A Publication of the Internet Scout Project
Computer Science Department, University of Wisconsin
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The Molecular Modelling Database (MMDB)--NCBI [Cn3D, RasMol
or MAGE]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Structure/index.html
NCBI,
the National Center for Biotechnology Information, provides this seachable
database, consisting of "experimentally determined three-dimensional
biomolecular structures" of macromolecules obtained from the Brookhaven
Protein DataBank (PDB). The PDB currently contains more than 7600 proteins, 600
nucleic acids, and 12 carbohydrates, and adds new entries weekly. Designed
"to facilitate comparative analysis involving 3-D structures," MMDB
may be queried directly using author name(s) or descriptive text terms.
Structures may be viewed using Cn3D, RasMol or MAGE; see instructions for
viewing and downloading in the FAQ section on site. [LXP]
[Back to Contents]
Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) Citation Index
(CCI)
http://altmed.od.nih.gov/oam/resources/cam-ci/
The
National Institutes of Health, Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) has released
a prototype version of the CAM Citation Index (CCI), a bibliographic index to
the scientific literature on complementary and alternative medicine which has
appeared in the National Library of Medicine's Medline database from 1966 to
1997. CCI includes over 90,000 citations in the broad areas of Alternative
Systems of Medicine (Traditional as well as Western medicine); Herbal and Manual
Healing; Mind/Body Control; Diet, Nutrition, and Lifestyle Changes;
Bioelectromagnetic Applications; and Pharmacological and Biological Treatment.
Users can search by keyword or browse by Systems, Methods, or Diseases.
Retrieved records can be displayed in HTML or bibliographic format. Clicking on
the Home button at the bottom of the screen will take users to information about
OAM, CAM, grants, research, and funding opportunities. The final version of CCI
is scheduled to be released in December, 1998. [GW]
[Back to Contents]
The Transnational China Project
[RealPlayer]
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~tnchina/
Hosted
by Rice University and sponsored by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public
Policy, the Transnational China Project is an effort to develop new approaches
to the study of contemporary China through the use of advanced technologies and
inter-institutional collaboration. Scholars from Duke, UCLA, Harvard, Rice, and
others have contributed commentary, curriculum materials, and other pedagogical
resources. The ultimate goal of the project is "a state-of-the-art,
multi-lingual, electronic archive . . . available for both course development
and research." Currently, users will find the text of several speeches and
a roundtable, lectures and syllabi, student projects, and an interesting
presentation on Outdoor Political Advertising in Shanghai. The section on
political ads also examines the conflation of corporate advertising with public
service announcements; in one instance, Shanghai citizens are instructed:
"Drink Pepsi/Respect Greenery and Stay Out of the Flower Beds."! [MD]
[Back to Contents]
National Institute for Urban School
Improvement
http://www.edc.org/urban/
Funded by the
US Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, the National
Institute for Urban School Improvement seeks to combine the reform efforts
pertaining to special needs children with general reform efforts for all
children in urban schools. Their mission is "to support inclusive urban
communities, schools, and families to build their capacity for sustainable,
successful urban education." This site features an electronic newsletter,
E-news; a forums section offering Public, Leadership, Working Group, and
District dialog opportunities; a browseable and searchable Resource Database;
and a regularly-updated Calendar section. Related links and a listing of
listservs direct visitors to additional resources. [JR]
[Back to Contents]
National Snow and Ice Data Center
http://www-nsidc.colorado.edu/
Established
by the National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 1982 as an
information and referral center for glaciological research, the National Snow
and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) maintains data information on "snow cover and
avalanches, glaciers and ice sheets, floating ice, ground ice and permafrost,
atmospheric ice, paleoglaciology and ice cores." In addition to its role as
an information resource, NSIDC "archives analogue and digital snow and ice
data, creates and distributes data products, and maintains a large library
collection in support of snow and ice research." From Global Annual
Freezing and Thawing Indices to the Former Soviet Union Monthly Precipitation
Archive, users may explore myriad snow and ice data. For information on current
research and available data, or answers to frequently asked questions, see the
NSIDC's Notes and Updates sections. [LXP]
[Back to Contents]
Two from the US Census Bureau
Money Income
in the United States: 1997 [.pdf]
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income97.html
Poverty
in the United States: 1997 [.pdf]
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/povty97.html
The
Census Bureau has released two new reports based on the March 1998 Current
