The Scout Report -- Volume 23, Number 19

During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, astrological medicine gained prevalence throughout Great Britain. Simon Forman and Richard Napier were perhaps the most prominent astrologer-physicians; collectively, they saw thousands of patients in urban and rural areas. During visits, Foreman or Napier would interview each patient and consult astrological charts to gain insight into their ailments. The Casebooks Project, a collaboration between the Wellcome Trust, the Bodleian Libraries, and the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, details this fascinating part of medical history via medical casebooks authored by Forman and Napier between 1596 and 1634 and other digitized material relating to astrological medicine. Perhaps the best place to start is with the Introduction to the Casebooks, available under The Manuscripts tab. Here, readers may learn about the history of these casebooks and how they were organized. Next, visitors may wish to check out digitized and transcribed casebooks, found within The Casebooks section. This collection may be searched by a number of fields, including Date & TIme, Patient, and Case Details. Finally, the On Astrological Medicine section provides Guides to Astrology and a list of Further Reading. This project provides a fascinating glimpse into an oft-forgotten chapter of European medical history. [MMB]

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The Numeracy Infusion Course for Higher Education (NICHE) is an initiative of the City University of New York Quantitative Reasoning Alliance. NICHE offers this collection of instructional resources designed to help college-level educators better support their students' numeracy skills. This website includes general resources to help instructors reflect on their pedagogical practices as well as external resources that instructors might consider implementing into the classroom. These general resources, which can be found in the QR (Quantitative Reasoning) Learning Goals, QR Best Practice, and QR Assessment sections, include links to papers and videos that discuss best practices for supporting students in mathematics classrooms. These resources may be of interest to individual instructors or helpful for professional development communities. Meanwhile, the extensive Resource Center contains links to websites, videos, organizations and more. These resources are sorted into three categories: Teaching Resources for Math, QR, and Statistical Skills; Internet Resources for Data Analysis; and Internet Exercises and Modules for Teaching QR Skills.

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Falmouth, Jamaica is home to "one of the richest collections of architecture in the Caribbean." With this interactive map and timeline, architecture students, researchers, and enthusiasts can explore this architecture and its history. The Falmouth Project was developed by Louis P. Nelson of the University of Virginia's Department of Architectural History in collaboration with Falmouth Heritage Renewal and the Jamaican National Heritage Trust. On the Explore Falmouth Section of this page, visitors can check out over 700 buildings by Location, Date, and Use (e.g. Residential, Commercial, or Educational). Each building record features photographs, a short description, and a copy of the survey form used to gather information. Meanwhile, the Essays section of this website (also titled the Falmouth Field Guide) features longer descriptions about a number of particularly interesting structures. Visitors can browse these short essays by street or district. [MMB]

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The Key to Nature Program, an initiative of 14 different European organizations, is dedicated to helping students learn about biodiversity and identify different species. This program hosts the Marine Species Identification Portal, an extensive collection of diagrams, photographs, and descriptions of hundreds of marine species. On the landing page, visitors can explore these species alphabetically or by category (e.g. Crustaceans, Hydrozoans, or Sponges). Visitors also have the option to search for a specific species of interest. Visitors may also view common species by global region via the Identify tab, or test their identification skills with an interactive Quiz. The multiple choice quiz is available in three different difficulty levels and offers a great learning tool for biology students or anyone looking to sharpen their knowledge of different marine species. [MMB]

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Jane Austen fans and English literature instructors alike should take note of this digital research project from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Developed by a team of English scholars and students, Austen Says allows users to visualize and analyze the language patterns of Austen's most popular works. Word Frequencies is a great place to start. Here, visitors can view data about the unique vocabularies of specific characters in a select novel. Alternatively, visitors may opt to compare the vocabularies of characters with shared characteristics, such as age, gender, or character type (e.g. cad, fool, or heroine.) Meanwhile, the Novel Visualizations section allows visitors to view highlighted examples of Free Indirect Discourse (FID), a technique commonly used by Austen. Finally, visitors to this website will find a Search tool that allows visitors to find select words or phrases in all six of Austen's published novels. [MMB]

