No subject

[Zhaoran Xu]

ANNOUNCEMENT FROM SERFIS, October 12, 1995

        An International Workshop on Bilingual Botanical Information
        Management will be held in 2-6 December 1995 at the University of
        Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, U.S.A.  The workshop is funded by
        the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), including lodging,
        food, domestic travel and some other cost.  Co-funding is provided
        by the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation (NSFC) for
        international travel from mainland China to Birmingham (AL).

        About 30 participants will attend the workshop, among whom about
        1/3 are curators (C) and 1/3 are museum database specialists
        (MDS).  Seven computer experts (CE) will present special topics
        and several Chinese colleagues will discuss information management
        related to the Chinese language.

        Following are the major topics of the workshop:
        December 3, demos and hands-on practice with:
                Botanical databases in mainland China: XU Kexue (CE, China)
                DBMS softwares in mainland China: LI Lei (CE, China)
                Herbarium Database in Taiwan: PENG Ching-I (C, China)
                Image processing with Wavelet: Zhijian Wu (MathProf., U.S.)
                PANDORA, a Botanical Database System: Richard Pankhurst
                        (MDS, U.K.)
                SERFIS, Southeastern Regional Floristic Information System:
                        Robert Haynes and Zhaoran Xu (MDS, U.S.)
                SMASCH, Specimen Management System for California Herbaria:
                        Thomas Duncan (MDS, U.S.)
                TROPICOS, a Botanical Database System: Christine McMahon
                        (MDS), Robert McGill and Jim Zarruchi (C) (U.S.)
        December 4, visit and see demos in:
                American Computing Consultants (Birmingham, AL), Client-
                        Server Networking with Windows NT as server and
                        Win95 as clients...: Steve Gleason (CE, U.S.)
                NASA computing facilities (Huntsville, AL)
                SUN Microsystems (Huntsville, AL), Image processing
                        and the SUN facilities:  Ron Bush and Robert
                        Montgomery (CE, U.S.)
        December 5, morning, demos and hands-on practice:
                A survey of available Chinese operating systems: Zhaoran Xu
                        and staff
                Bilingual (English-Chinese) information management with
                        geographic, personal and taxonomic data: Zhaoran Xu
                Prototype of bilingual (English-Chinese) herbarium database
                        systems (BBIS95): Zhaoran Xu and Mingguang Li
                Sending and displaying Chinese data on the Internet
                        (especially with World Wide Web), Zhaoran Xu
        December 5, afternoon, discussion and conclusion of workshop.

        In addition, there will be four laboratory sessions for
        individuals to explore the internet facilities or to practice a
        specific system listed above.  Participants will receive a bundle
        of documents of the speech and demo systems in the workshop.

        Invited speakers and international participants are expected to
        arrive at Tuscaloosa on December 1, and others should arrive
        before 6:00 pm on December 2.  International participants may
        leave on December 7, but the workshop will accomodate U.S.
        participants only until noon on December 6.

        Social events include a mixer in the evening of December 2, an
        opening session in the morning of December 3 and a banquet in the
        evening of December 5.

                                --- Robert Haynes (rhaynes at biology.as.ua.edu)
                                --- Zhaoran Xu (zxu at serfis.by.ua.edu)