sites (perhaps as Tilia files). The entire database (as Paradox tables), Tilia files for individual sites, and several ASCII representations of the data are all publicly available. We intend to make at least quarterly updates, as new data become available and are processed. ShowTime ShowTime is an animation that shows the movement of various pollen taxa through space and time. From ShowTimeþs main window (Fig. 5), you select a taxon, set its display parameters, and then click the Play button to start the show. You can halt the animation at any time by clicking the Stop button or the Pause button. You can also advance the animation by one time slice by clicking the Frame Advance button. You select a taxon by clicking its icon or by selecting it from the Now Playing list box. The Settings affect the playback for an individual taxon: percentages below the minimum are ignored; percentages above the maximum are truncated so as not to distort the scale; percentages between the minimum and maximum are drawn as 10 proportionally sized circles (the higher the percentage, the larger the circle); the Time Slice can be set between 50 and 1000 years; the Speed determines the relative playback rate (1 to 10, 10 is the fastest). [* p. 3 / p. 4 *] Fig. 5. ShowTimeþs main window. ShowTime is set to show Carya at 250 year time slices with a minimum threshold of 3%. The command buttons from left to right are: Stop, Play, Pause, and Frame Advance. For North America (Fig. 6), ShowTime first draws a map of the continent. Then beginning at 15,000 yrBP it draws an outline of the ice sheet and plots all existing sites at that time period. Finally it draws circles that are proportional to the pollen percentage at each site for the selected taxon. With each tick of the clock ShowTime updates the display to reflect the existing sites at that time period, the retreat of the icesheet, and the changes in the pollen percentages. ShowTime has proven useful not only for showing plant migrations and population shifts through the late Pleistocene and Holocene, but also for revealing Fig 6. North America with the outline of the Laurentide icesheet. Pollen sites with Picea less than 5% (minimum threshold) are shown as dots. Percentages above the minimum threshold are displayed as proportionally sized circles. At 9000 yrBP, Picea has spread along the western edge of the icesheet and is beginning to show up in Alaska. potential inconsistencies in the data. Sites that appear to be out-of- phase with their neighbors may merit reinspection. And then it is also just fun to watch Picea shoot along the western edge of the icesheet into Alaska between 11,000 - 9,000 yrBP. Availability SiteSeer and ShowTime are available via anonymous ftp from the National Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. The internet address is ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov (192.149.148.109). The SiteSeer (ss*.zip) and ShowTime (showt*.zip) files are in the subdirectory named /paleo/pollen/pdb/get- files. These are compressed files, which require the DOS program pkunzip.exe (version 2.04 or greater) to extract the Windows installation files (pkunzip is also available from NGDC). Once the files are downloaded and unzipped, you will run a standard Windows installation. (Typically, by selecting File and Run from the Program Manager, typing a:\setup.exe under Command Line:, and clicking Ok. This assumes that you have unzipped [* p. 4 / p. 5 *] the installation files onto a disk in drive A:.) See the ss-read.me file for instructions. Instructions for using anonymous ftp are available on request. Future Developments Both SiteSeer and ShowTime are still evolving. We have shown here the most recent versions of each program. These should be available at NGDC in August. Version 1.1 of SiteSeer adds support for surface samples, and includes a number of other minor modifications. Version 0.60 of ShowTime makes more taxa available and provides for the display of data from places other than just North America (when such data become available). A number of further additions are contemplated: for SiteSeer these include allowing you to access the pollen databases from SiteSeer directly over the internet; and for ShowTime, zooming of the map. Additional requests or comments are welcome. Please Contribute! Contributions of data are also very welcome. The best form for submissions would be Tilia files, but data in any electronic form is acceptable. We will also accept data on paper, although this takes much longer to process. Let us hear from you. Keep those counts coming in! ------------------- Copies of all the Data-Handling Methods Newsletters are available as ASCII text in the INQUA File Boutique; however they do not include the figures. I have put a complete set of the newsletters at the University of Wisconsin's Geology & Geophysics Library, 1215 West Dayton St, Madison, WI 53706 USA, and an additional set at the library at PAGES, Past Global Changes, Baerenplatz 2, 3018 Bern, Switzerland. If you need a old newsletter and cannot reach me, you might try the library that is closest to you. L.M. ------------------- COMPARISON OF PALEOCLIMATE SIMULATIONS AND OBSERVATIONS J. Kutzbach and P. Behling Center for Climatic Research Institute for Environmental Studies University of Wisconsin-Madison 1225 West Dayton Street Madison, WI 53706 E-mail: jekutzba@facstaff.wisc.edu behling@blitz.meteor.wisc.edu Numerical models of earth's climate provide a means of calculating the seasonal cycle of temperature, precipitation and wind. These models are based upon physical laws, such as the first law of thermodynamics (heating of a gas causes expansion and warming), and F = ma (forces (F) cause masses (m) to accelerate (a)). Given these laws governing the internal workings of the atmosphere (and land surface and ocean), it is then only necessary to specify certain so-called external boundary conditions in order to calculate the climate. Examples of such external conditions include the seasonal and latitudinal distribution of solar radiation, the composition of the atmosphere, the spatial distribution of land and ocean, and the location and height of mountains. How do these external boundary conditions and governing laws or equations combine to yield climate? An example. In summertime, solar radiation (externally imposed) raises the temperature of the air more over continents (low heat capacity) than over oceans (high heat capacity). This produces air of relatively low density over land and relatively high density over ocean. The density difference leads to slight differences in the overall weight of a column of air over ocean, compared to land. And this difference represents a force that accelerates air from ocean to land. Here, oversimplified, is the explanation for the so-called summer monsoon circulations that carry maritime air masses onshore in Asia, Africa, and southeastern North America every summer producing abundant rains. With the aid of large computers, these repetitive calculations of temperature, wind and precipitation are carried out over what can be visualized as large horizontal and vertical grids involving tens of thou- sands of locations. It is necessary to perform these calculations at intervals on the order of hours and extending over [* p. 5 / p. 6 *] many years, because the climate of the model, like the real climate, is a synthesis of the ever-changing atmospheric conditions on the scale of hours, days, weeks, months and years. How good are these models? Simulations of present-day climates depict the continent-scale circulations and the associated thermal and hydrologic regimes fairly well. However, if one examines regional fea- tures, one readily finds temperatures too high or low, and precipitation too much or too little, compared to observations; in some cases the climatic patterns are simulated correctly, but shifted from their correct location. Climate models should produce increasingly accurate regional simulations when calculations are made on a finer grid. Current models use a coarse grid (generally around 500 km by 500 km) because of computer limitations. Other needed improvements include coupling the atmospheric portion of climate models to ocean general circulation models. Models of present-day climate can rather easily be modified to simulate past or future climates by appropriate changes in external boundary conditions. By changing the composition of the model's atmosphere to include increased amounts of carbon dioxide, one can study scenarios of future climate. By changing earth's orbital parameters and modifying the surface "topography" by inserting ice sheets, one can simulate climates of the past. The COoperative Holocene MApping Project (COHMAP) produced a series of paleoclimate simulations for 18-, 15-, 12-, 9-, 6- and 3000 years ago (COHMAP, 1988; Wright et al., 1993; Kutzbach and Guetter, 1986). These climatic "snapshots" consisted of averages of January and July conditions (based on three Januarys and three Julys). Details of the experiments are reported in the above-mentioned publications. The simulated values of wind, temperature, precipitation and other variables are summarized for the entire earth on grid boxes of 4.4ø latitude by 7.5ø longitude. This computational grid is large compared to the space scale of local paleoenvironmental studies. Moreover, it is prudent to average the model results over several grid boxes to obtain representative estimates of regional paleoclimates. In spite of this scale mismatch between model grid and observations, the model simulations can be of value for comparison with paleoclimate observations for several reasons. First, the model-simulated climate is the result of changes in specific external boundary conditions, such as solar radiation or prescribed ice sheets. Therefore it is usually possible to understand cause and effect relationships and assess both the direction and magnitude of the climatic changes produced by imposed changes in boundary conditions. Second, the model provides a spatial context for relating changes in a particular area to a broader regional and continental perspective. Third, the model provides a temporal context for comparing the simulated changes in the climate of a particular region, say, for the past 18,000 years, to the observed paleoenvironmental history of the region. If you are interested in comparing these simulations with your paleoenvironmental observations, you may access the COHMAP simulations through the NGDC computer: ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov (IP address 192.149.148.109). We plan on having gridded ASCII data sets available at NGDC by the end of August. These data sets will include a three year ensemble average of the CCM0 perpetual January and July runs for the COHMAP experiment time periods mentioned above, plus the model modern climate. There will be two files per experiment, (January and July). Each file will contain ASCII grids (40ø latitude x 48ø longitude grid points) for the complete list of output variables. A readme file will contain formatting information and an explanation of the output variables. Within the next year, we hope to make available a new set of simulation experiments covering the same time period but based upon an improved climate model. We will also be participating in a Paleoclimate Modeling Intercomparison Project (PMIP) that aims to intercompare the simulations of several modeling groups for 6000 yr BP and for the Last Glacial Maximum. References. COHMAP (1988). Climatic changes of the last 18,000 years: Observations and Model Simulations. Science 241, 1043-1052. Kutzbach, J.E., and P.J. Guetter (1986). The influence of changing orbital parameters and surface boundary conditions on climate simulations for the past 18,000 years. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 43(16), 1726-1759. [* p. 6 / p. 7 *] Wright, H.E., J.E. Kutzbach, T. Webb III, W.F. Ruddiman, F.A. Street-Perrott, and P.J. Bartlein, eds. (1993). Global Climates since the Last Glacial Maximum, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 569 pp. INFORMATION ANALYSIS VIA THE WORLD WIDE WEB David G. Green (1) Anthony Wesley (1) and David Peters (2) (1) Bioinformatics Facility, Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra 0200 AUSTRALIA Email: david.green@anu.edu.au (2) Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service, Department of Environment and Land Management, GPO Box 44a, Hobart, Tasmania 7001 AUSTRALIA Email: dp@parks.parks.tas.gov.au Introduction The World Wide Web (WWW) is a hypermedia (= hypertext + multimedia) protocol for accessing information on the Internet (Green 1993, 1994). The release during 1993 of client/browsing software for widely used computing platforms (including Mac, PC, workstations) led to a rapid increase in the popularity of "the Web". Half way through 1994 use of the World Wide Web continues to grow at an exponential rate. The hypermedia capability of WWW is rapidly making it the medium of choice for anyone wishing to provide a public information service to the rest of the world. The range of services available via the Web has increased as fast as the number of users. To illustrate the possibilities that WWW now offers for remote processing, we present here a simple example from our current work to develop tools for processing geographic information via the World Wide Web. Our example is a query system for producing maps of plant and animal distributions in Tasmania. The system allows users to submit queries via WWW and receive as a reply either a text report or an interactive map. The interactive map allows a user to request certain operations by the point-and-click method. Some possible operations include: * selective enlargement of certain regions of the map; * view site-specific information (elevation, rainfall etc); * view lists of species found within a given radius of a selected point. In the implementation we have chosen, the reply from any one query can be used directly as a basis for further queries. It's all done with mirrors When a user requests a document (usually by clicking on a highlighted phrase in the current document), their browser program sends a request to the WWW server concerned. For queries that have to be processed (e.g. database searches), the requested document may not exist. Instead, it is created "on the fly" and sent back without ever being stored. In effect the user is seeing a custom-made, "virtual" document that was created specifically for them by an application program. This facility permits a far richer information system than would be possible with static document retrieval. In particular it allows WWW to be used as a network "front-end" for many kinds of analysis and data processing. The interface between the WWW server and an application is called the "Common Gateway Interface" (CGI). In our example, the software "engine" for processing queries is a CGI script written in the perl programming language (Wall, 1992). From request to reply The mechanism that permits users to interact with programs via the WWW is the "forms interface". WWW allows a document to include an interactive form (Figs. 1, 2). That is, the user can interact with the document via "buttons", pull-down menus, and text-boxes. To submit a request, a user fills out a form which is contained in the document they are browsing (Fig 1). When they submit this form, the server forwards relevant portions of it to the CGI application. This program then generates output to be sent back to the user as a new document. It is up to the application to format the data it sends back for viewing as hypertext. This is done using the HyperText [* p. 7 / p. 8 *] Markup Language (HTML), which uses plain text "tags" to indicate formatting instructions (Fig 2). Fig. 1. A sample fill-out form used to submit queries to the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife GIS server.

