Scout Report for Science & Engineering_
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/report/sci-eng/2001/se-010328.html
Volume 4, Number 15 of the Scout Report for Science & Engineering is available. The In the News section annotates ten resources on acid rain.
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Two on the Chemical Industry
Chemical Industry Archives -- EWG [.pdf]
http://www.chemicalindustryarchives.org/
Trade Secrets [.pdf, RealPlayer]
http://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/
This week, PBS aired a disturbing two-hour special hosted by Bill Moyers that explores the history of the chemical revolution of the past 50 years and how companies have long sought to withhold information from the public and their employees about the safety of many substances. The program draws on a large collection of previously secret industry documents unearthed during a ten-year lawsuit by the family of a man who died from a rare brain cancer after working at a vinyl-chloride plant. The family's lawyer eventually charged all vinyl-chloride-producing companies with conspiracy, and the discovery process brought to light hundreds of thousands of pages of documents which reveal a closely planned and well-executed campaign to limit regulation of toxic chemicals and the liability of manufacturers and to withhold important health information from all parties. A large selection of these internal documents, over 37,000 pages, is now available for the first time at the Chemical Industry Archives, created by the Environmental Working Group. The site offers several essays on the archive and the industry, including a selection of some egregious examples of companies hiding or denying known health risks of their products. The archive itself may be searched by keyword with several modifiers. The documents are presented in .pdf format. This site is sure to become an extremely important resource for health activists, journalists, and the concerned public. The companion site to the PBS program offers an overview of the film, interview transcripts, selected documents in HTML and .pdf formats, chemical worker profiles and videos, and a section on the 84 chemicals detected in Bill Moyers's blood and urine. Visitors will also find features on industry secrecy, regulation, money, and politics, as well as right-to-know efforts and what people can do to help protect themselves. These are enhanced by interactive features, documents, and links to related resources. If you only have time to visit two sites this week, they must be the Chemical Industry Archives and Trade Secrets. [MD]
[Back to Contents]Three on Bay of Pigs/ Castro
Bay of Pigs Reports -- CIA
http://www.foia.ucia.gov/popdocs/bayofpigs.htm
Bay of Pigs: Forty Years After -- NSA [RealPlayer]
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/
Castro Speech Database
http://www.lanic.utexas.edu/la/cb/cuba/castro.html
Next month is the 40th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, and this was marked last week by an extraordinary conference last week in Havana which involved former officials of the Kennedy Administration, the CIA, members of Brigade 2506, and Cuban government and military officials. The anniversary has also seen the release of numerous documents related to the ill-fated expedition. Over 1,000 pages of these have been placed online by the CIA. The primary offering consists of two volumes: the first contains the CIA Inspector General's (IG) report on the invasion, and the second consists of commentary on the IG report written by the Directorate of Plans (DP), now known as the Directorate of Operations (DO). As the site notes, "these two volumes are a rare side-by-side compilation of high-level government self-evaluation of its own performance in an historic and controversial event." In addition, the site includes over 750 related documents, many of them multi-page. All of these are offered as digitized page images of varying quality. Although it has not been updated since the second day of the conference, the National Security Archive's site on the Havana conference is a very useful resource, with reports on the proceedings, a chronology, numerous declassified documents, several audio recordings, and biographies of the members of the US delegation. Finally, for those interested in the political history of Cuba before and after the Bay of Pigs, lanic has placed online a database "containing the full text of English translations of speeches, interviews, and press conferences by Fidel Castro, based upon the public domain records of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS)." The database contains speeches from 1959 to 1996 and may be searched by numerous modifiers or browsed by year. The speeches are offered in plain text format only. [MD]
[Back to Contents]Aid and Reform in Africa: Lessons from Ten Case Studies -- World Bank [.pdf]
http://www.worldbank.org/research/aid/africa/release/aid.htm
Released on March 28, this new World Bank report investigates the impact of development aid on economic policy in ten African countries. Among the findings is the discovery that in nations where political leaders are not committed to reform, aid can actually hinder development by insulating these countries from the need to adopt reforms. The report also concludes that using "conditionality" to force reforms has largely failed and that, by and large, successful economic policies and reforms have been developed domestically by committed political leaders rather than introduced from the outside. Users may download the full text of this 696-page report by chapter in .pdf format at the World Bank site. [MD]
[Back to Contents]AMS Featured Reviews [.dvi, .pdf, PostScript]
http://www.ams.org/msnhtml/featured-reviews/
