5 posts tagged with "HTML/CSS"

The Michigan Flora app is a companion to the Michigan Flora website also developed by the RSE team. The RSE team worked closely with U-M Herbarium staff to develop this application, which is designed to work offline for easy classification in the field where internet connections are often unavailable. The app provides convenient access to thousands of plant species records, including detailed images, descriptions, and maps, and shares a unified database with the website to maintain data accuracy and consistency.

Summary​

The UM Primate Behavior Lab studies the evolutionary causes and consequences of primate behavior and physiology, with much of its research focused on wild mountain gorillas monitored by the Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda. Gorilla Hormone is a data management web application that brings hormone assay results and other data about individual gorillas into a single, curated location for the lab. An early version of the application was prototyped by the lab but it lacked key functionality needed for use in production. The Research Software Engineering team worked closely with Dr. Stacy Rosenbaum and the Primate Behavior Lab to complete and enhance the site, adding a validated uploader for data coming from lab equipment, permissions-based editing, and views for sorting and filtering records.

The LSA Herbarium curates and maintains a comprehensive database collection of known vascular plant species growing wild in Michigan, based on the Field Manual of Michigan Flora. The original Michigan Flora website was developed decades ago to serve as an “evolving illustrated companion to the Field Manual, presenting photographs of the species and their diagnostic features, and build on the foundation of the Field Manual by incorporating updates and new discoveries.” The original website had become quite dated, however, and increasingly difficult to use, update, maintain, and secure. The Research Software Engineering team worked closely with Michigan Flora curators to design and develop an all new Michigan Flora website from the ground up.

The researcher wanted to use an online platform to run an interactive experiment with two subjects remotely. The experiment needed to teach both subjects the words of a new language and then allow the subjects to describe images to their partner using the new language in a web browser. The Research Software Programming team was able to adapt the existing version of the researcher’s experiment to implement an online, multi-subject version using the LIONESS Lab platform.

The researchers had created a Qualtrics survey to probe the participant’s voting preferences. However, the way this information needed to be displayed and the data the researcher needed to collect was not possible in a standard survey. The Research Software Programming team was able to help create a custom information environment embedded in the Qualtrics survey using Javascript and custom HTML.