Species distribution maps

Output type
Select desired image size Small Medium Large
Enter a species name in the selection field below.
Fig. 2 A portion of the HTML source code that produces the form shown in Fig. 1. In our example system, the CGI interface "wraps" the HTML formatting tags around the data and images produced by subsidiary processes - specifically database and imaging operations. The output that is returned to the user is organised as another fill-out form that allows the whole process to be repeated if desired. Figure 3 shows the maps resulting from two successive queries. In the first query, the user has requested a map showing the locations of all species that include the string "tasman". In the second, the user has clicked on the resulting map to zoom in. When displayed on a suitable WWW browser, such as NCSA's Mosaic, the screen will zoom to the selected area, as shown on the right. It is worth noting that the entire query system we have built uses "freeware". Its main elements include: * NCSA's HTTPD - a popular WWW server; * NCSA's Mosaic - a popular WWW client program; * GMT (Generic Mapping Tools) - flexible map projection software (Smith and Wessel, 1991); * perl script interpreter (Wall, 1992), which provides powerful text and database manipulation capabilities; * PBMPLUS - a powerful set of filters for converting images from one format to another. * Our own CGI scripts, mostly written in perl. The "database" for this demonstration consisted of flat files that were tagged using SGML, the Standard Generalized Markup Language (Goldfarb, 1990; Smith & Stutely, 1988). The advantage of SGML is its use of tags to indicate the structure of text and data. It is compatible both with the record structure of databases and with WWW formatting (HTML is itself an application of SGML). At a later stage we intend to link our system to a standard SQL database using freely available software, such as GSQL (available from NCSA). Conclusion Serving information to the Web is not difficult. Many sites now make available on the Web information services that will interest Quaternary scientists. Increasingly these services include real-time database searches and information processing, similar to those we have described here. A notable example is Australia's Environmental Resources Information Network (ERIN):(http://kaos.erin.gov.au/erin.html). Their impressive range of services include an interactive map index of "Environmental Information Servers by Region" and species occurrence data, maps and models. We have created a list of relevant starting points (with direct hypertext links) in the document http://life.anu.edu.au/landscape_ecology/pollen.html We have also collated a number of examples of on-line [* p. 8 / p. 9 *] geographic services in the document http://life.anu.edu.au/demos/akclis.html To access these documents, simply type the above "uniform resource locator" (URL) into a Web browsing program such as Mosaic and the program will retrieve it, via the Internet (assuming you are connected!). The document then provides hypertext links to various sites of interest, which can be accessed simply by clicking on the name. For those not yet using the World Wide Web, browsing software is freely available via anonymous FTP from various sites, especially NCSA (ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the directory /Mosaic) and CERN (info.cern.ch). References Goldfarb, C. (1990). The SGML Handbook. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Green, D.G. (1993). Hypermedia and palaeoenvironmental research. INQUA - Commission for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data-- Handling Methods 10, 11-14. Green, D.G. (1994). The year of the Web. INQUA - Commission for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data-Handling Methods 11, 20-21. Smith, J. & Stutely, R. (1988). SGML: the Users' Guide to ISO 8879. New York/Chichester/Brisbane/Toronto: Ellis Horwood Limited/Halstead Press. Smith and Wessel (1991). Free software helps map and display data. EOS Trans. Amer. Geophys. U. 72, 445-446. Wall, L. (1992). Programming perl. O'Reilly & Associates, New York. (Email: Larry Wall lwall@netlabs.com) [* p. 9 / p. 10 *] SPORE MARKER TABLETS - HELP ARRIVES! A number of you e-mailed me after I asked if anyone knew of a source of spore marker-grain tablets for spiking pollen samples. One was Bj”rn Berglund, who said he hoped to have a new manufacturer soon, and if the tablets were satisfactory, Lund University would be able to supply marker tablets again. On 5 July 1994, I received a FAX from Thomas Persson, the text of which I reproduce below: INFORMATION ON SPORE TABLETS Lycopodium spore tablets (batch 124961) Lycopodium spore tablets can be dissolved in water or in HCl, but not in NaOH. They have been prepared in a slightly different way compared to that described by Stockmarr (1971, 1973). The tablets are thus based mainly on sodium bicarbonate together with polyvinylpyrilidon and polyethyleneglycol, which must be carefully washed away with water and finally with diluted HCl before further treatment. The spores are acetolysed. The spore concentration has been determined with an electronic particle counter, Coulter Counter ZB (cf. Stockmarr 1973), tube size 140 æm. One hundred samples of five tablets each taken from different places in the batch were prepared by dissolving the tablets in Isoton II NaCl solution in 100 ml flasks. Twenty counts each of 0.5 ml were made on each sample. Result: X = 62,712; s = + 3.3% For one tablet: X = 12,542 Production, Distribution and Payment Spore tablets for calibration of pollen analyses have earlier been produced and distributed by Dr. Jens Stockmarr, Copenhagen. In October 1980 this business was taken over by the Laboratory of Quaternary Biology at the Department of Quaternary Geology in Lund. It is performed as an official commission approved by the University of Lund. A new batch, No. 124961, is now produced and calibrated and tablets are available. The tablets are manufactured by Dansk Droge Import A/S, Ishþj, Danmark. Lycopodium tablets will be distributed in plastic bottles with 500 tablets per bottle. The price is, in Swedish currency, SEK 150/bottle (500 tablets), plus postage. (US$ 1 ÷ SEK 8) Examples of current postage (airmail/surface mail): U.K., Germany: 500-5000 tabl. SEK 130/117; 5500-10,000 tabl. SEK 150/129. USA, Canada: 500-5000 tabl. SEK 160/123; 5500-10,000 tabl. SEK 210/141. South-America: 500-5000 tabl. SEK 175/135; 5500-10,000 tabl. SEK 240/155. Australia: 500-5000 tabl. SEK 210/135; 5500-10,000 tabl. SEK 310/165 Surface mail is often very slow. If you do not specifically request surface mail on your order, we will send it airmail. A university invoice will be sent separately to the receiver of the tablets or to the purchase office. Please, follow the instructions for payment given on the invoice. Please note that production and distribution of tablets is done at cost price, which makes it necessary to reduce administration to a minimum. Therefore, the machinery of payment must be as simple as possible - so, please, follow our instructions and try not to impose too many administrative duties on us, which will only result in delayed deliveries. Bj”rn Berglund and Thomas Persson Suggested order form: To Lund University, Department of Quaternary Geology, Tornav„gen 13, S-223 63 LUND, Sweden We order ___________ tablets of Lycopodium spores Name ______________________________ Address ___________________________ [* p. 10 / p. 11 *] CALL TO ALL POLLEN ANALYSTS J.-P. SUC A PhD thesis is being undertaken in Marseilles and Montpellier (France) by S‚verine FAUQUETTE to quantify the Pliocene climate in West Europe and in the whole Mediterranean region. As evidenced by Dowsett et al. (Science, 258, p. 1133-1135, 1992), the supervisors of the thesis (Dr. Jo‰l GUIOT, Marseilles - Dr. Jean-Pierre SUC, Montpellier) consider that it is very important to estimate Pliocene climates, the warming-up which occurred at 3.1 - 3.0 Ma being a good past analogue for the extension of the greenhouse effect. The West Europe and Mediterranean region is very rich in well-dated, detailed Pliocene pollen analyses. Unfortunately, unlike East Asia, West and East North America, the Mediterranean region is devoid of any living plant representative of tropical-subtropical environments. As a consequence, we urgently need modern surface samples (10 cc; from lakes, coastal marine sediments, or mosses) from East China, Japan, North Viet- Nam, East and West North America, and the Red, Caspian, and Black Seas. Their pollen analysis will be used for reference to better understand the climate response of significant taxa. Existing pollen-analytical data are also welcome. In any case, we need to know the latitude, longitude and altitude of each sampled locality. Samples (or pollen spectra) should be sent to: Dr. Jean-Pierre SUC Laboratoire de Palynologie (case 061) Universit‚ Montpellier II F-34095 Montpellier cedex 5 (France) Tel. (33).67.14.32.69 Fax. (33).67.04.20.32 Any help will be greatly appreciated. If you have some difficulty mailing samples, please contact J.-P. SUC. You will be informed how you can use the dispatch-box of the French Embassy in your country. Many thanks. SOUTHWEST PACIFIC POLLEN ATLAS Geoff Hope Division of Archaeology and Natural History Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies Australian National University Canberra 0200 Australia Email: geoff.hope@coombs.anu.edu.au The Southwest Pacific Pollen Atlas is an electronic Atlas of pollen types designed to give an overview of types encountered in the Australian - Malesian area for which no conventional Atlas exists except one for Taiwan. The project is now in a pilot stage, and a test version, containing mangrove taxa, has been sent to collaborators for comment and suggestions. The Atlas is being developed in the Division of Archaeology and Natural History in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, the old department of Biogeography and Geomorphology having been merged with Prehistory and the Quaternary Dating Centre. The Atlas runs on PC or Mac using Filemaker II, and there is also a Delta (Unix) version. Pollen images are stored as quicktime movies of 4 or 5 views, any one of which can be viewed by sliding a button on the screen. The movies are stored separately from the data file, which currently describes 4600 pollen types. The pollen description has been kept simple on purpose, but a full diagnosis is included as a text. Thus pollen can be quickly found on the basis a few characters. At present each "find" must be looked at sequentially; however a screen of found images (up to 16 at a time) is being developed. Images are not of high quality, but file-size constraint prevents high-resolution scanning at present. We