NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology
The first issue of the second volume of the MET Report is available. Its Topic in Depth section offers Web sites and comments about artificial satellites.
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The Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science
http://www.csiss.org/
Funded primarily by the National Science Foundation, the Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science's primary mission is "to develop unrestricted access to tools and perspectives that will advance the spatial analytic capabilities of researchers throughout the social sciences." To that end, their Web site will be of great use to those individuals working in the fields of geography, anthropology, urban planning, sociology, and geographic information systems. With that in mind, visitors will want to examine the Core Programs section of the site, which features a best practices in spatial approaches section, a collection of educational resources (such as papers, listings of classic research endeavors in spatially-oriented social sciences, and additional links), and information about relevant national and regional conferences dealing with these approaches. Most helpful for researchers will be the customized searches for spatial resources (with reviews of each individual site) that can be performed through the Center's search engines. [KMG]
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The Historical Society of Pennsylvania
http://www.hsp.org/index.html
Founded in 1824 and located in Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania contains one of the most important archives of material relating the history of Pennsylvania in the United States. Visitors to the site will want to examine the newsletter published by the Society, which relates details about ongoing events, lectures, and exhibitions, along with offering details about new publications related to the state's history. Researchers will want to examine the Society's online catalog, which is fully searchable. Equally valuable are a series of drop-down menus that provide information on utilizing the Society's collections, including research guides to architectural history, Civil War manuscripts, family history, and Philadelphia neighborhood history. Also available online are a number of online collection finding aids, including "Places in Time: Historical Documentation of Philadelphia," which provides numerous scanned images of the city over its 300-year history. [KMG]
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Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean World
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/dl/proj/neh2/
Sponsored by the University of Chicago Library and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, this online project contains numerous primary materials related to the study of the ancient Near East and covers topics ranging from archaeology; art history; language; law; and the religions of Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria, Egypt, Nubia, and Persia. Currently, the project includes full-text editions of 33 seminal works in the field, including works on Greek athletics and the exploration of Palestine during the first decade of the 20th century. For those seeking to read them in their language of origin, several of the texts are also available in the original French and German. This site will be of great interest to persons hoping to look through primary research texts, but find themselves unable to make a trip to the University of Chicago Library. [KMG]
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Querido Emigrante: Musical Perspectives of Dominican Migration [.pdf]
http://www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk/working%20papers/gill.pdf
This 49-page working paper from the Transnational Communities Programme at Oxford deals with the musical expressions of the widespread Dominican migration that has occurred over the past several decades. Authored by Hannah E. Gill, the work deals primarily with the musical genre of merengue and its ability to evoke the nature of the migration experience for Dominicans. As Ms. Gill suggests in her introduction, "Popular music, however, portrays a different perspective of migrant life: one that emphasizes not transnationalism and migration, but rootedness in Dominican geographic locales, identification with traditional Dominican values and loyalty to homeland." Ms. Gill continues on her work to examine how this musical expression may in fact question the relevance of some theoretical frameworks of transnationalism with which contemporary anthropological scholarship conceptualizes migration practices. Overall, this is a refreshing and compelling look at one aspect of international migration that is often overlooked or ignored, particularly given the predilection towards easily quantifiable measures of the migrant experience. [KMG]
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Australian Bureau of Statistics
http://www.abs.gov.au/
For those looking for statistical information on a broad set of themes and geographical areas within Australia, they should visit the Australian Bureau of Statistics Web site. From the main page, visitors can view recent statistical reports, such as the Australian Consumer Price Index, information about the labor force (e.g., employment rates), and a series of occasional papers. Particularly helpful to the casual user will be the Themes section, which provides summary statistics about the environment, tourism, transportation, economic well-being, and education. Additionally, the Bureau publishes reports organized by administrative and regional divisions of the country, a feature that will be helpful to students doing research on a particular area of the country. If users are seeking to learn more about the organization, history, and mission of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, they will find this material located under the About the ABS section of the site. [KMG]
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Intel Technology Journal [.pdf]
http://developer.intel.com/technology/itj/index.htm
This quarterly journal from Intel addresses many issues related to computers and networking technology. The articles are not overly technical in nature, making them appropriate for a broad audience. Each issue of the journal has a general area of focus. Some recent topics include smart toys, the "digital home," and Hyper-Threading Technology. While the later is an Intel-specific development, most of the topics are applicable to the industry as a whole. The journal was originally internal to Intel, but every issue since the journal went public in 1997 is now available in an archive. This site is also reviewed in the January 17, 2003 NSDL MET Report. [CL]
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Passports into Credit Cards: On the Borders and Spaces of Neoliberal Citizenship [.pdf]
http://depts.washington.edu/ccce/Assets/documents/pdf/Passportsintocreditcards.pdf
