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) or visit the
Web
version of the Scout Report. Subscription instructions are included at the
end of each report.
http://rs.internic.net/scout/report
Speech, Text, Image, and Multimedia Advanced Technology
Grant
The National Science Foundation (NSF), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) plan to jointly
support fundamental research devoted to understanding multimodal human
communication and its application to computer technology. This initiative
is focused on several areas of research: (1) automated processing of
multimodal human communications; (2) discourse and dialogue phenomena for
a wide variety of multimodal tasks; (3) new algorithm paradigms or
representation schemes for processing within a modality; and (4)
multimodal architectures that permit the separation of application
functionality from modality of user interaction. Academic and other
not-for-profit research institutions in the United States with computer
and information science research capability are invited to submit
proposals. Proposals may involve unfunded collaboration with industry or
other agencies of the government, however an academic or research
institution must be the prime research management organization submitting
the proposal. Proposals are due September 1, 1996. For further information
contact: Gary W. Strong, Program Director, Interactive Systems (703)
306-1928, gstrong@nsf.gov For more
information, including examples for possible proposal topics on the
solicitation:
http://www.cise.nsf.gov/iris/STIMULATE.html
gopher://gopher.nsf.gov/
gopher to: gopher.nsf.gov
select: Search NSF Publications
search: NSF ADJ 96-85
select: NSF 96-85
[Back to Contents]
The Learning Web -- U.S. Geological Survey
The Learning Web, provided by the U.S. Geological Survey, is dedicated to
K-12 education, exploration, and life-long learning. It is divided into
two sections, Teaching in the Learning Web, and Living in the Learning
Web. Teaching at present contains information about three main topics,
Global Change, Working with Maps, and Earth Science. Each of these
sections offers student activities, along with several images. Global
Change and Working with Maps also offer teacher's guides that contain
bibliographies and further information. Teaching also contains pointers to
lists of USGS maintained pointers (not limited to K-12 sites) in subjects
such as climate, earth science, hydrology, oceanography, and volcanology,
among others. Living in the Learning Web presents information on topics
such as household water supply, radon gas, preparing for volcanoes, and
the affect of weather on streams. Each one of these sections connects to a
pertinent USGS Web page, which in turn offers additional information and
pointers.
http://www.usgs.gov/education/index.html
[Back to Contents]
Proceedings of Organic Mathematics Workshop -- Simon
Fraser University
The Digital Proceedings of the Organic Mathematics Workshop, held at Simon
Fraser University December 12-14 1995, are available on the Web. Papers
are presented on such topics as Pfaff's Method, arithmetic properties of
binomial coefficients, the Hirsch Conjecture, and differential equations,
among others. However, what makes the site unique are the
"mathactivations" that accompany the papers. Here the user can
interactively enter variables to change outcomes using the mathematical
computer program Maple. The result are papers that are "organic" in that
they can change with user input, demonstrating interactively the concepts
they explain. The site also provides spaces for readers to comment
directly on the papers.
http://www.cecm.sfu.ca/organics/
Less graphical:
http://www.cecm.sfu.ca/organics/contents.html
[Back to Contents]
Diversity Teaching Resources -- Fisher College of
Business, Ohio State University
Fisher College of Business at the Ohio State University presents a page of
Teaching Diversity Resources as part of its diversity pages. The college
is committed to "recruiting and retaining the most talented students,
faculty, and staff while promoting diversity in culture and perspective."
The Teaching Diversity Resources page presents a bibliography of print
diversity resources that address diversity issues as they relate to
various aspects of business and employment. The resources are presented
alphabetically by topic, including accounting, finance/banking,
management, marketing, reference, and books. This resource is not meant to
be exhaustive, and user input is actively solicited. At present there are
over 200 citations, with strong sections in management and marketing.
Fisher's central diversity page is a large set of pointers to general
diversity resources in such topics as online magazines, business data,
age, disabilities, gender, religion, sexual orientation, class, African-,
Asian-, Hispanic- and European-American.
Teaching Diversity Resources:
http://www.cob.ohio-state.edu/~diversity/divbib.htm
Fisher diversity pages:
http://www.cob.ohio-state.edu/~diversity
[Back to Contents]
Learning Aids for North American Indian Languages --
UC - Davis
The Native American Studies Department at the University of California -
Davis has made available Learning Aids for North American Indian
Languages, a resource offering "information on published and
'semi-published' teaching and general reference materials for North
American Indian languages or groups of languages." It is a page of
pointers to citations for dictionaries, descriptive grammars, pedagogic
materials collections of bilingual narratives, and tapes, among others.
