The Scout Report - May 3, 1996

May 3, 1996

A Publication of Internet Scout
Computer Science Department, University of Wisconsin

A Project of the InterNIC

The Scout Report is a weekly publication offering a selection of new and newly discovered Internet resources of interest to researchers and educators, the InterNIC's primary audience. However, everyone is welcome to subscribe to one of the mailing lists (plain text or HTML) or visit the Web version of the Scout Report. Subscription instructions are included at the end of each report.
http://rs.internic.net/scout/report

Send comments and contributions to: scout@cs.wisc.edu

Biology Hypertext Chapters -- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Biology Hypertextbook Chapters, provided by the MIT Experimental Study group, was originally intended as a study aid to an introductory biology course at MIT, but is an excellent source of material for any introductory biology course. It includes chapters on chemistry, large molecules, cell biology, enzyme biochemistry, photosynthesis, genetics, DNA, and immunology. Each chapter contains thorough explanations of the topic. One of the strengths of the site is its extensive use of graphical models to illustrate concepts. The chemistry review, large molecules, and cell biology sections contain particularly graphic content. Note that Internet visitors are asked not to participate in the self quiz exercises.
http://esg-www.mit.edu:8001/esgbio/chapters.html/
[Back to Contents]

Digest of Education Statistics -- 1995 Edition
The U.S. Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has recently made full text of the 1995 "Digest of Education Statistics" available via the Internet. This is the 31st in a series of publications begun in 1962. "Its primary purpose is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field of American education from kindergarten through graduate school." The Digest contains seven chapters: All Levels of Education, Elementary and Secondary Education, Postsecondary Education, Federal Programs for Education and Related Activities, Outcomes of Education, International Comparisons of Education, and Learning Resources and Technology. It contains 32 figures and 415 tables. Tables and figures are clearly labeled under their hypertext links, and tables are rendered as ASCII text. Tables are current through 1992-93. This is one of the most important primary sources of education statistics available. The gopher version of the Digest provides the tables and figures in compressed .zip files, and provides pointers to viewing and decompression software.
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsold/D95/
gopher://gopher.ed.gov:10000/11/publications/majorpub/digest/
gopher to: gopher.ed.gov:10000
select: NCES Publications and Reports/Major NCES Publications/ Digest of Education Statistics/
This path will also lead to full text "Digests" for 1992-1994.
For other NCES major publications:
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/stats.html
gopher://gopher.ed.gov:10000/11/publications/majorpub
gopher to: gopher.ed.gov:10000
select: NCES Publications and Reports/Major NCES Publications/
[Back to Contents]

Trace Research and Development Center -- technology and disability
The Trace Center, an interdisciplinary research, development and resource center on technology and disability, housed at the Waisman Center and the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Wisconsin, has recently established a Web site. The Trace Program Areas section details the Center's mission and goals, provides information on computer access and standards, and gives information on the clinical services provided by the Center. Under Papers and Publications, you can find a catalog of Trace publications, including "Quick Sheets," short resource lists on a variety of topics, among others. The Designing an Accessible World section provides a wealth of information about including access for people with disabilities when designing Web sites, computers, consumer products, kiosks, and telecommunications. One of the highlights of the site is a newly released paper on "Design of HTML Pages to Increase Their Accessibility to Users With Disabilities." Trace's Web site is an enhancement of an already existing gopher site.
http://www.trace.wisc.edu/
gopher://trace.wisc.edu
gopher to: trace.wisc.edu
"Design of HTML Pages":
http://www.trace.wisc.edu/TEXT/GUIDELNS/HTMLGIDE/htmlgide.html
gopher://trace.wisc.edu:70/0/ftp/PUB/TEXT/CURBCUT/WORKING/HTML_DSN.TXT
gopher to: trace.wisc.edu
select: New and Spotlighted Items/Spotlighted Items/Design of HTML...
[Back to Contents]

webCATS -- Library OPAC's on the World Wide Web
Peter Scott, the creator of HYTELNET, has collaborated with Doug Macdonald to create webCATS, a page of library catalogs which can be searched via the Web. webCATS is arranged for searching geographically, by type of library, and by library catalog vendor. The webCATS page will soon have an interactive form for adding a URL to your Web searchable library catalog, and in the meantime an email address is provided. The site also connects to the HYTELNET home page. HYTELNET is a computer utility which gives users instant access to telnet accessible library catalogs, FREE-NETS, BBSs, gophers, wais, etc.
http://www.lights.com/webcats/
[Back to Contents]