The American Mathematical Society's MathSciNet now presents Featured Reviews from Mathematical Reviews online. "Since its founding in 1940, Mathematical Reviews (MR) has aimed to serve researchers and scholars in the mathematical sciences by providing timely information on articles and books that contain new contributions to mathematical research," state the editors. The purpose of the Featured Reviews page is to assist researchers in accessing the most outstanding reviews without having to wade through the thousands of reviews that are posted to MR online each month. The editors state that the Featured Reviews "...will cover some of the very best papers published in mathematics, identified by the MR editors with the advice of distinguished outside mathematicians as being especially important in one or more of the areas covered by MR. The reviewers for these papers are asked to set the paper in context, perhaps with some historical background, state the main results of the paper, outline (in not too technical a fashion) the main new ideas in the paper and include their evaluation of the paper." Each four- to six-paragraph-long review, available in HTML, .dvi, .ps, or .pdf format, gives the reviewer's name and the full article citation, hyperlinked when possible. This should prove to be a valuable Web resource for academic mathematicians. [HCS]
[Back to Contents]Bloomsbury Research Centre
http://www.bloomsburymagazine.com/ARC/arc_home.asp
Provided by Bloomsburymagazine.com, this site offers a free online database of reference books, containing some 17,000 cross-referenced entries. The titles indexed include Biographical Quotations,Dictionary of English Literature,Good Word Guide, and Guide to Art, among others. Users may search the database by keyword or browse by title. Initial returns include a short excerpt and source citation which links to the full entry. This site is a handy resource and a good adjunct to the free reference works at Bartleby.com (last reviewed in the March 16, 2001 Scout Report). [MD]
[Back to Contents]Korean Legal Research Resources on the Internet
http://www.siu.edu/offices/lawlib/koreanlaw/
Created by Heija B. Ryoo, Director of Library Systems and Technical Services at the School of Law Library, Southern Illinois University, this site offers a thorough overview of the South Korean legal system accompanied by numerous links to official sites, primary documents, and other authoritative resources. These are arranged under three major headings on a no-nonsense single page. Please be aware that the information provided for each link varies and that many of the sites require the appropriate plug-in for reading Korean characters, though this is noted by the site. [MD]
[Back to Contents]Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States -- William J. Clinton [.pdf]
http://www.gpo.gov/nara/pubpaps/photoidx.html
Search Page
http://www.gpo.gov/nara/pubpaps/srchpaps.html
The Government Printing Office recently added Vol. 1 (January-June 1999) to its online collection of President Clinton's public papers, which are papers and speeches of the President issued by the Office of the Press Secretary. Users may access documents from the latest and previous releases via a keyword search engine at the search page. The full-text documents are offered in HTML and .pdf formats along with a summary. The index page includes tables of contents, documents listed by name and subject, document categories lists, and photographic portfolios for each volume since 1993. [MD]
[Back to Contents]Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to 1516
http://www.history.ac.uk/cmh/gaz/gazweb2.html
Compiled by Dr. Samantha Letters and hosted by the Institute for Historical Research (IHR), this site contains the first comprehensive national survey of markets and fairs in medieval England and Wales. At present, full information is available for eleven counties, with new additions planned throughout the year. The entries may be browsed by country or place name, and a glossary, list of abbreviations, and description of methodology and sources are provided. Users are encouraged to read the introduction and instructions on reading the entries before they begin, or else they might not be able to decipher the contents. This unique resource will undoubtedly be warmly welcomed by scholars of medieval history and literature. [MD]
[Back to Contents]H-Disability
http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~disabil/
This new H-Net discussion network will serve as a "scholarly discussion group that explores the multitude of historical issues surrounding the experience and phenomenon of 'disability.'" As with most H-Net discussion groups, participants are expected to share ideas, syllabi, and information on conferences, publications, and archives. Subscription information and discussion logs are available at the URL above. [MD]
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Women and Smoking - A Report of the Surgeon General 2001 [.pdf, RealPlayer]
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/sgr_forwomen.htm
Released on Tuesday to considerable comment from the media, this new report from the US Surgeon General reveals that smoking has become a leading killer of American women in just two generations. Women now account for 39 percent of the country's smoking-related deaths, more than doubling the proportion of 1965. While the rate of adult women smokers has not changed much, that of teenaged girls has increased in the past ten years. In addition, the report finds a direct link between education levels and smoking -- women who have not completed high school are nearly three times more likely to smoke than those who have some postgraduate education. Users can read the full text of the report, along with a summary, fact sheets, and related materials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) site. [MD]
