Subject: The Scout Report -- August 1, 1997 -- HTML Version Sent: 1/8/97 02:32 pm Received: 2/8/97 01:07 am From: Scout Project, scout@CS.WISC.EDU Reply-To: The Scout Report (HTML Version), SCOUT-REPORT-HTML@INTERNIC.NET To: SCOUT-REPORT-HTML@LISTS.INTERNIC.NET The Scout Report - August 1, 1997

The Scout Report

Volume 4, Number 14
August 1, 1997

A Publication of the Internet Scout Project
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.

An Acrobat .pdf version of this report is available for printing and distributing locally. For information on Adobe Acrobat Reader, visit the Adobe site.

Visit the Scout Report web page at: http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/report/

Send comments and contributions to: scout@internic.net

In This Issue:

Research and Education

General Interest

Network Tools

Where Are They Now

Research and Education

IDEAL: Tables of Contents and Abstracts from Academic Press
http://www.idealibrary.com/
Academic Press Journals Print and Electronic Publication Dates
http://www.apnet.com/www/ap/whatsnew.htm
Academic Press
http://www.apnet.com/
Academic Press, publishers of over 175 scholarly journals in thirty subjects, provides free tables of contents and abstracts to those journals at its IDEAL (International Digital Electronic Access Library) site at this time. After guest login, users can browse or keyword search (quick search mode only) tables of contents and abstracts. Journals are divided into eight major subject categories, with numerous subcategories under them. AP provides print and electronic publication dates to aid users in navigating IDEAL. IDEAL is part of a much larger fee-based service that provides full text of journal articles to subscribers via site licence. At the AP site, users can search a book catalog of more than 6,000 titles, and read science related news stories featured daily in inScight. [JS]
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Visionary--A Dictionary of Terminology in Vision Research [frames]
http://cns-web.bu.edu/pub/laliden/WWW/Visionary/Visionary.html
Lars Liden of Boston University's Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems produced this browsable online dictionary of over 350 terms related to human and animal vision, from Amblyopia to Zollner Illusion, and including "biological and machine vision, visual psychophysics, visual neuroscience and other related fields." Entries offer brief descriptions with occasional graphics and hot-linked cross references to related terms. There are also appendices of specialized terms, including one on the Cortical Areas, which maps each definition to its location on an outline of a Rhesus monkey brain. [AG]
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Scholarly Societies Project--University of Waterloo
http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/society/
URL Stability Index for SSP
http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/society/URL_stability_index.html
The University of Waterloo (Canada) Electronic Library provides this massive meta-index of over 1,100 scholarly societies, from the Abrasive Engineering Society to the Yuen Ren Society for the Promotion of Chinese Dialect Fieldwork. The list can be browsed alphabetically or by any of 39 subjects, and is also searchable. Features include a meeting/conference announcement list, full text archives of scholarly societies' serial publications when available, and pointers to other scholarly societies resources. There is also an essay on the stability of URLs for this meta-page that may interest maintainers of other large meta-pages. [JS]
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Interactive Geometry and Trigonometry Resources [Java]
Euclid's Elements
http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html
A Short Course in Trigonometry
http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/trig/
These two resources, provided by Professor David Joyce of Clark University, while still under construction, are excellent examples of how Java can be used to explain basic principles of geometry and trigonometry. Euclid's Elements contains the text of the thirteen books of this classical treatise, illustrated with geometry applets. In addition to these applets, many sections are accompanied by "guides," supplemental explanations of concepts by Joyce. A Short Course in Trigonometry is divided into thirteen sections (twelve are currently available), accompanied by instructive Java applets and selected answered exercises. In both resources Professor Joyce shows a wonderful ability to simplify complex concepts and demystify geometry and trigonometry. Figures are provided for those without Java capability. [JS]
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Ancient Mesoamerican Civilizations
http://www.angelfire.com/ca/humanorigins/index.html
Provided by Kevin L. Callahan, an anthropology graduate student at the University of Minnesota, this site consists of short, referenced essays, organized by civilization (Maya, Mixtec, Zapotec, and Aztec), on Mesoamerican writing systems, governments, and religions. Users can also read essays on the Mayan calendar, "How the Sky Works," and on Maya and Zapotec political structures. These essays, along with a selective, eclectic list of Mesoamerican Internet resources, and a brief bibliography, form a good introduction to the topic of ancient Mesoamerican civilizations. [JS]
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ERICNews--Educational Resources Info Center Bulletins
The ERICNews listserv is the Educational Resources Information Center's read-only mailing list. Subscribers will receive bimonthly updates on the latest ERIC system wide initiatives, products, and services. ERIC, part of the National Library of Education (NLE), is a nationwide education information system sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI). Postings to the ERICNews listserv include information about: new ERIC document delivery services; new ERIC publications and products; ERIC Web site enhancements and updates; and system wide administrative announcements. [JS]

