Twitter for estimating crowds

One of the toughest jobs for reporters, event organisers and authorities may become easier with Twitter. New research suggests it can be used to estimate crowd numbers at unmonitored events, such as protests.

Using geo-located Twitter and mobile phone data from Italy, the researchers found they could estimate crowd size for football matches at San Siro stadium and the number of people at Linate airport at any given time.

The Twitter data included messages sent and where and when they were made. Mobile phone data counted the number of calls, text messages or internet connections opened or closed.

The researchers suggested the data could be useful in emergency situations such as evacuations and crowd disasters.

In 1669 a Frenchman discovered a new kind of shrub on a Caribbean Island. Back in Paris, naturalists gave it a scientific name honouring a famous German botanist and herbalist, Dr Leonhard Fuchs. They called it Fuchsia.

Ancient Spaniards brought new sorts of plants from Mexico to Europe and some of these found their way to Sweden, where they were named in honour of a local professor, Anders Dahl. They called it Dahlia.

Fuchsia and dahlia are just two of many everyday plants immortalising the names of people. Any plant whose name ends in -ia or -ea is probably named after some old worthy.

Camellia was named after George Kamel, a Jesuit priest in China. Clivea was named after Charlotte Clive, the Duchess of Northumberland.

Bougainvillea was named after the French admiral and explorer Louis de Bougainville. The first European to see this plant was the assistant and secret lover to the ship’s botanist on Bougainville’s ship. Because she was a woman, the assistant Jeanne Bare was not allowed on the global circumnavigation so disguised herself as a man.

Banksia, the Australian bottlebrush, was named after its discoverer Sir Joseph Banks, and Darwinia, an Australian shrub with red bell-like flowers was, of course, named after Charles Darwin. Mind you, there’s a popular video game going under the same Darwinia name.

The Latin name for peonies is Paeonia, named after Paeon the Greek god of medicine and the scientific name for yarrow is Achillaea, named after the legendary Greek warrior Achilles, whose soldiers bound their wounds with the plant. Queen Victoria’s name is immortalised in an Amazonian water lily. The names of Presidents Washington and Jefferson have been given to the plants Washingtonia and Jeffersonia.

But not only plants. Many animals have been named after worthy figures. Dante and Leonardo da Vinci have wasps named after them, Chile’s Salvadore Allende a beetle Allendia, Nelson Mandela a sea slug Mandelia, and Khrushchev a worm Kruschevia.

In the 1880s, Argentine Florentino Ameghino studied fossils from rocks near Buenos Aires and named more than a thousand of them. Having used up all the Latin names he knew, Ameghino started naming his fossils after famous biologists – among them Carolodarwinia, Thomashuxleya, Asmithwoodwardia, and Ernestohaekelia.

Many New Zealand plants were given Latin names honouring ancient botanists. Our kanuka goes under the botanical name of Kunzea – honouring Gustav Kunze, professor of botany at Leipzig in 1828. One of our tree ferns, Dicksonia, was named after a Scottish botanist and nurseryman, James Dickson.

The commonest tree in the New Zealand bush, kamahi, is known to scientists as Weinmannia, the name honouring Johann Weinmann, a German botanist and apothecary in the time of Bach. Our wineberry goes under the Latin name Aristotelia. Four years ago a new kind of bacteria, Austwickia, infecting a turtle, was named after the still-living Auckland microbiologist Peter Austwick.

Brockia has yet to be discovered, but my father and his botanical friend Harry Talbot once found a new plant in the Nelson mountains and it was given the name Coprosma talbrockiei.