This large resource is arranged alphabetically by language group, and also
contains many cross references. Over 100 language groups are included,
from Abenaki to Yukon languages. Citations contain bibliographic
information and are thoroughly annotated. Learning Aids has been compiled
from the "Society of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas
Newsletter."
http://cougar.ucdavis.edu/nas/SSILA/names.html
[Back to Contents]
Society of Automotive Engineers
The highlight of the newly opened SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers)
Web site, under the Products section, is the listing of a vast array of
magazines, books, technical papers, standards, CD-ROMS, professional
development tools, and software engineering tools produced by the
organization. Thousands of items are available, and though there is a fee
to obtain each one, the listings themselves make up a virtual library
catalog of automotive engineering. The site also offers a large calendar
of SAE events including meetings and expositions, collegiate design
competitions, and professional development seminars, among others. The SAE
site also offers Engineer Al, a weekly feature on the world of
mobility.
http://www.sae.org/
Text only:
http://www.sae.org/text.htm
[Back to Contents]
Info-Quality-L Discussion List
The Info-Quality-L mailing list was established in March 1996 by the
Coombs Computing Unit, Research School of Social Sciences, ANU (Australian
National University) to provide a world-wide communications vehicle and a
central electronic archive for exchange of information dealing with the
criteria, guidelines, standards and operational procedures for evaluation,
development and management of high quality online, especially Web,
information resources. The forum is an integral part of the Information
Quality WWW Virtual Library.
To subscribe send email to:
majordomo@coombs.anu.edu.au
In the body of the message type:
subscribe Info-Quality-L your-e-mail-address
Information Quality WWW Virtual Library:
http://coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVL-InfoQuality.html
[Back to Contents]
White House Economic and Social Statistics Briefing
Rooms
The White House Web site has made access to current U.S. economic and
social data much easier by establishing the Economic and Social Statistics
Briefing Rooms. The power of these sites is that they not only offer brief
statistics and charts, but that they also link to the agency that is
responsible for the data, allowing interested users to obtain much more
detailed data when available. The Economic Briefing Room contains current
data on income, output, employment, unemployment and earnings, production
and business activity, prices, money, credit and securities markets,
transportation, and international statistics. The Social Briefing Room
contains data on crime, demographics, education, and health. These two
sites make the distinction between agencies that produce particular types
of data invisible to the user.
Economic Statistics Briefing Room:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/fsbr/esbr.html
Social Statistics Briefing Room:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/fsbr/ssbr.html
[Back to Contents]
Two U.S. Supreme Court Rulings
The full text of two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that could have
far reaching effects are available via the Internet. Docket 94-1039,
Romer, Governor of Colorado, et al. v. Evans et al. struck down part of
the Colorado State Constitution that prevented the passage of new anti-
discrimination laws against homosexuals. Docket 94-896, BMW of North
America, Inc. v. Gore set standards for determining when punitive damages
are "grossly excessive." The Syllabus (headnotes), opinion, and dissent,
are available in both cases.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/supct.may.1996.html
select the case(s) of interest
[Back to Contents]
The Guide to Museums and Cultural Resources
-- worldwide
The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County has recently opened the
Guide to Museums and Cultural Resources on the Web. It is meant to be a
comprehensive index for information about museums, aquaria, historical
parks and other cultural institutions. It is provided not only to allow
visitors to tour cyber exhibits when available, but to make information
available for travelers who might want to visit the actual museums.
Because of that, and in order to maintain a single list, this site is
arranged geographically by continent. Under each continent there are
country listings and, for the U.S., state listings as well. Each listing
consists of a name, URL, and language, and can also contain an email
contact and a description. Information about the resources is provided by
each institution. The site is fully searchable. Search results provide the
option to go to the museum or to the related geographic page, making it
easy to find other museums in the same area. The Guide also includes a
section on cybermuseums -- those that exist only on the Internet.
http://www.lam.mus.ca.us/webmuseums/
[Back to Contents]
Salon -- an e-zine about books, arts, and ideas
Salon is a weekly e-zine of "books, arts, and ideas." Articles cover news,
books, movies, TV, media, politics, digital culture, and modern life. A
browsable chronological archive is available, and articles can be read by
subject as well. It also contains an interactive table talk section, as
well as selected pointers to related sites.
