INQUA Working Group on Data-Handling Methods

Newsletter 10: July 1993

NOTE FROM THE COORDINATOR

The Newsletter filled up fast this time, and Dr. Triage is petulant because his column got crowded out again. Eric Grimm's TILIA v. 2.0 is due out in a few months, and I had to promise Triage that he can have several pages to field questions about it! In this issue Glen MacDonald starts the first of several articles on data-handling by CD-ROM. Walter Treloar discusses his work using image analysis to identify pollen. Nancy Marcoux and Pierre Richard describe their technique for handling and displaying information in size-class data of fossil Betula pollen. John Andrews explains an exploratory data analysis program he has created for teasing information out of, for example, long sequences of magnetic-susceptibility readings. Dave Bulman and Peter Kershaw suggest using Chi-Square in attempting to establish modern analogs for fossil pollen in Australia. Minze Stuiver and Paula Reimer have released their new CALIB3, and Paula tells how you can get a free copy by anonymous ftp. The group at the World Data Center-A provide more information about getting data from them, and Eric Grimm issues a call for pollen data sets to add to the North American Pollen Database. Ian Campbell discusses his program CANPLOT, and he also agreed to explain some very interesting things you can do to hand-edit PostScript graphics files. Warren Kovach has issued v. 2.1 of MVSP, and put a shareware version on our INQUA boutique at geology.wisc.edu. Malcolm Clark has added some nice new features to PCSLOT; it also is available from here by ftp. Konrad Gajewski suggests an electronic bulletin board, and I tell how you can join POLPAL-L, a list server for paly- nology. David Green discusses the broad enterprizes of the World Wide Web. I describe SPOON-EZ, a program that connects your computer to an electronic balance and gathers the data for determining the wet and dry weights and volumes of core samples. Owen Davis has sent a concise list of where you can find handy programs for dealing with your data. And last but not least, is the section on e-mail addresses--where you will find that Jim Ritchie, the former newsletter coordinator, is back on the Internet!

During the 1993-94 academic year (Sept-May) I am to be on sabbatical to learn as much as I can about the Internet, electronic databases, e-mail, and comput- er uses in paleoecology. I will be in Switzerland and the UK in late August, hope to get to Australia and New Zealand in September, Canada in October and November, Europe again in January and also later in the Spring. If you are doing something you would like to share--or if I could help you with a problem of yours--please let me know, and I will try to schedule a visit if I am anywhere near your base of operations.

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

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