Population Survey. Given all the press on America's booming economy, it should
come as no surprise that the reports contain good news. For the third
consecutive year, households in the United States experienced an annual increase
in their real median income while the poverty rate fell from 13.7 percent in
1996 to 13.3 percent in 1997. The statistical number of poor and the degree of
income inequality, however, remain unchanged. Both reports offer several tables
and the text of press releases which highlight national-level findings as well
as income and poverty statistics for African-Americans, Asian and Pacific
Islanders, and people of Hispanic Origin. [MD]
[Back to Contents]
Gothic_Lit--Discussion of the Gothic Literature
Genre
http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/Gothic_Lit
Gothic_Lit
is a moderated, largely academic-level discussion of Gothic literature, from
Horace Walpole's groundbreaking Castle of Otranto through modern
neo-Gothic works. The list will not serve as a "fan club" for popular
fiction writers, but rather as an academic and intellectual discussion. Users
may subscribe at the Website. [MD]
[Back to Contents]
Three from American Memory--LOC
Baseball
Cards, 1887-1914
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/bbhtml/bbhome.html
Historic
American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record
(HAER)
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/hhhtml/hhhome.html
Pioneering
the Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820-1910 http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/umhtml/umhome.html
The
US Library of Congress American Memory site has once again expanded its
unmatched digital historical collection, this time with three new features.
Given the recent renewed interest in "America's game," the release of
the first feature is well-timed. Baseball Cards, 1887-1914 showcases the LOC's
wonderful collection of early baseball cards, collected by cigarette card
collector Benjamin K. Edwards and donated to the Library by poet Carl Sandburg
in 1954. Users can search the 2,100 digitized and thumb nailed cards by keyword
or browse by player, team, league, city, or card set. The early legends, such as
Ty Cobb, Connie Mack, and Cy Young are, of course, here, but so also are the
cards of players from lesser known teams such as the Brooklyn Bridegrooms,
Cleveland Spiders, and Boston Beaneaters. Additional resources include a brief
bibliography and information on ordering reproductions. The second collection is
an initial offering of material from the HABS and HAER, both of ! which document
achievements in architecture, engineering, and design in the United States and
its territories. HABS and HAER are two of the most heavily used collections in
the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, and online
resources include images, surveys, survey photos, and measured drawings from
1933 to the present. Users can search by keyword or browse by subject index or
geographic location index. Additional material will be added monthly. The third
offering--focused on the upper Midwest states from the seventeenth to the early
twentieth centuries--consists of digitized and searchable pages from 138 volumes
in the LOC's General Collections and Rare Books and Special Collections
Division. Users will find a range of works which describe and examine a variety
of social and political topics, such as the experiences of pioneers, conflicts
between settlers and Native peoples, local cultural traditions, education, the
role of women, and the establishment! of local governments and businesses. [MD]
[Back to Contents]
Italian Life Under Fascism
http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/dpf/Fascism/Home.html
The
Department of Special Collections within the University of Wisconsin-Madison's
Memorial Library presents Italian Life Under Fascism, a virtual exhibition
exploring the nature of Italian fascism in the early twentieth century. Digital
reproductions of original documents provide insight into "the character and
range of Fascist propaganda and the special cult of the Duce that it
fostered." The site covers an array of topics related to the political,
educational, social, and racial policies of Italian Fascism. Included are
sections devoted to family life, youth organizations, Italian colonialism, the
role of women in the regime, the anti-fascist resistance, and the rise and fall
of Fascism in Italy. [AO]
[Back to
Contents]
Online Ballet Dictionary [Quicktime,
frames]
http://www.abt.org/dictionary/
American
Ballet Theatre homepage
http://www.abt.org/
How many times have you
heard or used the terms "pirouette" or "pas de deux" without
really knowing what they meant? A number of words related to ballet have made
their way into common usage, although many people may not know what they really
mean or what they would look like if performed by a trained dancer. The American
Ballet Theatre has created this Online Ballet Dictionary of 170 terms with
assistance from its own dancers who were asked to "show us how it is
supposed to be done." The resulting site combines Quicktime movies of
dancers demonstrating steps with terms drawn from the Technical Manual and
Dictionary of Classical Ballet. While not every term is accompanied by a
movie, each term includes a definition and pronunciation guide, as well as
