The Scout Report -- Volume 25, Number 3

Particulate air pollution is a serious human health hazard in locations around the world, connected to nearly seven million deaths each year. Recently, the digital science magazine Undark (featured in the 2017 Best of the Scout Report) published Breathtaking, a special series of articles focused on a specific classification of particulate pollution, PM2.5. Here, readers are taken on a journey that "visit[s] seven countries on five continents, rich and poor, north and south, to examine the impacts of this sort of air pollution on the lives of everyday people" and also looks at whether and how this deadly problem is being addressed. Locations include California's San Joaquin Valley, where one in six children are estimated to have asthma due to the region's recurring air pollution, and Macedonia, whose coal-based electricity and political difficulties contribute to its "reputation for having some of the worst annual average air pollution in Europe." Accompanied by many highly visual photographs, videos, and interactive graphics, Breathtaking provides an informative and engaging exploration of worldwide particulate pollution. This series was produced jointly by Undark and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. [JDC]

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Crash Course Engineering is one of the most recent additions to the popular Crash Course YouTube channel founded by vlogging brothers Hank and John Green in 2011. Hosted by engineer, science communicator, and Crash Course veteran Shini Somara and produced in association with PBS Digital Studios, Crash Course Engineering launched in May 2018. Here, learners of all ages will find energetic, fast-paced videos on a wide variety of engineering subjects. Episodes range from introductions to and histories of subfields like mechanical and chemical engineering to explorations of topics such as thermodynamics, nanomaterials, and renewable energy. Each episode is approximately ten minutes long, making them short enough for classroom use and snappy enough for anyone to learn a little in their spare time. As of this write-up, the series contains 32 episodes with new episodes uploaded on Thursdays and a total of 42 planned. [JDC]

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Educators seeking to foster their students' ability to form rigorous, well-researched, reasoned arguments may want to check out Debating Matters. Launched in 2003 by the UK-based organization Academy of Ideas, Debating Matters is an annual competition for 6th-form students (equivalent to US 12th grade). However, the competition's website contains many resources that readers outside the UK can also benefit from, including a library of more than eighty well-developed, in-depth topic guides "covering debates relating to big questions about science and experimentation, liberty and the law, arts and culture, health and medicine, politics, the media and more." Recently added and updated topics include the repatriation of museum artifacts, autonomous vehicles, and artificial intelligence. While the topic guides are designed for debaters preparing for competition, educators may also adapt their contents for classroom use. Teachers interested in leading or starting a debate organization at their school should visit the resource hub. Here, readers will find two resource packs created to help teachers start a debate club or organize a Debating Matters-style competition, as well as several case studies describing teachers' experiences in this area and videos showcasing how Debating Matters events work. [JDC]

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The study of mathematics has a long and varied history spanning continents and centuries. Instructors might like to draw upon the field's rich and diverse legacy to nudge their students' imaginations and help them understand why various techniques were developed. Problems from Another Time provide readers with a large, outstanding collection of educational resources that present and discuss specific math problems from a historical context. The exercises and articles that include historical problem sets are published in Convergence, one of the many excellent online resources from the Mathematical Association of America. Offered in order of publication, examples include ancient Indian rope geometry, using Sudoku puzzles to understand Al-Maghribi's Mecca Problem, and a project on computing determinants based on a paper by mathematician Charles Dodgson (also known as Lewis Carroll of Alice in Wonderland fame). Most of the resources in this collection include images, in addition to materials such as illustrative applets, downloadable worksheets, or LaTeX files. Topics range widely and are largely aimed at mathematics educators of grades 8 through 12. [JDC]

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Puratos, an international company located in Belgium that supplies products for bakeries, patisseries, and chocolate manufacturers, also maintains a library of sourdough strains. Similar to a seed library, the Puratos Sourdough Library currently catalogs 1,430 sourdough varieties, which can be browsed via the Quest for Sourdough website. The library accepts two types of submissions from sourdough aficionados: recipes and actual samples of sourdough starter. Samples are analyzed for microorganisms in labs at the Uni Bolzano and Bari in Italy. After analysis, the microorganisms are then stored in a freezer at -80C/-112F to preserve their biodiversity for the future, while the sourdoughs are kept in optimal condition in refrigerators at 4C/39F. Each sample is refreshed every two months with the flour with which it was originally made. In addition to the scientific side, the website includes a blog with stories and lots of recipes, such as Ione's sourdough waffles (from Alaska) or Sourdough donuts. Belgium is not typically known for its sourdough baked goods and, in fact, consulting the map of location origins of the sourdoughs in the library shows that the majority have been collected from the United States. [DS]

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Every year, January 1st is celebrated as Public Domain Day, when a new batch of media ceases to be protected by national copyright law. While most countries' copyright expirations are based on a set period of time after a work's creator dies, US copyright expiration is based on the year a work was published. This, combined with changes to copyright law in 1978 and 1998, has meant that 2019 is the first year that any works have entered the US public domain due to copyright expiration in more than twenty years. To honor this momentous occasion, the online journal The Public Domain Review recently published this "Class of 2019" list highlighting some of the many works of literature, film, and art that are now in the public domain. Notable examples from this list are Robert Frost's New Hampshire (containing the well-loved poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"), Kahlil Gibran's immensely popular classic The Prophet, the silent film Our Hospitality starring Buster Keaton, and Pablo Picasso's paintings The Pipes of Pan and Paulo on a Donkey, all of which were published in 1923. [JDC]

