A Publication of Internet Scout
Computer Science Department, University of Wisconsin
A Project of the InterNIC
The Scout Report is a weekly publication offering a selection of new and
newly discovered Internet resources of interest to researchers and
educators, the InterNIC's primary audience. However, everyone is welcome to
subscribe to one of the mailing lists (plain text or HTML). Subscription
instructions are included at the end of each report.
The Scout Report Web page
Paradigm Online Writing Assistant
http://www.idbsu.edu/english/cguilfor/paradigm/
The Paradigm Online Writing Assistant, a frames-based site provided by
Professor Chuck Guilford of Boise State University, aids writers in a
different way from well known Online Writing Labs (OWLs), such as Purdue
University's (discussed in the March 8, 1996 Scout
Report), in that it concentrates on helping students think about how to
conceive a writing project instead of giving nuts and bolts aids on grammar
and style. This site contains sections on discovering what to write,
organizing, revising and editing your writing, various types of essays,
including thesis/support, argumentative, exploratory, and informal, and
documenting sources. Each section is accompanied by activities, which help
the student to incorporate the concepts. Professor Guilford understands
that good writing is well prepared and thought out before a word hits the
page, and that is the power of this site.
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Biotech Biblionet
http://schmidel.com/biotech.htm
This site, provided by Dyann Schmidel, contains a bibliography of recently
published biotech articles. Citations are added on the first of each month,
and remain online for four months. Citations are hyperlinked to author
contacts and/or abstract information, when available. Citations are
arranged in subject headings under two major categories, "Nucleic Acid &
Protein Techniques," and "Biotech Applications." At present 45 journals are
searched. The entire site is searchable. While Biotech Biblionet is by no
means an exhaustive bibliography, it is a good, free current awareness
source.
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BICO (US Export/Import Statistics for Bulk,
Intermediate, and Consumer Oriented Foods and Beverages)
http://ffas.usda.gov/cgi-bin/bico_cmmd.pl
USDA-FAS (United States Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural
Service) offers a searchable database of US food import and export data at
its web site. The BICO database offers 46 different product groups, divided
into "bulk commodities, and high-value intermediate and consumer-oriented
foods and beverages, as well as forest products and edible fish and seafood
products." The site can be searched via a forms-based interface by
commodity or country (as well as 16 country groupings), and retrieved data
includes US dollar value of imports or exports, with record export years
noted with an asterisk. Data for both fiscal and calendar year is
available, and coverage is annual, beginning in 1991. About the only
limitations to this database are that, at present, data cannot be directly
downloaded, and no volume data is available. Printing instructions are
available at the site. BICO is an excellent and easily available source for
a vast amount of US food data.
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Student Press Law Center
http://www.splc.org/
The relationship of student publications to the First Amendment has always
been a contentious one, with the defense of students' liberties contesting
with concern for preserving an atmosphere conducive to learning. This web
site, produced by the Student Press Law Center, a non-profit group
headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, addresses issues of student
journalism in colleges, public high schools, and private schools. Online
versions of several of the SPLC's print publications are available, and
others may be ordered from the site. The Online Legal Clinic offers answers
to frequently asked questions from high school and college journalists, as
well as a guide to obtaining access to public records and meetings. The
SPLC also offers free legal help to student journalists and their advisors
by telephone, email, or conventional mail. A page of links to related
information on the Internet is provided. Many other resources are under
development; if the site fills out according to SPLC's apparent plan, it
will become an even more valuable asset for those concerned with student
journalism.
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America Goes Back to School--Get Involved!--US Dept. of
Education
http://www.ed.gov/Family/agbts/
As school begins, involved parents and community leaders will find the US
Dept. of Education's America Goes Back to School--Get Involved! page a
useful one. It contains a Partners Activities Kit for 1996-7 (as well as
for 1995), available in both HTML and .pdf format, and a new full-text
publication, Reaching All Families: Creating Family-Friendly
Schools. The Partners Activities Kit provides information and examples
of how parents, community and religious leaders, employers, and cultural
groups can become involved in improving education in their community.