occasional cross references to other terms in the dictionary. Also available at
the American Ballet Theatre's homepage is information about performances (past
and present), Dancer Bios, and a Photo Gallery of black and whit! e photographs
of performances, staged poses, and behind-the-scenes shots. [AG]
[Back to Contents]
Celtic Art and Cultures
http://www.unc.edu/courses/art111/celtic/index.html
The
Celtic Art and Cultures Website was originally created for art history students
at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and can now be used by any would-be
student of Celtic Art with access to a newer Web browser. The main feature of
the site is its multimedia database of Celtic-related images, maps, timelines,
and vocabulary aids complete with spoken pronunciations. Images can be viewed by
period, material, object, and country. If you find yourself uncertain of which
time period or object type to choose, as I did, helpful information is available
in the Maps & Timelines section. The course syllabus, which can be found
under site info, also provides an overview of Celtic Art. [DS]
[Back to Contents]
ARS Science 4 Kids
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/kids/
This
new e-zine from the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), aimed at kids aged
eight to thirteen with an interest in science, introduces various projects of
ARS scientists in a collection of stories. The homepage offers intuitive graphic
links to the various sections: clicking on the catfish takes users to the
Aquaculture section, the bee to Insects, and so on. The stories are short,
illustrated, and written with young readers in mind. Students who wish to learn
more about certain topics or find resources for school reports can follow links
to the ARS Agricultural Research magazine and the ARS search engine, or
send email questions to Dr. Watts, the helpful ARS scientist. [MD]
[Back to Contents]
The American Heritage 40
http://www.americanheritage.com/98/oct/40index.htm
How
does Bill Gates compare to Henry Ford or the robber barons Andrew Carnegie and
John D. Rockefeller? These "men of independent means" and their 36
companions are listed in the American Heritage 40, a ranking of the 40
wealthiest Americans of all time. The rankings were made by estimating the size
of each fortune at the time of death, or in the current year for the three
living members on the list, and then comparing it with the gross national
product of the time. Bill Gates may be the richest man in the world, but he
still has a long way to go to match Rockefeller's staggering 1/66 of the entire
nation's GNP at the time of his death. The listing for each of the 40 includes a
photo, estimated worth in today's value, and brief biographical information. The
site also offers an explanation of the ranking process and an interesting essay
comparing and contrasting the men and their varied paths to the top tax bracket.
[MD]
[Back to Contents]
The Computing Research Repository
(CoRR)
http://xxx.lanl.gov/archive/cs/intro.html
This
site, sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Los Alamos
e-Print archive, and the Networked Computer Science Technical Reference Library
(NCSTRL), provides access to several collections of papers on various research
topics in computer science. The goal of CoRR is to provide a repository to which
researchers from all fields of computing can submit reports. The Repository is
integrated with the NCSTRL collection of more than 20,000 computer science
research reports and will be linked with the ACM Digital Library. Access to the
Repository is free, and submissions are not refereed. Papers are classified
using the 1998 ACM Computing Classification System and also organized by a list
of subject areas. [MR]
[Back to
Contents]
Review Booth
http://www.reviewbooth.com/
This site
serves as a clearinghouse for published hardware and software product reviews,
currently offering links to over 5,300 reviews. Although the reviews are from
well known sources (e.g., PC Week and c|net) located off-site, Review
Booth offers users one-stop searching. If, for example, the new low prices have
inspired you to invest in a scanner, one search can yield links to multiple
reviews for comparison and contrast. Users can search by software and hardware
type and date of review. The site is updated frequently and the New &
Interesting and Latest Reviews sections offer links to reviews of the newest and
most notable products. [MD]
[Back
to Contents]
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From the Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project
1994-1998.
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The paragraph below is the copyright notice to be used when reproducing the entire report, in any format.
Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-1998. The Internet Scout Project (http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/), located in the Computer Sciences Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, provides information about the Internet to the U.S. research and education community under a grant from the National Science Foundation, number NCR-9712163. The Government has certain rights in this material. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the entire Scout Report provided this paragraph, including the copyright notice, is preserved on all copies.
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