The Scout Report - March 3, 1995

March 3, 1995

A Service to the Internet Community Provided by the InterNIC


The Scout Report is a weekly publication provided by the Info Scout and InterNIC Information Services to provide a sampling of the best of newly announced Internet resources. See the end of each report for additional information and complete access methods through gopher, WWW, and mailing lists for both plain text and HTML versions. Comments and contributions to the Scout Report are encouraged and can be sent to scout@cs.wisc.edu.

Highlights In This Week's Report:

World Wide Web

  • 1901: A Journey Through Yosemite via Stereograms, is on the Web thanks to Patch American High School, Stuttgart, Germany. Take a walk back in time! Experience the 19th Century version of "virtual reality" via a new exhibit at Patch American High School, among the first K-12 Web servers in the world. The Yosemite exhibit is a new addition to our Virtual Travel Center which features the "Mercedes Museum", "Stuttgart", "Vietnam", and others. See also the Patch Stereogram Project section which features the history of stereograms and some recent examples. [Note that the URL wraps to a second line.]
    http://192.253.114.31/Projects/stereograms/Stereoscopic_Photographs/Stereoscopic_Photographs.html
    [Note: When last checked by the Internet Scout team, this site URL was no longer available.]
  • Discovery Communications (better known as The Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel) has announced the launch of a pilot Internet site designed to help teachers, students, and their educational partners devise innovative uses of Discovery programming. The Discovery Learning Community provides resources, relationships and collaborative tools to promote academic inquiry and knowledge building.
    http://school.discovery.com/
    [Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher may no longer be available.]
    gopher to: ericir.syr.edu
    select Other Education Networks/ Discovery Learning Community
  • The Environmental Biology Program of Boyce Thompson Inst. for Plant Research at Cornell University is now on the Web offering information on research focusing on the interaction of plants and the environment. The research spans many levels of biological organization, from individual plant organs to ecosystems and beyond. This site provides details about our staff, facilities, and the many research projects in the program. Reprints of publications can also be ordered.
    http://birch.cit.cornell.edu/
  • India Online, webs together World Wide Web pages from around the world to provide information pertaining to India and countries of the Indian subcontinent. The location is intended to be a one-stop kiosk for information on Indian Subcontinent. Information on travel, food, culture, news, telecommunication, international trade etc. can be found.
    http://indiaonline.hypermart.net/
  • The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced that their Food and Consumer Service, which oversees the Food Stamp Program, school meals programs, WIC, and a dozen other nutrition programs, has established a bulletin board system on FedWorld, an electronic marketplace for federal program information.
    http://www.fns.usda.gov/fncs/
    select Health Mall/ Food and Consumer Service
  • MetaCenter Computational Science Highlights Web Page: The NSF-funded supercomputer centers; the Cornell Theory Center (CTC), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), and San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) have created the MetaCenter Computational Science Highlights, a repository of multimedia computational science articles for the World Wide Web. Stories feature: modeling blood flow in the human heart; simulating the behavior of cancer genes and enzyme/inhibitor complexes vital to the design of new drugs; the Shoemaker-Levy comet's impact on Jupiter; and the discovery of the first planet known to exist outside of our solar system. Browsers will also find information on both Pacific and Atlantic Ocean systems, including a high-resolution animation of the general circulation of the North Atlantic. Computational Science Highlights can be accessed via the World Wide Web at any of the following addresses:
    http://www.psc.edu/MetaCenter/MetaScience/welcome.html
    http://www.sdsc.edu/MetaScience/welcome.html.
  • The Microelectromechanical Systems Research Page at Case Western Reserve University: Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) is currently revolutionizing the field of sensors and actuators through the use of new techniques and processes. MEMS focuses on development of tiny electromechanical devices for a diverse range of applications such as miniature accelerometers for air-bag systems and disposable blood pressure sensors (many other applications are being hotly researched).
    http://mems.cwru.edu/index.html
  • The National Graffiti Information Network is an organization which specializes in crime and graffiti prevention.
    http://www.infowest.com/business/n/ngin/
  • The new National Press Club WWW site at gives Club members, journalists and the general public unprecedented access to this professional and social organization for journalists that is one of Washington D.C.'s most prestigious institutions. It includes Internet access to speeches and press conferences at the Club, which make the national news on a daily basis. It also contains a comprehensive but concise collection of Internet resources for journalistic research, designed to be the best available tool for journalists seeking information from the Internet as deadline approaches.
    http://npc.press.org/
  • PBS has launched a new "Neighborhood" on the Web which begins with an audio welcome message from Fred Rogers of the popular PBS series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. The site provides access to searchable monthly program listings, including air dates, times and descriptions, as well as information on how to obtain products related to PBS programs; educational program guides with activities for K-12 classrooms and a hyperlink directory of Internet sites with K-12 resources; links to many public television stations and related organizations offering extensive information on the Web; and information about college-credit telecourses available through the PBS Adult Learning Service.
    http://www.pbs.org