are looking into rapid compression/decompression programs, because when the Atlas contains 12,000 entities it will exceed our goal of containing it on a single CD. Tagging selected records allows a printed copy of required taxa to be produced. The quality of output from a standard 300 dpi laser printer is quite satisfactory. Current plans for the first issue of the Atlas on CD-ROM are to release it at the end of 1994. If better software is encountered, there may be some delay. Collaborators in the region will send in new taxa for checking and incorporation. Meanwhile image improvements, addition of SEM and other changes will be taking place. The Atlas should thus be upgraded [* p. 11 / p. 12 *] once or twice a year. Cost will be that related to producing and mailing the CD. The Division has decided to develop jointly a SE Asian-Pacific site database with John Dodson, University of New South Wales and Peter Kershaw, Monash University. Ed Cushing (University of Minnesota), John Flenley, (Massey University) and other active groups will also be involved. We will follow the North American Database format, utilising the 16 groupings of the Atlas plus some additional areas in southeast Asia, to collect all Quaternary sites. Initial lists indicate about 250 sites are completed, not including New Zealand. Tilia files are already constructed for about 70 sites, but standard dictionaries and surface sample files need to be developed. Funding for the data entry is currently being sought. LIST ADDRESSES THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST TO READERS A listserv consists of an automated mailing list. Any message sent to the list is automatically relayed to all subscribers on the list. Typical messages vary with the listserv, but may consist of announcements of conferences, job vacancies, requests for assistance in locating references, people and resources, and anything that the list members think appropriate. * QUATERNARY LISTSERV A listserv created for all interested in research in the Quaternary sciences, particularly, but not exclusively in Canada. It will be of interest to anyone with an interest in the Quaternary geological period, including geologists, geomorphologists, soil scientists, archaeologists, palaeontologists, geochronologists, palynologists, and others. To subscribe send the following message to listserv@morgan.ucs.mun.ca SUBSCRIBE QUATERNARY Your name You should receive acknowledgement of your subscription. To get off the list send the message SIGNOFF QUATERNARY to the same address. The listowner is Dave Liverman, who can be reached at dgl@zeppo.geosurv.gov.nf.ca Contact him if you have any problems. Messages to the list should be sent to QUATERNARY@morgan.ucs.mun.ca [Dave recently sent a nice summary of listserv etiquette to its members. They apply to any list, and I have provided an abridged summary here. Ed.] Several people have e-mailed me requesting a posting regarding etiquette for listserv lists. Think before hitting r for reply in your mailer. Check the mail header; did the original message come from the listserv (quaternary@morgan) or from an individual? If from Quaternary then decide: Do you want this message to go to everyone on the list, or just to an individual? List members who have to pay for their net access resent receiving messages directed to the list, when they really should have been sent privately to an individual. If you are posting, make sure your e-mail address is included somewhere in the message, so others can reply directly to you. Quoting long messages in replies is annoying to some; if possible, edit the reply. Secondly, if you are overwhelmed by the volume of e-mail, the listserver will allow a digest mode. This takes all the messages for one day, and mails them to you as a single message to be browsed through at your leisure. To do this send the message SET QUATERNARY MAIL DIGEST to listserv@morgan.ucs.mun.ca (not quaternary@morgan.ucs.mun.ca)] * POLLEN-SWEDEN LISTSERV The POLLEN-SWEDEN list is primarily intended as a means of dissemination for the pollen reports prepared by the Palynological Laboratory of the Swedish Museum of Natural History. Regular reports, initially restricted to the Stockholm region, will be sent to list members. The reports are written for the general public and are intended to be useful, for example, to someone contemplating a visit to Stockholm. The list is also open as a forum for free discussion of anything of interest in palynological work. The list is not moderated and the names of list members will be provided on request by the list host. [* p. 12 / p. 13 *] To subscribe, send a message to mailserv@nrm.se with the first non-blank line containing the text: SUBSCRIBE POLLEN-SWEDEN Your subscription will be acknowledged with a more detailed text about the list and its host service. If you experience any difficulty in accessing this service please contact Owner: postmaster@nrm.se * ARCH-THEORY LISTSERV Arch-theory list is for discussions and exchange of information in archaeological theory in Europe: social theory, material culture, epistemology, the past in the present, cultural identity, perspectives from anthropology and history. Contributions are welcome in French, German, English. We are devoted to scholarly and friendly discussion of anything relating to archaeological theory. You are invited to join the list and to both enjoy passively and contribute actively to ongoing discussions! To join please send to MAILBASE@MAILBASE.AC.UK the command: join arch-theory first_name second_name * SLA Natural History Caucus Reflector The Special Libraries Association Natural History Caucus announces the establishment of an electronic discussion list focusing on issues related to natural history librarianship and natural history libraries. The NHC reflector is based at the California Academy of Sciences and is open to both Caucus members and any other interested persons. To be included in the reflector mailings, please send your name and email address to Adam Schiff, Associate Librarian for Technical Services, California Academy of Sciences: aschiff@cas.calacademy.org. To send messages to the list itself use the reflector address: NHC-SLA@cas.calacademy.org. * MICROPAL LISTSERV Jere H. Lipps (jlipps@ucmp1.berkeley.edu) calls your attention to MicroPal, for the discussion of problems of micropaleontology. This subdiscipline of paleontology deals mostly with fossil protists--foraminifera, radiolaria, tintinnids, diatoms, dinoflagellates, coccolithophores, acritarchs, etc. that have excellent fossil records extending back in some cases 1.4 billion years ago. Invitations are extended to join MicroPal. Hopefully, a discussion between neontological and paleontological protistologists might ensue that could be useful. To subscribe send the usual message to listserv@ucmp1.berkeley.edu. Leave the subject field blank, type in the text field: subscribe MicroPal [your complete name] You will soon receive acknowledgment of your subscription. To unsubscribe, do the same except type unsubscribe MicroPal. You must be a subscriber to post this bulletin board. To post, send your messages to MicroPal@ucmp1.berkeley.edu * POLPAL-L LISTSERV A Palynology listserver that was mentioned in Newsletters 10 and 11. To subscribe send the message: SUBSCRIBE POLPAL-L Firstname Lastname to LISTSERV@UOGUELPH.CA Once on, send messages to POLPAL-L@UOGUELPH.CA The list is run by Peter Kevan who can be reached at pkevan@uoguelph.ca. To leave the list, send an e-mail message to: LISTSERV@UOGUELPH.CA with the text as follows: UNSUBSCRIBE POLPAL-L * DIATOM-L LISTSERV This list for diatom algae researchers was mentioned in Newsletter 11. They welcome any meeting and job [* p. 13 / p. 14 *] announcements, relevant scientific information, as well as general queries about diatom science that the members can address. The address of the operating LISTSERV (for sign ups, etc.) is: LISTSERV@iubvm.ucs.indiana.edu Once subscribed, send messages to: DIATOM-L@iubvm.ucs.indiana.edu The operator of DIATOM-L is P. Roger Sweets of Indiana University and further queries can be addressed to him at sweets@ucs.indiana.edu CHARACTERS WITH DIACRITICAL MARKS AND THE INTERNET Louis Maher I was recently working with some LIGA/SLICE (Last Interglacial in the Arctic / Study of Last Interglacial: Climate and Environment) site data collected by workers from many different countries in the northern hemisphere. I plan to assemble this information so that a person wanting to use it can receive it from a central site either by e-mail or by anonymous ftp. The LIGA/SLICE data uses the Roman alphabet; languages with other alphabets will be transliterated. But even the Roman alphabet is wonderfully rich in characters. I have been impressed while travelling this past year that there are about as many computer keyboard layouts as there are styles of electrical outlet. We in the United States tend to forget about the letters with diacritical marks because our form of the alphabet does not routinely use them. Character sets can vary between different computer manufacturers and also between the language groups in the countries where they are used. Most follow a standard definition of characters 0 to 127 (transmission units of 7-bits) which correspond to the letters, numbers, and symbols seen on a standard U.S. keyboard. Manufacturers often differ in their definitions of characters 128 to 255 (used when transmission units are 8-bits). The early e-mail systems once sent 7-bit characters, and although most systems now use 8-bit characters, they are not universal. Most commercial word-processing programs have means for displaying and printing all the characters from different European languages, but these methods also differ between programs. Protocols exist for those running Gopher and World Wide Web operations, but these tend to add a level of complexity that I want to avoid. In the LIGA database, whenever a word uses a character not included in the generally accepted ASCII list from 0 to 127 (7-bit characters), a special convention will be followed. On the first line after the occurrence (or if the letter occurs in a reference, on the first line after the reference) the word with the character(s) is reproduced in parentheses in three different forms: [1] IBM PC extended character set for the US, [2] a suggestive indication of the character using ASCII characters from 0 to 127 (Hewitt, 1985), and [3] the ISO 8859/1 (Latin 1) numerical representation of the character. (Microsoft Windows uses that character set, adds a few characters in positions undefined in ISO 8859/1, and calls the result the ANSI character set which is illustrated in the Windows User's Guide.) The first form--the word written with the IBM PC extended character set-- is there for purposes of recognition and calibration. If international differences have altered the characters here and in the line(s) above, one sees the result and can refer to the next two representations of the word to determine what the characters should have been. The second form (Hewitt, 1985) quite effectively simulates diacritical marking by placing a representation of the mark after the letter and then prints a back-slash symbol to suggest that the mark applies back to the preceding letter. Some common examples are shown below: a'\ acute accent on any letter au\ breve accent on any letter ao\ Ao\ bolle or ring over a letter sv\ caron accent on any letter c,\ cedilla with any letter a^\ circumflex on any letter a"\ dieresis or umlaut on vowels a`\ grave accent on vowels a-\ macron accent on any letter n~\ tilde on A, a, N, n oe\ OE\ French ligature ss\ German 'es-zet' or sharp S [* p. 14 / p. 15 *] ae\ AE\ Scandinavian ligature o/\ O/\ Scandinavian o-slash Keith Bennett uses a slightly different procedure to indicate characters with diacritical marks in his psimpoll manual (Bennett, 1994). For example, in the LIGA usage, the Norwegian town spelled Bþ (o-slash) would be represented as: @(Bþ, Bo/\, B[ANSI 248]) whereas the French spelling of Pleistocene would appear as: @(Pl‚istocŠne, Ple'\istoce`\ne, Pl[ANSI 233]istoc[ANSI 232]ne) A user of the data can load the text into a word processor, search for the @ symbol ('at' symbol), and use the information in parentheses to reconstruct the word so that it is correct in his/her own computer's character list. It may not be high tech, but it works. Bennett, K. D. 1994. 