Lucid December 2016 Newsletter

• Christmas Message
  
• Software Updates
  
• Visitors to Lucid
• Recent Keys
• Lucid Spotlight - Walter Reed Army Institute of Research
  

 

Welcome to the December Lucid newsletter

It’s been yet another busy and exciting year for the Identic team. Looking back over the past twelve months it’s hard to believe how much has happened and how fast time has disappeared! 2017 is already scheduled with a number of new and continuing developments and projects – more on these in upcoming newsletters. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this newsletter.

From all the staff at Identic, we wish you and yours all the very best for Christmas and a healthy and prosperous New Year.

PS. Please note our offices and support desk will be closed from Friday 23rd December until 30th December.

Software Updates

Lucid v3.6 coming soon

The launch of Lucid v3.6 has been delayed due to a number of recent projects. However, the delay has allowed us to add even more functionality to the new JavaScript edition of the Lucid Player!

We are endeavouring to have the new release finalised and ready late December 2016 or early January 2017.

Anyone who purchased v3.5 from September this year will get the v3.6 upgrade for free. Otherwise the upgrade price for existing users of v3.5 will be $360.00.

The first major key to show off the functionality of the new JavaScript based Player is the Australian Freshwater Molluscs key (https://keys.lucidcentral.org/keys/v3/freshwater_molluscs/).

You can read more about this key in the recent keys section of the newsletter.

Lucid v3.4

Support for v3.4 will officially end in February 2017. If you are using this edition you still have time to upgrade to v3.6 until the end of February. No upgrade pricing from v3.4 to v3.6 will be available after this.

Lucid v3.3

We have updated v3.3 Free Edition to cope with further changes to the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). One important change has been to remove the Applet Player deployment option. This option has become untenable due to continual breaking JRE updates and the current lack of direct support for Java Applets in Google Chrome. This is a major reason why we have moved to a JavaScript Player in v3.6. The v3.3 Builder will still allow the deployment of a key with the deployable Application edition of the v.3.3 Player.

Lucid Mobile Update

The Lucid Mobile platform continues to evolve at a rapid pace. Recently several new exciting features have been added, which will be available in the future for those wishing to deploy their keys as mobile Apps.

• Users now have the ability to save their identification sessions and reload them at a future time.
• The Lucid App can now open other Lucid based Apps, allowing keys (Apps) to be daisy chained (e.g. as sub keys).
• This allows users to install keys that they are interested in. The first example of this is the SANBI Keys – See the Recent Keys section for more information on this.
• The Lucid Mobile App image viewer has been updated to include more features.
• User registration can now be added to your key, along with licence requirements, if required.

Fact Sheet Fusion

Fact Sheet Fusion v2.0.4.950 released.

A new update to Fact Sheet fusion has just been released. This maintenance update adds a number of minor enhancements and bug fixes.

For more information on these Fact Sheet Fusion updates click here.

To purchase Fact Sheet Fusion click here.

For existing Fact Sheet Fusion v1 licence holders purchase the upgrade here.

Recent Visitors

Professor Yoohan Song - Emeritus Professor of Entomology in the Department of Applied Biology, Gyeongsang National University, Korea - is currently visiting Identic. Professor Song has a long association with the Identic team, having collaborated with us on several projects concerning CD/DVD on rice and Korean vegetable pest management. On this occasion Yoohan is working with us and with colleagues at the International Rice Research Institute (Philippines) to update the Rice Doctor diagnostic online key and apps for tropical rice and to discuss the development of a diagnostic key for temperate rice.

Recent Keys

Australian Freshwater Molluscs

We have been working with Dr Anders Hallan and Dr Winston Ponder from the Australian Museum over the past few months to ready this key for release.

The Australian Freshwater Molluscs key is one of the first to use the new Lucid JavaScript Player. It shows off a number of new features that are now available. For example, this key demonstrates how users, via JavaScript, can control the selection of feature states and subsets selection, along with various interface elements such as windows, thumbnails and other key settings prior to opening the key.

The content for this key was developed in Fact Sheet Fusion, which used a customised template based on the responsive Html Bootstrap framework, enabling the content to be viewed across various screen sizes and devices.

A Lucid Mobile App is also a possibility for this key in the near future.

