The Scout Report - October 2, 1998

The Scout Report

October 2, 1998

A Publication of the Internet Scout Project
Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Scout Report is a weekly publication offering a selection of new and newly discovered Internet resources of interest to researchers and educators. However, everyone is welcome to subscribe to one of the mailing lists (plain text or HTML). Subscription instructions are included at the end of each report.

An Acrobat .pdf version of this report is available for printing and distributing locally. For information on Adobe Acrobat Reader, visit the Adobe site.

New From Internet Scout

• Scout Report for Science & Engineering

Research and Education

• Library of Congress Finding Aids
• The Molecular Modelling Database (MMDB)--NCBI
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) Citation Index (CCI)
• The Transnational China Project
• National Institute for Urban School Improvement
• National Snow and Ice Data Center
• Two from the US Census Bureau
• Gothic_Lit--Discussion of the Gothic Literature Genre

General Interest

• CNN--Cold War
• Three from American Memory--LOC
• Italian Life Under Fascism
• Online Ballet Dictionary
• Celtic Art and Cultures
• ARS Science 4 Kids
• The American Heritage 40

Network Tools

• Direct Hit
• The Computing Research Repository (CoRR)
• Review Booth

Where Are They Now

• Volume 2, Number 22, September 29, 1995

Scout Report for Science & Engineering
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/report/sci-engr/
Volume 2, Number 2 of the Scout Report for Science & Engineering is available. It annotates over twenty new and newly discovered Internet resources in the physical & life sciences and engineering. The In the News section annotates eight resources on hurricanes. [MD]
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Library of Congress Finding Aids
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/faid/
The Encoded Archival Description Working Group at the Library of Congress has announced the first release of a search system for archival finding aids at the LOC. These finding aids are extremely useful to researchers because they offer more detailed information on primary source material than standard catalog records, often providing "information about a collection's provenance and the conditions under which it may be accessed or copied; biographical or organizational histories related to the collection; a note describing the scope and content of the collection; and progressively detailed descriptions of the parts or components of the collection together with the corresponding call numbers [or] container numbers." The aids have been encoded in SGML using Encoded Archival Description (EAD), and search returns are available in both HTML and SGML. Users can search by keyword or browse by subject, name, collection title, or collections by date. [MD]
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The Molecular Modelling Database (MMDB)--NCBI [Cn3D, RasMol or MAGE]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Structure/index.html
NCBI, the National Center for Biotechnology Information, provides this seachable database, consisting of "experimentally determined three-dimensional biomolecular structures" of macromolecules obtained from the Brookhaven Protein DataBank (PDB). The PDB currently contains more than 7600 proteins, 600 nucleic acids, and 12 carbohydrates, and adds new entries weekly. Designed "to facilitate comparative analysis involving 3-D structures," MMDB may be queried directly using author name(s) or descriptive text terms. Structures may be viewed using Cn3D, RasMol or MAGE; see instructions for viewing and downloading in the FAQ section on site. [LXP]
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Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) Citation Index (CCI)
http://nccam.nih.gov/nccam/resources/cam-ci/
The National Institutes of Health, Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) has released a prototype version of the CAM Citation Index (CCI), a bibliographic index to the scientific literature on complementary and alternative medicine which has appeared in the National Library of Medicine's Medline database from 1966 to 1997. CCI includes over 90,000 citations in the broad areas of Alternative Systems of Medicine (Traditional as well as Western medicine); Herbal and Manual Healing; Mind/Body Control; Diet, Nutrition, and Lifestyle Changes; Bioelectromagnetic Applications; and Pharmacological and Biological Treatment. Users can search by keyword or browse by Systems, Methods, or Diseases. Retrieved records can be displayed in HTML or bibliographic format. Clicking on the Home button at the bottom of the screen will take users to information about OAM, CAM, grants, research, and funding opportunities. The final version of CCI is scheduled to be released in December, 1998. [GW]
