The Scout Report -- Volume 25, Number 7

Over the past year, The New York Times has been publishing obituaries for women of historical importance whose deaths the newspaper had neglected to commemorate. This project, entitled Overlooked (featured in the 3-16-2018 Scout Report), recently added a special edition in honor of Black History Month. This collection, published on January 31, 2019, "highlights a prominent group of black men and women whose lives we did not examine at the time of their deaths." In one obituary, Tanisha C. Ford writes about fashion designer Zelda Wynn Valdes, who began her career in the Jim Crow era and, after opening her own boutique in New York City, dressed socialites and stars such as Ella Fitzgerald, Eartha Kitt, and Marlene Dietrich. In another obituary, Wil Haygood writes about celebrated ragtime pianist Scott Joplin, whose iconic piece "The Entertainer" is instantly recognizable today and who was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his music in 1976, nearly six decades after his death. Other remarkable people featured in this special edition include filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, abolitionist Mary Ellen Pleasant, and inventor Granville T. Woods. Readers are also invited to nominate candidates for future Overlooked obituaries. [JDC]

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Launched in February 2019, the Atlas of Endangered Alphabets is a fascinating project that anyone curious about written languages can enjoy and learn from. Visitors to the atlas can browse dozens of writing systems by their place of origin via the interactive map on the front page or by name under the alphabets tab. While many of the languages represented in the atlas are spoken today, their written forms may have declined in use (such as the Baybayin script in the Philippines) or have only recently been developed (such as the Ditema tsa Dinoko script in sub-Saharan Africa). Each language has its own page with images, a contextual profile, and links to additional resources. The atlas is part of the broader Endangered Alphabets Project, which since 2009 has aimed to "preserv[e] endangered cultures by using their writing systems to create artwork and educational materials" and bases its vision on Article 13 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Coincidentally, the UN has proclaimed 2019 to be the Year of Indigenous Languages. A nonprofit based in Vermont, the Endangered Alphabets Project is led by its founder Tim Brookes, a professor of writing at Champlain College. [JDC]

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Euclid's Elements has been the standard in geometry textbooks for millennia, with hundreds of editions published since the ancient Greek mathematician created it at around the year 300 BCE. One edition was particularly noteworthy for its technological innovation: Oliver Byrne's 1847 edition, which stood out for its cutting-edge use of multiple colors in its diagrams rather than traditionally written labels, lending it an artistic quality as well as making the ideas easier to understand. Now, Byrne's Euclid has entered the digital era thanks to Chicago-based web designer and artist Nicholas Rougeux, who recreated Byrne's edition as an interactive website. Launched in December 2018, this project faithfully reproduces Byrne's version of Elements in its entirety, including its color scheme, graphics, and typography. Here, visitors can view all six books of Byrne's edition as well as its introduction and glossary of symbols, which Rougeux has enhanced with clickable shapes to help illustrate the ideas being discussed as well as links to cross-references within the text. Those interested in the background of this project should visit its about page, where they will find a short summary and a link to a lengthy blog post explaining how Rougeux created this site. [JDC]

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STEM educators and readers interested in science pedagogy may want to check out Chantier 7, a project conducted by researchers at McGill University and the University of Quebec in Montreal. This project, which was conducted from 2013-2016, aimed "to develop diagnostic assessment tools to uncover students' intuitive ideas about the natural world and design targeted teaching interventions to develop students' understanding of scientific and technological concepts and models." After reading the project's introduction on its main page, visitors may like to peruse Evidence-based Interventions, where they will find six groups of teaching strategies "gleaned [and summarized] from relevant literature studies which teachers can use to improve students' conceptual understanding in science." These interventions focus on STEM topics such as earthquakes, evolution and natural selection, and renewable and nonrenewable energy resources, and each intervention typically includes several strategies. Additional teaching materials are included in the resources section, where readers will find several sample lesson plans and ideas for classroom activities. Chantier 7 was led by Anila Asghar, Associate Professor of Integrated Studies of Education at McGill University. The material on this site is available in both English and French. [JDC]

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On its website, the tagline for the Food Programme reads "Investigating every aspect of the food we eat." The site primarily features 30-minute podcasts originally broadcasted on BBC Radio 4, covering a wide variety of food-related issues, from speculation on the effects of Brexit on food to different cultural approaches to deep-fried foods to posh noshes for dogs. There's also a series of podcasts entitled "Life Through Food" that features interviews with notables such as Sir Paul McCarthy and Nigella Lawson, while another series, "The Ark of Taste," explores ingredients and traditional foods at risk of extinction. Image galleries also accompany this website. Shetland, Lancashire and squashes are currently on view, in addition to information pages that include recipes such as "How to pimp up your porridge," "How to liven up your lunchtime," "Can comfort foods really make you feel better?" and a Chinese food quiz. [DS]

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The name John James Audubon has become synonymous with bird conservation science thanks to Birds of America, his extensive series of paintings sold as life-size prints between 1827 and 1838. Only 120 complete double elephant folio sets of Audubon's masterpiece are thought to exist, the pages of which were printed on "the largest paper sheets available at the time" and hand-colored. The University of Pittsburgh acquired one of these rare complete sets as part of the Darlington Collection (featured in the 5-10-2013 Scout Report). This collection also includes Audubon's Ornithological Biography, written as a companion piece to Birds of America, and the University of Pittsburgh Library has carefully preserved and digitized both works. Here, readers can search and explore all 435 of Audubon's paintings from Birds of America. When browsing the collection by plate name, each plate is paired with a link to the relevant pages from Ornithological Biography, which features Audubon's "lively narratives that describe each bird and includes additional information, such as their habitat." For those interested, the Audubon at Pitt section contains background information about Audubon's work and the library's preservation and digitization project. [JDC]