[Back to Contents]The George Ortiz Collection [QuickTime, .mpg]
http://www.georgeortiz.com/aasite/index.html
This site is an online version of a travelling exhibit of the unique private collection of George Ortiz, who has been gathering Greek, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and other artifacts for some 42 years. At the site, visitors can view the full collection (280 pieces), along with catalog entries for each piece, as well as 20 key works presented in 3D via QuickTime VR. The collection is browsed by 18 geographic sections (Near East, Greek World, China, etc.), some of which are further divided by type of artifact. Each entry links to the full catalog description and a larger image. Also included at the site are a glossary and some video clips from a television interview of Ortiz. [MD]
[Back to Contents]Pictures of the Year
http://www.poy.org/58/
One of the oldest and most prestigious photojournalism competitions, Pictures of the Year was established 58 years ago by a University of Missouri-Columbia photojournalism professor. This year's overall winners will be announced on April 19, but in the meantime, readers can view the winning photos and those that received the Award of Excellence in the three major categories: Newspaper, Magazine, and General. These images were selected from over 32,000 entries, and they run the full gamut of subject matter and emotion. Visitors will find images that are amusing, inspiring, beautiful, and heartbreaking. Highly recommended and well worth a visit. [MD]
[Back to Contents]The New York Times -- College Times
http://www.nytimes.com/college/index.html
Launched yesterday, this new section from the New York Times (free registration required) is aimed at both college students and faculty members. At the site, visitors can browse recent news stories organized by over 200 academic disciplines and sign up to receive free email alerts when new articles related to their interests are published. In addition, there are two special sections, one for students and one for faculty. The students section includes recent news from colleges and universities, book and film reviews, and a weekly feature. The faculty area proffers curriculum guides on using the newspaper in their courses, faculty and education news, and links to related content of interest elsewhere on the site. A modest resource, but worth a look. [MD]
[Back to Contents]openup2images
http://www.openup2images.com/
Less Graphical Entry
http://www.openup2images.com/index.asp
openup2images is a London-based online image bank that catalogs photos related to contemporary music and youth culture. The images are for sale and digitally watermarked, but anyone with an interest in youth culture may enjoy browsing the site. The database can be keyword searched or browsed via terms selected from the index. The images are offered as thumbnails in groups of six, which link to a larger image. A new additions sections is also provided. [MD]
[Back to Contents]YourSky
http://www.fourmilab.ch/yoursky/
One of many educational pages devised by entrepreneur and programmer John Walker, YourSky is a virtual planetarium. Visitors to the site can use the Sky Map to produce astronomical maps by entering time and date, viewpoint, and observing location (latitude/longitude and ascension/declination). The Virtual Telescope helps you to track comets and asteroids, and Horizon Views returns views of the stars above the horizon as seen from a specified observing site at a given date and time. If you aren't sure of the exact map coordinates of the city sky you desire to view, you can consult a hypertext list of major cities around the world. Want to aim your telescope at a certain planet or stellar body? There's a hypertext list of those, too. Full explanations of map colors and symbols are provided, along with links to related programs, a Sky screensaver, and more. [HCS]
[Back to Contents]Meeting God - Elements of Hindu Devotion
http://kaladarshan.arts.ohio-state.edu/exhib/meetgod/hp.htm
This new online exhibit from the Huntington Archive showcases a selection of photos featured in two museum exhibits and a book of the same name. The site consists of approximately seventy-five images arranged in eight sections. These include Morning Prayers, Household Worship, Processional Images, and Vows and Healing, among others. The images themselves are offered as large thumbnails in a left-hand frame which produce a full-sized image accompanied by a brief description in the main frame. [MD]
[Back to Contents]Planet Krulik [RealPlayer, QuickTime]
http://www.planetkrulik.com/index2.htm
Jeff Krulik is best-known for his 1986 fifteen-minute masterpiece, Heavy Metal Parking Lot, which he produced with John Heyn and which subsequently became one of the most widely distributed underground videos of all time. For anyone who was a teenager or young adult in the mid-1980s, this film will definitely bring back some memories, as it perfectly and affectionately captures the essence of heavy metal culture. Since 1986, Krulik has made a number of entertaining and enlightening documentaries of varying lengths, which explore subjects such as the crowd at a Neil Diamond concert (shot in the same parking lot ten years later), an annual Goodwill book sale, Washington Redskins fans after the 1988 Super Bowl victory, a Harry Potter book-signing, and a cross-country drive with Ernest Borgnine, among many others. Krulik's entire corpus is now available online for viewing in RealPlayer and QuickTime formats. Please note two caveats. First, some of the films contain strong language or are otherwise unsuited for young viewers. Second, films in QuickTime tended to load extremely slowly for us, although the film quality was superior to RealPlayer versions. One part anthropological study, one part tongue-in-cheek short documentary, and one part public access program, these films should appeal to a range of mature viewers. [MD]