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Readers wondering where they might find some of the films that recently entered the public domain under US copyright law should take a look at the Internet Archive's movie collection. At the link above, visitors can watch and download several dozen full-length feature films from 1923, the publication year that most recently became public domain in the US. This collection includes such films as Cecil B. DeMille's lesser-known silent version of The Ten Commandments, the classic The Hunchback of Notre Dame starring Lon Chaney and directed by Wallace Worsley, and Alla Nazimova's avant-garde adaptation of Oscar Wilde's play Salome, as well as several of Otto Messmer's early Felix the Cat cartoons. Although films from this time had no audible dialogue, some in this collection include music. Visitors may use the search bar and filters on the left to further explore the Internet Archive's movie collections, and the entire site is bursting with other content to explore as well. [JDC]

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The HathiTrust Digital Library is a global partnership between research institutions and libraries around the world, all "committed to the long-term curation and availability of the cultural record." Since its launch in 2008, this repository has grown to include more than 16 million digitized volumes, over six million of which are in the public domain. Here, readers can peruse HathiTrust's collection of publications from 1923 that entered the public domain on January 1, 2019. At the time of this write-up, this collection contains well over 53,000 digitized books, journals, reports, sheet music, and more, with content being added regularly. To sift through this trove, visitors can narrow the results by fields such as subject, author, and original format, and they may also search within the collection by keyword. Some of the more well-known texts readers can find in this collection include A few figs from thistles: poems and sonnets by Edna St. Vincent Millay; A Lost Lady by Willa Cather; a 26-volume edition of works by Robert Louis Stevenson; and the first two volumes of The World Crisis, Winston Churchill's account of World War One. [JDC]

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The Center for the Study of the Public Domain (CSPD), part of Duke University Law School, is a pioneer among university centers examining "the contributions of the public domain to speech, culture, science, and innovation." Both casual and academic visitors to their website will find much to capture their attention. Readers may like to start with the Public Domain Day section, where they will currently find an approachable explanation of why 2019 is so important for the US public domain, links to some of the works that are now in the public domain, and a section on what could have become public domain if US copyright laws had not been changed in 1978. The CSPD also features several publications that includes two acclaimed graphic novels designed to teach readers about copyright law, as well as a 2016 casebook on intellectual property law -- all free to download. Additionally, readers may want to check out the projects section for resources engaging a variety of disciplines, and the CSPD has several multilingual resources to help citizens worldwide learn about intellectual property and the public domain. Founded in 2002, the CSPD is directed by Jennifer Jenkins, a Clinical Professor of Law at Duke Law School. [JDC]

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The venerable Project Gutenberg (last featured in the 07-02-2010 Scout Report) is well-known for providing open access to ebooks of public domain texts. But how do those free ebooks come into existence? The primary way is through Distributed Proofreaders, a not-for-profit organization founded in 2000 to help support Project Gutenberg's mission of digitizing public domain books. This organization offers a web-based platform through which volunteers around the world can easily help convert scanned pages into optical character recognition (OCR) text to create ebooks capable of adapting to different screen sizes. To make the process of proofreading entire books faster and much less daunting, individual pages from each book are distributed amongst many volunteers, hence the organization's name. As of this write-up, their team of volunteers has produced well over 36,000 ebooks, all of which now reside in Project Gutenberg's repository. Interested in helping to make public domain books more accessible to the world? Distributed Proofreaders has a handy walkthrough, extensive wiki, and well-organized forum to help new volunteers get started. [JDC]

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Hammerspoon is a tool for automating macOS computers, allowing users to write Lua scripts that control applications, windows, the mouse, the keyboard, the screen, wifi and networking, and more. For example, a user could automatically start a set of applications when connecting to a work wifi network and could quit then when connecting to a personal wifi network. Hammerspoon's Getting Started Guide provides a walk-through of creating a basic "Hello World" script. A repository of official modules (called Spoons) can be found at Hammerspoon.org/Spoons. These modules include informational overlays for the desktop or menu bar, modules that manage window layout, application launchers, integrations with various applications, and various others. In addition to the getting started guide, the Hammerspoon wiki on GitHub contains several dozen sample configuration files that new users may examine for inspiration. Hammerspoon is a free software, distributed under the MIT license, with source code available on GitHub. [CRH]

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AutoHotkey is a tool for controlling Windows computers, allowing users to automate a wide range of tasks and customize how their mouse and keyboard behave. Examples on their front page include "form fillers, auto-clicking, macros, etc." It can even be used for software remapping of keyboard layouts. AHK uses its own built-in scripting language that is designed for ease of learning and use. A number of examples of the syntax are provided on the AHK front page, with more available via RosettaCode. In the documentation section, users can locate a tutorial and comprehensive reference for the AutoHotkey language. In addition to the official tutorial, the footer of the site links to a number of community-provided tutorials including video tutorials via YouTube. AutoHotkey is a free software, distributed under the GNU General Public License, with source code available on GitHub. [CRH]

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We originally featured LibriVox in the 10-05-2012 Scout Report, and it continues to be an excellent source of free audiobooks of public domain literature. To date, the LibriVox catalog contains more than 12,000 audiobooks (including over 1,600 non-English works) recorded by more than 9,000 volunteers.

The LibriVox site is billed as an "acoustical liberation of books in the public domain." This claim proves to be true; the site provides free audiobooks of public domain works from authors such as Dickens, Chaucer, and hundreds of others to forward their mission of recording all the books in the public domain. First-time visitors can click on the LibriVox catalog to search a title or author to get started. One can also view recently cataloged titles or just elect to browse the entire catalog. The new releases area is a fun way to learn about what has recently captured the attention of the folks at LibriVox. One can even register to help record an audiobook for the site. Visitors are encouraged to sign up for the LibriVox RSS feed and to check out their interesting podcasts as well.

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