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This project explores the origins and development of the first writing in the New World by constructing a comprehensive database of Formative period, 1500-400 BCE, iconography and a suite of database-driven digital tools. In collaboration with two of the largest repositories of Formative period Mesoamerican art in Mexico, the project integrates the work of archaeologists, art historians, and scientific computing specialists to plan and begin the production of a database, digital assets, and visual search software that permit the visualization of spatial, chronological, and contextual relationships among iconographic and archaeological datasets. These resources will eventually support mobile and web based applications that allow for the search, comparison, and analysis of a corpus of material currently only partially documented. The start-up phase will generate a functional prototype database, project website, wireframe user interfaces, and a report summarizing project development.

The effectiveness of personal protective equipment, such as respirators, helmets, etc., is dependent upon their capacity to accommodate or conform to morphometric variation amongst users. In many cases, standard approaches for doing this involve the use of multiple, linear distance measures subjected to a Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to reduce the dimensionality of the data to a tractable number, e.g., two. The resulting scatterplot is then partitioned into blocks and sampling minima for each block established to provide what is believed to be an adequate coverage of the targeted population. Geometric morphometrics (GM) is an approach to the analysis of shape variation that focuses mostly, though not exclusively, on two- and three-dimensional coordinates of anatomical landmarks. Unlike traditional approaches, GM automatically preserves all of the geometric relationships between the landmarks identified for analysis and provides a more comprehensive and powerful analysis of shape (size-free geometry) or form (size+shape) variation. As such, GM offers considerable potential for improving the design and fitting of personal protective equipment.

Twenty years ago, Rohlf and Marcus proclaimed that a "revolution in morphometrics" was underway, where classic analyses based on sets of linear distances were being supplanted by geometric approaches making use of the coordinates of anatomical landmarks. Since that time the field of geometric morphometrics has matured into a rich and cohesive discipline for the study of shape variation and covariation. The development of the field is identified with the Procrustes paradigm, a methodological approach to shape analysis arising from the intersection of the statistical shape theory and analytical procedures for obtaining shape variables from landmark data. In this review we describe the Procrustes paradigm and the current methodological toolkit of geometric morphometrics. We highlight some of the theoretical advances that have occurred over the past ten years since our prior review (Adams et al., 2004), what types of anatomical structures are amenable to these approaches, and how they extend the reach of geometric morphometrics to more specialized applications for addressing particular biological hypotheses. We end with a discussion of some possible areas that are fertile ground for future development in the field. Download the complete "Yellow Book" on "Virtual Morphology and Evolutionary Morphometrics in the new millenium".

This paper examines the opportunities offered by recent advances in digital image processing to allow access to natural history museum collections without direct handling of specimens. It specifically refers to two- and three-dimensional data recording and analysis in the frame of geometric morphometrics.