Possibilities! Integrating the Internet into the Secondary Science Classroom
Possibilities! Integrating the Internet into the Secondary Science Classroom, a Web site created by a longtime Seattle, Washington area science and math teacher, attempts to help secondary science teachers exploit the Internet for teaching purposes. The site is a selective list of pointers to resources, as well as suggestions for activities organized by function. It includes interpersonal projects, information collection and exchange, problem solving projects, and miscellaneous projects. There are pointers to email, listserv, and news groups, conferencing utilities, field trips, museum tours, virtual science fairs, database creation, and many others. There are also sections on evaluating sites, pointers to other k-12 education sites, and a highlight page of the month. Possibilities!, while not comprehensive, is a good place to start for secondary science educators.
http://kendaco.telebyte.com:80/billband/Possibilities.html
[Back to Contents]

Religion and Generational Cultures Discussion List -- Generation X
What does "religion" have to do with "Generation X"? This list is designed to support the research activities of the Center for the Study of Religion at the Department of Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara. Under the direction of Wade Clark Roof, the Center is participating in a nationwide Lilly Endowment grant project to study the relationship between "religion" and "generations." This list is intended to promote wide-ranging interdisciplinary discussions on these issues. Membership is open, but participants should be aware that this is primarily a forum for academic discussion & debate, and information exchange. Religious proselytization and political posturing is not appropriate on this list.
To subscribe send email to:LISTSERV@UCSBVM.UCSB.EDU
In the body of the message type:
SUB SBBUST-L yourfirstname yourlastname, your institution
[Back to Contents]

sci.archaeology.moderated -- a new Usenet newsgroup
sci.archaeology.moderated is a new Usenet news group dedicated to the discussion of archaeology. Articles submitted to the newsgroup are first filtered through a panel of moderators, and may be accepted, rejected, or sent back with suggested changes. Articles may include requests for information, announcements of relevance, or topics for discussion. Articles which contain personal attacks, racist comments, or ad hominem arguments will not be approved for posting. At present, threads include web sites of ongoing digs, algorithms for Egyptian fractions, and Neolithic bones of the feet, among others. The moderation of this group promises to keep the discussion at a high level.
Point your Usenet newsreader to:sci.archaeology.moderated
Welcome message to the newsgroup:
http://www.newton.cam.ac.uk/egypt/sam/guide.txt
[Back to Contents]

Picasso and Portraiture
Picasso and Portraiture: Representation and Transformation, is an exhibition of over 200 Picasso portraits at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), that is taking place now through September 17, 1996. From the Picasso Web site you can read introductions by Claude Picasso and William Rubin, and view a selection of the portraits in the exhibition. The virtual exhibition contains self portraits and portraits of the family, the children, the women, the friends, and the others, over fifty images in all. Each section is previewed with large thumbnails of all the images it contains. Click on any thumbnail for an enlarged image. For those who intend to view the MOMA exhibition, this site is a nice preview. For those who cannot, it is a wonderful glimpse of what they will be missing.
http://www.clubinternet.com/picasso/
Less graphical entrance: http://www.clubinternet.com/picasso/homepage.html
More information on the MOMA exhibition:
http://www.moma.org:80/picasso.html
Museum of Modern Art:
http://www.moma.org
Less graphical: http://www.moma.org/menu.html
[Back to Contents]

Wall St. Journal Interactive Edition
The Wall St. Journal has launched its Interactive Edition on the Web. Due to be a subscription service, it will be free of charge until July 31 to anyone who registers before May 31, 1996. It includes the content of the print version, as well as weather and sports sections. The content can be accessed by section or by a general index that can be found under Table of Contents on the home page. Stories that mention companies contain hypertext links that allow the reader to obtain more information about a company, including latest news stories, a 20 minute delayed company stock report, and a "briefing book" on the company which includes background information, a financial overview, stock performance measures, previous Wall St. Journal articles about that company, and company press releases. Walter Mossberg's popular Personal Technology column is also available. He now takes email questions from readers, and will answer selected ones in his Interactive Edition columns.
http://www.wsj.com
[Back to Contents]