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The Transnational China Project [RealPlayer]
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~tnchina/
Hosted by Rice University and sponsored by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, the Transnational China Project is an effort to develop new approaches to the study of contemporary China through the use of advanced technologies and inter-institutional collaboration. Scholars from Duke, UCLA, Harvard, Rice, and others have contributed commentary, curriculum materials, and other pedagogical resources. The ultimate goal of the project is "a state-of-the-art, multi-lingual, electronic archive . . . available for both course development and research." Currently, users will find the text of several speeches and a roundtable, lectures and syllabi, student projects, and an interesting presentation on Outdoor Political Advertising in Shanghai. The section on political ads also examines the conflation of corporate advertising with public service announcements; in one instance, Shanghai citizens are instructed: "Drink Pepsi/Respect Greenery and Stay Out of the Flower Beds." [MD]
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National Institute for Urban School Improvement
http://www.edc.org/urban/
Funded by the US Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, the National Institute for Urban School Improvement seeks to combine the reform efforts pertaining to special needs children with general reform efforts for all children in urban schools. Their mission is "to support inclusive urban communities, schools, and families to build their capacity for sustainable, successful urban education." This site features an electronic newsletter, E-news; a forums section offering Public, Leadership, Working Group, and District dialog opportunities; a browseable and searchable Resource Database; and a regularly-updated Calendar section. Related links and a listing of listservs direct visitors to additional resources. [JR]
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National Snow and Ice Data Center
http://www-nsidc.colorado.edu/
Established by the National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 1982 as an information and referral center for glaciological research, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) maintains data information on "snow cover and avalanches, glaciers and ice sheets, floating ice, ground ice and permafrost, atmospheric ice, paleoglaciology and ice cores." In addition to its role as an information resource, NSIDC "archives analogue and digital snow and ice data, creates and distributes data products, and maintains a large library collection in support of snow and ice research." From Global Annual Freezing and Thawing Indices to the Former Soviet Union Monthly Precipitation Archive, users may explore myriad snow and ice data. For information on current research and available data, or answers to frequently asked questions, see the NSIDC's Notes and Updates sections. [LXP]
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Two from the US Census Bureau
Money Income in the United States: 1997 [.pdf]
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income97.html
Poverty in the United States: 1997 [.pdf]
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/povty97.html
The Census Bureau has released two new reports based on the March 1998 Current Population Survey. Given all the press on America's booming economy, it should come as no surprise that the reports contain good news. For the third consecutive year, households in the United States experienced an annual increase in their real median income while the poverty rate fell from 13.7 percent in 1996 to 13.3 percent in 1997. The statistical number of poor and the degree of income inequality, however, remain unchanged. Both reports offer several tables and the text of press releases which highlight national-level findings as well as income and poverty statistics for African-Americans, Asian and Pacific Islanders, and people of Hispanic Origin. [MD]
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Gothic_Lit--Discussion of the Gothic Literature Genre
http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/Gothic_Lit
Gothic_Lit is a moderated, largely academic-level discussion of Gothic literature, from Horace Walpole's groundbreaking Castle of Otranto through modern neo-Gothic works. The list will not serve as a "fan club" for popular fiction writers, but rather as an academic and intellectual discussion. Users may subscribe at the Website. [MD]