To subscribe send email to:
LISTPROC@ASPENSYS.COM
In the body of the message type:
subscribe ERICNews Yourfirstname Yourlastname
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General Interest

Financial Action Task Force On Money Laundering--OECD [.pdf]
http://www.oecd.org/fatf/
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has established this site, which features a publications page that includes the last six annual reports on task force activity (1991/2-1994/5 reports are available in Adobe Acrobat [.pdf] format only). These reports detail money laundering "methods and countermeasures," and "monitor the implementation of anti-money laundering measures." Also included are reports on "money laundering typologies." Users can find news of FATF's work and forty recommendations to combat money laundering. Parts of the site are available in French, German, and Portuguese, as well as English. [JS]
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Two Annual Reports From UNICEF
Progress of Nations 1997
http://www.unicef.org/pon97/
State of the World's Children 1997 [pdf, 103p.]
http://www.unicef.org/sowc97/
Previous editions:
http://www.unicef.org/apublic/
Gopher access:
gopher://gopher.unicef.org:70/11/.s2pubdocs
gopher to: gopher.unicef.org
select: UNICEF Public Information
The United Nations Children's Fund recently released the 1997 versions of these two publications. Progress of Nations assesses the well being of the world's nations in terms of sanitation, nutrition, health, education, and women. Each section is accompanied by a "Progress and Disparity" section, and the entire publication includes a social indicators and statistical profiles table. State of the World's Children discusses a single topic related to children's welfare. This year's issue (available on the web in Adobe Acrobat [.pdf] format only, ascii text available on UNICEF's gopher site) concerns child labor. There are two chapters: "The Convention on the Rights of the Child: A new era for children," and "Children at risk: Ending hazardous and exploitative child labour." SOWL also provides ten statistical tables and fourteen-page length sidebars (panels). The 1995-96 Progress of Nations, and the 1996 State of the World's Children are available on UNICEF'S web site. Partial or full archives back to 1993 are available on UNICEF's gopher site. [JS]
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CCTA Government Information Service--Gateway to UK Government Sites
http://www.open.gov.uk/
No frames:
http://www.open.gov.uk/frames/welcome.htm
Internauts interested in UK government web sites will find this site, provided by the Central Computer and Telecommuncations Agency, a UK Office of Public Service agency, a useful bookmark. Alphabetically and topically browsable (organizational and functional index respectively), and searchable by keyword, this site also provides a subject-based public services directory. GIS features strong local government coverage, with pointers to over 250 sites at present. [JS]
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Stormy Weather
The Weather Channel Storm Encyclopedia
http://www.weather.com/breaking_weather/encyclopedia/
Storm '97 Hurricane Central
http://www.storm97.com/
These two sites can prepare interested Internauts for the US hurricane season. The Storm Encyclopedia provides users with all they ever wanted to know about severe weather and tips on how to prepare and plan for it. It also offers links to current satellite weather maps. Hurricane Central, provided by Cox Interactive Media, is designed to prepare users for the 1997 hurricane season now. This site has information on how hurricanes form, how to prepare for the storm season, and a number of stories on past hurricanes and cleanup efforts. It features satellite weather images, current storm reports, chat and discussion forums, and a searchable index. Hurricane Central also links to the Lightning Stalker site, a fun collection of David Stillings' lightning photos. [MD]
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HeartTalk-L--Heart Patients Mailing List
HeartTalk-L is a discussion list for people with heart disease and their family and friends. HeartTalk-L is an unmoderated mailing list for discussions of all aspects of life affected by heart disease. Any topic concerning heart disease is welcome on this list. Note that this list is meant as a support group and not as a replacement for proper medical attention. [JS]

To subscribe send email to:
LISTSERV@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU
In the body of the message type:
SUB HeartTalk-L
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Network Tools

