CERN Document Server Posters [.pdf, PostScript]
http://weblib.cern.ch/Home/Multimedia/Posters/
Posters for various exhibitions and workshops at CERN, the Swiss-based European Laboratory for Particle Physics, are now available within the Multimedia collection of the CERN Document Server. At this site, over 220 posters can be searched (keyword, title, or date) or browsed by title. The posters cover CERN projects such as the L3 detector and the End-cap Muon system and exhibitions including "Crystals of China" and "Collaborating through the Cold War." They display labeled diagrams of equipment, specifications, and historical facts. Because the online CERN Document Server is set to provide thorough information about documents in its database, users can find the top ten keywords for each poster, get detailed file format information (.pdf, .gif, .ps), extract figures, and receive documents by email. The printable color posters provide an interesting look into the history of CERN research and outreach and make nice office decorations for science geeks such as this editor. [HCS]
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Parallel History Project on the Warsaw Pact [.pdf]
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php/
The Parallel History Project (PHP) began in 1999 in response to the increasing declassification of documents related to the Warsaw Pact. The project collects and analyzes these documents, and users will find a regularly updated collection (.pdf) on the site. The Project's latest findings include documents from Hungarian archives that detail command exercises (which resemble actual war plans) describing the destruction of European cities including Vienna, Munich, and Verona. Visitors can read the documents (which are available in an English translation) and commentary from PHP members and a wealth of other items related to NATO and the Warsaw Pact. PHP's Website is part the International Relations and Security Network (ISN), operated by the Swiss Center for Security Studies and Conflict Research, and affiliated with NATO's Partnership for Peace. [TK]
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MENALIB: Middle East Virtual Library
http://ssgdoc.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/vlib/html/index.html
A collaborative venture of more than a half dozen international libraries, MENALIB is coordinated by the University and State Library Saxony-Anhalt, Halle in an attempt to combine contributors' resources into a virtual library of materials on the Middle East and North Africa. The library's primary goals are to create a subject guide for electronic resources in the areas of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, a current contents service for scholarly journals, a virtual catalog, and databases for dissertations and conferences. The site currently contains ALMISBAH, a searchable and browseable (by source type and subject) database of Internet resources, and the classification scheme of the special subject collection (in German and English). [TK]
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Netsurfer Robotics
http://www.netsurf.com/nsr/
This new monthly e-zine from Netsurfer, available on-site or via subscription, covers most anything related to robotics. Each issue highlights a wealth of online resources grouped by topic or story. The first issue has annotated links related to the use of robotics in post-September 11 missions (bomb detection, search and rescue, etc.), LEGO's reaction to hackers work on Mindstorm, new technologies, new toys, and more. [TK]
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After September 11: Perspectives from the Social Sciences
http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/
This new site from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) contains essays by well-known social scientists on the events of and following September 11. The site aims to "provide the public and academic community with a deeper level of analysis than can be found on Op-Ed pages or talk shows." Among the more than 35 pieces currently posted are essays by Seyla Benhabib, Olivier Roy, and John Hall. Wide ranging in scope, essays are grouped into seven topic areas -- Globalization, Fundamentalism(s), Terrorism and Democratic Virtues, Competing Narratives, New War?, New World Order?, and Recovery. The site is regularly updated with more material as well. Future plans are to add a teaching guide by mid-January, to help instructors use the essays in lesson plans, and to use some material from the site in a book series that SSRC will launch in 2002. [TK]
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GeoCommunicator
http://www.geocommunicator.gov/
Brought to the Web by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the US Forest Service (USFS), GeoCommunicator acts as a portal to the Geography Network's resources related to land management and land records. Here users can publicize data and events; request information from other users; search for data, references, and events; and sign up to receive updates when new data are posted to a specified geographic area. Visitors can search for data in variety of ways. Clicking the Explorer button brings up a handy search interface, with tabs indicating search types (by township, latitude/ longitude, or a general search with pull-down menus featuring a variety of limits). The favorites tab brings up a page where users can subscribe to receive update notifications. The forum section allows users to communicate with others, and the Land Manager Viewer section features interactive maps that deliver contact information for agencies that manage federal lands. The Reference section showcases NILS (the National Integrated Land System), a database of parcel-based land and survey information. Clearly, a must-bookmark for anyone involved in land management. [TK]
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Advanced Encryption Standard
http://csrc.nist.gov/encryption/aes/
The Secretary of Commerce Don Evans this week announced a new encryption standard for the federal government, the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). AES is expected to be used by businesses and organizations outside of government as well. AES, which replaces the Data Encryption Standard (DES) that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) adopted in 1977, has been in production for four years. NIST began a contest in 1997 to determine the best encryption algorithm. The algorithm finally selected in 2000 incorporates the Rijndael encryption formula. From this page, users can read the press release, join an AES discussion forum, access test values and code, and learn more about AES and Rijndael. [TK]
