The Scout Report -- Volume 24, Number 17

Missing Scientists' Faces is a project led by Hilda Bastian that is dedicated to "getting photos & stories of women & other under-represented scientists in the public domain and Wikipedia." In this blog, Bastian raises awareness about important individuals who have been overlooked in science history. In particular, Bastian hopes to locate photographs of overlooked scientists to include in the Missing Scientists' Faces Wikimedia Commons page. Those interested in getting involved in the project will want to check out "how to help," which features a list of Wikipedia entries in need of a photograph and a link to a tutorial about editing in Wikipedia. Science and history educators may find this blog to be a helpful resource for locating stories about important scientists and their accomplishments. The blog recently completed its "28 Days of African-American Women in Science" series, which visitors will find on the site's homepage. The series features short biographies of scientists including Jane Hinton (who, in 1941, developed an agar that is still used today to test antibiotic resistance), Inez Beverly Prosser (the first African-American women to earn a Ph.D. in Psychology), and chemistry educator and activist Josephine Silone Yates. [MMB]

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From the University of California, Santa Barbara and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art comes this online exhibit dedicated to the 1938 journey of Wilber L. Cummings, Jr. (1914-1943) and F. Bailey Vanderhoef, Jr., who traveled from Kalimpong, India to western Tibet. As UCSB religious studies scholar Jose Ignacio Cabezon explains in the introduction to this exhibit, the pair hoped to "document the religious art and the famous 'lama dances' at the monastery of Palkhor Choede, located in the city of Gyangtse in western Tibet." Some of these photographs were published in a 1939 issue of Life magazine. This online exhibit consists of five parts. First, visitors may read the late Wilber Cummings's journal made available by his sister, Molly Cummings Minot Cook. Visitors may also read F. Bailey Vanderhoef's memoirs, which consist of fifteen chapters recounting the trip. Next, the exhibit features over 80 black and white photographs from the journey and eighteen full-color images of Tibetan art. Finally, visitors may view the route that Cummings and Vanderhoef took in the Maps of the Trip section. [MMB]

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The Library of Congress's Moving Image Research Center offers a number of online resources that may appeal to teachers and students of film history. Visitors may want to start by exploring the links in the About the Collection section, where readers can find out more about what films are held in the LOC. For instance, the National Film Preservation Board page features a short synopsis of all films in the collection, along with a number of longer film essays penned by scholars and critics. Another highlight of this collection is the National Film Registry collection, available in the Digital Collections & Online Resources section. Here, visitors may view 63 film clips from movies that are part of the National Film Registry. These include a clip from the 1945 Frank Sinatra film The House I Live In and a clip from an 1897 filmed boxing match between James Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons, which is considered to be the first feature-length film. Other film clips can be found in the Digital Moving Image collections, which features thematic exhibits such as "America at Work, America at Leisure: Motion Pictures from 1894- 1915" and "Buckaroos in Paradise: Ranching Culture in Northern Nevada, 1945-1982." [MMB]

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The Haiku Foundation (THF) is a non-profit organization that aims to "preserve and archive the accomplishments of our first century of haiku in English, and to provide resources for its expansion in our next." On the foundation's Educational Resources page, K-12 and college educators will find resources for integrating haiku into the classroom. These resources are organized by grade level and are designed to complement existing language arts curriculum. Resources include lesson plans, classroom handouts, and "teaching stories" (reflections from educators who incorporated haiku into their classrooms). Most lesson plans on this website were designed by THF president Jim Kacian and by poet Ellen Grace Olinger, Ed.D. Additional lesson plans were contributed by poets Brad Bennett and Tom Painting. [MMB]

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Launched in 2001 by the Chicago Theological Seminary, the LGBT Religious Archives Network (LGBT-RAN) is dedicated to "preserving history and encouraging scholarly study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) religious movements around the world." To meet this goal, LGBT-RAN, which is currently part of the Center for Lesbian & Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry in Berkeley, California, has two initiatives. First, the group assists LGBT individuals and groups in identifying how to preserve relevant archival information. Second, the group seeks to provide "an electronic information clearinghouse for these archival collections and other historical data about LGBT religious history for the use of historians, researchers and other interested persons." On this website, visitors can explore short biographies of LGBT religious leaders in the Profiles Gallery and listen to oral history interviews with 45 of these individuals in the Oral History collection. Another highlight of this collection is the Online Exhibitions section, which features digitized archival material that may be of interest to religious studies scholars as well as members of the general public. [MMB]

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Boston Globe Media's STAT News (featured in the 10-21-2016 Scout Report) has recently introduced Boddities - a series of educational videos about "the quirks of the human body." As of this write-up, the series includes eleven short videos (approximately two to three minutes in length) that answer the kind of body-related questions you've probably found yourself wondering, such as "Why do our fingers get wrinkly in the water?" Each episode is hosted by STAT reporter Megan Thielking and features a combination of helpful animations and interviews with expert scientists. For health and science educators interested in incorporating Boddities into the classroom, three of these videos are accompanied by short worksheets. [MMB]

