The Scout Report - November 27, 1998

The Scout Report

November 27, 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.

In This Issue:

Subject Specific Reports

Research and Education

General Interest

Network Tools

Where Are They Now

Subject Specific Reports

Scout Report for Science & Engineering
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/report/sci-engr/
Volume 2, Number 6 of the Scout Report for Science & Engineering is available. The In the News section annotates eight resources on the dawn of the International Space Station (ISS). [MD]
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Research and Education

Kennedy Library Releases Largest Quantity of JFK Recordings [RealPlayer, .pdf, 192p.]
http://www.cs.umb.edu/jfklibrary/tapes_1998.html
On November 24, the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston, MA made available for researchers "more than 37 hours of recordings of President Kennedy's meetings, conversations, phone calls and dictation," the largest ever single release of tape-recorded material by the Library. The recordings were made from 1962 to 1963 and include conversations between the President and his advisors on a number of issues, such as the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Cuba, Berlin, Egypt, and the Soviet Union. Also included are a number of dictabelt recordings of telephone conversations with former Presidents Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower after the Cuban Missile Crisis and dictation made by Kennedy following the overthrow and assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963. The site offers ten sample RealPlayer recordings of varying length, on a variety of topics. For potential researchers of the tapes, the most valuable resource at the site is a lengthy finding aid and detailed recording logs in .pdf format. Information is also provided on how to purchase the recordings and finding guide. [MD]
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Assessing Aid-What Works, What Doesn't, and Why -- World Bank [.pdf, PowerPoint]
http://www.worldbank.org/research/aid/aidpub.htm
The latest in a series of World Bank Policy Research Reports, this major new report summarizes the findings of a multi-year research program on aid effectiveness. The 1990s has seen official Development Assistance fall by one-third in real terms. One of the reasons for this has been "a sense that aid does not work very well. Assessing Aid aims to understand when aid works and when it does not, so that the lessons can be used to make aid more effective." The report identifies two key components of aid -- money and ideas -- and discusses how and when they can best be applied to promote developing economies. Users can read a detailed overview in HTML or download the full text of the report in .pdf format. Additional resources at the site include a PowerPoint slide presentation and a news release in several languages. [MD]
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Our Voice
http://www.birzeit.edu/ourvoice/
Birzeit University, West Bank, Palestine, produces this engaging collection of original research, commentary, and other writings by staff and students at the University. Articles are organized in six sections: History, Politics, Culture, Society, Geography, and Economics. Some sections are sparse, but the overall quality of the works is high (especially with regard to Palestinian national and gender identities), and new pieces appear to be added on a regular basis. Current article topics include Islamic feminism; Shopkeepers, Peddlers and the Urban Resistance in the Palestinian Uprising; Women and the Intifada; The Black Banners and the Socio-Political Significance of Flags and Slogans in Medieval Islam; and a discussion with Edward Said. [MD]
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Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Graphics--UNEP/GRID [JPEG]
http://www.grida.no/db/maps/collection/climatechange/index.htm
Researchers and educators with an interest in climate change, and in particular in the recent COP-4 meetings in Buenos Aires, may find this collection of graphics and tables useful. Posted at the United Nations Environment Programme UNEP/GRID Arendal website (described in the June 24, 1998 Scout Report for Science & Engineering), the data sources and summary procedures are described in the section entitled "Introduction and Explanation of Greenhouse Gas Graphics and Data." Graphs and tables show "the actual emissions of Carbon dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4) and Nitrous oxide (N2O), and in some cases also emissions of sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), hydrofluorocarbons (HFC's) and perfluorocarbons (PFC's) until 1995." Countries highlighted fall within Eastern Europe, Western Europe, the Baltic States, North America, Asia-Pacific, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine. Also provided are several graphics of global climate predictions, potential sea level rise impacts, impacts on crop production, and trends in ice break-up dates. [LXP]
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USDA Agriculture Fact Book 1998 [.pdf, 277p.]
http://www.usda.gov/news/pubs/fbook98/content.htm
The 1998 edition of the United States Department of Agriculture's Agriculture Fact Book (described in the March 13, 1998 Scout Report) has been recently released. This valued and trusted reference tool binds together a variety of facts, figures, charts, and tables on US agriculture, nutrition, consumers, and trade; rural America; and the USDA itself. Users can consult the fact book to discover information such as what Americans eat and how much they pay for it, what crops are being raised where and how much, the composition and condition of rural America, the structural organization of the USDA, and much more. The Fact Book is also available for download in .pdf format. [MD]
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A Human Mitochondrial Genome Database
http://www.gen.emory.edu/mitomap.html
The Center for Molecular Medicine at Emory University maintains this human mitochondrial genome database, which offers information on Mitochondrial DNA Function Locations and Polypeptide Assignments as well as the relevant publication references. The database is initially searchable by gene, disease, and enzyme. Users can then refine their search by function, polymorphisms, or references (author, title, journal, year, or keyword). Users can also search the references directly via an Advanced Search. An additional resource at the site is a reference guide to mitomap tables featuring searchable (by keyword) information on specific mitochondrial DNA function locations and references. An opportunity to add publications to this database is available, if users find that pertinent papers have not been cited. [SN]
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Review of Biblical Literature
http://www.bookreviews.org/
Published in both print and electronic formats by the Society of Biblical Literature, the Review of Biblical Literature (RBL) is a "review of monographic literature in the field of biblical and related studies as well as reference works, commentaries, dictionaries, and biblical translations." This site hosts a database of over 400 reviews from 1996 to 1998. Users can browse by year, subject, author, or title. The database is also searchable by author, title, subject, reviewer, and keyword. Unlike most sites parallelling print publications, the review database appears to be current with the print version, with new reviews added on a regular basis. Additional resources include a Books Received Database and Instructions for Contributors. [MD]
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Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography [.pdf, Word]
http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepb.html
Version 22 of Charles Bailey's Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography (described in the November 22, 1996 Scout Report) has been recently released. The Bibliography is a selective collection of "over 800 articles, books, electronic documents, and other sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet and other networks." Each section of the Bibliography is a separate Webpage, accessible from the Table of Contents. Last updates are noted, and links to full texts are provided when available. Users can also search using Boolean operators or download the Bibliography in Word or .pdf format. A collection of related links is also provided. [MD]
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Strategic Workshop on Emerging Technologies in the Digital Libraries Domain: Summary Report [Word]
http://www.iei.pi.cnr.it/DELOS/NSF/Brussels.htm
.pdf version
http://www.ercim.org/publication/ws-proceedings/DELOS-B/dl_sum_report.pdf
Summary of Research Agenda
http://www.iei.pi.cnr.it/DELOS/NSF/nsf.htm
The European Union and the National Science Foundation have been collaborating on a joint international project to identify future research directions and funding priorities for digital libraries. Five working groups were established to explore specific research areas: Intellectual Property and Economics, Global Resource Discovery, Interoperability, Metadata, and Multilingual Information Access. At their most recent workshop in October 1998, the five working groups presented recommendations based on their studies, the results of which are outlined in this Summary Report (available in HTML, Word, and .pdf). The final reports from each of the five working groups are expected to be published in early 1999. The collaborative work on digital libraries by the National Science Foundation and the European Union is described briefly in the Summary of Research Agenda. Also included here are links to European digital library research and initiatives. [AG]
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General Interest

