(Twitter, Brian Spiesman @BrianSpiesman) “I invite you to check out BeeMachine.org, a deep learning web app for identifying bumble bee species from images. BeeMachine v1.0 IDs 36 species of N. American bumble bees.”
(ABC NEWS) Australia’s biosecurity regime is about to get a timely technological boost from an unlikely alliance. Some young tech-savvy aerospace engineers have joined forces with one of Australia’s largest dairy companies to create the Purple Hive Project, which is aimed at safeguarding Australia’s bee and honey industry from invasive and destructive pests like the varroa mite with cameras and artificial intelligence. Australia is the only inhabited continent still free of the varroa mite.
(EurekAlert/Cell Press) Researchers from the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Microsoft are using a kind of machine learning known as sentiment analysis to assess the successes and failures of wildlife conservation over time. In their study, the researchers assessed the abstracts of more than 4,000 studies of species reintroduction across four decades and found that, generally speaking, we’re getting better and better at reintroducing species to the wild. They say that machine learning could be used in this field and others to identify the best techniques and solutions from among the ever-growing volume of scientific research.
(FoodNavigator) A Belgian start-up is analyzing pollen samples to monitor bees’ environments, a Quebecois innovation is tapping AI tech to “give bees a voice”, and dairy farmers in the UK and Sweden are creating insect-friendly ecosystems to promote biodiversity.
