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
Institute For Academic Technology--University of North
Carolina
http://www.iat.unc.edu/
Cybrarian's Desk
http://www.iat.unc.edu/cybrary/cybrary.html
The Institute for Academic Technology (IAT) at the University of North
Carolina, "is dedicated to the proposition that information technology can
be a valuable tool for improving the quality of student learning,
increasing access to education, and containing the costs of instruction."
With that in mind, its web site provides a clearinghouse of information
devoted to the subject. The highlight of the site is its publications
section, which includes the full text of academic and technical papers on
such subjects as converting classroom courses to distributed courses, using
multimedia to enhance instruction, and classroom design in the age of
information technology, among others. In addition, this section holds
complete archives of IAT Infobits, a monthly information and
instruction technology newsletter, The Monitor, a new biweekly
publication that explores hot topics in instructional technology, and
information resource guides on 15 different topics ranging from copyright
to grants. The site also contains information about IAT's work in
consulting, consortia, technology, and workshops. The Cybrarian's Desk
contains a site map, as well as external links to related topics.
[Back to Contents]
Lawrence and His Laboratory
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Research-Review/Magazine/1981/
Lawrence Berkeley Lab Image Library
http://imglib.lbl.gov/ImgLib/
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory is celebrating its 65th anniversary this year,
and this frames-based web site is a tribute to its founder. Ernest Orlando
Lawrence, who invented the cyclotron, opened the way to "a Golden Age of
particle physics and revolutionary discoveries about the nature of the
universe." The story was originally told by the lab's public information
department in 1981. In addition to presenting the accomplishments of
Lawrence and the laboratory from 1931 to 1958, the site displays a large
collection of photos from the Berkeley Lab Online Photo Archive. These are
organized by topic, including accelerators, buildings, history, particle
detection, people, publications, and research. Images are searchable and
browsable, and all are described. Users also have a choice of resolutions
for display of the images. All in all, this site provides a personal look
into one of the foremost physics labs in the world, at a time when its
discoveries were literally shaking the world.
[Back to Contents]
Russia's Demographic "Crisis"
http://www.rand.org/publications/CF/CF124/index.html
The Rand Organization has recently made available via the Web the full text
of Russia's Demographic "Crisis." "This volume is an outgrowth of a
June 5-6, 1995 conference at which a group of Russian demographers
presented the results of their pioneering research on Russia's demographic
'crisis' to American colleagues from the Rand Organization, the University
of California-Los Angeles, the University of Southern California, and the
International Programs Center of the US Bureau of the Census." The six
papers that make up the volume deal with two broad categories: "(1)
fertility and family planning; and (2) issues in the area of health and
mortality--health status, health care, and population aging." The scope of
a Russian demographic crisis is hotly debated, as well as "the
interrelations between economic reforms and demographic trends in Russia."
Russia's Demographic "Crisis" should shed some light on this
topic.
[Back to Contents]
Chemistry and Industry Magazine
http://ci.mond.org/
Society of Chemical Industry Home Page
http://sci.mond.org/
Chemistry and Industry Magazine, a bimonthly product of the Society of
Chemical Industry, provides selected full-text articles from the print
magazine in the areas of news, commentary, features, latest results from
chemical literature, and highlights from the latest European patents. In
addition, there is a searchable and browsable archive of past issues, a
daily news section, and searchable jobs and meetings databases. The Society
of Chemical Industry is "an international association of about 6000 members
aimed at furthering applied chemistry." One of the highlights of its web
site is its publication section, where, under "electronic publications,"
readers can find updated daily news, jobs and meetings listings on
chemistry, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and the environment. The SCI
home page also carries information about the organization, as well as
details about its over 35 subject and geographical groups and their meeting
schedules.
[Back to Contents]
Who elects the President?--NickNacks Collaborative
Education on the Internet
http://www1.minn.net:80/~schubert/VoteSum.html
NickNacks: Collaborative Education on the Internet
http://www1.minn.net:80/~schubert/NickNacks.html
Who Elects the President? is a new collaborative education project for
grades 5-12 from the NickNacks Telecollaborative Learning project. It will
run from October 2 to November 22, 1996 and is intended to be a
"multidisciplinary project, incorporating activities in civics, language
arts, mathematics, science, art and technology." Balloting is to be
simulated for the upcoming US presidential election. The project is
designed for individual classrooms or entire schools to participate in.
Balloting, result compilation, and data analysis materials, as well as
materials for several optional activities, will be provided by October 1,
1996. While American students are being solicited to participate in the
balloting exercise, international students are encouraged to participate
(after the actual November 5, 1996 election) in analyzing the results and
contributing their opinions to the forthcoming NickNacks forum Students
OnPolitics Online.
[Back to Contents]
Library of Congress Classification System--Unofficial
Guide
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8459/lc.html
This very simple Web site has one very useful function: it contains the
outline of the Library of Congress Classification System. While the outline
is not searchable, users may browse through the twenty-one categories,
which are then arranged by sub-category and number range. For the library
user who would like to be convinced that the LOC system is a logical
organizational structure, this is a good start. This site will be most
useful to library patrons who need to get an overall sense of the LOC
system, and to library staff members who are assisting them.
[Back to Contents]
The CeramicsWeb--San Diego State
University
http://apple.sdsu.edu/ceramicsweb/ceramicsweb.html
The highlight of the CeramicsWeb, provided by Richard Burkett, a professor
of art - ceramics at San Diego State University, is its section on ceramics
databases, which includes searchable databases of tested and untested glaze
recipes, "a searchable database of glaze and clay ingredient analyses," and
a pointer to an interactive glaze calculation page, among others.
