The Scout Report -- Volume 22, Number 26

The History of Vaccines is an educational site maintained by the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Founded in 1787, the College currently runs the Mutter Museum, a museum of the history of medicine, and the Historical Medical Library. The History of Vaccines website includes an interactive timeline of vaccination history, online classroom activities, and a gallery of over 700 items related to vaccination. These three sections of the website include a number of helpful visuals (such as an interactive animation designed to help individuals visualize the concept of herd immunity) and intriguing primary documents. The Articles tab includes a variety of readings aimed at students, educators, and families alike. In the Educators area of the website, instructors will find four complete lesson plans (compatible with a variety of Science and Health Education standards) that utilize material from the website. Finally, readers will find recent news items related to vaccination in the Blog. Interested parties may also sign up to for an email list to learn about website updates. [MMB]

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TheStructuralEngineer.info aims to provide useful resources to civil engineering and construction industry professionals, educators, and students. The Online Structural Engineering Library is one such resource. Created in 2000 by Dimitrios Zekkos, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan, the library contains links to over 3,000 papers related to structural engineering. These papers are drawn from a variety of sources including academic and professional journals, conference presentations, and official government and non-profit organization reports. All of these reports are available for free and are sorted into twenty thematic categories, including Structural Reliability, Standards and Design Codes, and Earthquake and Tsunami Reports. The Online Structural Engineering Library includes a disclaimer noting that it exists solely to categorize external sources and cannot guarantee the online availability of all articles. That said, a perusal through the library indicates that the large majority of these articles are available and easy to access. [MMB]

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Founded in 2012 by a team of doctoral students at the University of Texas at El Paso, Borderlands History is a collective blog dedicated to exploring the legal, social, and cultural history of borderland regions. In the United States, the term "borderlands" usually connotes the area along the U.S.-Mexico border, and most contributions to Borderland History address this region. However, this blog is intentionally inclusive of all borderlands. Blog posts are frequently updated and range from interviews with borderlands historians to book reviews, links to magazine articles, and job postings. Recent posts include a discussion by Michael K. Bess, Assistant Professor of History at the Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas, a closer look at historical maps of Texas, and a Question-and-Answer session with Carleton University (Ottawa) professor Michael Hogue about the history of Metis individuals who lived on the border of modern-day Canada and the United States. [MMB]

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In 1999, Anne Rosenfeld and Kelly Williams created Learning & the Brain as a conference series aimed at helping educators learn about new cognitive and neuroscience research and apply this research in their classrooms. Since 2009, Learning & the Brain has also published a regular blog. Authored by a variety of researchers, experienced educators, and doctoral students, the L&B Blog provides summaries of recent neuroscience research and book reviews. The blog also features discussions about how research can provide insight into common instructional issues, including how to best manage technology in the classroom and how to address student procrastination. Although the blog is designed for educators, others - especially parents and other caretakers of children - may find topics of interest here. Recent posts include the role and limitations of writing in overcoming trauma, how mathematics can be introduced to infants, and advice on giving yourself more effective pep-talks. [MMB]

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The Jackson Laboratory ("Jax") is a non-profit organization that has been conducting research in genetics and genomics since 1929. Currently, the group is engaged in research on topics including cancer, immunology, neurobiology, and developmental and reproductive biology. Jax is also committed to providing the general public with information about its research and recent developments in the field of genetics. On its extensive website, visitors will find numerous informational resources. By clicking on the News and Insights tabs, visitors can read about updates at Jax ("Jax News") and explore a general blog ("Jax Blog") that provides summaries of new studies and commentary on issues arising in the field of genetics. Podcast fans can check out the Supplemental Material podcast in this section. Interested readers can also sign up for a Jax Newsletter in order to receive weekly updates from this section of the website. Alternatively, readers can click on the Explore by Topic tab to find all previous posts relating to a topic of interest. [MMB]

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Sound Studies is an interdisciplinary field that explores the relationship of sound - including nature sounds, speech, and popular music - to human experience. Sounding Out! is a blog dedicated to engaging both academics and the general public with this growing field. Edited by Jennifer Stoever-Ackerman, a professor of English at Binghamton University, the blog features regular contributions by scholars of English, Music, Communications, Design, and Philosophy. Fittingly, the blog features both peer-edited articles as well as regular podcasts. Recent contributions include an examination of sound art in Brazil by sound artist and music scholar Rui Chaves; a discussion of the Old English noun "crim" by English scholar Jordan Zweck ("crim" appears in the poem "Exodus" and, according to Zweck, connotes an "indistinguishable, non-linguistic hum of a crowd, rather than the meaningful utterance of an individual"); and an analysis by ethnomusicologist Benjamin Tausig of how popular music critics have (mis)interpreted Prince's music and persona. Sounding Out! is frequently updated, and visitors can search archived posts by a number of topics. [MMB]