URL: https://keys.lucidcentral.org/keys/v3/freshwater_molluscs/

Authors: W.F. Ponder, A. Hallan, M. Shea and S.A. Clark

South African wildlife and plant keys - Traffic.org and SANBI Keys

Traffic – the wildlife trade monitoring network and the South African National Biodiversity Institute SANBI have been working on two identification keys to help assist customs officials, law enforcement officers, border police and Environmental Management Inspectors (EMI’s) working against the illegal wildlife and plant trade. The following two “IDentifyIT – Species” keys help inspectors identify plant and wildlife parts. They are now preparing to make these keys available to the public – see below.

Cycad ID Tool - provides a practical, easy-to-use identification guide to South African Encephalartos species.

Species ID Tool - assists with the identification of South African TOPS and CITES-listed species, thereby enabling better regulation and monitoring of the local and international trade in these threatened and endangered species.

Authors: Tess Rayner et al.

Android & iOS: Coming Soon. Please check back later.

These key projects were a collaboration between the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and TRAFFIC, the Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network, a strategic alliance of WWF - World Wide Fund for Nature and IUCN - The World Conservation Union. The project was sponsored by NORAD, SANBI and the Mazda Wildlife Fund.

MyCrop Keys

The MyCrop key Apps (Wheat, Barley, Oats, Canola and Pluses) have all been recently updated.

URL: https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/mycrop

Pacific Pests and Pathogens v4

The Pacific Pest and Pathogens App has been updated again to include an additional 30 taxa and fact sheets, many of these being pests and pathogens of vegetable crops found in the Papua New Guinea highlands. The App now covers 300 pests and diseases.

Authors: Grahame Jackson et al.

Funded by: ACIAR, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research.

Pacific Pests and Pathogens @ iTunes App Store

Pacific Pests and Pathogens @ Google Play Store

NudiKey v1.0

An illustrated, interactive key to the Australian heterobranch sea slug families.

The Australia heterobranch sea slugs not only have popular appeal among the public but they also hold scientific importance. NudiKey provides a simple, interactive tool to assist with their identification and an opportunity for users to become familiar with the external diagnostic characteristics found in this highly speciose group of gastropod molluscs. NudiKey summarises the essential characteristics of the epibenthic families and, using high quality photographs of living animals, comprises a comprehensively illustrated, user-friendly, interactive key.

URL: https://keys.lucidcentral.org/keys/v3/NudiKey/

Author: Matthew J. Nimbs

Funded by: Southern Cross University & National Marine Science Centre

Rainforest Plants of Australia - Rockhampton to Victoria

This very popular and impressive key is now available for Android and iOS.

iOS - Apple iTunes

Android - Google Play Store

Coming Soon

Snake ID App

Hal Cogger, one of Australia’s foremost reptile experts, has developed a Lucid key to 223 Australian snakes. It is expected to be published under the Lucid Mobile platform in the next couple of months.

Spotlight on Lucid users – Walter Reed Army Institute of Research

Introduction

Mosquitoes have been important vectors of human pathogens for thousands of years, the recent outbreak of Zika virus being the latest evidence of the continuing risk they present. To address the problem of identifying different mosquito species, taxonomists at the Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit (WRBU - https://wrbu.si.edu/), within the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), Smithsonian Institution, have been working since the early 1960s to provide taxonomic information on the various genera and species of mosquito that transmit malaria, dengue and other pathogens.

The WRBU has focussed on building up, curating, and publishing on a mosquito collection, which is now the largest in the world, comprising over 1.5 million specimens. A primary role of the WRBU is to provide support for military personnel and others at the front line who require help in mosquito identification as part of vector-borne disease prevention. To this end, the Unit has been involved for some time in developing online computer-based identification keys for various regions of the world.

While some of these interactive, diagnostic matrix keys are still in development, many keys (>150) can be accessed from a Lucid Server via the WRBU website at - https://wrbu.si.edu/aors/aors_keys.html.

As shown in the following image, users can click on the geographic command (COM) area of concern for a list of keys appropriate to that region.

A recent development is the creation of Lucid Mobile Apps to enable easier access to the keys in the field. The first app is for Central American Malaria Vectors.