SOURCE:Justmeans
DESCRIPTION:
Some new initiatives indicate that social networking and crowd-sourcing can be effective tools in the fight to preserve the planet’s species, with the help of science and technology.
For example, a consortium known as International Barcode of Life (iBOL) invites citizens around the world to gather samples to help universities, natural history museums and research institutes to create a database of species. With the samples, scientists can identify them by sequencing a section of its DNA, known as barcoding.
iBOL is hosting its database on HANA, technology company SAP’s enterprise platform that makes data available in a computer’s memory. The move to HANA will allow researchers and citizen scientists to analyze high volumes of data in the cloud more swiftly, merging their records and carrying out predictive analyses that reveal patterns between species and location. This way, they can get ideas as to how outside factors, such as invasive species and climate change, affect the environment.
Click here to continue reading and comment on Justmeans
KEYWORDS: Justmeans, SAP, Technology, crowd source, social networking, Science, International Barcode of Life, Hana, IBM