In this 47-page working paper from the University of Washington's Center for Communication and Civic Engagement, Professor Matthew Sparke interrogates the notion of citizenship in a changing global environment, or as he states, "the primary goal of this chapter is to register some of the complex ways in which citizenship is being recodified in an area where neoliberal commitments to public-private partnerships and free market solutions are well entrenched." Professor Sharpe begins by examining the previous work on citizenship and social class, while then engaging in a qualitative examination of the border region development plans around the Pacific Northwest, or the region that is known to some as "Cascadia." Professor Sparke also examines the proposal by one INS officer that persons who frequently cross international borders for travel or business be issued a credit-card device that would contain detailed information. [KMG]
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The Canela Indians of Northeastern Central Brazil [.pdf, QuickTime]
http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/canela/
Based largely on the pioneering research of Bill Crocker, this site on the Canela Indians of Central Brazil is hosted by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Designed to educate a general audience about the life and activities of the Canela, the site contains numerous sections that allow visitors to explore a world that few persons will be able to visit. First-time visitors will want to read the short essay ("About the Canela") before proceeding to the Daily Life chronology, which lists the activities of the Canela on an average day, including a men's council meeting and sing-dancing. A literature section offers numerous papers written by Bill Crocker on various aspects of Canela life, such as their initiation festivals and their relationships with ghosts. Finally, visitors will want to check out a short video showing Canela men engaging in one of their most unique daily activities, log racing. [KMG]
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NYU and the Village: An Urban University in Bohemia
http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/collections/exhibits/bobst/washsq/index.html
Many universities and colleges have extensive archival material about their respective institutions histories and development, but surprisingly few have placed these often quite colorful and engaging materials online. The staff of New York University's (NYU) Library and Archives division have created this exhibit to draw the spotlight on the school's history in the milieu of Greenwich Village. The History section of the site offers some brief historical sketches of the university's development from 1832 to the present day, complemented by scanned images of the development of the campus and the different buildings constructed throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Two virtual walking tours of the Washington Square part of NYU's campus allow users to see the dramatic transformation of the surrounding built environment, an engaging aspect that can be better utilized with the building index provided here. Finally, the site also contains a Featured Voices section that offers written accounts of daily life at NYU from the 19th century and novels and memoirs in which Greenwich Village is featured, most notably Washington Square by Henry James. [KMG]
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The Official Leonard Bernstein Site
http://www.leonardbernstein.com/
Leonard Bernstein was one of America's foremost conductors and champions of classical music in the 20th century, along with composing such works as West Side Story,Candide, and his Mass. Developed and maintained by the Leonard Bernstein Society, this site contains a wealth of printed interviews, musical excerpts, and other ephemera that will be of great interest to those with a passion for American music. Visitors to the site can explore the sections through a pull-down menu located on the homepage, or search for a specific media type under the Browse Site section. A message board allows users to post and respond to questions about Leonard Bernstein, and the left side of the main page contains news updates about upcoming performances of his different works. Under the Life's Works section, users can access the Red Book, which is a comprehensive and detailed catalog of Bernsteins compositions, speeches, and honors, along with a discography and selection of recommended recordings. The site is rounded out with a nice collection of audio clips such as highlights of Mr. Bernstein's auspicious debut with the New York Philarmonic, the famed Norton Lectures at Harvard, and selections from the Young Peoples Concerts. [KMG]
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The National Council of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial
http://www.lewisandclark200.org/
In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson sent Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on an expedition westward in the hope of mapping a transcontinental water route to the Pacific Ocean. The National Council of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial is a coalition of agencies created to mark the 200th anniversary of Lewis and Clark's three-year journey. At the group's Web site, visitors will find the calendar for fifteen signature events that trace the expedition's route, beginning January 18th, 2003, at Monticello, Jefferson's home in Virginia, and ending September 23, 2006, in St. Louis, Missouri. Stops in between include Fort Atkinson State Historical Park, Nebraska, in July and August of 2004, where there will be an outdoor reenactment of the meeting between the Lewis and Clark's expedition and the Otoe and Missouria Tribes, and Fort Clatsop National Memorial in Astoria, Oregon, in November 2005, where, in 1805, Clark wrote in his journal that the Pacific Ocean was in view. [DS]
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Life Interrupted: The Japanese American Experience in WW II Arkansas [Flash]
http://www.lifeinterrupted.org
On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which gave the Secretary of War the authority to designate "military areas from which to exclude certain people." As a result, over 120,000 Japanese-Americans were removed to relocation camps all over the United States for much of World War II. This site, developed by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's Public History program and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, offers a nicely composed historical overview to the human experience within the two relocation camps in Arkansas during World War II. The design of the site is particularly inviting, as each section appears as a manila folder, on top of a well-worn wooden table. A history section offers a brief overview of the internment of Japanese Americans across the country, along with a timeline that provides details on the history of the Arkansas camps. A multimedia section allows visitors to view the current site of the former camps and to browse through a scrapbook of archive photographs of daily life in the camps. This site will be an excellent resource for educators and students seeking information about this tragic episode in American history. [KMG]
