NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology
The twentieth issue of the first volume of the MET Report is available. Its Topic in Depth section offers Web sites and comments about image processing.
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Globalisation, Drugs, and Criminalisation: Final Research Report on Brazil, China, India, and Mexico [.pdf]
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001276/127644e.pdf
Produced by a team of interdisciplinary researchers and scholars on behalf of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), this massive 409-page report deals primarily with the increasingly global problem of the drug trade and ancillary criminal activity in Brazil, China, India, and Mexico. The first nineteen pages of the report offer a broad overview of the project, including abstracts of the chapters (which often function as self-contained essays), the team's main findings, and detailed information about the project team. The entire report is divided into four more specific topic areas, which include "Drug Trafficking and the State," "Drug Trafficking, Criminal Organisations and Money Laundering," "Social and Cultural Dimensions of Drug Trafficking," and "Methodological, Institutional and Policy Dimensions of the Research on Drug Trafficking." As one might expect, this document and its representative chapters will be important documents for anyone interested in learning more about the pervasive problem of international drug trafficking and the potential pitfalls involved with formulating meaningful policy to address criminal behavior associated with these activities. [KMG]
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The Myth of American Isolationism [.pdf]
http://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/papers/579__MythOfUSIsol.pdf
The period of American diplomacy and international relations between the World Wars is often referred to as one of isolation, an idea that Professor Bear Braumoeller critiques in this 32-page working paper. Originating from the Whitehead Center for International Affairs at Harvard, the paper boldly attacks the popular and prevailing notion that American diplomacy in the interwar period was isolationist in nature. Throughout his work, Professor Braumoeller addresses and examines previous literature on isolationism and offers a well-honed definition of isolationism, a term that at times can be murky and poorly understood. In his conclusion, Professor Braumoeller states that the United State's failure to join the League of Nations does not offer sufficient evidence to characterize this entire period of American international diplomacy and involvement as "isolationist." This paper represents a thought-provoking development in political science scholarship and will hopefully be the subject of much critical debate and discussion. [KMG]
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Monticello: The Home of Thomas Jefferson
http://www.monticello.org
It is fitting that Thomas Jefferson, a true Renaissance man, should have a site about his own life that features such a wide range of information about his interests and passions. At the center of the site is information about the house he designed and about which he once said, "I am as happy no where else." From the site, visitors can tour almost every room in the house, complete with narrative information about each room's dimensions, its original purpose, furnishing, and specific architectural features. Not surprisingly, the site contains a great deal of material about the man himself, including a brief biography, a timeline of his life, quotations, and physical descriptions of him from his contemporaries. Other areas offer information about the grounds of Monticello and the plantation. Most notably, there is a discussion and bibliography detailing the recent historical debates over the alleged long-term affair that Jefferson had with Sally Hemmings, a slave at Monticello. Finally, information about visiting Monticello in person is located on the site, along with helpful resources about doing work at the Jefferson Library or with the International Center for Jefferson Studies. [KMG]
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Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education
http://www.wiscape.wisc.edu/
The Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education (WISCAPE) is a center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison dedicated to engaging key stakeholders (including faculty members, researchers, and administrators) in a dialogue about postsecondary education. To this end, their Web site contains information about their prime activities, which include research, instruction, conferences, and professional education. The site is divided into several sections, which include an events calendar, a links page, and recent publications arising from events and research sponsored by the center. Most recently, papers from a recent conference titled "Optimizing the Nation's Investment: Persistence and Success in Postsecondary Education" have been placed on the site for general consideration. Other publications located on the site deal with the role of technology in the changing landscape of higher education and the future of international studies. Persons with an interest in the world of postsecondary education will find this site a welcome addition to the vast amount of scholarship and research dealing with this vast subject. [KMG]