CeramicsWeb also contains pointers to articles on ceramics, electron
microscope photographs of clay, ceramics software, and links to other
ceramics and arts related sites.
[Back to Contents]
PTHER--Physical Therapy Discussion List
PTHER is a forum for the exchange of ideas pertaining to treatment
protocols, clinic management, and the general advancement of the field of
physical therapy. Practicing physical therapists, students of physical
therapy, and those interested in physical therapy and related fields are
encouraged to subscribe and participate. The list is not moderated.
To subscribe send email to:
MAJORDOMO@MAJORDOMO.SRV.UALBERTA.CA
In the body of the message type:
SUBSCRIBE PTHER your@email.address
[Back to Contents]
FAQ Finder
http://ps.superb.net/FAQ/
If you think FAQ (Frequently Asked Question) collections are only good for
finding information about computers and technology, a visit to the FAQ
Finder will show you otherwise. This collection of pointers to FAQ sites
currently lists 28 categories, arranged in alphabetical order in a framed
box on the side of the browser window. Within each category users will find
dozens of FAQ collections, browsable from within the framed interface of
the FAQ Finder. One expects to find Internet and computer FAQs in a
collection like this, but here users will also find FAQ collections on
animals, art and music, personal finance, health, and other topics. Of
course, since this is a collection of pointers to other sites and not a
comprehensively maintained FAQ archive, users will find the occasional dead
link or outdated information. But having so many FAQ resources available
from within one site may allow you to find quickly the information you're
looking for.
[Back to Contents]
Finance Area
http://www.tsi.it/finanza/index.html
Central Banks of the World
http://adams.patriot.net/~bernkopf/
Finance Area, provided by Top Services International, is a giant
frames-based meta-page of pointers to international finance sites in the
areas of companies, markets, the European Union, stock, equity markets, and
financial analysis, among others. Sites are not annotated, but the sheer
number of sites along with the international flavor is what makes this site
unique. Note that users must navigate from pointers page to pointers page
inside of the left hand frame and this can be somewhat confusing. The
opening page of any section is just a description of the various
subsections within that section. Note also that almost all of the graphics
at this site (which slow down transmission considerably, depending on the
condition of the network between the user and Venice, Italy), can be turned
off with minimal loss of content.
Central Banks of the World is a pointers page to central banks and central
bank information for over 45 countries, as well as multilateral financial
institutions, research and training establishments, and conference
information. To show how little is generally known about the history of
central banking in the United States, this site includes an email message
sent to the webmaster of the First Bank of the United States, promoting a
certain software company's web interactivity applications. Of course, since
the First Bank of the United States was closed in 1811, its web site is
primarily historical. The Central Banks site lists over 30 Internet
directories and pointers pages that list the First Bank of the United
States as a functioning financial institution. To help remedy this
situation, the site includes a pointer to a brief history of banking in the
US.
[Back to Contents]
RxList--The Internet drug index
http://www.rxlist.com/
There are two aspects of this drug information site that make it
distinctively useful: first, it uses fuzzy logic as well as wildcard
searching, just in case your spelling of long chemical names is imperfect;
second, it's free. Don't let the simplicity of the search form fool you;
while the searching is easy, it's also powerful. Search results come in the
form of a listing of brand name, generic name, and category; more
information on many of the drugs in the database, and on all of the 200
most frequently prescribed drugs in America, is available through links in
the search results listing. The interactions database is particularly
useful, since it can either search for interactions among categories of
drugs or between a particular drug (that the user enters) and all of the
200 most frequently prescribed drugs at once (this search uses the Alta
Vista search engine to generate results). Users may also display these most
frequently prescribed drugs as an alphabetical or ranked list.
[Back to Contents]
The Gist--TV and the Internet
http://www.theGIST.com/
Gist TV listings
http://www.theGIST.com/index.dpg
At the heart of The Gist TV and the Internet site is a listing of TV shows
for the day on over 35 cable and network channels. Listings can be viewed
in a grid, and by time, channel or category. Also included are Gist's daily
best web picks, daily best TV picks, and special columns about TV. For the
couch potato who spends a lot of time also looking at the computer screen,
Gist can be a virtual TV Guide. Note that this is a very graphical
site, as would be expected for a site about TV.
[Back to Contents]
CLASSOF64--Teenage Life in the 60s Discussion
List
CLASSOF64-This is the place to come to talk about what it was like to be a
teenager during the 1960s. Ask questions, share some of your favorite
memories. Get the name of that song you loved. What did you call a pair of
shoes? Was growing up a teenager on the East Coast the same as on the West
Coast? Subscribe and find out. CLASSOF64 could be the most fun you've had
since you were a teenager. Join in on the fun as CLASSOF64 recount, recall,
and remember what our life was like as teenagers in the '60s.
To subscribe send email to:
hub@xc.org
In the body of the message type:
subscribe classof64
[Back to Contents]
Searching The Internet: Some Basic Considerations and
Automated Search Indexes
http://rs.internic.net/nic-support/nicnews/enduser.html
This article, which appears in the September issue of InterNIC Newsletter,
is a primer that looks at eight Internet search engines (Alta Vista, Open
Text, WebCrawler, Excite, Infoseek Guide, Lycos, HotBot, and Infoseek
Ultra), from the point of view of user search features, rather than speed
or size of index. It also gives brief explanations of such features as
Boolean searching, proximity operators, field searching, phrase searching,
and truncation searching. The article is accompanied by a table that gives
the basic syntax for how to use these features. It also speaks to some
fundamental considerations for creating a search strategy. "Searching the
Internet" will be at this URL until October 1, when it will be replaced by
another End User's Corner, and moved to the site's archive.
[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.