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The Purdue OWL recently created this helpful resource for incorporating writing instruction into engineering classrooms, which may be useful for engineering instructors and teaching assistants. Created with support from the National Science Foundation's Research Initiation Grant in Engineering Education (RIGEE), these resources are designed with two purposes. The first is to support students in developing their writing skills; the second, to help students understand engineering concepts through writing exercises. With these dual aims in mind, this collection highlights six kinds of writing prompts that instructors might use with engineering students. These consist of conceptual writing prompts aimed at asking students to explain engineering concepts, such as fluid mechanics, in writing. Others include explain-a-problem writing prompts, which are designed to accompany engineering computational problems; how stuff works writing prompts (one example: "Explain how the gears of a bicycle work? What is changing when you change gears?"); real-world example writing prompts; design-a-problem writing prompts; and open-ended design writing prompts (one example: "Design a viewing platform that hangs over the Grand Canyon."). [MMB]

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The American Library Association (ALA) recently released its annual State of America's Libraries Report, which summarizes major trends in public, academic, and school libraries. This report highlights three national trends that are predicted to impact the future of libraries: an aging population, growing income inequality, and the growth of "connected learning," or, educational opportunities in digital and social media. As the report notes, these last two trends are intertwined: "In order for connected learning to help level the playing field between the haves and have-nots, students must have regular access to new and emerging technologies and the internet." The report also includes the ALA's annual list of the most frequently challenged books in the past year. The brief report includes a very helpful reference section for readers interested in further reading. [MMB]

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On view at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History is the exhibit Cultivating America's Gardens, which traces the history of gardening in the United States from the 1600s through the present. The exhibit was launched in May 2017 and runs through August 2018. For those who can't make the trip to Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian offers this companion online exhibit. Cultivating America's Gardens is comprised of seven sections, each of which are accompanied by digitized material in the Smithsonian collection. For instance, in the first section, Gardening for Science, visitors can view a map and sketch of a mourning dove by English naturalist Mark Catesby and images from Asa Grey's 1858 book Botany for Young People and Common Schools. The Gardening for the Common Good section features a 1919 newspaper comic by J.N. Darling entitled "War Garden to Do its Duty" and the cover of a 1943 issue of World's Finest Comics, which depicts Batman, Robin, and Superman tending to a victory garden. [MMB]

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In summer 2016, NASA's space probe Juno reached Jupiter five years after its 2011 launch. Over the past two years, Juno has been capturing spectacular images of the solar system's largest planet. On NASA's photo journal page dedicated to Jupiter, visitors can explore some of these images alongside other Jupiter images, including telescope images, diagrams, images captured by infrared spectrometers, and more. In total, the collection features over 900 images dating back to 1996. Each image is accompanied by a caption that includes links to related resources. When visitors view an image captured by the JunoCam, they will see a link to NASA's JunoCam website. Here, interested visitors can help process raw images from JunoCam and participate in discussions with fellow citizen scientists. [MMB]

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From the Centre for Australian Art comes this collection over 26,000 digitized images of works by printmakers from "Australia, Aboriginal Australia, the Torres Strait Islands, Papua New Guinea, Maori and Pakeha Aotearoa, New Zealand, and the Pacific region..." This collection is "based on the Australian print collection at the National Gallery of Australia." Visitors can explore this rich collection in a number of ways. By using the advanced search option and selecting artist, visitors can search for printmakers by category, such as culture, country, and gender. Visitors also have the option to limit search results by birth year, allowing visitors to explore how printmaking has changed over time. In addition, by selecting the work option in the advanced search, visitors can limit options by category (e.g. book, multimedia, textile) or print type (e.g. collage, digital print, etching). Alternatively, the browse option allows visitors to explore artists and works alphabetically. [MMB]

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Aesthetics for Birds is a blog that was started by University of Houston philosophy professor Christy Mag Uidhar in 2013 and is currently run by SUNY Buffalo philosophy professor Alex King. Aesthetics for Birds is designed to "bring people working in aesthetics and philosophy of art together with each other, as well as with artists, the art world, and others in philosophy and the academy." The blog frequently features ruminations about issues at the intersections of art, popular culture, and philosophy. For example, a recent blog post authored by Boston University philosophy professor Daniel Star reflects on the popularity of the #nofilter hashtag on Instagram and how the era of smartphone cameras and social media has shaped ideas about photography. The blog also features the series "100x100x100" or "100 Philosophers 100 Artworks 100 Words," which invites philosophers to select an artwork to write about. As of this write-up, 67 philosophers have been featured in this series. Aesthetics for Birds also features interviews and regular "artworld roundtables" that incorporate contributions from multiple philosophers on a particular topic from the worlds of art and philosophy. [MMB]