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Re-envisioning the PhD
http://www.grad.washington.edu/envision/
This new site, sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts, is home to the Re-envisioning the PhD project, which is tasked with investigating change in doctoral education, in particular, helping to expand the career choices available to PhD students. In the Re-envisioning Project Resources section, visitors will find conference materials, recommendations from studies, summaries of interviews, a bibliography, career resources, and more. The Promising Practices section contains information on the different ways in which groups (universities, associations, organizations, and more) are responding to concerns about doctoral education. The other two main sections of the site, National/ International Resources and News and Updates contain links to even more resources, studies, current news, related projects, and more. [TK]
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Devices of Wonder
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/devices/
The Getty Museum cleverly uses our new media toy, the World Wide Web, to showcase this exhibition of media devices from the past and present. Included are inventions that present visual information or optical illusions, such as Indonesian shadow puppets, magic lantern slides, pop-up books, thaumatropes, and anamorphic images. Both animated and non-animated versions are available, and there are tradeoffs with each. In the animated version, users can see each device in action, but it takes a little longer to simply get each device's name and information about how it works. For example, the animated thaumatrope works pretty well, since it is easy to see that it is a card with two images on the back and front that fuse when the card is spun on a string. It's a little harder to figure out how the choreutoscope works from starting with the animated version, although one gets to watch the skeleton dance. The non-animated version immediately informs us that this is a hand-cranked magic lantern slide. [DS]
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Toolkit to End Violence Against Women [.pdf]
http://toolkit.ncjrs.org/
The Toolkit to End Violence Against Women was launched last month by the National Advisory Council on Violence Against Women, which is chaired by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Each of the Toolkit's sixteen chapters (.pdf) is geared toward a specific audience (e.g., Native Women, the US Military, the entertainment industry, health and mental care systems, etc.) and stresses ways in which these audience can increase prevention efforts and better services for victims. Clicking on a chapter title brings up a bullet-pointed list of things that particular audience can do to make a difference and links to the .pdf version of the chapter and an "action card" (a .pdf version of the bullet points with explication). [TK]
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Afghanistan: Land in Crisis -- National Geographic [RealPlayer]
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/landincrisis/
This new special feature from National Geographic collects information on Afghanistan, including articles, maps, lesson plans, current news, and more. Some of the site's notable features include an archived Webcast of an October 22 screening of "National Geographic Explores a Changing World" and panel discussion on the Middle East and Afghanistan; a bibliography of National Geographic's print resources related to the topic; and a regularly updated interactive map of Afghanistan displaying cities and attacks, ethnic groups, drought and vegetation, and more. Teachers will want to check out the four lesson plans, which are geared to various age groups K-12. [TK]
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Criminal Enforcement Against Terrorists
http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/terrorism/report011203.html
Syracuse-based Transactional Records Clearinghouse (TRAC), a non-partisan group monitoring federal staffing, spending, and enforcement activities, recently posted this report covering referrals for prosecution in international and domestic terrorist cases. It is difficult for the American public to monitor the federal governments efforts to find and prosecute terrorists because of the necessary secrecy that surrounds the feds' anti-terrorist activities. With this in mind, TRAC obtained (under court order) 131 computer tapes "with data that offer the American people the most up-to-date and complete view ever available about how the government is enforcing the law against international and domestic terrorists." The data graphs, tables, and text available at this site are a sampling of findings about the 1,338 referrals classified as domestic or international terrorism-related from October 1996 through September 2001. These findings reveal that, during the years 1997-2000, there were between 40-60 referrals for prosecution involving international terrorism, but in 2001, this number jumped to 204. It also shows that federal prosecutors declined to bring charges against more than two out of three of the criminal suspects who they classified as being involved in domestic or international terrorism. The investigative agencies included the FBI; the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA); the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; the US Marshal Service; the IRS; and many others. [HCS]
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NYC Surveillance Cameras
NYC Surveillance Camera Project [.pdf]
http://www.mediaeater.com/cameras/
i-SEE v.911: "Now more than ever" [Flash]
http://www.appliedautonomy.com/isee/