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City CarShare: Assessment of Intermediate-Term Travel-Behavior Impacts [.pdf]
http://www-iurd.ced.berkeley.edu/pub/WP-2002-03.pdf
This timely working paper on the car-sharing program developed by the city of San Francisco offers some preliminary conclusions from a team of researchers at the University of California at Berkeley's Institute of Urban and Regional Development. Released in July 2002, this 57-page report examines the travel and usage patterns of approximately 300 persons participating in the new car-share program during 2001. After analyzing the data, researchers at the Institute concluded that approximately 7 percent of trips made by the program's members involved city CarShare vehicles, a percentage that rose from around 2 percent just six months earlier. Interestingly enough, the survey results suggest that car-sharing is cutting into private car usage, especially among higher income participants in the program. The report is fleshed out by the inclusion of a detailed methodology section, and some helpful maps that locate the origin and destination of the different car-share trips taken by participants. The report will be very useful to transportation planners, and more broadly, for those with an interest in the viability of car-share programs in urbanized areas. [KMG]
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College Profiles
http://www.collegeprofiles.com/
For many young people, fall brings a new school year, and for high school seniors, a sense of excitement and trepidation about looking for the college that will best serve their educational needs. The College Profiles Web site will be a valuable resource for them and their parents or guardian. The site provides brief sketches of thousands of colleges and universities, along with materials on the cost of each school, financial aid opportunities, and campus life. Information on the site is organized in several different ways, with the most helpful being the interactive map that users can click on to find a complete list of college and universities in any selected state. From the main page, users can also click on a list of thematic lists of schools, including Catholic colleges, black colleges, women's colleges, and two-year colleges. [KMG]
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The Wizard of Oz: An American Fairy Tale
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/oz/
The Wizard of Oz is probably one of the most enduring American stories, having been translated into numerous movies, recordings, stage productions, and hundreds of written versions. This online exhibit from the Library of Congress showcases some of the many products and ephemera related to this integral piece of American culture. Many of the objects originated from the Library's voluminous holdings, but additional pieces were borrowed from private collectors, other institutional holdings, and museums. The first section titled To Please a Child features scanned images and material relating to the works of L. Frank Baum, including an early review of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the original copyright application for the book. To See the Wizard features printed material related to the book's many stage productions, and of course, props and still photographs from the 1939 MGM film version, starring Judy Garland, Bert Lahr, and Ray Bolger. The last section, To Own the Oz highlights some of the many collectible items associated with the book and movies, including collector plates, a Monopoly version of The Wizard of Oz, and different music boxes. [KMG]
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Math for Elementary School Kids
http://www.teachrkids.com/
Teach R Kids Math is a Web site with a large assortment of interactive lessons that demonstrate basic mathematical concepts. The material ranges from basic counting for preschoolers to more advanced topics for elementary school students. Online worksheets help children practice multiplication, division, rounding, fractions, number sequences, and much more. Some of the activities are timed, which allows the child to see his/her improvement. The site "has been designed by children and adults," making it especially tuned to the most efficient ways of conveying information. This site is also reviewed in the November 8, 2002 NSDL MET Report. [CL]
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Lower East Side Tenement Museum [Quicktime, Realplayer]
http://www.tenement.org/
The majority of National Trust Park properties commemorate the lives of famous politicians and other well-known Americans, but the Lower East Side Tenement Museum commemorates the everyday (and in some cases extraordinary) lives of some of the 7,000 immigrants who lived at 97 Orchard Street from 1863 to 1935. At the site, visitors can take virtual tours of immigrant family apartments, including those of an Italian Catholic family. The tours allow visitors to move through their apartments, along with the ability to listen to an audio presentation that offers additional details about the day-to-day experiences of immigrants in the Lower East Side. Particularly helpful is a 97-page online Tenement Encyclopedia, which defines and discusses terms common to the immigrant experience. Finally, reflecting the fact that the museum is in an urban milieu, information about businesses and local culture in the Lower East Side is also provided for persons journeying to New York to visit. [KMG]