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Internet Explorer 6 Public Preview [Windows 98, 2000, ME]
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/preview/
Microsoft has announced that a public preview of the latest version of its browser is now available for download and evaluation. Users should consult the system requirements page before downloading and note that it is currently available only for Windows 98, 2000, and ME. The Scout Project was not able to give this new browser a run-through, but the site touts a number of new features, including a new look and feel, personalized Explorer bars, an image toolbar, automatic picture resizing, integrated MSN Messenger, and enhanced privacy features. Download instructions are provided at the site. [MD]
[Back to Contents]Windows Media Player 7 for Mac
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/en/download/mac7.asp
On March 22, Microsoft announced the release of Windows Media Player 7 for Mac. While it has not yet fully displaced RealPlayer as the standard streaming media player for the Web, Windows Media Player is absolutely a must-have plug-in. Features of the newest version include a new skin; local and streamed playback of .asf, .wma, .wmv, .asx, .wmx, .wax, .wm, .wvx, and .mp3 extensions; multiple bit rates; closed captioning; and intelligent streaming; among others. Mac users will find system requirements and download instructions at the above URL. [MD]
[Back to Contents]Take Back the Net
http://www.cnet.com/internet/0-3793-8-5181225-1.html
This concise but very helpful four-part guide from CNet can help users cut down the never-ending flow of spam to their email in-boxes. Topics covered include prevention, evasion, spam blocking services and programs, and how to report offenders. A quick must-read for anyone sick of receiving "exciting news" about weight-loss plans, debt reduction services, or "hot stock tips." [MD]
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McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Bill Poised for Passage
McCain-Feingold-Cochran Campaign Reform Bill
http://www.senate.gov/~mccain/cfrpage.htm
Campaign Finance Reform -- CRP
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/campaign.finance.asp
Campaign Finance Special Report -- Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/campfin/campfin.htm
"Campaign Finance Bill Clears Senate Hurdle" -- Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/print/asection/20010330/t000027313.html
"US campaign finance 'set for overhaul'" -- BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1250000/1250833.stm
"Senate to check role of big money in politics" -- Times of India
http://www.timesofindia.com/today/30amrc6.htm
"A step toward reform" - Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/089/editorials/A_step_toward_reform+.shtml
"The Senate Steps Up" -- Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14703-2001Mar29.html
Editorial cartoons -- Campaign Finance Reform
http://cagle.slate.msn.com/news/campaignfinance/mf1.asp
After two weeks of unusually open debate and hours of backroom maneuvering, the Senate will vote on Monday on the most sweeping overhaul of campaign finance law since 1976. Despite several ploys by opponents, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) have managed to keep their both their coalition and the bill largely intact. The latest hurdle was passed yesterday, when the Senate voted 53 to 47 to reject an amendment that would have brought down the whole bill if the Supreme Court found any portion unconstitutional. The two major provisions of the bill are a complete ban on soft money contributions to the national political parties from corporations, labor unions, and wealthy individuals and restrictions on "issue ads" run by labor unions and corporations within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. In a compromise move, the bill also doubles the amount of hard money individuals may contribute to a candidate in an election from $1,000 to $2,000 and increases the total amount of direct donations allowed by individuals to candidates and parties in a year from $25,000 to $37,500. In addition, hard money limits are also raised for candidates facing self-financed "millionaire opponents," and candidates are guaranteed discount rates for television advertisements. The bill is widely expected to pass on Monday, and then the Senate must wait for the House to pass a parallel measure and then iron out the differences in committee. Even opponents of the bill are now predicting that a measure will pass the House and that the President will sign it despite his opposition to several elements in the McCain-Feingold bill. After that, the bill will be challenged in the courts by numerous parties and will almost certainly end up in the US Supreme Court. Despite these pitfalls and the fact that analysts and fund-raisers are already finding loopholes and plotting strategies to skirt the restrictions, the bill must be regarded as an important first step towards reforming the nation's political campaign system.
Readers should begin with Senator's McCain's site at the US Senate, which offers several news releases, a summary of the measure, and a link to the full text of the bill. More detailed overviews are available from the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) and the Washington Post. Additional coverage can be found at the Los Angeles Times, the BBC, and the Times of India. Editorial pieces have been placed online by the Boston Globe and the Washington Post, and users can view a large selection of editorial cartoons on campaign finance at Daryl Cagle's cartoonists index. [MD]
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