U.S. House of Representatives Internet Law Library
The U.S. House of Representatives has made its Internet Law Library available on the Web. Originally a demonstration project of the Offices of the Law Revision Council and the Legislative Council, the purpose of the library is to provide easy access to the law-related resources of the Internet. The site contains links to over 4,900 law related resources in subjects such as U.S. federal laws, state and territorial laws, international laws, laws of all jurisdictions arranged by subject, attorney and legal profession directories, law school library catalogs and directories, and reviews of law books. The U.S. Code (up to date through early 1994) and Code of Federal Regulations can also be searched from the home page. A selected list of law related listservs and pointers can be found on the "about this directory page."
http://law.house.gov/
[Note: Resource(s)/URL(s) mentioned above is no longer available.]
[Back to Contents]

The Electronic Banking Resource Center
The Electronic Banking Resource Center, provided by an MBA graduate student at Ohio State University, is a one stop resource for information about banking on the Internet. It contains pointers to explanations of various open payment standards; a FAQ on electronic money/Internet payment systems that discusses such issues as challenges of Internet payment systems, electronic cash, credit cards, and checks and the Web, and advice for merchants on the Internet, among others; a page of pointers to examples of Internet financial transactions; and a large page of pointers to banks on the Internet. The Resource Center also contains pointers to other banking related sites.
http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~damm/Lehre/E-Money/InternetPayment.html
[Back to Contents]

National Interagency Coordination Center (NICC) reports on U.S. wildfires
Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA), as part of its Disaster Information Service, is maintaining daily reports from the National Interagency Coordination Center (NICC) on U.S. wildfires. Each day the report details progress made in these fires, along with size, percent containment, estimated date of containment, and estimated losses and costs, among other variables. In order to better understand the language used in the reports, interested readers should look at the NICC Incident Management Report FAQ.
The reports:
gopher://gopher.vita.org:70/11/disaster/report/domestic/forest
gopher to: gopher.vita.org
select: Disaster Information/Disaster Situation and Status Reports/ Domestic U.S. Situations/Incident Management Forest Fires
[Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher site has been replaced by web site.]
http://vwww.vita.org/disaster/wildfire/
NICC fire reports are also available via email:
Send email to:listproc@vita.org
In the body of the message type:
sub fireline FirstName LastName
For information on other disaster information resources maintained by VITA:
http://www.vita.org/emergres.htm
select: Disaster Information/Disaster Situation and Status Reports
[Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher site has been replaced by web site.]
VITA Home Page:
http://www.vita.org/
gopher://gopher.vita.org
gopher to: gopher.vita.org
[Note: Gopher may no longer be current.]
[Back to Contents]

Theodore Tugboat -- an interactive story for young children
Theodore Tugboat is a Canadian TV series "about a cheerful tugboat who likes to be friends with everyone." The Theodore Tugboat Web page, provided by Cochrane Entertainment Incorporated, is highlighted by an interactive story in which you and your child can decide what Theodore does next. It also includes 6 pages from an online coloring book (available in both .gif and .pdf formats), and an interactive postcard that allows you to receive a real postcard with Theodore's picture on it. The site also contains a description of all Theodore Tugboat characters, as well as a section on "How the Big Harbour Works." Theodore Tugboat also links to over 300 other rated children's sites, ranging from activity centers to world travel. This is a wonderful site for parents and their young children.
http://www.cochran.com/theodore/
[Back to Contents]

Roger Ebert film reviews and two Cannes Film Festival Sites
The Chicago Sun Times Web site presents the Roger Ebert on Movies Web page. Ebert, a Pulitzer Prize award winning film reviewer, writes regular columns for the Sun Times, as well as being co-host of a nationally syndicated film review TV program. This site presents full text of recent reviews, a "one minute summary" of recently reviewed films with a brief synopsis and rating, and, the highlight of the site, a completely searchable archive of Ebert reviews going back to 1985. You can search by movie title, the names of actors, producers, directors, or writers, date, and rating. Be sure to read the help file on searching to use the searching system to greatest advantage.
http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert.html