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Public libraries have a long history of adapting to meet the changing needs of their communities. This practice continues today, with libraries adapting their programing, material collections, and staff training to meets community needs. On March 30, 2017, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation published this report outlining the "state of innovation capability and culture of urban public libraries." In collaboration with an outside consultant, the foundation interviewed numerous directors of urban public libraries across the United States in order to identify common challenges faced by library professionals in 2017. The results of this interview are outlined in the second section of the report, The State of the Field. This section also highlights a number of examples of how library staff are developing innovative solutions and programs to meet these challenges. Meanwhile, the third and fourth sections of this report provide a framework designed to aid libraries in developing and assessing their own innovative strategies. Interested readers may download the full report in PDF format. [MMB]

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From the California Academy of Sciences comes the Science Notebook Corner, a resource designed to help K-12 science teachers support young learners develop note taking skills, organization skills, and metacognition. Visitors may want to start by checking out Science Notebooks in Action, a series of short videos that outline the different ways "science notebooking" can be used in the classroom. From here, educators can check out a number of introductory activities that can aid in implementing science notebooks into the classroom. These activities include a lesson plan to introduce students to scientific sketching and advice for how science instructors can use notebooks in student assessment. The Science Notebook Corner also offers a number of guides on how to support students in developing specific note taking skills, such as data collection, active reading strategies, and taking notes on field trips. While aimed specifically at elementary school science teachers, this website provides material that may be of interest to educators of other content areas looking for ways to incorporate literacy skills into their classroom. [MMB]

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The Online Book Page, a project founded and edited by John Mark Ockerbloom at the University of Pennsylvania, offers this listing of prize-winning books that are freely available in the public domain. This extensive list features texts that have garnered the Newberry Award, the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the Pulitzer Prize. Available texts include multiple works by W.B. Yeats; Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence; and Henry Adams's The Education of Henry Adams. In addition to these well-touted works are titles that are perhaps less well-known today. In addition, this collection includes a number of English translated works by Nobel Prize winners who wrote in other languages. This handy one-stop shop of digitized prize winners provides a useful resource for any literature classroom, as well as a helpful research tool for English literature students and scholars. [MMB]

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This spectacular Google Arts and Culture page was recently awarded the 2017 Webby Award for Best Educational website. Developed in collaboration with the National Parks Service, this website allows visitors to experience the wonder of five different national parks in the United States: Kenai Fjords National Park, Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, Bryce Cannon National Park, and Dry Tortugas National Park. After selecting a park of interest, visitors can take a virtual tour of each park headed by an expert park ranger. These interactive tours include three-dimensional video and camera footage, interactive visuals, historical footage, and more. For example, visitors can observe the rate of glacial melting between 2004 and 2016 in the Kenai Fjords, or use the Night Sky feature to locate and learn about constellations and stars in Bryce Canyon. [MMB]

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"Why are there so many 17th century paintings of monkeys getting drunk?" If your curiosity is piqued by this question, Res Obscura is a blog for you. Authored by Benjamin Breen, assistant professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Res Obscura features long-form essays on various strange fads, controversies, and practices throughout history. Each essay is accompanied by a number of digitized primary sources. For example, the essay about seventeenth century paintings mentioned above features 10 pieces of artwork, many of which involve monkeys consuming alcohol. Other recent essays include an investigation of the 1674 Women's Petition Against Coffee in London and an examination of early modern handwriting and typeface. Breen currently publishes a new essay about once a month, and visitors can check out past essays by a number of subject tags. [MMB]

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For anyone interested in culinary history, the Biodiversity Heritage Library for Europe offers this interesting exhibition about spices. The exhibition features an alphabetized glossary of dozens of spices, from Ajwain (a strong, thyme-like spice grown in India and a number of Middle Eastern countries that can be used to season lentils) to Zedoary (a spice originally from India and Indonesia that, like ginger, has been used for medicinal purposes). Each spice entry includes photographs and illustrations of the spice, along with information about origin, interesting tidbits, and a recipe. Selecting an image reveals additional illustrations or photographs of the spice. The Biodiversity Library (which includes both U.S. and European versions) collaborates with Europeana Collections to offer digitized images from museums and libraries across Europe. Thus, the collection of photographs and historical illustrations available here is especially rich. Visitors may sort the collection by country, language, or timeline. [MMB]