CNN--Cold War [RealPlayer, Shockwave]
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/
Cold War is a major, 24-part series directed by renowned documentary filmmaker Jeremy Isaacs that recently premiered on CNN and BBC2. Whether or not this series will become "the definitive account of the Cold War" remains to be seen, but the research that has made it possible is quite impressive. This feature-filled, comprehensive site complements the series by offering, among other things, video previews and multimedia recaps of each episode; video, audio, and text excerpts from nearly 100 interviews filmed for the series; text from archival documents and contemporaneous Time and Russian newspaper stories; in-depth sections on Cold War culture; and a Knowledge Bank section containing a glossary, "Cold Warrior" profiles, related links, and a chronology. Additional resources include a classroom guide to the series, online Shockwave quiz games, and an online discussion group. As large as it is now, the site will continue to expand and add new features as the series progresses over the next three months. [MD]
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Three from American Memory--LOC
Baseball Cards, 1887-1914
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/bbhtml/bbhome.html
Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER)
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/hhhtml/hhhome.html
Pioneering the Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820-1910
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/umhtml/umhome.html
The US Library of Congress American Memory site has once again expanded its unmatched digital historical collection, this time with three new features. Given the recent renewed interest in "America's game," the release of the first feature is well-timed. Baseball Cards, 1887-1914 showcases the LOC's wonderful collection of early baseball cards, collected by cigarette card collector Benjamin K. Edwards and donated to the Library by poet Carl Sandburg in 1954. Users can search the 2,100 digitized and thumb nailed cards by keyword or browse by player, team, league, city, or card set. The early legends, such as Ty Cobb, Connie Mack, and Cy Young are, of course, here, but so also are the cards of players from lesser known teams such as the Brooklyn Bridegrooms, Cleveland Spiders, and Boston Beaneaters. Additional resources include a brief bibliography and information on ordering reproductions. The second collection is an initial offering of material from the HABS and HAER, both of which document achievements in architecture, engineering, and design in the United States and its territories. HABS and HAER are two of the most heavily used collections in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, and online resources include images, surveys, survey photos, and measured drawings from 1933 to the present. Users can search by keyword or browse by subject index or geographic location index. Additional material will be added monthly. The third offering--focused on the upper Midwest states from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries--consists of digitized and searchable pages from 138 volumes in the LOC's General Collections and Rare Books and Special Collections Division. Users will find a range of works which describe and examine a variety of social and political topics, such as the experiences of pioneers, conflicts between settlers and Native peoples, local cultural traditions, education, the role of women, and the establishment of local governments and businesses. [MD]
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Italian Life Under Fascism
http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/dpf/Fascism/Home.html
The Department of Special Collections within the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Memorial Library presents Italian Life Under Fascism, a virtual exhibition exploring the nature of Italian fascism in the early twentieth century. Digital reproductions of original documents provide insight into "the character and range of Fascist propaganda and the special cult of the Duce that it fostered." The site covers an array of topics related to the political, educational, social, and racial policies of Italian Fascism. Included are sections devoted to family life, youth organizations, Italian colonialism, the role of women in the regime, the anti-fascist resistance, and the rise and fall of Fascism in Italy. [AO]
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Online Ballet Dictionary [Quicktime, frames]
http://www.abt.org/dictionary/
American Ballet Theatre homepage
http://www.abt.org/
How many times have you heard or used the terms "pirouette" or "pas de deux" without really knowing what they meant? A number of words related to ballet have made their way into common usage, although many people may not know what they really mean or what they would look like if performed by a trained dancer. The American Ballet Theatre has created this Online Ballet Dictionary of 170 terms with assistance from its own dancers who were asked to "show us how it is supposed to be done." The resulting site combines Quicktime movies of dancers demonstrating steps with terms drawn from the Technical Manual and Dictionary of Classical Ballet. While not every term is accompanied by a movie, each term includes a definition and pronunciation guide, as well as occasional cross references to other terms in the dictionary. Also available at the American Ballet Theatre's homepage is information about performances (past and present), Dancer Bios, and a Photo Gallery of black and white photographs of performances, staged poses, and behind-the-scenes shots. [AG]
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Celtic Art and Cultures
http://www.unc.edu/courses/art111/celtic/index.html