'Psimpoll, version 2.23: A C program for analysing data and plotting pollen diagrams. INQUA - Commission for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data-Handling Methods Newsletter 11:4-6. Hewitt, Helen-Jo J. 1985. Computers, bibliography, and foreign language typography. Computers and the Humanities 19:89-95. AN INTERNET GUIDE TO QUATERNARY LIBRARY RESOURCES (2) - SCANDINAVIA AND THE UNITED KINGDOM Dana L. Naldrett Naldrett Paleoenvironmental Geosciences P.O. Box 5228 Merivale Depot Nepean, Ontario, Canada K2C 3H5 E-mail: naldret@cc.umanitoba.ca This is the second in a series of reviews of library resources for Quaternary scientists. The last review (Naldrett, 1994) covered Canada and the USA, and this one Scandinavia and the UK. The next review will cover the Pacific rim- Australia, New Zealand, and some Asian countries. On reviewing the available resources, two problems are apparent: volume (number of databases) and language (not English). Using the HYTELNET facility, there are 10 sources for Sweden, 11 for Finland, and 1 for Norway which comprises about 25 connected institutions. There are 90-95 listings for the UK, making even a representative review nearly impossible. The reviews are just a sample of what is available. Thus, I have started with better known universities and omitted many. If your favorite institution was left out- maybe next time! The language problem is more difficult. Since most of us have at best a rudimentary knowledge of Scandinavian languages, we must rely on their systems to give simple instructions for switching to English. Unfortunately, systems handle languages with varying degrees of success. The best way to find out is to experiment - there are no clear successes or failures, but many hybrids. At least one system (BIBSYS in Norway) completely stopped me from searching in English with HYTELNET. Switching to searches by Gopher, I found an excellent system in English. The problem also arises when searching for subjects. Although most systems can convert the screen display to English, this does nothing to solve the problem of material written in other languages. Although you may be searching for something in English, if the title or keywords are, say, in Swedish, then you will not find them. You are limiting your searches to the English literature in a foreign library, which may not be a significant part of their holdings. There are also some rather idiosyncratic ways of searching for topics. Although quite outdated, the term, "drift" still often produces better search results than the term "till". You should forget using "dia- micton"--it is too new to be used in the keyword classification. Particularly with Scandinavian languages, "till" is such a common word, and does not mean glacial debris, so it is nearly useless to search for it. Terms such as "tephra" are often not used in favor of "volcanic ash". Similarly, "beetle" (common in colloquial language) is rarely found, but "Coleoptera" gives many results. HYTELNET has had some significant improvements in the latest update. It now contains a list of all libraries [* p. 15 / p. 16 *] AU CA EU KU LUI LUU NE OU SOU UW FN JU CH GU LU SU UU BI Arctic 5 5 5 4 4 4 5 5 4 4 5 3 4 2 5 5 4 4 Antarctic 4 5 4 4 4 4 5 5 4 4 4 2 1 1 3 5 4 4 beetle/Coleoptera 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 4 3 2 0 3 3 5 4 4 diatom 2 2 3 2 1 3 2 3 2 2 3 3 0 1 4 4 4 4 fjord/fiord 2 2 1 3 1 2 0 2 2 2 2 1 2 3 5 2 3 5 foraminifera 3 4 4 3 4 5 5 4 4 4 3 1 2 2 5 4 3 5 glacier 4 3 4 4 2 2 4 5 3 3 4 2 1 2 3 3 4 4 glaci(o)marine/lacu 2 1 2 0 1 0 4 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 3 3 limnology 3 5 3 2 3 4 4 3 3 4 3 2 3 1 5 3 3 4 ostracod(a) 5 3 3 3 3 5 5 4 3 3 2 0 0 2 4 4 3 3 periglacial/permafr 4 1 2 3 3 3 3 3 2 3 3 2 2 2 4 2 4 5 pollen 5 4 3 4 4 4 4 3 4 4 4 2 3 3 4 4 4 5 radiocarbon 4 3 4 3 3 4 3 3 3 4 3 2 2 3 4 2 3 3 tephra 1 1 1 2 3 2 2 0 2 3 1 0 0 0 3 1 2 3 thermoluminescence 3 3 3 0 0 3 3 3 2 3 3 2 1 4 4 1 3 2 till 2 2 2 1 1 2 3 1 1 2 1 0 1 2 1 1 2 2 TOTAL: 54 54 48 42 41 51 56 49 43 50 46 25 23 32 59 47 53 60 Figure 1. Library search ratings. See test for abbreviations. given by their catalog system, if you choose to look at them in this way. It also has a help file for each searching system and suggestions for searches are given. For example, if you prefer the GEAC system, you could find libraries using it. Note that unless noted otherwise, you can exit all systems by typing the telnet escape keys (usually control-]) to get to the telnet prompt, and then type quit. Short descriptions of places reviewed are given below, with instructions for logging in. Ranking of the resources found at each location are given in the table. Two-and 3-letter names for each location used in the table are given below. Countries of origin are indicated as follows: SCO=Scotland; ENG=England; WAL=Wales; SWE=Sweden; FIN=Finland; NOR=Norway. AU = Aberdeen University (SCO); CA = Cambridge University (ENG); EU = Edinburgh University (SCO); KU = Keele University (ENG); LUI = London University, Imperial College (ENG); LUU = London University, University Coll. (ENG); NE = National Environmental Res. Council(ENG); OU = Oxford University (ENG); SOU = Southampton University (ENG); UW = University of Wales (WAL); FN = Finland National Library (HELKA) (FIN); JU = Joensuu University (FIN); CH = Chalmers University of Technology (SWE); GU = University of Gothenburg (SWE); LU = Lund University (SWE); SU = Stockholm University (SWE); UU = University of Uppsala (SWE); BI = BIBSYS Database (NOR). UK Resources: Aberdeen University (SCO) - a nice surprise: good displays, easy searching and generally good holdings. Telnet library.abdn.ac.uk or 139.133.220.1 To login, type "library" and choose 3 for VT100 emulation. Cambridge University (ENG) - awkward searching, with too many keystrokes to request a search. Very good in the traditional areas, but weaker in newer, less traditional areas. Telnet ipgate.cam.ac.uk or 131.111.12.21 To exit, type "end" at any command prompt. [* p. 16 / p. 17 *] Edinburgh University (SCO) - very easy searching and display using the GEAC system. Like Cambridge, good on the traditional subjects, but weaker on the newer or less traditional areas. Telnet geac.ed.ac.uk or 129.215.128.40 To login, follow instructions that appear on screen. Keele University (ENG) - very nice display, function keys work as they should, and searching is not case sensitive for fast browsing. Telnet potter.cc.keele.ac.uk or 160.5.2.101 Login as opac, with password library. Then choose 1- opac searches. To exit, follow instructions given at login. London University, Imperial College (ENG) - nice search system, NOT case sensitive. Telnet vaxa.lib.ic.ac.uk or 155.198.4.2 Type library for the user name. London University, University College (ENG) - Telnet lib.ucl.ac.uk or 128.40.20.220 Use user name of library, and choose terminal type 8 (other), NOT 1 (VT 100), because it will cause the screen to flash and display odd characters. To exit, follow instructions. National Environmental Research Council (ENG) - probably one of the best single sources of information in the UK. Telnet sun.nsf.sc.uk or 128.86.8.7 Login as janet; for password hit [return]; for hostname use uk.ac.nkw.vf; for user name, use library. Select 1 for VT100 emulation. To exit, type exit. Oxford University (ENG) - poor display, but good holdings. Probably one of the best general sources. Telnet library.ox.ac.uk or 129.67.1.46 To login, type VT100 for the terminal type, and then choose 14 (Earth Sciences Library). Southampton University (ENG) - good searching mechanisms. Best search type is the keyword searching all categories (title, category, etc.) Telnet lib.soton.ac.uk or 152.78.128.14 To login, type library. University of Wales, College of Cardiff (WAL) - has an awkward display with too many keystrokes for searches. Telnet liby.cf.ac.uk or 131.251.2.3 For user name, type science. Scandinavian Resources: Finland National Library (HELKA) (FIN) - Telnet hyk.helsinki.fi or 128.214.4.130 At login: type "hello yourname.user.class02" At terminal type screen menu, type 5 for Scandinavian ASCII 7-bit terminal At the location code prompt (Anna kokelma), enter 100 At the prompt for language change (Anna uusi...), change the language of help screens and VTLS messages to English by entering /lang 1 To exit, type /quit Joensuu University (FIN) - average searching, but fairly typical for the Finland systems in general. Telnet joyk.joensuu.fi or 128.214.14.103 At the HP3000/935 prompt, enter "hello yourname,user.class01" Select terminal type 4 At the Anna kokoelma prompt, enter 100 At the Anna uusi komento prompt, enter /lang 1 for English To quit, type /quit Chalmers University of Technology (SWE) - much better searching and viewing than Gothenburg (same city), but fewer earth science holdings. Telnet cth.lib.chalmers.se or 129.16.86.70 Login with username "chans". At the alternative menu (the first), choose 3 to change languages. At the language menu (next), choose 1 for English. [* p. 17 / p. 18 *] University of Gothenburg (SWE) - keyword search doesn't work well; best searching is by title. Other libraries are available from this service (for example Chalmers). Telnet