Reaching all Families is a "booklet intended to stimulate thinking
and discussion about how schools can better involve all families,
regardless of family circumstances or student performance, in their
children's education." It includes sections on "Personal Contacts"
(conferences and home visits), "Ongoing Communications" (newsletters,
positive phone calls, homework and home learning), and "Special Practices
and Programs" (parent resource centers, parent workshops, and informal
school-family gatherings), among others.
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The Computer Law Observer
Lifton's Labor Law Letter
The Computer Law Observer is distributed each month via e-mail by Challenge
Communications, a legal content provider located in Baltimore, Maryland. It
is currently written by William S. Galkin, a lawyer and adjunct professor
of computer law at the University of Maryland School of Law. Each issue of
the Observer contains an article discussing an important legal development
relating to the Internet and computer technology in general. The articles
are written for both lawyers and non-lawyers. Topics of past issues have
included: domain names; e-mail confessions in court; electronic privacy
rights; encryption; license restrictions; software ownership; negotiating
purchase of a computer system; and negotiating royalty agreements in the
information age.
Lifton's Labor Law Letter (LLLL-L) is an open, moderated newsletter which
will be circulated twice monthly. The topic is Labor law and collective
bargaining negotiation for the public sector, especially schools and
colleges. The moderator, Fred Lifton, has conducted more than 700
collective bargaining negotiations in his career. While school
administrators, school board members, and school-related unions will have
particular interest in the newsletter, anyone is welcome to participate.
To subscribe to the Computer Law Observer send email to:
ChallComm@aol.com
and request to be put on the list.
To subscribe to LLLL-L -- Lifton's Labor Law Letter send email to:
lawobserver-request@charm.net
In the body of the message type:
subscribe
[Back to Contents]
Democrats Online
http://www.democrats.com/
Townhall
http://www.townhall.com/
Now that the political convention season is over, you may be looking for
sites that offer a little more interactivity and are a little less
concerned with the party line. This week, we took a look at a new site on
the progressive side of the political spectrum, and one that represents a
conservative view. Debuting this week is Democrats Online: A Community of
American Voices. The emphasis on this site is user involvement; users are
offered the opportunity to participate in real-time chat using Ewgie, a
Java applet, and to post a personal web page indicating which
accomplishments of the Clinton/Gore administration are most important to
them. A highlight of the site is the Shockwave-driven "Help Dole Name his
Cabinet," which allows users to spin the slot machine and imagine Dole's
possible picks for Chief of Staff, Secretary of State, and Secretary of
Defense. The results are discomforting or inspiring, depending on your
perspective. A "question of the week" poll will come online on Labor Day.
On the other side of the political spectrum is Townhall, a site that since
June 29, 1995 has invited users to "explore the new conservative world."
Its main page is linked to a large number of web sites that advocate
various aspects of the conservative political agenda, from the Heritage
Foundation to a site that asks users to vote on whether they think Bill
Clinton actually inhaled. The "Town Meetings" allow users to engage in
real-time chat with like-minded individuals. The Townhall site is
particularly useful for those Internauts who want easy access to a wide
range of conservative sites on the Net.
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StreetEYE--Wall St. Search Engine
http://www.streeteye.com/
StreetEYE attempts to bring together every important investment and
financial resource on the Internet into a neatly arranged structure,
organized by topic and subtopic, and supplemented by a search engine. The
frames-based main page provides a consistent, easily navigated front end
for browsing resources. An alternate main page presents the same
information in tabular form for those without frame capability. The news
and quotes & graphs pages provide links to sites offering both
up-to-the-minute and archival data. The exchanges page lists many of the
world's financial markets, with links to details about brokers, banks,
investment managers, and other market participants. Users will also find
information about government and commercial information providers,
nonprofit institutions, and other financial resources. Individual investors
can browse a collection of personal finance topics, as well as selected
non-financial resources. The entries in each listing are arranged by topic,
but are not annotated with information about what the user will find at
individual sites. Even if you're already using the Internet to gather
investment information, this site will help you to keep up with current
offerings.