http://www.salon1999.com/
Less graphical:
http://www.salon1999.com/archives/salontext.html
[Back to Contents]
NETLiNkS Flavor of the Week -- an African American
resource
The NetLiNkS Flavor of the Week site picks and annotates one African
American Web site a week based on "content and contribution to the black
community." Picks are eclectic in nature and have included music, film,
history, business, books, and women. Each pick is fully annotated so that
readers have a very good idea of what the site is about before they
visit. This is one of the better sources of African American Web
sites.
http://www.interlog.com/~csteele/flavour.html
[Back to Contents]
Baseball at the Park and By the Numbers
Two new baseball sites on the Web allow you to follow the action in real
time, and analyze statistics from the 1996 season on a day to day basis.
The Instant Ballpark allows spectators (if they have Java enabled
browsers) to actually view a Java applet graphic of the game. This harkens
back to the days before radio, when fans by the thousands stood in front
of
"animated billboards" to follow the progress of World Series games. The
Instant Ballpark provides tracer bullets to show the path of the ball, a
scrolling scoreboard, and the ability to switch between games with the
click of a mouse. And if you don't have Java capability, you can follow
current text descriptions, play by play. The site contains a complete
archive of all games played, standings, statistics, and schedule as well.
Another site, the High Boskage House Baseball Pages, offers detailed,
"normalized" statistical analysis, and attempts to account for the effect
that such factors as the ball park and the "lively ball" have on player
statistics. As such it takes actual player statistics and creates other
statistics from them. The results are, of course, controversial, and this
site is not for the feint of heart. But if you love statistics as much as
the game, it is worth looking at.
Instant Ballpark:
http://www.InstantSports.com/baseball.html
High Boskage House Baseball Pages
http://www.scruznet.com/~ewalker/baseball.html
More on statistical definitions at HBHBP:
http://www.scruznet.com/~ewalker/STATINFO.HTML
[Back to Contents]
JUDO-L Discussion List
The purpose of the JUDO-L mailing list is the public discussion of all
aspects of Judo. Judo is an Olympic sport, a form of self-defense, a
battlefield art, and a means of physical culture. Members of this list
discuss techniques, practice methods, competition results, applications as
a martial art, history, and traditions -- in short, the entire world of
modern Judo.
To subscribe send email to:
LISTSERV@UCONNVM.UCONN.EDU
In the body of the message type:
SUB JUDO-L yourfirstname yourlastname
[Back to Contents]
OCLC's NetFirst
NetFirst, provided by OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) is part of the
FirstSearch suite of bibliographic tools. It is OCLC's first large scale
attempt to create a bibliographic resource for searching Internet
resources. Simple searching can be done on title or subject headings, and
the search engine also supports complete Boolean AND/OR/NOT, proximity,
and field searching. Word lists (inverted indexes of the database) are
available in order to aid searching. Records contain bibliographic and
access information, along with detailed summaries of the resource.
NetFirst plans to incorporate all major Internet resource types in its
database. Web pages and listservs are available now. NetFirst should not
be confused with another OCLC service, InterCAT. NetFirst does not rely on
volunteers to create its database as InterCAT does. NetFirst "uses a
combination of automated collection and verification techniques and proven
abstracting and indexing practices." NetFirst also does not create MARC
(MAchine Readable Cataloging) records at this time. For these reasons, the
NetFirst database is already much larger than InterCAT. NetFirst is freely
available until July 31, at which time it will be sold to libraries as
part of the FirstSearch suite.
http://www.oclc.org/oclc/netfirst/netfirst.htm
For more information on InterCAT see the Scout Toolkit:
http://rs.internic.net/scout/toolkit/3b2-7.html
[Back to Contents]
HotBot
HotBot, a service of HotWired Ventures, uses the Inktomi search engine as
the heart of its new Internet search service. It claims to index the full
text contents of 50 million Web pages, as well as Usenet news and mailing
lists. This would make it the largest search engine on the Internet.
HotBot supports Boolean AND/OR/NOT, and phrase searching. It provides
relevance feedback with retrieval. It also supports chronological, domain,
and geographic searches, as well as media type searches such as Java,
VRML, and Acrobat. HotBot is a public "beta" site and encourages feedback
and bug reports.
http://www.hotbot.com
[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.