ThinkQuest 1998 Awards Announced
http://www.thinkquest.org/library/98winners.html
ThinkQuest Homepage
http://www.thinkquest.org/
Advanced Network & Services Inc.'s third annual ThinkQuest awards were recently presented for educational Websites created by twelve to nineteen year-old students and their coaches. The 25 winning entries, in the categories of arts & literature, science & math, social sciences, sports & health, and interdisciplinary sites, were chosen from entries submitted by 2,189 teams composed of 5,852 students from 64 countries. Best of the contest was The Soundry, a site "which promotes the knowledge and appreciation of sound." Interested users can view the winning sites, finalists, semifinalists, and all entries (the latter in alphabetical order). A complete library of the nearly 1,000 entries and winners from 1996-98, searchable by keyword, alphabetically, and by award level is also available. Applications and information for all three ThinkQuest 1999 contests (ThinkQuest, ThinkQuest Junior, and ThinkQuest for Tomorrow's Teachers) are available from the ThinkQuest homepage. [MD]
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IBM Intellectual Property Network
http://patent.womplex.ibm.com/
Users can search, retrieve, and view nearly four million patents and applications at this site from IBM. The Intellectual Property Network offers access to US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) patent descriptions from 1971 to the present, as well as "over 1.4 million European Patent Office and World Intellectual Property Office patents and applications." In addition, the site also contains "images of nearly all the US patents over the last 24 years and the images of the EPA and WIPO documents." Users can search each patent collection by keyword, patent number, Boolean text, or advanced text. Print and CD-ROM copies of patents may be ordered for a fee. Additional resources include What's New and FAQ pages and a Gallery of Obscure Patents. [MD]
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HealthScout
http://www.healthscout.com
HealthScout, a news service provided by Rx Remedy, Inc., posts fifteen to twenty short, easy-to-understand articles each day on a variety of medical and health topics in the news. Articles are based on interviews with experts and reports from medical journals, and HealthScout cites sources and provides links to related resources for each. HealthScout also summarizes newswire stories and links to the original newspaper or journal article. A Directory section contains an archive of older articles. Registration is not required to use the site; however, visitors can sign up to receive personalized health or medical news reports by filling out a personal survey. Quick registration allows users to select from nearly 350 topics; "7-Minute Checkup" requires extensive personal information, but provides a choice of over 700 topics and a detailed health-risk assessment based on the user's responses. The site contains a privacy statement and recommends that users select "Switch to Secure Server" [which requires a browser that supports Secure Socket Layers (SSL)] before submitting information. Searches of news sources are performed every four hours, and users can opt to receive email notification when HealthScout posts new information on their topic. [GW]
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Writers Online
http://www.yearofreading.org.uk/writers/index.html
The National Year of Reading
http://www.yearofreading.org.uk/index.html
As part of the National Year of Reading effort in the UK (spearheaded by the National Literacy Trust to promote reading and literacy), Writers Online is aimed at piquing younger readers' interests. The site features interviews with popular children's writers as well as "writer-in-residence" workshops. Visitors to the site can try their hand at creative writing, learn tricks of the trade, and get personal feedback from their favorite authors. The National Year of Reading site is meant to foster community participation in reading- and literacy-related events throughout the UK. A special resource section offers information and toolkits that can help a variety of different audiences (including libraries, teachers, and those with special needs) come up with innovative ways to implement local projects. [REB]
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NOAA Central Library -- Photo Collection
http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has placed their photo and slide collection in the public domain and made it available to users via the Internet. The Photo Collection began in 1970, but some images date back to the nineteenth century. The more than 1000 images are grouped in four categories: The National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) Collection, The National Undersea Research Program (NURP) Collection, The NOAA Historical Photo Collection, and the General Collection. Each category includes several subsections with thumbnail indexes of images. A wide variety of subjects are included, such as tornadoes and lightning, seascapes and undersea technologies, historical weather and fisheries, marine life, atmospheric research instruments, and more. An internal search engine is also available. [MD]
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The Visual Front -- Posters of the Spanish Civil War
http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/posters/
Provided by the Mandeville Special Collections Library, University of California, San Diego (described in the June 12, 1998 Scout Report), this online exhibition is a fine study of 42 propaganda posters from the Spanish Civil War. Contemporaries as well as historians have noted the widespread use of vivid propaganda posters by both sides in the war. This collection contains posters from the Republican side, and the images included deal with most of the dominant themes. The site's authors remark that, "many of the posters were produced by some of the most important organizations and institutions active in the war, and they were designed by some of the leading artists of the era." In addition to the posters, arranged by title and in a thumbnail index, the exhibit contains a chronology and a detailed introductory essay, which ties together events over the course of the war with propaganda efforts and representative posters. Each poster page features a large thumbnail and several paragraphs of explanatory text. [MD]
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The Power 25 -- The Influence Merchants -- Fortune
http://library.northernlight.com/SG19990714120012307.html
The December 7 issue of Fortune Magazine features the second annual Power 25 survey, self-described as "America's most reliable guide to the high-contact sports of lobbying and legislating in the nation's capital. It tells the rest of us what Washington insiders already know: who are the true masters and who the mere pretenders." For the Power 25 Survey, Fortune interviewed over 2,500 Washington political operators to determine the 25 most influential trade associations, labor unions, and other pressure groups. While many of the top lobbying groups have kept their stars in the firmament, there have been some dramatic ascents and declines. These are discussed in the full text of the article, which is provided at the site. As the list and article reveal, older images of back room dealing and cigar-smoking fat cats no longer fit today's lobbying lords. Instead of wining and dining politicians, today's top lobbyists appeal to the voters. Top influence merchants such as the American Association of Retired Persons draw strength more from their large and active membership rather than from their net worth. This year's Power 25 also adds a new roster, the Kings of K Street, a listing of the top ten freelance lobbying firms and their top guns. The site improves on the print article by offering a ranking of the next 40 most influential Kings of K Street. [MD]
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Network Tools