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Down the Drain: Chicago's Sewers, The Historic Development of an Urban Infrastructure
http://www.chipublib.org/digital/sewers/sewers.html
While many aspects of urban life and history are frequently explored by scholars and journalists alike, one particularly important element of modern living is often overlooked: sewers. The Special Collections Division of the Chicago Public Library has developed this well-thought out site in order to shed some light on the history and development of this unique part of the city's underground infrastructure. Users will want to start by reading five short essays that offer some helpful information on the development of the entire system since the late 1800s, including a section on current efforts to expand the system through the "Deep Tunnel" project. Next, users can browse the Gallery of Images, which contain some excellent photo documentation of the construction of Chicago's sewer system dating back to the late 1920s. Finally, a section devoted to technology allows visitors to learn about how sewage is treated today and to take an online tour of a sewer department yard. [KMG]
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National Postal Museum
http://www.si.edu/postal/
Opened in 1993, the National Postal Museum is located in the City Post Office Building in Washington DC. Part of the Smithsonian Institution, the Postal Museum also contains a 40,000 volume research library, along with an online, searchable catalog of their holdings. Young students will enjoy the variety of online games, such as a scavenger hunt, a jigsaw puzzle, and quizzes about postal history. The site also features seven online exhibits, including ones dealing with the stamp issued to commemorate the life of Roberto Clemente, the role of the mail carrier in the Klondike Gold Rush, and those postal service employees who lost their lives aboard the Titanic. For those visitors with additional questions about the museum, the staff has provided a section of answers to frequently asked questions, such as "How is the National Postal Museum funded?" and "How are stamp subjects chosen?" [KMG]
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Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies
http://www.princeton.edu/~artspol/
The Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies was created in 1994 by Stanley N. Katz and Paul DiMaggio, in part "to address the serious and damaging deficit in the information and thinking available to inform the development and implementation of policies related to arts and culture." To this end, the Center's Web site contains a great deal of material that describes their ongoing and long-term research projects, along with information about related awards and fellowships available through the Center. The site also has information about their research affiliates, their working paper series, and other germane articles and publications. The site is rounded out by the inclusion of a helpful page devoted to related links dealing with the humanities and cultural studies. [KMG]
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QuickE Lite
http://www.stuffsoft.com/quicke.html
This small application will be helpful to those persons needing to send out email quickly, without having to start their entire email client. After installing QuickE Lite, users will merely have to right click with their mouse, and the email will be sent out instantly. Additionally, there is an email address that can handle user queries, if any questions arise about the program. QuickE Lite is compatible with all operating systems running Windows 95 and higher. [KMG]
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NetShred X
http://www.mireth.com/pub/nxme.html
Net Shred is an utility program that allows users to securely delete files created when using the Internet, such as the Web browser cache, browser history files, and email trash. The program can be set up to run manually, or to take place after certain activities, such as shutting down the computer. Net Shred X is compatible with all computers running Mac OS X and higher. [KMG]
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The Banana's Future May be Uncertain
Banana's Days May Be Numbered
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=2058060
Traditional Vegetative Propagation
http://heg-school.aw.com/bc/companion/cmr2e/activity/VR/VR17.htm
Genetic Diversity and Food Security
http://www.unesco.org/courier/2000_05/uk/doss23.htm
International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain
http://www.inibap.org/
Global Consortium Announces Plans to Sequence Banana Genome
http://www.futureharvest.org/news/banana_release.shtml
Banana: Food and Wealth [.pdf]
http://www.inibap.org/publications/inibap-factsheets_eng/food.pdf
Banana Recipes
http://www.pastrywiz.com/archive/category/banana.htm
In the United States, the banana is one of the most popular fruits in the average grocery store, and rightly known as a good source of potassium. In much of the developing world, such as Latin America and Africa, the banana (along with the plantain) constitute some of the most plentiful and crucial foodstuffs and are the fourth most important food crop after rice, wheat, and corn. In recent years, production levels of both crops have suffered as the rapidly spreading fungus "Black Sigatoka" has taken its toll, often reducing yields by up to 50 percent. Additionally, chemical fungicides used on the crops have harmed the health of plantation workers and the environment, adding to an already problematic situation. In a recent press release, Emile Frisson, the head of the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain, noted that, "We may seen the extinction of the banana as both a lifesaver for hungry and impoverished Africans and as the most popular product on the world's supermarket shelves."
The first link leads to a recent Reuters release about the difficulties currently facing the continued success of the banana and plantain crop around the world. The second link describes the propagation process of the banana, which for the cultivated banana, is complicated by the fact that it has no seeds and is sterile. The third link will take users to a brief written by Geoffrey Hawtin for the UNESCO Courier on the importance of genetic diversity and food security. The fourth link goes to the home page of the International Network for the Improvement of the Banana and Plantain, which contains a wealth of material about the importance of bananas and plantains, particularly to the developing world. The fifth link is to a 2001 press release from the Future Harvest group announcing that a global consortium would begin work on sequencing the banana genome, in large part to discover the diversity of bananas that grow and reproduce in the wild. The fifth link takes users to a fact sheet published by the INIBAP highlighting the importance of bananas to the nutritional well being of persons in developing areas. The last link leads to a page devoted to recipes that utilize bananas. [KMG]
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