gunda.ub.gu.se or 130.241.30.253 To switch to English type "\lang 1" Choose the central library (#4400) Lund University (SWE) - one of the best Swedish sources. Keyword searches work much better than title or subject searches. Telnet lolita.lu.se Select terminal type 10, or if you have a terminal that supports the Scandinavian 7-bit ASCII, select 4 Enter 100 as the location code To select English, type \lang 1 To exit, type /quit, and to confirm, type y Stockholm University (SWE) - another of the best Swedish sources. Title searches work best. Telnet fog.tele.su.se or 130.237.162.5 For username, type sub At Tryck nu prompt, enter 1 for English version To exit, enter end University of Uppsala (SWE) - keyword searches useless, subject searches OK, title searches sometimes best. Telnet udac1.udac.uu.se or 130.238.4.130 At the "Enter address" prompt, type disa At the terminal type prompt, select 10 At the "ANGE KOD F\R Biblioteksenset/AVD" prompt, type 100 Type /lang 1 for English. BIBSYS (NOR) - is a shared database for all Norwegian university libraries and research institutions. There are about 30 places on the list. Using HYTELNET, this database could not be searched or read in English. Using Gopher, an excellent system in English was used. It has a good display and is very fast. It is not clear what the default search type is, and changing to another search type is not obvious. While BIBSYS received the highest rating of the facilities tested, it should be remembered that the holdings represented by BIBSYS are the collective holdings of 11 different institutions. It is also awkward to find out where a particular holding is located. Telnet castor.bibsys.no or 128.39.9.9 (this method not recommended) Press [enter] to accept terminal type VT100 At LOGG INN, type vm xx00bi01 Password is bibsys. Gopher gopher.bibsys.no (highly recommended) System comes up in English and has rapid searching with good holdings. Every item has a unique "DOKID", which identifies the year of input (dig- its 1 & 2), library code (digit 3 & in some cases 4) and a serial number, e.g.: 78c000123 The a,b,c etc. refers to the institution holding the item, e.g.: c UBT(OE) Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso Tromso University Library) Naldrett, D. L. 1994. An internet guide to Quaternary library resources. INQUA - Commission for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data-Handling Methods Newsletter 11, 14-17. ----- A number of you have contacted me about my article on the Magellan Meridian Global Positioning Receiver in the last issue (Newsletter 11:23- 27). My wife pointed out that West Marine (P.O. Box 50050, Watsonville, CA 95077-5050), which offers a 24-hour toll-free ordering number, 800- 538-0775, to those in the U.S and Canada, recently was selling the Meridian (their Model 588400) for US$387.95 for a few weeks in July. Do not forget to ask about the "Meridian Mounting Kit, Model 139669, for US$79.00, which has the wires for hook-up to your computer. Ed.) ----- [* p. 18 / p. 19 *] NEW BOOKSHELF 9 H.J.B. Birks E-mail: John.Birks@bot.uib.no The following recently published books and monographs may be of interest to readers of this Newsletter. Bradbury, J.P. & Dean, W.E. (Eds.) 1993 Elk Lake, Minnesota: Evidence for Rapid Climatic Change in the North-Central United States. Geological Society of America Special Paper 276, 336 pp. Paperback Buckland, P.C. & Coope, G.R. 1991 A Bibliography and Literature Review of Quaternary Entomology. J.R. Collis Publications, University of Sheffield. 85 pp. Paperback. Cleveland, W.S. 1993 Visualizing Data. AT & T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey. 360 pp. (Available from Hobart Press, PO Box 1473, Summit, NJ 07902-8473, USA). Coker, P.D. 1993 How to deal with Disk Disasters. Kuma Books, Pangbourne. 176 pp. Paperback. Cromwell, J.B. et al. 1994 Univariate Tests for Time Series Models. Sage University Press, Thousand Oaks. 96 pp. Paperback. Dunn, G., Everitt, B. & Pickles, A. 1993 Modelling Covariances and Latent Variables using EQS. Chapman and Hall, London. 201 pp. Paperback Elias, S.A. 1994. Quaternary Insects and Their Environments. Smithsonian Institution Press, Blue Ridge Summit, PA. 256 pp. Everitt, B.S. 1992 The Analysis of Contingency Tables (Second edition). Chapman and Hall, London. 164 pp. Fraser-Taylor, D.R. (Ed.) 1991. Geographic Information Systems. The Microcomputer and Modern Cartography. Pergamon Press, Oxford 251 pp. Frenzel, B. (Ed.) 1994 Evaluation of land surfaces cleared from forests in the Roman Iron Age and the time of migrating Germanic tribes based on regional pollen diagrams. European Science Foundation Project European Palaeoclimate and Man 7, 134 pp. Paperback. Frenzel, B., Matthews, J.A. and Glþser, B. (Eds.) 1993 Solifluction and climatic variation in the Holocene. European Science Foundation Project European Palaeoclimate and Man 6, 387 pp. Paperback Hardisty, J., Taylor, D.M. & Metcalfe, S.E. 1993 Computerised Environmental Modelling. A Practical Introduction using EXCEL. J. Wiley and Sons, Chichester, 204 pp. Paperback. Hastings, H.M. & Sugihara, G. 1993 Fractals - A User's Guide for the Natural Sciences. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 235 pp. Paperback. Krol, E. 1994 The Whole Internet - User's Guide & Catalog (Second edition). O'Reilly & Associates, Sebastopol, CA. 543 pp. Paperback. Maling, D.H. 1992 Coordinate Systems and Map Projections. Pergamon Press, Oxford. 476 pp. Paperback. Marcus, L.F., Bello E. & Garcia-Valdecasas, A. 1993 Contributions to Morphometrics. Monografias Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid. 264 pp. Paperback (with diskette). Patil, G.P. & Rao, C.R. (Eds.) 1993 Multivariate Environmental Statistics. North-Holland Series in Statistics and Probability 6. Elsevier Science Publishers, Amsterdam, 596 pp. (Includes chapters by R.H. Green, V. Barnett, N. Cressie, B.F.J. Manly, C.J.F. ter Braak et al., L. Orloci, and E.P. Smith on topics such as environmental reconstructions, randomisation tests, species-environment relation- ships, trend analysis, spatial analysis, etc.). Ricklefs, R.E. and Schluter, D. (Eds.) 1993 Species Diversity in Ecological Communities. Historical and Geographical Perspectives. University of Chicago Press. 414 pp. Paperback. (A book that is of interest to Quaternary palaeoecologists even though the Quaternary is barely mentioned despite the subtitle "historical"!) Saarnisto, M. & Kahra, A. (Eds.) 1992 Laminated Sediments - Proceedings of the Workshop at Lammi Biological Station 4-6 June 1990. Geological Survey [* p. 19 / p. 20 *] of Finland Special Paper 14, 113 pp. Scheiner, S.M. and Gurevitch, J. (Eds.) 1993 Design and Analysis of Ecological Experiments. Chapman and Hall, New York. 445 pp. Paperback. (Contains much of relevance to the quantitative palaeoecologist, with chapters on exploratory data analysis, time-series analysis, multiple regression, bootstrapping and jack-knifing, spatial statistics, and Mantel tests). Wright, H.E., Kutzbach, J.E. Webb III, T., Ruddiman, W.F., Street- Perrott, F.A. & Bartlein, P.J. (Eds.) 1993 Global Climates since the Last Glacial Maximum. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 569 pp. EMULATION OF DOS-BASED PROGRAMS ON THE PowerMac Ian Walker Biology, Okanagan College 1000 K.L.O. Road Kelowna, B.C. V1Y 4X8 Canada E-mail: iwalker@instr.okanagan.bc.ca Although I had worked entirely with DOS computers, I discovered a MacIntosh Classic sitting on my desk when I moved to Okanagan University College three years ago. Since my wife owns an identical computer, I quickly adopted the Mac for most of my everyday work, and admired its user-friendly interface and graphics capability. Nevertheless, for specialised work I continued to rely on a variety of DOS-based applications. The advent of the PowerPC promised an opportunity to run all of my software on a single machine. Arrival of the first PowerPCs has been heralded by a barrage of attention from the computer press (Byte - April 1994; Macworld - Feb. 1994; PC/Computing - Feb. 1994). The PowerPCs chips are the first based on RISC architecture and are faster and less expensive than existing chips. Native applications are reputed to run two to six times faster on PowerPC-based machines than comparable programs on Intel's Pentium CPU. PowerMacs are already available using the 601 chip, and a series of other chips in the PowerPC family will soon be introduced. Emulation software (SoftWindows) has been quickly introduced, allowing PowerMacs to run DOS- and Windows-based programs. I recently visited the Future Shop, laden with TILIA, TILIAùGraph, CANOCO, and WACALIB to test a new PowerMac 6100CD 160 equipped with 16 MB of RAM and SoftWindows. The PowerMac successfully ran all of these programs under SoftWindows emulation, and I was very impressed with the performance with a couple of exceptions: 1) With TILIAùGraph I could not (of course) find a display option for the PowerMac's monitor. I believe I selected "Super VGA". Although this worked well, I could not view the very bottom of the diagrams. (Since then, Eric Grimm has suggested that I would probably have been better off selecting "VGA".) 2) The emulation seemed a little slow. I only found this frustrating when I tried a Monte Carlo permutation test of the First Canonical Axis at the end of my CANOCO run. My initial attempt indicated that 999 permutations might have required several hours to run. (I understand that a MacIntosh version of CANOCO is available, and this might provide a solution). When running TILIA, I was initially surprised that the MacIntosh had no ALT-key, but soon discovered that the option key performs the same function, providing access to the menus. The opportunity to easily transfer graphics, data, text, etc. among DOS, Windows, and Mac Programs is another potential advantage of the PowerMac. I was able easily to copy a TILIAùGraph plot into the MacIntosh Scrapbook, but I soon discovered that the store had not equipped the PowerMac with any MacIntosh graphics programs and was not connected to a printer, so I could not complete my tests. The new PowerMac is impressive for its software flexibility, and certainly for the speed at which it can run native applications. This flexibility does sacrifice computational speed when DOS- and Windows-based applications must be run under emulation. With this experience, I am still considering the PowerMac. I will probably wait at least until autumn, when the first machines equipped with the faster PowerPC 604 chips arrive. [* p. 20 / p. 21 *] CORRECTIONS AND EXTENSIONS TO PCSLOT Malcolm Clark Department of Mathematics Monash University Clayton, Victoria Australia 3168 E-mail: Malcolm.Clark@maths.monash.edu.au A corrected version of PCSLOT, my program for sequence-slotting, is now available by anonymous ftp