Sam Spade
http://www.blighty.com/products/spade/
Sam Spade v1.10, written by Steve Atkins, is a highly helpful Internet tool for advanced users. This program combines and extends numerous Internet network tools with easy-to-use interfaces and interpretive output. Some of the tools included in Sam Spade are traceroute, ping, whois, a port scanner, a utility to keep your dial-in connection alive, a raw HTML Web browser, and many more. Sam Spade includes a mail header analysis tool that attempts to determine the source(s) of your mail as well as a tool to check cancelled Usenet messages. Sam Spade, a handy tool for any administrator or power-user, runs on Win95/NT and is free to download and use. [CL]
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Libwww Release 5.2 -- W3C
http://www.w3.org/Library/Distribution.html
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has recently released libwww 5.2 (First described in the Scout Report for May 29, 1998). "Libwww is a general-purpose Web API written in C for Unix and Windows (Win32). With a highly extensible and layered API, it can accommodate many different types of applications including clients, robots, etc. The purpose of libwww is to provide a highly optimized HTTP sample implementation as well as other Internet protocols and to serve as a testbed for protocol experiments." Users can download the release as a .tar file, or they can check it out from W3C's CVS repository. Contributors to the development of libwww are welcome, and information on becoming a collaborator is provided. [MD]
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Where Are They Now

The Scout Report was not published on November 24, 1995.

This feature will resume on December 4. [MD]
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The single phrase below is the copyright notice to be used when reproducing any portion of this report, in any format.

From the Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-1998.
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Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-1998. The Internet Scout Project (http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/), located in the Computer Sciences Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, provides information about the Internet to the U.S. research and education community under a grant from the National Science Foundation, number NCR-9712163. The Government has certain rights in this material. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the entire Scout Report provided this paragraph, including the copyright notice, is preserved on all copies.

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, or the National Science Foundation.

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