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
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end of each report.
http://rs.internic.net/scout/report
Collaborative Research on Learning Technologies --
a new NSF grant
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently announced a grant
program for Collaborative Research on Learning Technologies. The objective
is to stimulate research on the integration of technology with learning at
all levels of education--from K-12 to college and University, and from
learning in the classroom to self-directed and lifelong learning. Projects
supported through this program should involve a significant research
component in the information, computer, communications and computation
science and engineering aspects of learning technologies. The CRLT Program
will: 1) Fund research projects that establish collaborations involving
researchers from more than one discipline; 2) Fund a number of smaller
exploratory research grants that foster interdisciplinary collaborations
and explore possible new areas of research opportunity; 3) Establish one
or more real or virtual Centers for Collaborative Research on Learning
Technologies. Proposals that involve collaborations among institutions are
encouraged. Preliminary proposals are due June 1, 1996, and final
proposals are due July 15, 1996. CRLT is a joint program of 4 NSF
Directorates: Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering (CISE),
Education and Human Resources (EHR), Engineering (ENG), and Mathematical
and Physical Sciences (MPS). For more information on the CRLT program,
contact John C. Cherniavsky, CISE
(jchernia@nsf.gov), Nora H. Sabelli EHR
(nsabelli@nsf.gov), John W. Prados, ENG
(jprados@nsf.gov), or Alvin Thaler, MPS
(athaler@nsf.gov).
http://www.nsf.gov:80/nsf/homepage/progdead/deadline.htm
scroll to Collaborative Research on Learning Technologies (NSF 96-80)
gopher://stis.nsf.gov:70/7waissrc%3A/.waissrc/nsf-pubs.src?nsf9680
gopher to stis.nsf.gov
select: Search NSF publications and search: "learning ADJ technologies"
(without the quotes). NSF 96-80 is the CRLT proposal.
[Back to Contents]
Explorations -- an electronic book by the Cornell University
Theory Center
"Explorations," a Cornell Theory Center Web site, is designed as a virtual
book consisting of four chapters on ongoing scientific research : Above
and Beyond, Down to Earth, Living Things, and Particle Particles.
"Explorations" is intended to be an "interactive journey into the world of
computational research for a wide range of viewers." Topics include
cosmology, fluid flow, biodiversity, molecular biochemistry, ocean
resources and ecosystems, carpal tunnel syndrome, and fusion, among
others. What ties all these topics together in this virtual book is the
use of computer generated visualizations to demonstrate various concepts.
"Explorations" is readable only through Netscape 2.0 and incorporates
frames, animations, images, and VRML files. This is a site rich in
graphics and content and beautiful to view, but users with slow
connections must be patient. Note that it is important to read the
Navigation Tips section to make full use of the site.
http://www.tc.cornell.edu/er96/science96/Explorations/
Slightly less graphical:
http://www.tc.cornell.edu/er96/science96/Explorations/TOC/index.html
[Back to Contents]
OCLC SiteSearch WebZ -- an evaluation system at the
University of Missouri
The University of Missouri has made the OCLC (Online Computer Library
Center) SiteSearch WebZ evaluation system available on the Web. Searchable
databases include Current Contents, Expanded Academic Index, Legal
Resource Index, and Business Index. Searching can be done on title
keyword, author phrase, subject keyword, or journal title phrase. Boolean
searching and powerful proximity searching are available. Inverted indexes
of each searchable field dictionary are also available. The help files are
crucial to exploiting the power of the searching system, as they explain
basic searching, broadening and refining searches, and the indexes
available for searching in each database. Using the indexes allows
searchers to construct much more powerful searches. All help files are
located under "Help" on any search page. For additional information about
the
databases, click on "Descriptions of the databases and what they contain"
after you begin searching. Note that the University of Missouri
specifically
states that this an "initial implementation," which means that it is a
beta offering. However, the quality of the databases, as well as the
power of the searching system, make this site worth a visit.
http://sequoia.lso.missouri.edu:4300
[Back to Contents]
County and City Data Books for 1988 and 1994
-- University of Virginia
The University of Virginia Social Science Data Center has made "County and
City Data Books" for 1988 and 1994 available to be searched via the Web.
"County and City Data Book" is a Census Bureau publication which is
distributed every four to six years. It contains over 200 demographic,
economic, and governmental variables from both federal government and
private agency sources, presented for the purpose of multi-area
comparisons or single area profiles. It is designed to present a
"snapshot" of county, city, and state data for the year it covers. There
is usually a two year lag between the year of the book and the year of the
data. Users can choose areas and variables, and there is an option under
county and city data to pick all the counties or cities of a particular
state. Output can be sorted in three ways, and can be displayed to the
browser or saved in an ftp file as either browser output, or comma
delimited output for later importing into statistical applications.