[Back to Contents]
Klub Kaycee--Kansas City Jazz in the 1920s and
30s
http://www.kcjazz.com
Less graphical
http://www.kcjazz.com/mainpage.htm
Klub Kaycee, presented by the Miller Nichols Library, University of
Missouri-Kansas City, in cooperation with kansascity.com and the Kansas
City Star newspaper, is highlighted by a "Soundbyte" section, where,
with the aid of RealAudio 2.0, users can listen to (approximately
30-second) jazz recordings provided from the holdings of the library.
Included are over 35 recordings from 1916 to 1954, by artists including
Count Basie, Euday Bowman, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, and Jay
McShann's Kansas City Stompers, among others. The site also includes short
biographical sketches of over 25 jazz artists important in the Kansas City
jazz scene in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, ranging from Edward Emanuel
Barefield to Lester Young, each of which contains a short bibliography.
There is also a section on nightclubs, ballrooms, and outdoor pavilions
where the music flowed, as well as an "Articles" section which contains a
jazz bibliography and glossary. Interested Internauts will find Klub Kaycee
a passport back to a time when Kansas City was known as the "Paris of the
Plains," and jazz flourished there.
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The Minimum Wage--From the US Department of
Labor
http://www.dol.gov/dol/esa/public/minwage/main.htm
The US Department of Labor has produced a set of web pages to help
employers and employees understand the implementation of the new minimum
wage law, signed by President Clinton on August 20. The main page has links
to information for employers, a summary of employees' rights, coverage of
minimum wage laws in each state, and 1996 amendments to the Fair Labor
Standards Act. Users may also follow a link to the DoL's Wage and Hour
Division for more complete information about workplace regulations. A new
minimum wage poster, for posting in the workplace, is available in Adobe
Acrobat (.pdf) format.
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Chess--Karpov Defeats "The World"
http://www.tele.fi/karpov/gameworl.htm
Last February the best chess player in the world, Gary Kasparov, defeated
Deep Blue, IBM's multiprocessing chess playing machine (see February 16, 1996 Scout
Report). Last week, Anatoly Karpov, arguably the world's second best
player, beat the "rest of the world," (an average of 250 players actively
voting on the world's next move) in 32 moves and about 4 and a half hours.
Highlight of this site, provided by Finland's Tele Chess, is a
Shockwave-enabled replay of the game, chronicling its progress move by
move. A non-Shockwave graphical and text-based game is also available, as
well as commentary and information on both Karpov, and chess.
[Back to Contents]
HS-Canada--Health and Safety Canada Discussion List
HS-Canada is a means of distributing messages to a group of individuals
with interests in occupational health and safety in a Canadian context.
Although the list is intended primarily for Canadians, anyone with an
interest in Canadian occupational health and safety issues is welcome to
subscribe. Messages may be sent in English or French. Messages sent to
HS-Canada may relate to any occupational or environmental health and safety
topic specific to Canada, specific to one or more provinces or territories,
or of interest to people working in health and safety in Canada.
To subscribe send email to:
majordomo@ccohs.ca
In the body of the message type:
subscribe hs-canada
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PC Lube and Tune--PC and Internet Hardware and
Software Tutorials
http://pclt.cis.yale.edu/pclt
PC Lube and Tune, provided by Howard Gilbert, a Senior Research Programmer
for Yale University's Computer and Information Systems, is a no-nonsense
set of tutorials pertaining to PC computing. Internet tutorials of interest
include "Distributed Applications and the Web," "Learning Java,"
"Introduction to TCP/IP," and "The Warp Internet Connection." There is also
much useful information about the PC and networking world in general. There
are tutorials on operating systems, considerations when changing operating
systems, and PC hardware, among others. Many of the tutorials are
illustrated. The power of this site is that even for those who don't get
"under the hood" very often, it explains concepts in clear, concise
language. And for those contemplating buying a PC, but for whom PC-features
language might as well be Sumerian, the first tutorial, "An introduction to
PC Hardware," is essential.
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Copyright Susan Calcari, 1996. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the Scout Report provided the copyright notice and this paragraph is preserved on all copies. The InterNIC provides information about the Internet to the US research and education community under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation: NCR-9218742. The Government has certain rights in this material.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Wisconsin - Madison, the National Science Foundation, AT&T, or Network Solutions, Inc.