Today was a very productive day. But something stood off, with a shiny feeling: a new tool for bioanthropologists is on the making.
That’s it folks. Osteomics is releasing a new app today, on one of the 4 basic pillars of Forensic Anthropology, one that we hadn’t explored yet: sex diagnosis. It is based on a famous article by Murail et al. (2005) that has probably the method with best balance between applicability and overall accuracy for sex estimation in osteology. Basically, we’ve implemented a new interface onto the same algorithm (that has been rewritten in R). Which is now, by the way, way faster than the original DSP Excell-based software.
It allows a case-by-case input, very useful if you are in the field, with your mobile phone or tablet, so you can access it and estimate sex right away. If you are doing more intensive laboratory work, it also has a population input mode through .csv tables upload, and it can calculate literally thousands of cases and generate an output of results in less than a second. Currently it is solely limited by internet access. This means, that contrary to DSP original version it is not Windows-exclusive, neither Excell-dependent!
Here is the link:
DSP: betteR, fasteR, strongeR!
{% capture images %} /images/DSP1.png /images/DSP2.png /images/DSP3.png {% endcapture %} {% include gallery images=images caption=“Some print screens of DSP working in my iphone. The app allows you to do statistically significant sex estimations based on os coxae.” cols=3 %}
Since it is still on early stage (I will be adding a Manual with images tomorrow and other functionalities), I’d be very grateful if you guys tested it out, left any commentaries or try to crack it until you find some bugs for me to correct. After this starts to look as a final product, I will update it and add it to the Software section.
Hugs!
References:
Murail P, Bruzek J, Houët F, Cunha E. 2005. DSP: A tool for probabilistic sex diagnosis using worldwide variability in hip-bone measurements. Bulletins et mémoires de la Societé d’Anthropologie de Paris, 17, (3-4), 167-176.
Update!
22-October-2015 ~ around 01 AM
- Manual with descriptions and pictures added;
- Example dataset that works as a template for users to insert their data correctly, was also added;
- Limited the number of minimum variables to 4 as in the original version of the software;
- Corrected a lot of small bugs (calculations crashed under certains circunstances);
- Added a lot of explanation texts here and there, and corrected some typos.
It is pretty much a final product by now. Any suggestions?