These two sites focus on the increasing numbers of surveillance cameras in New York City. The first provides a .pdf-formatted map of the more than 2,300 camera locations throughout New York as well as text listings broken down by community. The information was compiled by volunteers from the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU). In addition to information on camera locations, in the news section of the site, users will find links to related Websites, FAQs, and sites related to taxi cameras and traffic cameras. The second site, from the Institute for Applied Autonomy, contains an interactive map of New York with which users can map routes through the city. Users click on their starting point and destination, and i-SEE will generate a route for them with the fewest surveillance cameras. Note that we had trouble using the map with Netscape on a Mac, but no trouble with Internet Explorer. Both of these sites are unabashedly anti-surveillance technology and will be appreciated by New Yorkers concerned with civil liberties issues. [TK]
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Holocaust Era in Croatia, 1941-1945 [RealPlayer, Javascript]
http://www.ushmm.org/jasenovac/
This new exhibit from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) focuses on the years following the German invasion of Yugoslavia, when the Ustasa regime founded the Independent State of Croatia and set up concentration camps there. Jasenovac was the largest of the camps, and the USHMM site features artifacts from the Jasenovac Memorial Area Collection. There are three main sections of the exhibit: memorial, history, and collection. The first is a sort of art piece, a sobering screen with shifting pictures and voices. The latter two offer images of artifacts, explication of events, oral histories, video, photographs, and more. The site is available in both low and high bandwidth versions. Note that Mac users with Netscape may have some trouble with some of the site's multimedia features. [TK]
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Special Report: 2001 Odyssey Mission to Mars
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/mars_odyssey_sr.html
Space.com offers this special look at the Odyssey Mission, the latest robotic probe circling Mars that delivered its first pictures back to Earth earlier this fall. If you can get past Space.com's flashy pop-up advertisements, you'll find interesting features such as "Water or No Water," an article discussing the search for groundwater on the Red Planet. Links to infrared imagery from the mission, an animation of the canyon-riddled topography and a discussion of how the search for water is conducted and how it relates to the search for life on Mars are furnished. Other highlights of this Web feature include a schematic of the Odyssey craft; an article about NASA's "faster, better, cheaper" approach to space exploration; numerous videos from their SpaceTV program; images (digital elevation models, infrared, photographic) of Mars from NASA telescopes and earlier missions such as the Viking and the Mars Global Surveyor; and of course, the latest infrared images coming from the Odyssey Mission itself. [HCS]
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purportal.com
http://www.purportal.com/
E-Scribe New Media brings purportal.com to the Web in an effort to combat hoaxes and misinformation. Here users can search five of the most well-known sites dedicated to setting the record straight: Snopes Urban Legends Archive, About.com Urban Legends search, CIAC Hoax Database, CERT Computer Security Database, and Symantec (Real) Virus Encyclopedia. The site also features a special page devoted to hoaxes related to the events of September 11 and a list of helpful links. [TK]
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Web Design Tools -- prana3
http://www.prana3.com/tools/
prana3 presents this Website with free tools for Web developers. From here, users can find various design tools (HTML, CSS, Javascript, Photoshop, Flash, etc.); usability and accessibility information (articles, tools, and links); graphics; and information on setting up a Website, promoting a site, and handling revenue. This is a good site for those just getting started with Web design, as the language is clear and the resources feature a great deal of beginning tutorials and tools. [TK]
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NJ Teachers Back to Work
"N.J. Teachers Agree to Return to Work" -- AP (via Yahoo!News)
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011207/ts/teachers_strike_22.html
"Anger Grows in Middletown Over Teachers' Strike" -- New York Times [Free Registration Required]
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/07/education/07MIDD.html?searchpv=nytToday
"Strike Earns N.J. Teachers Some Jail Time" -- Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-000097073dec06.story?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dlearning
"In jailing striking teachers, New Jersey judges unswayed" -- Philadelphia Inquirer
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/12/06/front_page/JTEACH06.htm
Middletown Township Public Schools
http://www.middletownk12.org/
Middletown Township Education Association
http://mtea.com/
National Education Association
http://www.nea.org/
Labor Research Portal
http://iir.berkeley.edu/library/laborportal.html
The Great Speckled Bird StrikePage LaborNet
http://www.thebird.org/strikes/
Middletown, New Jersey schoolteachers went back to work today after a labor dispute that landed a quarter of the teaching work force in jail. The teachers had staged a walk-out because they refused to continue working without a new contract (the old one had expired on June 30), and they resisted proposed increases in their health insurance premiums. Last week, Judge Clarkson S. Fisher Jr. issued a back-to-work order, and when the striking teachers failed to follow the order, he began jailing them, working his way through the alphabet day by day. By yesterday, more than 225 teachers were in jail. Today, the teachers agreed to go back to work next week, and the union and the school district will enter non-binding mediation.
AP, the New York Times,Los Angeles Times, and the Philadelphia Inquirer have all posted stories covering the walk out and subsequent incarcerations. The Middletown Township Public Schools site has the latest news on the conflict, and the Middletown Township Education Association (MTEA) gives a brief statement of the union's mission as well as other news from the local. The National Education Association site gives news about the union in addition to information about education in general. Other labor-oriented news can be found at the Labor Research Portal and The Great Speckled Bird page. The former is a portal to labor-oriented Web resources of all types, and the latter gives dates of and reasons for current strikes across the country. [TK]
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