Two of the better sites for interested Internauts to follow the 49th Cannes Film Festival are the Official Cannes Film Festival site and the Le Monde (Paris daily newspaper) Cannes site. The Official site is a work in progress, but at present its highlights include a searchble database of films and awards from 1955-1995, juries from 1946-1995, and summaries along with posters and stills from the winners from 1990-1995 (under the History section). Under Festival 96, Press Guide, there is a listing of the 1996 jury and films, along with short tributes to great film makers. The Official Site is available in both French and English, but the database query results are in French. The Le Monde site, also a work in progress, includes the official programme, as well as articles from Le Monde pertaining to previous Festivals. The highlight of this site will be Le Monde's coverage of the festival as it unfolds. This site is also available in both English and French, and short articles will be available in both languages, but feature articles will only be available in French. Both sites should increase their amount of content as the festival approaches and then takes place.
Cannes official site:http://www.festival-cannes.fr/
Cannes Le Monde site can be accessed from:
http://www.lemonde.fr/multimedia/sem1996/textes/act19961.html
[Back to Contents]

AccessWatch
AccessWatch, provided by David Maher, is a shareware utility that provides a regularly updated summary of WWW server hits and accesses, and gives a graphical representation of available statistics. It generates statistics for hourly server load, page demand, accesses by domain, and accesses by host. AccessWatch can run on Unix or Windows NT servers. The AccessWatch page provides sample output, a FAQ, installation instructions, and the Perl script that makes the product work. It is free for government, non-commercial home, and academic use. See the license agreement for more information.
http://accesswatch.com/
[Back to Contents]

Adobe Acrobat Access
Adobe Acrobat offers a beta version of its new Netscape plug-in Access for downloading from its Web site. Acrobat Access presents an alternative view of the open PDF document in a separate window called the Access View that is designed to cooperate with screen reading programs. In this way, it makes complex, rich text formatted .PDF (portable document format) files more accessible to people with visual disabilities. Complete details about Access are available at the Adobe Access page, along with downloading instructions, and an Adobe White Paper concerning the accessibility of PDF for the visually disabled. At present it is available only on Windows platforms.
http://access.adobe.com/
[Back to Contents]

Netscape Atlas is now Netscape 3.0 Beta
Netscape now offers Netscape 3.0 Beta for downloading from its home page. 3.0 is an enhancement of Netscape Atlas, which was discussed in the April 5, 1996 Scout Report. Video, phone, and enhanced Java support, among other features, have been added.
http://home.netscape.com/comprod/mirror/client_download.html
For more information about Netscape 3.0
http://home.mcom.com/comprod/products/navigator/version_3.0/index.html
[Back to Contents]

Scout Report and Scout Report HTML Subscription Instructions

To receive the electronic mail version of the Scout Report each week, join the scout-report mailing list. This is the only mail you will receive from this list.
send email to:listserv@lists.internic.net
in the body of the message, type:
subscribe scout-report yourfirstname yourlastname
For example, if your name is Frasier Crane, type
subscribe scout-report Frasier Crane
If your name is not Frasier Crane, substitute your own name.
To unsubscribe from the scout-report list,
send email to:listserv@lists.internic.net
in the body of the message, type:
unsubscribe scout-report
Do not type your name when unsubscribing.
To receive the Scout Report in HTML format for local viewing and posting, subscribe to the scout-report-html mailing list, used exclusively to distribute the Scout Report in HTML format once a week.
send mail to:listserv@lists.internic.net
in the body of the message, type:
subscribe scout-report-html yourfirstname yourlastname
For example, if your name is Frasier Crane, type
subscribe scout-report-html Frasier Crane.
If your name is not Frasier Crane, substitute your own name.
To unsubscribe from the scout-report-html list,
send email to:listserv@lists.internic.net
in the body of the message, type:
unsubscribe scout-report-html
Do not type your name when unsubscribing.

The Scout Report's Web page:
http://rs.internic.net/scout/report

FTP:
ftp://rs.internic.net/scout/

[Back to Contents]

Copyright Susan Calcari, 1996. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the Scout Report provided the copyright notice and this paragraph is preserved on all copies. The InterNIC provides information about the Internet to the US research and education community under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation: NCR-9218742. The Government has certain rights in this material.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Wisconsin - Madison, the National Science Foundation, AT&T, or Network Solutions, Inc.

The Scout Report - May 3, 1996

May 3, 1996

Research and Education

General Interest

Network Tools

Scout Report and Scout Report HTML Subscription Instructions