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For readers enamored with birds all around the world, the Internet Bird Collection (IBC) is an excellent place to spend some time. This nonprofit project describes itself as "an online audiovisual library of videos, photos and sound recordings of the world's birds" created "with the ultimate goal of disseminating knowledge about the world's avifauna." Visitors to the IBC can explore multimedia materials and recordings of thousands of bird species crowdsourced by birdwatchers around the world, with their species identifications cross-checked by trained ornithologists. This vast collection can be searched and filtered by family name (common or scientific), country, keyword, date, and more, and each media entry includes a location map and shows other media recorded nearby. The IBC also has several quizzes for those who enjoy testing their ornithology skills. Begun in 2002, the IBC was created by Lynx Edicons, the publishing house behind the 17-volume Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive, whose staff were inspired by their conversations with other birdwatchers to create a collective repository for multimedia collected by avid birders worldwide. Those interested can contribute their own bird photos, videos, and sound recordings to the IBC by creating a free account. [JDC]

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Elementary educators who would like to share the joys of birdwatching with their students may want to add this lesson plan from Science NetLinks to their curriculum. This lesson, based on the book Look Up! Bird-Watching in Your Own Backyard written and illustrated by Annette LeBlanc Cate, aims to "engage students in meaningful observation of the natural world by sketching common birds in their area." In this interdisciplinary, standards-aligned lesson (which was created with grades 3-5 in mind,) students are encouraged to think about and discuss their own experiences of observing birds alongside the book's educational and often humorous commentary. Discussion questions with page references are included, as are instructions for the accompanying sketching activity, suggestions for extension activities, and links to additional web resources such as All About Birds. In 2014, Look Up! was a winner of the AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books. [JDC]

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Much of the northern hemisphere may still be tight in winter's grasp, but the spring bird migrations will be starting before too long! For readers interested in keeping an eye on upcoming migrations in the contiguous United States, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's BirdCast Project is a great resource. Initially launched in 2012 and substantially updated in 2018, this project uses "many years of research and developments in machine learning, cloud-based computing, and big data analytics ... [to] feature migration forecasts that predict how many birds will be aloft over the continental US and live migration maps that report how many birds actually took flight." During seasonal migration events, visitors to BirdCast are greeted by colorful maps showing that day's migration forecast as well as the forecast for each of the next three days. Readers may also like to check out the Live Migration Maps for near real-time migration traffic. Between migrations, BirdCast still has a lot to offer, including informative scientific discussions on the insights this tool has provided during weather events such as hurricanes Michael, Rosa, and Florence in 2018. BirdCast's machine learning techniques were created in collaboration with Oregon State University and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. [JDC]

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The value of studying birds extends beyond the field of ornithology. Some species can be also used as indicators for ecological health and environmental monitoring. In this interactive story map created by the US Geological Survey (USGS), readers can explore how tree swallows are being used to help assess and monitor specific locations for the presence of legacy contaminants, such as pesticides and dioxins, that may have been released as far back as the 1950s. As the story map explains, tree swallows will nest in "highly industrial and urban locations where other species are often rare" and feed on insects that spend part of their lives in lake sediments, where contaminants tend to collect. Here, readers can learn about the different study sites, which include 27 areas of concern as well as 10 reference locations, and also view maps and summaries of the study's findings for each category of contaminants. The principal investigators of this study are Thomas Custer and Christine Custer, research wildlife biologists with the USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center. This project is part of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, an ongoing multi-agency effort launched in 2010 to protect and restore North America's Great Lakes. [JDC]

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StickyPassword is a password manager that also provides a secure vault for storing other sensitive information. Data is stored using industry standard AES-256 encryption. StickyPassword offers users a number of options to synchronize their data across devices, including cloud sync, local wifi, and manual offline synchronization. Users may also opt to skip synchronization across devices and instead store their data on a flash drive or memory card, physically moving the storage device among devices that need access to it. Rather than saving payment information on shopping sites, users can opt to store it in a StickyPassword vault and enter it at the time of purchase using StickyPassword's autofill feature. StickyPassword is available for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices. It supports Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera, and 11 other less common browsers. [CRH]

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Postman is a tool for working with REST APIs that describes itself as an API Development Environment. It can be used to interactively test API requests in the process of building software. For example, Postman can be used to test requests that pull data from the Internet Archive's Open Library Books API, to manually explore data available from an OAI-PMH server, or to interact with the Digital Public Library of America's API. Postman understands JSON, XML, and HTML data and prints responses for easier consumption by humans. Developers building software that provides a REST API can use Postman's testing features to run a scripted series of requests against their software, verifying that it produces the correct output. Sets of requests can be saved in workspaces, which can then be shared with collaborators and co-workers. These workspaces can be augmented with documentation about each included API call. Postman is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux computers. [CRH]

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Last featured in the Scout Report on 2-16-2018, the Great Backyard Bird Count is a wonderful way to appreciate the natural world around you and contribute to a valuable science effort.

The Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) is an annual citizen science event arranged by the Cornell Ornithology Lab and the National Audubon Society. This year, the GBBC will take place from February 15 - February 18, 2019. During the GBBC, bird lovers from around the world are invited to create a free account on eBird (available online and as an Android or iOS app) and report on the birds they observe in their backyards or communities. In doing so, participants provide valuable information about global bird populations and migratory patterns. Those interested in participating this year may want to start by checking out the GBBC instructions, available in the GBBC toolkit section of the website. Here, visitors will also find a helpful bird list, along with a collection of online guides and "tricky bird IDs."

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