The Celtic Art and Cultures Website was originally created for art history students at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and can now be used by any would-be student of Celtic Art with access to a newer Web browser. The main feature of the site is its multimedia database of Celtic-related images, maps, timelines, and vocabulary aids complete with spoken pronunciations. Images can be viewed by period, material, object, and country. If you find yourself uncertain of which time period or object type to choose, as I did, helpful information is available in the Maps & Timelines section. The course syllabus, which can be found under site info, also provides an overview of Celtic Art. [DS]
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ARS Science 4 Kids
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/kids/
This new e-zine from the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), aimed at kids aged eight to thirteen with an interest in science, introduces various projects of ARS scientists in a collection of stories. The homepage offers intuitive graphic links to the various sections: clicking on the catfish takes users to the Aquaculture section, the bee to Insects, and so on. The stories are short, illustrated, and written with young readers in mind. Students who wish to learn more about certain topics or find resources for school reports can follow links to the ARS Agricultural Research magazine and the ARS search engine, or send email questions to Dr. Watts, the helpful ARS scientist. [MD]
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The American Heritage 40
http://www.americanheritage.com/98/oct/40index.htm
How does Bill Gates compare to Henry Ford or the robber barons Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller? These "men of independent means" and their 36 companions are listed in the American Heritage 40, a ranking of the 40 wealthiest Americans of all time. The rankings were made by estimating the size of each fortune at the time of death, or in the current year for the three living members on the list, and then comparing it with the gross national product of the time. Bill Gates may be the richest man in the world, but he still has a long way to go to match Rockefeller's staggering 1/66 of the entire nation's GNP at the time of his death. The listing for each of the 40 includes a photo, estimated worth in today's value, and brief biographical information. The site also offers an explanation of the ranking process and an interesting essay comparing and contrasting the men and their varied paths to the top tax bracket. [MD]
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Direct Hit
http://www.directhit.com/
HotBot
http://www.hotbot.com
This new search tool is a "Popularity Engine" which ranks the top ten sites based upon previous user activity related to a particular search subject. By tracking the sites that users actually select from the search results list, Direct Hit theoretically offers the most popular and relevant sites for a given request. Direct Hit is presently available in conjunction with the HotBot search engine. Users can access it from the Direct Hit site or by running a search at HotBot and selecting the "Get the Top 10 Most Visited Sites for this query" link. [MD]
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The Computing Research Repository (CoRR)
http://xxx.lanl.gov/archive/cs/intro.html
This site, sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Los Alamos e-Print archive, and the Networked Computer Science Technical Reference Library (NCSTRL), provides access to several collections of papers on various research topics in computer science. The goal of CoRR is to provide a repository to which researchers from all fields of computing can submit reports. The Repository is integrated with the NCSTRL collection of more than 20,000 computer science research reports and will be linked with the ACM Digital Library. Access to the Repository is free, and submissions are not refereed. Papers are classified using the 1998 ACM Computing Classification System and also organized by a list of subject areas. [MR]
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Review Booth
http://www.reviewbooth.com/
This site serves as a clearinghouse for published hardware and software product reviews, currently offering links to over 5,300 reviews. Although the reviews are from well known sources (e.g., PC Week and c|net) located off-site, Review Booth offers users one-stop searching. If, for example, the new low prices have inspired you to invest in a scanner, one search can yield links to multiple reviews for comparison and contrast. Users can search by software and hardware type and date of review. The site is updated frequently and the New & Interesting and Latest Reviews sections offer links to reviews of the newest and most notable products. [MD]
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Volume 2, Number 22, September 29, 1995
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/report/archive/.html
RealAudio
http://www.realaudio.com/
G2 Full Beta Download Page
http://www.real.com/products/player/downloadrealplayer.html?wp=dl1098&src=download
The first RealAudio player was big news in 1995, and it has since become a fixture on the Internet and certainly one of the most-used plug-ins. The player has of course continued to evolve, adding video and improving performance. The most recent incarnation, RealPlayer G2 Beta, was just recently made available for free download. Real G2 offers smoother video and higher frame rates, includes more RealChannels, and supports live broadcasts. Please note that at this time Real G2 is not available for Macintosh users, who may instead download Version 5.0 for free. Other system requirements are listed on the download page. [MD]
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Susan Calcari Michael de Nie Travis Koplow Aimee D. Glassel Todd Hanson Sheilah Harrington Kathryn Harris Christopher Lukas Andrew Osmond Laura X. Payne Jeannine Ramsey Mike Roszkowski Debra Shapiro Geraldine Wanserski Megan Waters Amy Tracy Wells

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