Gopher

  • The Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities (ABRF) server contains information of interest to anyone involved in providing services for synthesis, sequencing, or use of DNA and protein.
    gopher to: riley.bs.jhu.edu
  • The Tables of Contents Inc., gopher consists of the most recent covers and tables of contents of 166 leading magazines, organized into the following five subject areas: Computers, Sports, Science, Music & Entertainment, and Electronic & Computer Games. It is updated weekly and new magazines are being added all the time.
    gopher to: mag-browse.com
  • The National Micropopulation Simulation Resource is funded by the National Institutes of Health Center for Research Resources. The purpose of the Resource is to promote Monte Carlo simulation of structured micropopulations in biomedical research. The emphasis is on development of simulation and analysis methodologies and software tools, with broad application to studies in epidemiology, genetics and demography.
    gopher to: dragon.labmed.umn.edu
    [Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher site has been replaced by web site.]
    http://www.nmsr.labmed.umn.edu/nmsr/NMSR.html
  • Walden University offers doctoral programs "over the 'Net" in the areas of Administration/Management, Education, Health Services, and Human Services.
    gopher to: www.waldenu.edu
    [Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher site has been replaced by web site.]
  • The Communications for a Sustainable Future (CSF) was founded on the idea that computer networking should be used to enhance communications with the objective of working through disparate views and ideologies to secure a more promising future. The contents of the archives and the quality of communications on the CSF lists are intended to reflect this purpose. Additional materials are accepted for dissemination through CSF. Topics include the Conflict Consortium, Economics, Environment, Feminist Scholarship, Foreign Policy, International Political Economy, Peace, Progressive Sociology, Service-Learning, and World Systems.
    http://csf.colorado.edu/
    [Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher site has been replaced by web site.]
  • The CIC Electronic Journals Collection (CIC-EJC) is a new collaborative initiative between CICNet and the librarians of the CIC member institutions to create a professionally managed collection of electronic journals of scholarly importance. This collection is intended to be distinct from the existing 600 journal CICNet Electronic Serials server in tone, content, and scope. The process of selecting CIC-EJC titles has begun and measures will be taken to ensure the completeness of holdings of titles that have been identified. The content of the CIC-EJC will be continually monitored by key librarians at the CIC member institutions.
    gopher to: gopher.cic.net
    [Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher site has been replaced by web site.]
    http://ejournals.cic.net/
  • Gopher Servers in Slovakia: A dozen new gopher servers are available in Slovakia, including those at the Slovak Technical University, Slovak Academy of Sciences, University of Transport and Communications, University of Agriculture, Astronomical Institute Tatranska, Military Academy Liptovsky, and the Forest Research Institute. Some English is interspersed throughout. Select "Gopher Servers in Slovakia" from the menu at the address below.
    gopher to: gopher.uakom.sk

National Information Infrastructure

NetBytes

  • O'Reilly & Associates has just released a new book titled Running Linux, which covers "everything you need in order to understand, install, and use the Linux operating system." Topics include: the background and concepts of the Linux system; a comprehensive installation tutorial that will lead you through the steps of configuring Linux on your machine from any distribution; a chapter on UNIX basics, designed especially for Linux users; complete information on Linux system administration and maintenance, from managing user accounts, to repairing filesystems, to upgrading software, to building a new kernel; full installation and configuration information for XFree86 3.1. By Matt Welsh & Lar Kaufman, 600 pages, ISBN: 1-56592-100-3
  • MultiMedia WWW PC - v. 2.0 Upgrade: MM-WWW-PC specs have been developed to fill the existing gap between the power of WWW in retrieving information, and the flexibility of PCs in running interactive hypermedia applications. This makes MM-WWW-PC particularly suitable for Distance Education purposes. Following step by step the procedures described on the Web page, you will be able to distribute your interactive PC applications using WWW, and the remote user will be able to launch them with a single mouse click from the Web page. New important features have been added to the previous release, such as the possibility to instruct automatically the browser to connect to an URL or print the contents of the page displayed. For more information contact Paolo Tosolini, Italy tosolini@psicosun.univ.trieste.it
    http://www.ets.bris.ac.uk/tosolini/mmwwwpc/
  • The Cryptography, PGP, and Your Privacy Web page contains links to many of the Web's resources on cryptography, as well as lots of documentation on the popular PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption program for PCs, Macs, and UNIX machines. It also contains a page of links to many privacy-related Web resources.
    http://world.std.com/~franl/crypto.html