from geology.wisc.edu. There were two programming errors in the previous version (v. 1.5) of PCSLOT. First, under certain circumstances, the program would stop prematurely during the sensitivity analysis. Second, certain input/output errors were not handled correctly. Both of these bugs have been fixed in version 1.5b. Those readers who have been using PCSLOT v. 1.5 need only replace the main .EXE file and the READ.ME file. First establish contact with the INQUA Boutique for anonymous ftp. Ftp geology.wisc.edu (or ftp 144.92.137.14) and logon as anonymous with your own e-mail address for the password. Issue the command cd /pub/inqua. Type ls to see the directory. You want to take a binary copy of the self-extracting file PCSLT15Z.EXE. So type bin to set the data transfer to give you an exact image of the original. Then type get PCSLT15Z.EXE. When you get the file on your own IBM/Clone PC, typing PCSLT15Z PCSLOT15.EXE READ.ME will extract just the changed files; new users should type PCSLT15Z to extract all the files. I am working on version 1.6, which will have an option to produce the optimal matching of depths in Sequence (or Core) B relative to the depths in Sequence A. It will also produce output which will enable users to produce a variety of graphs illustrating the optimal slotting. Version 1.6 should be ready by October 1994 or possibly sooner, and will be described in more detail in the January 1995 Newsletter. If you would like to be notified when version 1.6 is ready, please send me a message to that effect. References. Clark, R. M. 1992. Sequence comparisons and sequence-slotting. INQUA - Commission for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data- Handling Methods Newsletter 8:3-6. Clark2, R. M. 1993. Assessment of sequence-slotting. INQUA - Commission for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data-Handling Methods Newsletter 9:5-10. Clark, R. M. 1993. A new version of PCSLOT. INQUA - Commission for the Study of the Holocene, Working Group on Data-Handling Methods Newsletter 10:21-22. LOCATE YOUR SCANdinavian SITES WITH SITESCAN.BAS Louis Maher It is always a job keeping track of where things are. You can list their locations, but that does not really show very much. And if you plot things on a map, you will find you want to add other items in the same place with no room to write. Or you will decide to delete a site, which leaves a blot. If you want to locate items in Europe between 50 and 72 N Lat and from 6 W and 32 E, you might be interested in Sitescan. When I was teaching a shortcourse in Bergen last spring both the students and I needed a way of keeping track where various pollen sites were. My solution was not as slick as Keltner and Grimm's SiteSeer (described in this issue), but you can do some things with Sitescan that you cannot do with SiteSeer. You can identify a site if you know its name--even only the first letter of the name. You can find a site that is superimposed under a dozen other points on the map. But more important, you can add and subtract sites yourself. When you start Sitescan it asks what file you wish to read, proffering Sitescan.txt as the probably choice. If you touch the key (and Sitescan.txt is in the default directory) the file with the data is loaded. If you enter the name of a different data file for this map area, it will load instead. [* p. 21 / p. 22 *] Figure 1. Sitescan screen. Sitescan's map screen is shown in Fig. 1. It looks pretty cluttered, but it is easier to interpret in color. Going against all the principles of good illustration, the grid is emphasized rather than the map. This is for reasons I will discuss below. Also you will note that your favorite coastline may look strangely distorted; to that I will answer that maps are but representations of features on the earth. All the sites you have in the data file appear as 'crosses' whose colors depend on their country. If a site is selected, its cross becomes twice the size of the others, and data about that site are printed on the first line below the map. So how does one control Sitescan? The instructions are all listed at the lower part of the screen. You provide a name, initial letter(s), or just press the key. The key alone will simply move to the next item on the alphabetical list. If you know the site begins with an 'M' just type 'm' (the case does not matter) and then keep pressing until the correct site appears. If you want to move backward, simultaneously press and . Press the key any time you want to end the Sitescan session. Why the prominent grid and the strange shapes? You can find where a site is if you know its name, but it would also be nice to learn a cross's identify by specifying its coordinates rather than by repeatedly pressing the key until the site is high-lighted. Some of the Scandinavian countries extend through such a latitudinal belt that the spacing between meridians is markedly different from north to south. Map atlases often show the curving lat-lon positions, but use a more easily read orthogonal grid key in the margins--referring to a locality in, say, grid square D-12. Sitescan uses an orthogonal grid because it is easy for humans to read. Each small square represents one degree both of latitude and longitude. The grid is emphasized because it is important for specifying unknown sites; the coastlines are distorted because the meridians are constrained to be parallel, and degrees of latitude and longitude are made equal. Even with these devices, it is surprising how easy it is to identify Fig. 1's physical features. How would one identify the site between 52 and 53 N and 0 and 1 W on Fig. 1? Sitescan defines a square by the lat-lon of its lower left corner. It expects integer values, and it treats western hemisphere longitudes as negative. The site in question would be identified by typing 52, -1. The cross would double in size and the identity would be given as "Wing, Rutland 52 40 N 0 40 W...". You would also be instructed "Touch SPACE Key to Continue...." If other sites were also in the square they would be identified in succession; if there was none, the selected cross returns to the first site on the list. In a similar manner you could find all the sites between 59 and 60 N by typing 59 followed by a comma (59, ) or those between 30 and 31 E by typing a comma followed by 30 ( ,30). If you specify the latter you will find that northern Norway is about at the same longitude as St. Petersburg and Kiev (Kiyev). The crosses in Sitescan.txt represent Holocene sites, Last Interglacial sites, and some cities that were originally put in to provide a few crosses before the pollen sites were added. You are free to delete any you wish or add your own. Sitescan.txt is an ASCII file. You can use the first 79 columns (which will show on the screen) of each line in any way you want so long as the lines are in alphabetical order based on the first word in each line. The program expects to find an asterisk (*) in column 80 of each line, and it will not let you read a line that does not have one there. On the line after the asterisk, Sitescan expects to find three items separated by one or more spaces: the site's latitude in decimal degrees, its longitude in decimal degrees, and the first three letters of the country in [* p. 22 / p. 23 *] which it is found (i.e, NOR, SWE, GER, NET, RUS, ATL, etc.). The material at the end of the Abernethy Forest site (Fig. 1) would be: * 57.233 -3.717 SCO written without punctuation. Sitescan.txt can be read into a text editor where unwanted lines are deleted, and new lines inserted in alphabetical order. The result should be saved as an ASCII text file. Or you can just type in the lines in any order. Save the file as TEMP.TXT, and then from the DOS command line type: SORT < TEMP.TXT > SITESCAN.TXT to let DOS do the alphabetizing for you. I have placed a self-extracting zipped file called SITSCANZ.EXE in the INQUA Boutique which you can get by anonymous ftp. It contains both compiled and BASIC versions of Sitescan. You can easily alter the BASIC version to adapt its colors, etc. to your own needs. Let me know if you want to make Sitescan work with another map area, and I can offer some suggestions for the modification. WORLD DATA CENTER-A FOR PALEOCLIMATOLOGY DATABASE HOLDINGS AND DATA DOCUMENTATION REQUIREMENTS Robert S. Webb and Bruce A. Bauer NOAA-National Geophysical Data Center 325 Broadway, E/GC Boulder, CO 80303, USA E-mail: rsw@mail.ngdc.noaa.gov bab@mail.ngdc.noaa.gov The World Data Center-A for Paleoclimatology archive contains a growing umber paleoenvironmental datasets. Table 1 lists current data holdings followed by a brief description, and identifies datasets received or updated since the beginning of the year. Access and retrieval of these data over the toll-free electronic information highway has continued at a high pace over the last year, averaging 300 individuals per month from over 25 countries. As the database matures, we are formalizing guidelines for the types of "metadata" (peripheral data or information about the dataset) that are necessary to ensure accurate documentation of archived data. Table 2 provides a preliminary list of the range of information that has proven useful in generating documentation files. Identification of "key" data sets not currently archived as well as comments on the list of metadata are welcome from the international paleoclimatology community. We encourage you to contact the data center with comments or questions on how to archive data. E-mail: paleo@mail.ngdc.noaa.gov; phone: 303 497 6227; fax: 303 497 6513. Table 1. Summary of Holdings as of June 1994 AEA/WMO Network of Isotopes in Precipitation *** Monthly 18O, Deuterium, and Tritium in rainfall, 421 sites Barbados Sea Level and Th/U Calibration Radiocarbon-controlled sea level curve & calibration of Th/U - C14 dating Calcium Carbonate Database CaCO3% data from 350 marine sediment cores, plus C14 dates CLIMAP 18K Database CLIMAP project data for 18,000 YBP: plankton counts, mineralogy, SST estimates CLIMAP 120K Database CLIMAP project data for 120,000 YBP: plankton counts and SST estimates Climate Reconstructions from Tree-Rings Reconstructed temperature and precipitation, 92 sites SW USA Climate Since AD 1500 Database Data from Bradley & Jones book, including historical, ice core, and tree-ring data and reconstructions. Coral Data Sets*** Geochemical Data from 5 Pacific sites Eastern North American Vegetation Change for the Past 18kYr. Array mapping of Vegetation types at 3KYr interval, 21K to present Elk Lake, Minnesota Data Set Varve thickness, pollen, diatoms, geochemistry, isotopes, mineralogy Fossil Plankton Stratigraphies 1 (LDGO)Data Set Plankton counts and SST estimates, 35 north Atlantic cores Fossil Plankton Stratigraphies 2 (Russian) Data set Foram counts, Atlantic