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/socsci/ccdb
[Back to Contents]
Other searchable statistical databases at the University
of Virginia
"County and City Data Books" are only one of several statistical databases
that the Social Science Data Center has made available for interactive
searching. Also included are the "Regional Economic Information System"
(REIS) 1969-1993, with national, regional, state, and county employment,
income and earnings data; "County Business Patterns" 1977-1993, with 2
digit SIC (Standard Industrial Classification) business data on
establishments, employment, and payroll; "World Tables" (World Bank)
1950-1992, with 244 economic and social variables for 189 countries, and
the "1987 SIC Manual," among others. Also included are pointers to other
interactive statistical data resources.
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/socsci/interactives.html
[Back to Contents]
The Student Market -- used textbook exchange on the
Net
The Student Market Book Exchange allows students from every university in
the U.S. to post information about a textbook they'd like to sell, and
search for textbooks they'd like to buy. Users are able to browse books
posted from the same institution they are attending, and to post to all
institutions or to specific campuses. Forms are provided for listing the
subject area, title, edition, and even the condition of the book in
question. If there is extensive participation, the site could become a
handy book-buying alternative for students.
http://www.studentmkt.com
[Back to Contents]
The Calls For Papers mailing list at the University
of Pennsylvania's English Dept.
The University of Pennsylvania English Department provides the Calls For
Papers mailing list (CFP) to facilitate the announcement of conferences
and publishing opportunities in English and American literature. CFP
encourages conference or panel organizers and volume editors to post all
such announcements to this list, whether or not they subscribe.
Announcements can include upcoming conferences, panels, essay collections,
and special journal issues, and can include calls for completed papers,
abstracts, and proposals. Anything related to English and American
literature is welcome, including gender studies, other English-language
literature, cultural studies, queer theory, bibliography, humanities
computing, and comparative literature. Literature in other languages,
music, art, history, etc., are excluded unless they relate to English and
American literature, as are lecture series, regular meetings of small
local societies, fellowship opportunities, etc. An archive of the
announcements is maintained at both the CFP Web and gopher site, and is
available to be browsed by subject or date.
To subscribe send email to:
MAJORDOMO@ENGLISH.UPENN.EDU
In the body of the message type:
SUBSCRIBE CFP
http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/
gopher://gopher.english.upenn.edu:70/11/Announce/CFP/
gopher to: gopher.english.upenn.edu
select: Announcements and News about English/Calls For Papers
[Back to Contents]
Information Society Trends" from the European
Union
The European Union's Information Society Project Office (ISPO) now
provides its bimonthly newsletter, "Information Society Trends," via email
and the Web. The objectives of the ISPO include: "to create awareness of
the potential impact of the information society; to address information
society issues by providing a forum for the pooling of relevant solutions;
and to facilitate the launching of relevant international cooperation
actions." "Information Society Trends" contains information on information
technology related services, products, markets, companies, legislation,
policies, and technology issues. Each issue contains worldwide news broken
down by geographic area. Each "story" is no longer than a sentence or two,
but the strength of the report is that it allows readers to quickly keep
up with worldwide developments. A complete, browsable archive is kept on
the Information Society Trends Web page.
To subscribe send email to:
Majordomo@www.ispo.cec.be
In the body of the message type:
SUBSCRIBE ISTRENDS your e-mail address
http://www.ispo.cec.be/ispo/istrenddl.html
Complete Archive:
http://www.ispo.cec.be/ispo/press.html
For more information about ISPO:
http://www.ispo.cec.be/
For more information about other ISPO Information Society initiatives:
http://www.ispo.cec.be/infosoc/infosoc.html
[Back to Contents]
Smithsonian Virtual Festival: "VFest"
The Smithsonian Virtual Festival, "VFest," relates indirectly to the
Festival of American Folklife mounted every summer on the National Mall in
Washington D.C. Using multimedia materials developed for Mall presentation
combined with other research materials, this edition of VFest takes the
online visitor to a lu'au in Hawai'i, an African naming ceremony, and
borders with Mexico. The visitor can hear Mixteco music from the border
and pronunciation of Yoruba names for a child, see videos of a sacred
Indian dance and a spontaneous hula at a private party, and try recipes
for Hawaiian and African food. The Borders pages provide aids for
classroom teaching.
http://www.si.edu/folklife/vfest
[Back to Contents]
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has recently opened a Web site.
