Monday, September 17, 2012

Facebook Helps Speed Up Science


I thought this was really great!  Facebook can be utilized in countless ways that most of us wouldn't even think of.

Early last year, ichthyologist Brian Sidlauskas led an expedition to a little studied river in Guyana, South America to catalogue biodiversity.
Guyana's customs laws state that to take specimens out of the country, each must be documented and identified - a rather daunting task, considering they were on a tight schedule and were hoping to bring back more than 5,000 fish, some of which might not even be known to science yet.
To speed up the process, Sidlauskas uploaded all his photographs to Facebook and tagged researchers from around the world who he thought might be able to help identify the fish. Using social media in this way, they were able to identify all 5,000 specimens within 24 hours. 

http://vimeo.com/48909830

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