Weekend Scouting

  • Addicted to Noise -- Rock Journalism leaps into cyberspace with "addicted to Noise", a monthly online rock magazine mixing features, sound samples, photography and graphics. Unlike print magazines that spawn on-line version, ATN is only available on line. Scan album reviews or artist profiles, see CD cover art, then listen to song and interview clips. Latest is REM and the MC5. (Rolling Stone #702, February 23, 1995)
    http://www.addict.com/ATN/
  • 1995 Kaibab Mountain Bike Tour Guide: If you've never mountain biked Moab, Utah you've never mountain biked. [Or so they say.]
    http://www.kaibabtours.com/
  • The Kronos Quartet is a twice Grammy-nominated string quartet which plays almost exclusively contemporary music. These Kronos pages contain a discography, concert schedule, discussion forum, and lots of other information, and also links to many related resources on the net.
    http://www.kronosquartet.org/

About the Scout Report

The Scout Report is a weekly publication offered by the InterNIC to the Internet community as a fast, convenient way to stay informed about network activities. Its purpose is to combine in one place selected new (and newly-discovered) Internet resources.

A wide range of topics are included in the Report with an emphasis on resources thought to be of interest to the InterNIC's primary audience, the research and education community. Each resource has been verified for substantial content and accessibility within a day of the release of the Report.

The Scout Report is provided in multiple formats -- mailing lists for both a plain text and HTML version; gopher; and World Wide Web. The gopher and World Wide Web versions of the Report include links to all listed resources. The report is released every weekend.

In addition to the plain text version, the Scout Report is distributed in HTML format allowing sites to post the Scout Report on local WorldWideWeb servers each week. The result is faster access for local users. You are welcome and encouraged to re-post and re-distribute the report. Note that copyright statements appear on all versions of the Scout Report, and we ask that these be included when re-posting or re-distributing.

If you haven't yet subscribed or told your friends and colleagues, now is the time. Spread the news by word-of-net. Join 20,000 of your colleagues already using the Scout Report as a painless tool for tracking what's new on the 'Net!

Comments and contributions to the Scout Report are encouraged and can be sent to scout@cs.wisc.edu

-- Susan Calcari
InterNIC Info Scout

Scout Report Access Methods

  • To receive the electronic mail version of the Scout Report each Friday, join the scout-report mailing list. You will receive one message a week -- the Scout Report every weekend.

    Send email to: majordomo@dstest.internic.net in the body of the message, type:

    subscribe scout-report
    to unsubscribe to the list, repeat this procedure substituting the word "unsubscribe" for subscribe.
    • To receive the Scout Report in HTML format for local posting, subscribe to the scout-report-html mailing list, used exclusively to distribute the Scout Report in HTML format once a week.

      Send mail to: majordomo@dstest.internic.net in the body of the message, type:

      subscribe scout-report-html

      Resource Addressing Conventions

      After each resource in the Scout Report one or more network addresses are listed. Every attempt is made to use the same convention in each listing for the network address of each resource. It is assumed that users recognize the type of address and know how to use it. However, for those users unfamiliar with the Internet we provide here the order in which addresses are listed (by network tool) and instructions for accessing additional information in the InterNIC InfoGuide about each network tool. A brief explanation of one tool, WWW is included below.

      The four network tools referenced most often in the Scout Report are World Wide Web, gopher, email, and FTP. Occasionally WAIS and Telnet addresses are also listed.

      After each resource at least one address is listed, and sometimes more. This is because some resources are available using multiple network tools. The network tool addresses are always listed in the same order after each resource:

      • World Wide Web (WWW)
      • Gopher
      • FTP
      • Email
      • Telnet
      • WAIS
      A WWW address is called a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and always begins with a string of characters followed by a colon and two forward slashes. For example:

      http://www.internic.net/
      gopher://gibbs.oit.unc.edu:70/11/research.d/grants.d
      ftp://ftp.digex.net/pub/access/hecker/internet/slip-ppp.txt

      To access the resource through the WWW you can use a WWW browser installed on your desktop computer, or a "command-line" WWW client on your local Internet host computer. Web browsers are available for all major computer platforms, including Macintosh, PC, and UNIX. Check with your local support center or your Internet Service Provider for more information about Web browsers installed on the Internet host computer or for your desktop computer.

      Copyright Susan Calcari, 1995.

      Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the Scout Report provided the copyright notice, this permission notice, and the two paragraphs below are preserved on all copies.

      The InterNIC provides information about the Internet and the resources on the Internet to the US research and education community under the National Science Foundation Cooperative Agreement No. 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 National Science Foundation, AT&T, or Network Solutions, Inc.