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From the National Women's History Museum in Alexandria, Virginia, comes this online exhibit about the the women's suffrage movement. The exhibit features a number of fascinating primary documents, including posters, political cartoons, photographs, and more. Collectively, these items illustrate how women's suffrage proponents utilized popular notions about the sphere of femininity and motherhood in order to advocate for women's rights. In one 1911 cartoon, a woman is portrayed as cleaning the "dirty pool of politics" with the aid of the ballot. Meanwhile, a 1915 poster portrays a woman serving as a nurse, working at a factory, and scrubbing a floor. The poster notes that it "doesn't unsex her" to perform these duties, why should voting pose a threat to her femininity? This collection also highlights some of the divisions within the women's suffrage movement between the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and the National Women's Party (NWP). [MMB]

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Physician, scientist, and writer Siddhartha Mukherjee (best known for his 2010 book Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of the Cancer Gene) recently penned the essay "A.I. Versus M.D.: What happens when diagnosis is automated?" In this New Yorker piece, Mukherjee investigates the feasibility of incorporating machine learning into medical diagnosis. Mukherjee reflects on his own medical training and the skills and knowledge base involved in medical diagnosis. He then incorporates interviews with two computer scientists, Sebastian Thrun at Stanford University and Geoffrey Hinton at the University of Toronto, who are involved in developing new artificial intelligence technologies to diagnose a patient. Both Thrun and Hinton are inspired, in part, by the experiences of having close family members diagnosed with cancer. Hinton argues, "Early and accurate diagnosis is not a trivial problem. We can do better. Why not let machines help us?" This article will be of interest to anyone fascinated by the intersections of healthcare and technology. [MMB]

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This blog is for fans of comics, cartooning, and graphic novels. The Schulz Library at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont (named for Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts) is "packed with zines, graphic novels, cartoon collections, and related ephemera." This blog offers snippets from that collection and information about new publications, alongside news from the Center for Cartoon Studies. For example, one recent entry provides information about the newly published graphic novel Geis, authored and illustrated by Alexis Deacon. The blog also provides profiles of contemporary cartoonists, including school alumni. As a result, the Schulz Library Blog provides a useful space to learn about new comics and cartoonists while also checking out a bit of history. [MMB]

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Hank and John Green's Crash Course video series provides learners of all ages with fun, engaging material on everything from psychology to literature to astronomy - all in a fast-paced ten minutes. Here readers will find the Crash Course: Philosophy series on YouTube, with 43 episodes on topics from Cartesian Skepticism to Metaethics. A few of these episodes focus on specific philosophers or philosophical theories, offering viewers a chance to, for example, learn about "Locke, Berkeley, and Empiricism" in just a few minutes. Most episodes in this series, however, focus on broad themes and incorporate the ideas of multiple philosophers. One such episode explores the meaning of a good life according to Aristotle, Albert Camus, and contemporary philosopher Joanne Ciulla. [MMB]

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Accessing websites served over plain http (rather than https) using public wifi can be problematic for user privacy. As technically minded readers will be aware, any other users on the same network can snoop on http connections. Wifi network owners can even modify content traveling over http links (e.g., to insert advertising). OperaVPN makes the virtual private network already built in to the Opera web browser available to Android and iOS users as well. When using the service, all web browsing is shunted through an encrypted tunnel to the servers at SurfEasy Inc, a Canadian subsidiary of Opera Software, which then connect to sites on a user's behalf. Because traffic through the tunnel is encrypted, browsing sessions cannot be observed by other users on the same network, nor can they be modified by the network owner. [CRH]

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Writing can be among the most mercurial of skills, in large measure because of how quickly clarity can slip through one's fingers. The Hemingway Editor provides a distraction-free writing environment with a twist. It has an Edit mode that will highlight complex sentences and common errors, compute readability scores, and estimate reading time. According to the about page, "It's like a spell checker, but for style." These features can help authors to sharpen, clarify, and simplify their prose. In addition to the free web version of the editor, a desktop version is available for purchase for both Macintosh and Windows computers. [CRH]

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