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The Kelsey Museum of Archeology at the University of Michigan curated the exhibit, Pearls of Wisdom: The Arts of Islam. The Kelsey Museum's Pearls of Wisdom website is rich with resources for students and educators of both art and Islam. Visitors to this site can explore photographs of numerous items included in the exhibit, which highlighted works dating back to the 8th century. In curating this impressive collection, the Kelsey Museum borrowed the philosophy of medieval calligrapher Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi and created four categories that mimic al-Tawhidi's musings on art: everyday beauty (which highlights objects including hair combs and decorative water filters); play and protection (which includes ornate gaming pieces and die); media metaphors (highlighting a number of objects, including ceramics, that mimic other art forms); and illumination (lamps and art pieces that center on light). In addition, visitors can view photographs of architecture, epigraphy, and drawings. Finally, the resources portion of this website includes two videos and four lesson plans for use in the classroom. [MMB]

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KQED is Northern California's PBS/NPR affiliate, broadcasting out of San Francisco. On KQED's Education page, the station provides classroom resources, instructional ideas, and articles that will be especially of interest to educators. On the homepage, educators will find a variety of recently published resources that can be used in the classroom. These include a collection of articles from The Lowdown, a regular KQED series in which authors break down complex news stories for use in the classroom, often through interactive media; and recent Do Now activities, where youth are encouraged to engage in civic conversation via social media. For instructors interested in learning more about integrating social media and digital tools into their lesson plans, the For Teachers section of the website provides ideas for effectively incorporating technology as well as resources for teaching online safety. Many of these articles are authored by educators and include detailed descriptions and reflections on incorporating a variety of ideas into the classroom. [MMB]

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"Law is alive," the authors of Life of the Law declare. "It doesn't live in books and words. It thrives on our streets, in our schools, in our courtrooms, and in our lives." Written and produced by a team of journalists and scholars, Life of the Law is a regular 30-minute podcast dedicated to examining legal news and history in a manner that enables everyone - not just trained legal scholars - to understand the significance and nuances of these developments. Recent episodes have covered the impact of new French anti-terrorist policies on French citizens, the history of forced-sterilization laws and the question of modern-day reparations to survivors, and an examination of the jury selection process. On its website, users can browse through past podcasts (currently there are 85) and either listen online or download full PDF transcripts. Interested listeners can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes as well. [MMB]

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The Story of the Beautiful is an interactive website dedicated to a single room with a contentious history. Between 1876 and1877, artist James McNeill Whistler took charge of decorating a London dining room for ship owner Frederick Richards Leyland. Whistler took the lead from ailing architect Thomas Jeckyll, who had designed ornate shelving units to display Leyland's collection of Chinese porcelain jugs. Unbeknownst to Leyland, Whistler drastically revised the room, adding floor to ceiling peacock patterns; Leyland was not pleased. So Whistler added one final touch to the room: a mural of two squabbling peacocks entitled "Art and Money." Leyland hated the Peacock Room, but he kept the room intact and showed it off to visitors. In 1903, American art collector Charles Lang Freer purchased the Peacock Room and had it reassembled in his Detroit home. Leyland's porcelain collection was not included in the sale, so Freer collected his own ceramics to fill Jekyll's shelves, including pieces from Syria, Iran, Japan, China, and Korea. On this website, viewers can take a virtual tour of both the London and Detroit renditions of the Peacock Room, examine over 400 individual ceramic items featured in the room, and view other archival material related to this spectacular room. Note that to view the virtual tours on the site, visitors need to use Google Chrome or have the most updated version of Adobe Flash. [MMB]

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"Undark" is what the U.S. Radium Corporation named the glow-in-the-dark - and radioactive - paint it produced for use on watches between 1917 and 1938. Hailed as a great innovation at the time, the paint tragically led to the premature deaths of many young, female factory workers, known today as the "radium girls." Undark, an online publication launched by the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT this past spring, is dedicated to producing investigative journalism related to science. The editors write, "We appropriate the name ["undark"] as a signal to readers that our magazine will explore science not just as a 'gee-whiz' phenomenon, but as a frequently wondrous, sometimes contentious, and occasionally troubling byproduct of human culture." Edited and published by a team of prominent science writers, including Deborah Blum and Tom Zeller, Undark includes long-form investigative journalism, shorter articles, op-eds, documentaries, and news round-ups. The site has also produces a podcast, Colloquia, which accompanies longer investigative pieces. This online magazine is an especially useful source for those looking to better understand ethical debates in the scientific community. [MMB]