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Lionel Hampton: His Life and Legacy
http://www.uidaho.edu/hampton/index.html
On August 31st 2002, the world lost Lionel Hampton, one of the century's most loved jazz performers, to illness. Mr. Hampton had a long association with the School of Music at the University of Idaho, and this site serves as excellent testimony to the power of music and Mr. Hampton's prodigious talents and generosity. A brief biographical sketch provides a bit of material about Mr. Hampton's long and productive performing and recording career. Another section, titled Tributes, provides written tributes to the late jazz artist from his peers, including Quincy Jones and James Moody. For those seeking to see "Hamp" in action, a video section provides some extraordinary clips of Mr. Hampton performing at the University of Idaho on several different occasions. The site concludes with some nice audio and video clips of Mr. Hampton's memorial service, which was held at the Riverside Church in New York. [KMG]
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MoMA: The Changing of the Avant-Garde
http://www.moma.org/gilman/main.html
This Web exhibition from MoMA presents a history of modern utopian and visionary architecture, using architectural drawings donated to the museum by the Howard Gilman Foundation in 2000. The drawings date from the late 1950s to the 1970s. The main menu is two spheres, Megastructures (larger, public buildings and complexes) and Postmodern Roots (smaller buildings, retail and houses), from which users can select names to view particular projects. Each project consists of two to four drawings and explanatory text, with larger views of all the drawings available. An interesting example under Megastructures is Superstudio, a group of five Italian architects who, in the 1960s, created a set of purely theoretical drawing that impose gigantic, white, grid-patterned structures on natural landscapes such as rivers, ocean coastlines, and the Alps. Megastructures give way to Postmodern Roots in the 1960s, where drawings of projects by Robert Venturi, Michael Graves, James Stirling, Rem Koolhaas, and others can be seen. [DS]
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History of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge
http://www.lib.washington.edu/specialcoll/tnb/
The Department of Special Collections at the University of Washington has created an excellent online exhibit documenting the rise and (literal) fall of the Tacoma Narrows bridge in Washington State, an event referred to as the Pearl Harbor of engineering. The massive structure was built between 1938 and 1940 and, at the time of its completion, was the third longest suspension bridge in the world. The bridge displayed some notable wavelike motions during the final stages of construction, but no one was prepared for what happened on November 7, 1940, when the entire structure began to buckle, and shortly collapsed into the water below. Amazingly, the only fatality was a dog that was trapped in one of the vehicles on the main span of the bridge. The online exhibit documents this amazing event, with numerous photographs of the bridge under construction, and most incredibly, dramatic shots of the bridge buckling and its fall taken by several bystanders. This exhibit will be of particular interest to engineers, particularly those working in the field of bridge construction. [KMG]
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Conelrad
http://www.conelrad.com/
Conelrad is a site devoted to all aspects of atomic culture in the United States, presented in an informative and visual stimulating fashion. Founded in April 1999 by two Cold War veterans, Ken Sitz and Bill Geerhart, the site is a vast clearinghouse of articles, interviews, book reviews, and visual and audio documents related to the post-WWII atomic culture that flourished for close to two decades. While the site does not have an internal search engine, it is easily navigated. The best feature of Conelrad are definitely the short films and audio clips originally produced by the Civil Defense Board, including tracks from the 1962 LP, "If the Bomb Falls" and the unintentionally hilarious 1964 LP, "NORAD Tracks Santa." For those who remember the fallout shelter craze, the site also contains several virtual exhibitions dealing with this aspect of the atomic age, including one specifically dealing with fallout shelters in California. [KMG]
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The Collegiate Way: Residential Colleges and Higher Education Reform
http://www.collegiateway.org/