Ocean, 235 cores [* p. 23 / p. 24 *] GCM Output *** NASA/GISS climate model simulations for 11 & 18 KYBP, SST and CO2 scenarios Ice Core Data from GRIP: Methane 40Kyr series of Methane from the Greenland Ice Core Project *** Ice Core Data from GRIP: O-18 d18O from the Greenland Ice Core Project, from Johnsen et al. *** Ice Core Data from Quelccaya Ice Cap Isotopes, Accumulation, Dust, Conductivity Ice Core Data from Vostok 160KYr series of CH4, CO2, Dust, and Temperature interpretations Ice Topography and Extent *** Ice sheet and glacier topography and extent, 21KYrBP to Present International Tree-Ring Data Bank *** Ring Widths, Densities, and Chronologies, 1100 sites Little Ice Age Summer Temperatures and Annual Precipitation for the Northeastern and North Central United States NICL Ice Core Sample Inventory *** Detailed inventory of ice cores curated at the National Ice Core Laboratory, Denver, CO North American Pollen Database *** Counts and percentages, 464 sites Orbital Variations and Insolation Data Set Orbital parameters and insolation, 1,000 year intervals Relative Sea Level Database Radiocarbon-controlled relative sea level histories, 392 sites SPECMAP Archive #1 Counts, isotopes, SST's, age models at 17 sites, plus spectral analysis SPECMAP Archive #2 Counts, isotopes, SST's, age models, spectral analysis, 21 sites SPECMAP Archive #3 Devil's Hole spectral analysis vs 4 marine sites, with counts, isotopes, SST's, age models SPECMAP Archive #42 Counts, isotopes, SST's, age models, spectral analysis, 17 sites Swiss Historical Climate Indices *** Graduated Indices GI [+3 ,-3] for both temperature and precipitation from 1525 to 1989 The Sahara in the Holocene Radiocarbon Data *** Over 2000 radiocarbon dates from organic and mineral deposits in the Sahara Desert KEY *** Data Set new or updated in 1994 Table 2. Information for Archiving Point-Location, Time-Series, Mapped, or Gridded Data Sets Required Information data set name latitude(s) of site or grid points longitude(s) of sites or grid points bathymetry/elevation time period represented by data contributors references variable names variable unit data precision data format contact information (mail, phone, electronic) Optional Information additional site information brief description of data set methods including references chronostratigraphic information date of data generation any other information that would make the data more useful. -------- FIRST AID FOR psimpoll AND TILIA USERS by Dr. Triage I insisted my column be included because of the many questions I have received since the last one. Please send or e-mail questions to the newsletter coordinator saying they are for Dr. Triage. * psimpoll * Dr. Triage: I have started to use Keith Bennett's psimpoll, and it works fine when I plot my pollen diagram. But when I try to use psimpoll's numerical analysis features I always see a line on the screen that a file is not available. And I never get any analysis. [* p. 24 / p. 25 *] Help me with my analysis! Dear A. Nalysis: You must provide a name for the file you want to create. When you see psimpoll's main menu on your screen, press 'E' and provide a name for the data analysis file. I use the same root name as the data file and add '.ANL' for the extension. You were lucky you got a warning. On one system I was using I had a computer crash twice in succession when it apparently tried to open a file with a null name. Stupid computer! D.T. Dr. Triage: psimpoll takes 1.2 pages to print my pollen diagram. Can I condense it to print as a single page? Say Yes! Dear S. Yes: When you look at the psimpoll menu notice that item 'A' gives the scale factor, which normally starts as 1.00. Set up the problem as a proportion: Scale 1.00 is to 1.2 page as Scale X is 1.0 page. Change the scale shown in 'A' to 0.82 or 0.83 and you should see the diagram on a single page. D.T. Dr. Triage: I revise my pollen file using psimpoll, but when I run the program again to make small changes it never seems to remember the changes I already made. How Come? Dear H. Come: You need to establish a configuration file for the diagram that you are making. When you use the menu to select the diagram style 'D', provide the file name for the data analysis 'E', add the titles 'I', and select a scale factor 'A', you should then press 'O', and psimpoll will write a configuration file combining the data file's root name with the extension '.cfg'. When you run psimpoll again with the same data file, it automatically reads your *.cfg file and incorporates the existing settings. The program also saves a script file (*.scr) that records the commands you made during the last run. If you ran the program using interactive plotting, and forgot some small command setting(s), use a text editor to correct the *.scr file. When you run psimpoll again with the interactive plotting mode 'K' still set, simply turn on item 'P' to read from the script file before pressing 'X' to run the program. That feature alone is worth half psimpoll's price! D.T. [psimpoll is available free from the INQUA Boutique; Dr. Triage must have his little joke. Ed.] Dr. Triage: I like the fact that psimpoll can print the actual figures for the pollen sum used in each level. But I have several levels that are so close together that the numbers overlap. Easy Fix? Dear Mr. Fix: There are two possibilities, and I will give you the simple one first. You can show the size of the pollen sum as bars of a histogram. The histogram is not mentioned in the psimpoll manual, but during interactive plotting you will be shown the taxa names in the file numbered from 0 to n. You can then enter the number of a taxon you wish to plot (in any order you wish; all or just a few). If you just give a number, the default settings apply. Or you can add letters after the taxon number to customize the way that individual taxon is shown. The program provides a list of choices, which except for the choice [Hx] are described in the manual. Now when the pollen sums are to be shown by integer numbers, their list in the file starts with the symbol '*' which tells the program to plot the numbers. If you are going to plot the sums as bars on a histogram, edit the data file so that the list of sums starts with the symbol '#' which tells the program to plot that 'taxon' to a different scale from the others. When running psimpoll select interactive plotting (K). Assume the Pollen Sum is taxon 20. When you wish to plot the histogram, type 20 t h 0 and press the key. The '20' refers to the taxon, 't' says you wish to rename the taxon (type in Pollen Sum when you are asked), the 'h' specifies the histogram, and the '0' specifies a thin line to represent the size of the sum. (You do not really need to specify the '0' as that is the default; a number after the 'h' sets the histogram bar thickness in the same units as the depth or age measurements for the Y-axis.) Note that letters can be either upper or lower case; it does not matter to psimpoll. If you really want Arabic numbers for the sum, and only a very few numbers are partially overwritten, then you can try a more complicated fix. Work with the diagram until--with exception of the blurred numbers- -it is the way you want it to be. Make a copy of the PostScript file with a different name to use for editing. The idea is to print one or both of the overlapping numbers in smaller type so that they no longer overlap. For this discussion assume that the sums '457' and '503' formed the overlapping pair. Load the PostScript file into a text editor and search for the term 'scalefont' in order to locate the following lines: /F1 {/FRom findfont 432 scalefont setfont} def /F2 {/FRom findfont 250 scalefont setfont} def /F3 {/FIta findfont 250 scalefont setfont} def /F4 {/Symbol findfont 250 scalefont setfont} def /F5 {/FRom findfont 174 scalefont setfont} def /F6 {/FIta findfont 432 scalefont setfont} def /F7 {/Symbol findfont 432 scalefont setfont} def [* p. 25 / p. 26 *] The sums are printed with the F2 definition which here specifies size 250. Insert the following new line replacing the 250 with a smaller number, say, 150 or 200: /F8 {/FRom findfont 150 scalefont setfont} def Then search for the phrase '%n *' to find the line that starts the column with the pollen sums. The asterisk is used to identify a line of pollen sum numbers. %n *Main 0 -0 tr %t -0 5654 120 m 90 r ... Search for the 457 and 503 which will be in parentheses, and change the leading F2 to F8 as has been done below: ... F8 (457) sh -90 r 5684 815 m f90 r F8 (503) sh ... Save the file as ASCII text, and send it to the PostScript printer. Good Luck! D.T. Dr. Triage: On p. 5 of Bennett's excellent manual, he says "Following the usual convention of measuring depth from the top of a sequence downwards, positive values increase down the column, and negative values increase upwards." But in his example on p. 54 of Appendix 1, he lists the depths from deeper to shallower. And when you study the example file DALLP, the depths in it also go from bottom to top. What's up? Dear W. Up: You can load the data in from top down or from bottom up. Lou Maher made a QuickBasic program called WIS2PSIM.BAS which converts a Wisconsin Raw file of pollen grain counts into a file that psimpoll can read to produce a percentage pollen diagram. With it you can generate diagrams for all 293 fossil sites in the self-extracting file T50RAW.EXE in the INQUA Boutique. [T50RAW.EXE contains Wisconsin raw files converted from the NOAA National Geophysical Data Center files in their fos_t50.zip, both of which were described on p. 14-17 of Newsletter 10, July 1993. Ed.] In order to make a diagram you have to decide which taxa you will use and how they will be ordered on the page. WIS2PSIM.BAS expects you to provide it with data in the Wisconsin RAW format, although it does not matter whether you start from the bottom or from the top. WIS2PSIM also wants you to start with the ordinator (depth or age) and end with the values you want to use for the pollen sum. If you use POLFILE (a separate self-ex- panding copy is in the INQUA Boutique as POLFIL16.EXE) you choose its menu item '4' to change the taxon order in the file. When you read in the *.RAW file you will see all its taxa numbered on the screen. Type the number of the ordinator and then just the numbers of the taxa you want to show in the order you want to show them, separating each by a comma. Press when done and save the file under a different name with extension .RAW. Then choose menu item '3' to consolidate columns and re- read the file you saved. This time enter the numbers of all the pollen taxa shown on the screen and when asked for the name of the group, say 'Pollen Sum'. When you save this file, the pollen sum will be tacked on at the end, and it will be ready for use with WIS2PSIM. (If