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Graphic medicine is an increasingly popular term used to describe comics that discuss topics such as health, illness, and healthcare. For those interested in learning more about graphic medicine, GraphicMedicine.org is a great place to start. Launched in 2007, this website is run by Dr. Ian Williams (a physician and comics artist), M.K. Czerwiec, RN, MA (who writes comics as "Comics Nurse" and authored Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Unit 371) and Matthew Noe (who launched the blog This Week in Graphic Medicine in 2016). Readers unfamiliar with graphic novels may want to start by checking out Williams's essays "A Short History of 'Art' Comics," available in the About section. From here, visitors can explore previous blog posts by categories, tags, and check out reviews and recommendations in the Comics Reviews section. In addition, Graphic Medicine features a monthly podcast, which often includes interviews with comic artists and medical professionals. In 2016, physician and comic artist Monica Lalanda launched the Spanish-language sister site Medicina Grafica - visitors will find this website in the Links section. [MMB]

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Powers of Ten: Census Edition is a data visualization project by Jia Zhang that allows viewers to explore U.S. Census data in a novel way. The project was inspired by the Ray and Charles Eames's two films Powers of Ten, which was released in 1968 (the "sketch" version) and 1977 (the "final" version). The Eames's film depicts a couple picnicking in Chicago. The camera then zooms out, depicting the couple from a distance ten times farther away every ten seconds, eventually revealing satellite images of Earth and, eventually, a diagram of space. Similarly, Zhang's visualization allows visitors to explore population statistics and demographic data of an increasingly larger portion of the United States. The map begins in a single neighborhood, or, census block group. From here, visitors view an entire census tract and, next, a census county. As visitors are presented with these larger geographical areas, the population figures on the screen are updated, and new demographic statistics are introduced. As visitors reload the homepage, different starting locations are presented. When visitors allow the site to access their location, they may see their own neighborhood. Visitors interested in learning more about how Zhang created this map can check out the About section. [MMB]

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Viennese Modernism was launched in late 2017 in conjunction with the city of Vienna's planned 2018 celebration of Viennese Modernism. This website was intended to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the deaths of four main nineteenth-century proponents of Viennese Modernism: Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Otto Wagner, and Koloman Moser. The site motto is "Be ahead of your time." Viennese Modernism 2018 was created by Australian design firm Wild and has been nominated for best web project on the award site Awwwards. The site features everything related to Viennese Modernism, including clothing by Arthur Arbesser X Vienna. Other features in the collection include the Instagram hashtag #viennanow; prominent women in Viennese Modernism; and of course, plenty of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele's art. There's also a section on architect Otto Wagner's train stations and Koloman Moser, founder of Wiener Werkstaette, whose work spanned fine arts and design. [DS]

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Many organizations make their data available in CSV format (for example, the US Census Bureau, NOAA, and the US Department of Education). Xsv is a tool for quickly performing analysis and filtering on CSV files without first needing to import the data into a database system. It can generate basic statistics like the mean, standard deviation, median, and range for each column in the input file. CSV files can be combined using inner, outer, and cross join operations. They can also be a subset using regular expression searches, select operations on columns, and random sampling. Users can optionally create index files to improve performance. The xsv readme includes a "whirlwind tour" of many of these features using sample files from the Data Science Toolkit. Xsv is free software, dual-licensed under the MIT License and the Unlicense. Source code is available on GitHub. Executables can be downloaded for Windows, macOS, and Linux. [CRH]

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JSON is a lightweight markup language widely used for exchanging and storing structured data. Many websites provide APIs that return JSON data -- GitHub, Google Maps, and Wikidata to name a few. Jq provides a tool for slicing, filtering, mapping, and transforming JSON data similar to the sed, awk, and grep command-line utilities. The jq tutorial uses the GitHub API to produce summary information about recent changes to jq itself. Users can experiment with jq on their own data before downloading it using the 'Try online!' section of the website. Jq is free software, licensed under the MIT license, with source code available on GitHub. Executables are available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. [CRH]

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For fans of design and print, I Love Typography is a delightful, must-read blog.

"As I child," writes John Boardly, "I always wondered why the teacher asked us to draw the letter a as an o with a tail, when, in my books, the a's had an extra bit at the top." And so, as an adult, John Boardly publishes a blog called I Love Typography. Written by Boardly and a number of contributing design professionals, I Love Typography is rich with history, fascinating trivia, and visually striking images of fonts. While Boardly is deeply knowledgeable about the nuances of typography, he aims to make his blog accessible to anyone with a passing interest in the topic and writes in a jargon-free, engaging manner. Newbies can start with the New to Type? series, which helpfully breaks down typography basics and terminology. However, any reader - not just design experts - can also appreciate articles like Boardly's examination of the hidden history of fifteenth-century women typographers or designer Kristyan Sarkis's explanation of how he created a new Arabic type system, Greta Arabic.

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