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Shaun Usher launched Letters of Note in 2009 in order to highlight a variety of historic letters. The site has become so popular, especially in Usher's home of Great Britain, that he has since published two books compiling many of these letters. However, these books did not mark the end of his project, and Usher continues to post new letters to this site. Users can browse through an archive of over 900 letters that range from poignant to amusing. For instance, Usher recently posted Charlotte Bronte's eloquent and heartbreaking letter to her publisher regarding the death of her sister Emily ("Well, the loss is ours, not hers, and some sad comfort I take"), as well Winston Churchill's sardonic reply to a duke (under the nom de plum "Scorpio") who requested that Britons pray for rain to end a 1919 drought. Letters of Note makes for fascinating reading, and historians and teachers will also find this site to be a rich source for primary documents. [MMB]

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Shelf Awareness publishes two regular newsletters: one, Shelf Awareness Pro is a daily publication designed for publishers and librarians; the other, Shelf Awareness for Readers, is a twice-weekly publication for book fans of all stripes. Both publications are written and edited by a team that includes experienced publishers, booksellers, librarians, and book critics. While Shelf Awareness Pro includes job postings and news about bookstores and publishers, Shelf Awareness for Readers provides book fans with brief reviews of 25 recently published books each week. In addition to book reviews, the site includes interviews with reviewed authors and a Great Reads section highlights a previously published book, often one that may be of interest to readers because of its link to current events. The Book Candy feature, meanwhile, links to fun websites and resources about books and readers from around the internet. Interested readers can subscribe to both publications for free, or read current and past issues on the website. [MMB]

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Backchannel is dedicated to "mining the tech world for lively and meaningful tales and analysis." Since 2014, this magazine - authored by a team of tech experts and journalists - has provided readers with news about technological developments, product evaluations, and tech-industry news. Backchannel pays special attention to the business end of the tech industry, covering new start-up tech companies. While directed toward an audience of tech-enthusiasts, its authors excel at examining and reflecting on the ways in which technology continues to shape society at large in an engaging, jargon-free manner. As a result, even tech-shy readers may find articles of interest here. For example, Rex Sorgatz recently penned an engrossing article about visiting his hometown of Napoleon, North Dakota - population 792 - to examine how social media and technology have changed the experience of growing up in isolated, rural towns. Readers may also want to check out Jessi Hempel's recent article about six women who played key roles in the history of the Silicon Valley. [MMB]

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Open Plaques is an open-sourced project that documents and records the location of historic plaques around the world. Based out of Great Britain, Open Plaques has received support from the RSA (Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce). Anyone can submit a plaque for inclusion in this project, which currently features over 35,000 plaques worldwide. Users can browse or search for plaques by place, by the individual honored by the plaque, or by the organization that placed the plaque. Twitter users can follow @openplaques to both view recently added plaques and to explore how individuals have used Open Plaques to gain insight into history and how societies memorialize the past. For example, Steve Peters has created an infographic using sizing circles to represent the most popular subjects and individuals featured in U.K. plaques. Peters' infographic reveals that "knight" and, interestingly, "bachelor" top the subject list. John Wesley, meanwhile, edges out Charles Dickens for the honor of being featured on the most U.K. plaques featured in this project. [MMB]

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30/30 is a free productivity app for iPhones and iPad with iOS 4.3 or higher. On this app, users can write their own to-do list and allot an amount of time of their choice to complete each task. At the end of this time, an alarm will go off to signal that it is time to move to the next activity. Users can also schedule timed breaks into their to-do list, making this app especially appealing for Pomodoro Technique aficionados. Users can easily edit their to-do list, set the list to automatically loop, and email their lists to others. [MMB]

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If you are someone who needs "white noise" to work, relax, or block out the chatter of an office or coffee shop, Noisli may be the website for you. On this site, users can select to listen to a variety of noises, including rain, leaves, and railroad tracks. Alternatively, users can search for a previously composed collection of sounds, designed for either productivity or relaxing. By creating a free account, users can also save their favorite white noise medleys for future use. [MMB]

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