you have a copy of Tilia, you can use its spreadsheet to cut and paste the taxa you want. Use its features to compute the pollen sum, and even calculate the percentages if you wish. Then save the data in Wisconsin format. When you are asked what the ordinator is, type in Depth(cm), Age(14C) or whatever it happens to be.) You can run WIS2PSIM.BAS with QBasic that comes with DOS 5. It will ask whether the pollen data are written as 1) individual grains, 2) decimal fractions, or 3) percentages, and the name of the *.RAW file. Save the results with a name psimpoll likes of the form 'xxxxp' and no extension. By studying the file that WIS2PSIM makes, you can see what psimpoll wants to read in order to make a simple percentage pollen diagram. You can probably alter WIS2PSIM.BAS to get it to do other kinds of data as well. Lou combined a copy with some sample data in the self-extracting file WIS2PSIZ.EXE, and put it in the INQUA Boutique. The Boutique's ftp address is listed elsewhere in this newsletter. D.T. Dr. Triage: I am not a pollen analyst, but can I pick up a free copy of psimpoll from the INQUA Boutique [* p. 26 / p. 27 *] by Anonymous ftp and use it to plot things like sand-silt-clay textures of till, calcite/dolomite ratios, magnetic data, and all kinds of other neat things? I am hopeful. Dear Mr. Hopeful. Yes you can. D.T. * Tilia AND TiliaùGraph * Dr. Triage: I think I am losing my mind! I know TiliaùGraph allows one to plot silhouette curves with a dotted baseline, turn off the tic marks on the upper scale line, and adjust the end space between columns when needed. But I can never remember where to find those things in the menus. I am NEEDING HELP! Dear N. Help: I have received many such queries as yours. So I have convinced Lou Maher to let me lay out the entire Tilia and TiliaùGraph menu system on six pages near the end of the newsletter. And I have used bold type to highlight the things you need to find. The pages are pretty confusing at first, but if you work at them, you will learn a great deal about Tilia. Even though Eric Grimm is going to bring out a new version soon, I think a lot of the menu structure will stay the same. Lou has agreed to let me put a self- extracting PostScript file of these six pages in the INQUA Boutique as the file TILMENUZ.EXE. D.T. -------- USEFUL ADDRESSES AVAILABLE TO PUBLIC BY TELNET OR ANONYMOUS FTP INQUA File Boutique. ftp geology.wisc.edu (ftp 144.92.137.14) Logon: anonymous; Password: your e-mail address Path: /pub/inqua Contents described in file readme.txt World Data Center-A (WDC-A), U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) Paleoclimatology Program (Note: Numeric Host Address Subject to Change) ftp ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov (ftp 192.149.148.109) (Other aliases: ngdc1.ngdc.noaa.gov and online.ngdc.noaa.gov) Logon: anonymous; Password: your e-mail address Path: /paleo or /paleo/pollen LIFE at the Australian National University. ftp life.anu.edu.au (ftp 150.203.38.74) Logon: anonymous; Password: your e-mail address Path: /pub and its subdirectories CALIB (Calibration of 14C Dates) ftp ftp.u.washington.edu (ftp 140.142.56.2) Logon: anonymous; Password: your e-mail address Path: /public/calib Weather Information for selected cities in states: telnet madlab.sprl.umich.edu 3000 Logon/Password: None needed. Type ? for help Geographic Names, location, population, ZIP: telnet martini.eecs.umich.edu 3000 Logon/Password: None needed. Type ? for help On some multi-tasking unix systems typing: get filename - or get filename "| more" will let you browse a text file on line at the ftp site. [Filename - scrolls through the document; use key to stop the scrolling. Filename "| more" shows a screen page at a time. Press key to continue. These techniques work from our unix system, but not if I run telnet (DOS version) from my PC, Ed.] ----- I would like one or more readers who are knowledgeable about graphics files do an article for the newsletter. What are the advantages and disadvantages of vector and matrix formats? Which graphics files are best for distributing on the internet? Which formats have the widest use throughout the world? Which formats do you use? If you are interested, please contact me, and we can deal with further details. Ed. ----- [* p. 27 / p. 28 *] (Pages 28 - 33 consisted of Tilia Menus and are not included here. A self-unzipping PostScript file of these 6 pages is in the INQUA File Boutique under the name of TILMENUZ.EXE.) [* p. 33 / p. 34 *] E-MAIL ADDRESSES (I use the term in the general sense; it includes those on Internet, NSFNet, Janet, Bitnet, etc. A line ending with a trailing low dash [ _ ] indicates the address continues without a space on the line below.) David Adam dadam@mojave.wr.usgs.gov Jim Almendinger jdinger@vz.cis.umn.edu Brigitta Ammann ammann@sgi.unibe.ch David Anderson danderso@sog1.geog.ox.ac.uk Kathy Anderson kha@paleosun.ngdc.noaa.gov Pat Anderson pander@u.washington.edu Andrei A. Andreev paleo@glas.apc.org John Andrews andrews_jt@cubldr.colorado.edu Carlos A. Baied gg_cab@selway.umt.edu Dick Baker dick-baker@uiowa.edu Philip Barker p.barker@lancs.ac.uk Pat Bartlein bartlein@oregon.uoregon.edu bartlein@oregon.bitnet Rick Battarbee ucfamar@ucl.ac.uk Alwynne Beaudoin abeaudoi@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca Pat Behling pbehling@vms.macc.wisc.edu Trevor Bell bell@mgm.lan.mcgill.ca Keith Bennett kdb2@cus.cam.ac.uk Bj”rn E. Berglund bjorn.berglund@geol.lu.se John Birks birks@cc.uib.no R. Bonnefille rb@lgq.univ-mrs.fr Richard Bradshaw richard.bradshaw@ess.slu.se Julia Branson jb4@soton.ac.uk John Brew J.Brew@vax.rhbnc.ac.uk Linda Brubaker lbru@u.washington.edu Dave Bulman dbulman@arts.cc.monash.edu.au Ian D. Campbell icampbell@nofc.forestry.ca Don Charles charles@say.acnatsci.org Gail Chmura chmura@mgm.lan.mcgill.ca Malcolm Clark malcolm.clark@maths._ monash.edu.au Anthony Cole a.o.cole@massey.ac.nz Brian Cumming cummi006@maroon.tc.umn.edu Ed Cushing cushing@vx.cis.umn.edu Les Cwynar cwynar@unb.bitnet Owen Davis palynolo@vms.ccit.arizona.edu George H. DeBusk, Jr. gdebusk@raphael._ acpub.duke.edu Walter Doerfler guf12@rz.uni-kiel.dbp.de Marianne Douglas marianne@climate1.geo._ umass.edu Kevin J. Edwards edwardkj@ibm3090.bham.ac.uk Mary E. Edwards ffmee@alaska.bitnet ffmee@acad3.alaska.edu Scott Elias saelias@culter.colorado.edu Mike B. Elliot m.b.elliot@massey.ac.nz Dan Engstrom dre@umnacvx.bitnet John Flenley j.flenley@massey.ac.nz Jesse Ford fordj@ucs.orst.edu David R. Foster dfoster@lternet.washington.edu dfoster@lternet.bitnet Marie-Jos Gaillard mjgl@gemini.ldc.lu.se Konrad Gajewski gajewski@acadvm1.uottawa.ca [* p. 34 / p. 35 *] Robert Gilbert gilbertr@qucdn.queensu.ca Lisa Graumlich graumlich@ccit.arizona.edu David Green david.green@anu.edu.au Eric Grimm grimm@museum.state.il.us Elisabeth Gr”nlund mg@joyl.joensuu.fi Joel Guiot guiot@frmop22.cnusc.fr Margret Hallsdottir mh@rhi.hi.is Barbara C.S. Hansen hanse057@maroon.tc.umn.edu Sandy Harrison lakes@planteco.lu.se Linda and Cal Heusser heusser@acf1.nyu.edu Sheila Hicks sheila.hicks@oulu.fi Richard A. Hodkinson umfbco5@vaxa.cc.imperial._ ac.uk Geoff Hope geoff.hope@coombs.anu.edu.au Carol Hotton hottonc@simnh.si.edu Brian Huntley brian.huntley@durham.ac.uk Tristram C. Hussey io10651@maine.maine.edu Antti Huttunen ahuttune@phoenix.oulu.fi George L. Jacobson Jr. and Heather Almquist-Jacobson jacobson@maine.edu Jan A. Janssens janss001@maroon.tc.umn.edu Peter J. Jaumann pjjauman@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu Devra I. Jarvis djarvis@mukla.gn.apc.org Steve Juggins sjuggins@geog.ucl.ac.uk Peter Emil Kaland peter.kaland@bot.uib.no Peter Kershaw pkershaw@arts.cc.monash._ edu.au John C. Kingston johnk@morgan.ucs.mun.ca Warren Kovach warrenk@cix.compulink.co.uk 100016.2265@compuserve.com Constantin V. Kremenetski paleo@glas.apc.org John Kutzbach jekutzba@facstaff.wisc.edu Henry Lamb hfl@aberystwyth.ac.uk Bill Last mlast@ccm.umanitoba.ca Inigo Lentner lentner@rs1.rz._ uni-hohenheim.de Suzanne A. G. Leroy leroy@pageigbp.unibe.ch page@ubeclu.unibe.ch Bev Lipsitz blipsitz@reed.edu Dan Livingstone livinst@raphael.acpub.duke.edu Andre Lotter lotter@eawag.ch Susie Lumley shl11@phx.cam.ac.uk Ruud Lutgerink lutgernk@let.rug.nl Glen MacDonald gmmacd@mcmaster.ca Joyce Macpherson jmacphers@kean.ucs.mun.ca Darrel Maddy d_maddy@chelt.ac.uk Louis J. Maher, Jr. maher@geology.wisc.edu Vera Markgraf markgraf_v@cubldr._ colorado.edu John V. Matthews matthews@cc2smtp.emr.ca John H. McAndrews docjock@utcs.utoronto.ca Bob McCulloch rdm@geovax.edinburgh.ac.uk Matt McGlone mcglonem@landcare.cri.nz Josef Merkt merkt@gate1.bgr.d400.de Peter Minchin minchin@ariel.unimelb.edu.au Fraser Mitchell fmitchll@vax1.tcd.ie William N. Mode mode@vaxa.cis.uwosh.edu mode@oshkoshw.bitnet [* p. 35 / p. 36 *] Alan Morgan fossil@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca Robert J. Mott rjmott@emr.ca Dave Murray ffdfm@aurora.alaska.edu Dana L. Naldrett naldret@ccu.umanitoba.ca Robert E. Nelson renelson@colby.edu Bent Odgaard bo@dgu1.dgu.min.dk Jonathan Overpeck j.overpeck@omnet.nasa.gov jto@mail.ngdc.noaa.gov PAGES, Past Global Changes page@ubeclu.unibe.ch Marlow Pellatt mpellatt@sfu.ca Stephen C. Porter scporter@u.washington.edu Colin Prentice colin@planteco.lu.se Paula Reimer pjreimer@u.washington.edu P.J.H. Richard richard@ere.umontreal.ca Jim Ritchie jcr@aberystwyth.ac.uk Bruce F. Rueger bfrueger@colby.edu Jon Sadler sadlerjp@novell1.bham.ac.uk Charlie Schweger cschwege@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca George Smith smithg@lawrence.edu John Smol smolj@qucdn.queensu.ca Allen Solomon solomon@heart.cor.epa.gov Tony Stevenson tony.stevenson@newcastle._ ac.uk Eugene F. Stoermer eugene.f.stoermer@ub.cc._ umich.edu Alayne Street-Perrott geog2@oxford.vax1.ac.uk Rachel R. Summers s.r.summers@massey.ac.nz P. Roger Sweets sweets@ucs.indiana.edu Julian Szeicz g8726047@mcmail.cis._ mcmaster.ca Pavel E. Tarasov paleo@glas.apc.org Robert Thompson thompson@greenwood._ cr.usgs.gov Guus van der Geer gvdgeer@postoffice.utas.edu.au Adam Walanus polslask@plwrtu11.bitnet Ian R. Walker iwalker@admin.okanagan.bc.ca Jerome Ward jvward@mail.auburn.edu Robert S. Webb rsw@mail.ngdc.noaa.gov Tom Webb thompson_webb_iii@brown.edu Mina Weinstein-Evron mrect36@haifauvm.bitnet Cathy Whitlock whitlock@oregon.uoregon.edu Jolanda Willemsen a433jola@sara.nl David Williamson david@lgq.univ-mrs.fr Kathy Willis kjw11@phx.cam.ac.uk Janet Wilmshurst zool142@csc.canterbury.ac.nz Marge Winkler mwinkler@vms.macc.wisc.edu Henk Witte a433henk@sara.nl Sergei B. Yazvenko yazvenko@watserv1._ uwaterloo.ca Zicheng Yu yuzi@utcc.utoronto.ca Mingming Zhou zhouming@acf9.nyu.edu If you wish to be added to the directory, or to correct your present entry, please e-mail to: maher@geology.wisc.edu ------ End of Newltr12.txt -----