Much ado has been in made in recent years about how best to reform or modify undergraduate education, from developing inclusive and multicultural curricula to creating a supposedly more "student-friendly" environment. Dr. Robert J. O'Hara (who has thirteen years experience in residential college life and administration) has developed this Web site to provide information about how colleges and universities might address the problems surrounding student life. On the Web site, Dr. O'Hara provides a wealth of information about the residential college model, which may serve as a remedy to some of the cacophony and disorder that has come to characterize some large campuses in the United States. The site contains six main areas, some of which highlight materials on how to build a residential college, frequent objections to the collegiate model, and a substantial list of recommended readings. Dr. O'Hara also maintains an updated news section on the site featuring reading materials on developments within the world of residential colleges, both extant and proposed. [KMG]
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Airline History: The History of Commercial Aviation
http://airlines.afriqonline.com/
Designed and maintained by Sarah Ward, a former commercial pilot, this site offers essays about almost every major airline, both contemporary and historical. A complete alphabetical list runs from the ABA Swedish Air Lines all the way to ZAS Airline of Egypt. Each profile gives details about the types of planes used by each airline; what type of business they conducted (and where); and numerous photographs of the planes, many taken by Ms. Ward. Along with the airline profiles, another section of the site titled Aircraft by Decade offers basic statistics about different plane models and types introduced during every decade of the 20th century. Special features of the site include a photographic tribute to the planes that travelers might have seen as they traversed through London's airports in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Ms. Ward has taken a great deal of care in compiling the material on the site (along with the help of contributors), and the material here will be a joy for aviation fans and visitors interested in knowing a bit more about the history of different airlines. [KMG]
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All Search 0.9
http://www.softcows.com/search/index.htm
All Search is a small piece of software that makes Web browsing, particular within specific sites, a bit easier, along with allowing greater user specificity. The application is especially useful for searching for images, MP3 files, and other items. All Search is also fully integrated with Internet Explorer, and the layout is user-friendly. Finally, All Search is compatible with all of the Windows operating platforms. [KMG]
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Free Online Meter 1.3
http://www.birusoft.com/olmtr.htm
For those persons hoping to monitor the cost and time of their Internet dial-up service, this little application will be most welcome. The Free Online Meter keeps track of how long a user is online, and can be customized to include the cost per hour of the ISP service. Also, assistance with customizing the application's preferences is available from the Birusoft Web page. The Online Meter is compatible with all Windows operating systems. [KMG]
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Forensic Scientists and Scholars Solve Mystery of "Unknown Child" Lost on the Titanic
Titanic's Baby Victim Identified
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2413895.stm
Secrets of the Dead: Titanic's Ghosts
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_titanic/index.html
DNA Testing: An Introduction for Non-Scientists
http://www.scientific.org/tutorials/articles/riley/riley.html
Titanic Victims Buried in Halifax
http://museum.gov.ns.ca/mma/titanic/victims.htm
Encyclopedia Titanica
http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/
RMS Titanic, Inc.
http://www.titanic-online.com/
Earlier this week, a team of scientists, historians, and genealogists announced that they had discovered the identity of the "Unknown Child," a young boy who was found in the water around the Titanic several days after it sank on April 5, 1912. Using three small teeth from the boy's grave in Halifax's Fairview Lawn Cemetery and a blood sample from a Finnish woman thought to be related to the boy, researcher Alan Parr (from Lakehead University) was able to determine that the boy was in fact Eino Viljami Panula, who was traveling with his mother and four brothers to America. While the discovery granted closure to one family and their descendants, there are still many persons who perished in the sinking of the Titanic who have never been positively identified.
The first link leads to a complete news story on the recent discovery published by the BBC. The second link features material from an upcoming PBS television program on the question of using forensic science in answering questions associated with identifying persons on board the Titanic when it sank. The third link offers a nice overview of DNA testing written by Dr. Donald E. Riley. The fourth link leads to a detailed list of all the other Titanic victims buried at Halifax's Fairview and Mt. Olivet cemeteries. The fifth link is to the fabulous Encyclopedia Titanica, which is a massive compendium of all things Titanic, including passenger biographies, theories on why the ship sank, and research articles. The final link is to the RMS Titanic, Inc. homepage, which includes information about the Titanic's various research missions to recover materials and detritus from the Titanic's resting place at the bottom of the North Atlantic. [KMG]
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