Global Knowledge 97 [RealAudio, .pdf]
http://www.globalknowledge.org
The World Bank developed the Global Knowledge 97 website as a forum for discussing the use of "knowledge and information as tools of sustainable and equitable development." Visitors to this site can listen to speeches at the Knowledge for Development in the Information Age Conference held in Toronto, Canada on June 22-25, 1997 (RealAudio format). The conference aimed "to assure that developing countries and the world's poor participate fully in the global knowledge economy." The preliminary consultants' report (129 pages) prepared for the conference is also available at the site (Adobe Acrobat [.pdf] format only). To facilitate dialogue on the conference's theme, a mailing list, GKD97, has been set up as well. [THN]
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Digital Comet--Tools for Web Professionals
http://www.digitalcomet.com/
Digital Comet, Inc. offers a great solution for building, standardizing, and testing an entire website. The Comet products, CometSite for Apache/Netscape/WebSTAR Servers, CometPage, and CometPage for BBEdit, are available for various platforms such as Solaris, IRIX, BSDI, NT and Macintosh. At Internet Scout, CometPage for BBEdit (a BBEdit extension) and CometSite for WebSTAR (a WebSTAR plug-in) were tested. This Comet combo offers web administrators a great deal of control over customizing a website and reasonable site management capabilities. Some of the features include support and storage of templates and macros, on-the-fly inclusion of macro content and Comet commands, three types of counters, redirects, remote website administration, and more. Users can also opt to simply publish a website manually with CometPage, but would forfeit on-the-fly capabilities in doing so. Demo versions, documentation, and a more detailed discussion of the products are available. [TB]
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Where Are They Now

Volume 1, Number 14: The Scout Report for July 29, 1994
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/report/archive/7-29-94.html
FinanceNet
http://www.financenet.gov/
GovNews Project
http://www.govnews.org/
Library of Congress
http://lcweb.loc.gov/
FedWorld Information Network
http://www.fedworld.gov/
LabStats--Bureau of Labor Statistics Data
ftp://stats.bls.gov/
ftp to: stats.bls.gov
http://stats.bls.gov/datahome.htm
World Wide Web development moves from CERN to W3O
http://www.cern.ch/CERN/WorldWideWeb/WWWandCERN.html
http://www.w3.org/
The July 29, 1994 issue of the Scout Report contained a treasure chest of content rich information sites and an historic announcement. Vice President Gore's National Performance Review opened the doors of FinanceNet, designed to "link government financial management professionals together in an effort to innovate and optimize the way governments manage taxpayer's resources." In addition to growing into a gigantic site featuring a myriad of resources and thirty topic related mailing lists, it has recently launched the GovNews Project, an attempt to disseminate government information via Usenet news. The Library of Congress website opened, highlighted by an early version of the American Memory site, as well an exhibits program and connections to the book catalog. Today the LOC site is one of the largest and most content rich of any kind in the world. The American Memory site alone hosts 27 multi-media collections, with five new ones in development. There ar sixteen online exhibitions, nine research resources, and Thomas, which contains the most exhaustive information on the daily life of a national legislature in the world. And yes, MARVEL and LOCIS are still going strong. FedWorld in 1994 contained an astounding 100 pointers to federal government information servers. Today its FTP site contains a searchable database of over 15,000 files. It also contains the Government Information Locator Service (GILS), a searchable database of over 7,400 Supreme Court decisions, and a federal jobs announcement database, among others. LabStats started out as (and still is) an ftp archive of thousands of data series from the BLS. Today BLS also provides these series as interactive databases (Most Requested Series and Selective Access), which allow researchers to extract just the data they need from over 15 subject areas. Finally, the World Wide Web, born and raised by Tim Berners-Lee at the European Lab for Particle Physics, announced a collaboration with MIT (Massachussetts Institute of Technology) to form a World Wide Web Organization (W3O). Today that World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has become a nerve center for web standards development, most recently publishing a public draft of HTML 4.0 standards (discus sed in the July 11, 1997 Scout Report). [JS]
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Copyright Susan Calcari, 1994-1997. 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.

The Scout Report (ISSN 1092-3861) is published weekly by Internet Scout

Susan Calcari -- Managing Editor
Jack Solock -- Editor
Jeannine Ramsey -- Production Editor
Teri Boomsma -- Contributor
Michael de Nie -- Contributor
Aimee D. Glassel -- Contributor
Matthew Livesey -- Contributor
Thiam Hee Ng -- Contributor
Amy Tracy Wells -- Contributor

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© 1997 Internet Scout Project

InterNIC Information & Education Services

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