It consists of three parts: a guide to the NEA, with an overview of the
NEA grant making program that includes applicant guidelines and staff
information, as well as a hyperlinked list of state and regional arts
organizations; an arts resource center, with a listing of NEA
publications, information about international funding opportunities, and a
large listing of arts service organizations in over 20 subject categories;
and "arts.community," an online NEA publication that contains features
such as a focus on a particular community, a featured artist, a writers
corner, and endowment news, as well as links to other arts related
sites.
http://arts.endow.gov/
[Back to Contents]
The Population Bomb
Paul Ehrlich and the Population Bomb: The human population is likely to
double by the middle of the 21st century, soaring past an estimated 10
billion people on the planet. The new PBS television documentary and
companion Web site, Paul Ehrlich and The Population Bomb (broadcast
premiere: April 26), looks at the ideas of one scientist whose theories
link overpopulation to a broad range of global problems. The Internet
content includes: current statistics about the world's dwindling natural
resources; a directory of organizations committed to improving conditions
resulting from overpopulation; teacher resources and a classroom "word
game"; a glossary of key terms and a reading list; a population timeline
dating from 10,000 BC to the 1994 World Population conference in Cairo;
and background information about Paul Ehrlich and the producers.
http://www.pbs.org/population_bomb/
[Back to Contents]
Internet Daily Stock Report
The Internet Daily Stock Report contains a daily market recap and morning
report on how Internet related stocks are faring. Provided by Internet
World, it also contains an Internet stock index of over twenty companies,
with names, stock symbols, and business type. Hypertext links to the home
pages of those companies are provided.
http://netday.iworld.com/stocks/
[Back to Contents]
Johann Sebastian Bach
For lovers of Johann Sebastian Bach a visit to the J.S. Bach Home Page
will be worth the trip. This very comprehensive site appears to include
pointers to everything about Bach available on the Net, including listings
of his complete works, MIDI files of his recordings, and a calendar of
upcoming events related to his music. The site is searchable, and the
complete works listing can be browsed by category, title, year, instrument
& title, instrument & year, BWV number, or even by key. The Recommended
Recordings section is organized by title, conductor/performer, instrument,
BWV, record label, and recent submissions. Also available are links to
biographies, photographs, literature, and other sites offering resources
on Bach.
http://tile.net/bach/index.html
[Back to Contents]
Conferencing on the World Wide Web
Conferencing on the World Wide Web--Interactive discussions and
group forums: If you want your Web site to have pages that allow
interactive text based discussion forums, the Conferencing on the World
Wide Web page is a great resource to use to find an exhaustive list of
pointers to information about commercial software, free software,
proprietary systems, and "almost web conferencing." Each listing under
free and commercial software provides a short annotation of how the system
works, platform availability, examples of the software in action (when
available) and either the download site or pricing information. At
present, information on over 50 conferencing products is available. This
resource covers text based web conferencing (discussion forums and
groupware) systems, not web based teleconferencing systems such as
CuSeeme.
http://freenet.msp.mn.us/~drwool/webconf.html
[Back to Contents]
ISDN InfoCentre
For Internauts for whom the letters ISDN stand for I Still Do Not...
understand, the ISDN InfoCentre is the place to go. ISDN (Integrated
Services Digital Network) is an alternative to a modem connection to the
Internet, and can deliver the Internet to home and office at up to four
times the speed of the fastest modem connection currently available. The
InfoCentre, provided by Open Communication Networks, Inc., gives basic
(and not so basic) information about setting up an ISDN connection. The
ISDN in Plain English section provides a basic FAQ for the ISDN beginner.
ISDN 101--Solutions for the Beginner is a work in progress, but provides
(after registering) network diagrams and interactive information to help
users understand their own ISDN requirements. Dear Mr. ISDN answers email
questions about ISDN, and includes a "propeller heads" section for more
technical questions. The InfoCentre also provides ISDN ordering links to
major national ISDN providers, information about hardware, and other ISDN
links.
http://www.isdn.ocn.com/
[Back to Contents]
Updates and Additions to Scout Toolkit
Recent updates and additions to the Scout Toolkit include:
Search Tools--Searchable Indexes: The WebCrawler annotation has been
updated, as WebCrawler now offers a browsable subject directory of sites,
as well as more powerful search capabilities.
http://rs.internic.net/scout/toolkit/3b1-1.html
Search Tools--Specialized Directories: Savetz Publishing's The Un-Official
Internet Booklist, with over 475 books about the Internet, has been
added.
http://rs.internic.net/scout/toolkit/3b4-15.html
Specialized Tools: The Internet Telephone section has been reworked, with
five new Windows and one new Macintosh software product pointers, as well
as a pointer to a comparison of 12 Internet telephone products recently
done by c|net.
http://rs.internic.net/scout/toolkit/3d4.html
Specialized Tools: An annotation has been added for video and audio
streaming technologies, which promise real time viewing of video and audio
files.
http://rs.internic.net/scout/toolkit/3d8.html
The Scout Toolkit:
http://rs.internic.net/scout/toolkit
[Back to Contents]
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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.