The Scout Report -- Volume 12, Number 38

http://dlese.org/library/index.jsp

As the crucial element of the National Science Digital Library that provides information on the area of geoscience, the Digital Library for Earth Science Education (DLESE) provides access to quality teaching and learning resources about the Earth as a system for a wide range of learners. With an impressive array of materials, its hard to know where to start, but first-time visitors may wish to look over the most recent edition of their in-house newsletter, which profiles some of the materials that have been added to the site. Of course, there is also a general search engine that allows users to search all of the materials by grade level, resource type, standards, and thematic collection. Visitors may also elect to register with DLESE and partake in some of their email discussion groups. [KMG]

http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/math.htm

The PBS Teacher Source website is just one of the many fine ways that this organization is actively involved in reaching out to different segments of the educational community in the United States. The section dedicated to math resources is quite a find, and educators will find a number of lesson plans and related activities for their students here. While the material is ostensibly designed for students in grades K-12, many of the high school specific activities remain highly applicable to students in the early stages of college-level math. These materials are divided into groups topically, and they include geometry, calculus, problem solving, and statistics. The nice thing about many of the activities is that they are tied to pragmatic and applied situations, which in many cases may help the students understand the concepts that are being introduced. [KMG]

http://www.teoria.com/

Music appreciation can take many forms, and certainly gaining a basic understanding of how music is composed and subsequently analyzed and performed can provide years of enjoyment and edification. With his website, Teoria, Jose Rodriguez Alvira offers visitors the opportunity to take online tutorials, complete exercises, and read articles about music all in the same place. In the Tutorials area, visitors will learn about how to read music and how to identify different chords, intervals, and harmonic functions. Moving along, the Exercises area lets visitors test their mettle with interactive materials that will take them through the world of key signatures, jazz, and clef reading. Finally, the site also has a Reference area which provides answers to such questions as What is a chord? along with offering a detailed explication of the bits and pieces of information that can be found in a bar of music. [KMG]

http://rad.usuhs.mil/medpix/medpix_home.html

Radiologists, students of radiology, and those who are interested in medical images in general will be delighted to hear about this website. Created by MedPix, the teaching files and medical images offered here can be browsed by organ system, and after selecting a particular system, visitors can learn about more about each slide in great detail. Another feature of the site allows visitors to offer their own diagnosis before learning the particulars of each discrete medical case. Visitors can also consider the Case of the Week area, which features a case that has been selected by the peer review board that vets all of the images that find their way into their archive. Additionally, the site also features an advanced search engine for those users who know exactly what they want. [KMG]

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2006/libya0906/

In recent years, the government of Libya has grown increasingly interested in improving its relations with various countries, including the United States as well as several in Europe. However, some remain leery about its treatment of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, and the release of this report from the Human Rights Watch group provides some information on this current situation. In the 135-page report, their team of researchers provides information on how Libyan authorities have mistreated undocumented foreigners in detention and subsequently forced them to return to countries where they could face persecution, and potentially, torture. The report also notes that part of this problem could stem from the fact that Libya has not signed the 1951 Refugee Convention. All told, the report has twelve chapters and an appendix, and is available in Arabic, Italian, and French. [KMG]

http://www.hispanichealth.org/

Founded in 1973, the National Alliance for Hispanic Health advocates on behalf of the well being of Hispanics across the country, and over the years, they have created a number of resources that will pique the interest of public health experts and the general public. From their homepage, visitors can get a handle of some of their most requested documents, which include fact sheets on health issues in the Hispanic community, phone hotlines, and news updates about their latest work. For additional materials in this area, the Resources section contains reports titled Gene, Culture, and Medicines: Bridging Gaps in Treatment for Hispanic Americans and information about funding sources for those who wish to work on public health issues in the Hispanic community. As might be expected, many of the sites resources are available in Spanish. [KMG]

http://digitalmedia.worldbank.org/

Podcasts on development issues in South Asia and photographic essays of the Amazon River Basin are just some of the many highlights of this creative and well-designed website created by the World Bank. Of course, the World Bank has always been well known for its many working papers and research reports, but this site is tailored for a more general audience and some of these resources could also be used in the classroom. The site includes a quiz on food security and poverty reduction and the Dev360 area, which features stories about educating young women in Bangladesh and the process of creating a national road system in Morocco. The site is rounded out by several dozen podcasts, which include addresses by the head of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz and the creation of an avian flu facility at the Bank. [KMG]

http://content.lib.washington.edu/llweb/index.html

Lawrence Denny Lindsley was born in 1878 in a house on scenic Lake Union, right in the middle of the relatively young city of Seattle, Washington. As a descendant of the early Seattle pioneer David Denny, Lindsley began to wander around the city and its environs from a young age. Like many men in the Pacific Northwest during the late 19th century, he enjoyed the outdoors, and soon developed a skill for photography. He later went on to work for Edward Curtis, and he continued on by documenting such landscapes as Mount Rainer, Lake Chelan, and the Olympic Peninsula. Many of these excellent photographs can be viewed in this latest offering from the University of Washington Libraries Digital Collection. All told, there are 472 photographs here, complete with detailed records. The King County section is a real highlight, as visitors will get a real sense of the area before it became heavily urbanized during the 20th century. [KMG]

http://hes.lbl.gov/

Homeowners and other persons of property will benefit a great deal from this website, which is sponsored by the Department of Energy, along with significant support from other federal agencies. Essentially, the site allows users to learn how they can make their home more efficient and all users need to do is submit their zip code to get started. Upon submitting their zip code, users will see a comparison of the energy costs of an average home in that particular geographic area as compared to an energy efficient home in the same area. After the calculation is returned, visitors can fine-tune their calculation by entering additional data, such as the total floor area of the dwelling and so on. There are a number of extras on the site, including state-by-state lists of energy saving programs and construction standards. Finally, there is also a glossary of energy terminology which gets to the basic essentials of such phrases as radiant barrier and color temperature. [KMG]

http://commonground.cr.nps.gov/Index.cfm

Within the pages of the National Park Services magazine, Common Ground, users will find behind-the-scenes events, the partnerships, the creativity, the innovations that make a real difference in safeguarding our past. These are bold claims, and the magazine delivers in full on all of them. The magazine is published quarterly, and users can browse through the current issue, or browse through their online archive, which includes all issues dating back to 2003. Every issue includes a brief piece on a recent preservation success story and a section dedicated to recent preservation news. Some of the highlights of recent issues include an article on the New Bedford whaling museum and the documentation of covered bridges by the Historic American Engineering Record. [KMG]

http://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/

How is a nation formed? That question alone has vexed political scientists, historians, and aspiring nation-builders for centuries. The answer is often quite complex, and only in rare cases do we have a complete answer. The National Archives of Australia has recently created this website which explores the various documents that tell about the creation and formation of their country as a commonwealth. The homepage presents a map of the country, divided into its contemporary political divisions, allowing visitors to click on each area to read primary documents that provide insight into each locale. Areas such as New South Wales include transcripts and original documents, such as the secret instructions to Captain James Cook on what to do if he finds land and the New South Wales Courts Act of 1787. Other sections of the site include Pathways, which allow users to delve into these documents in a thematic fashion (related to issues surrounding land and the like) and a basic timeline that begins in 60,000 BC and continues to 1836. [KMG]

http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/blacksea/index.html

The Crimea has been a gathering point for centuries, and among those who have gathered in the region include Italian merchants, pirates, and in recent years, holiday makers from Russia. The Black Sea also serves as the last resting place for a number of ships, some of which were the victims of various sea battles. One such ship sunk in 1277 as a result of just such a military action, and most recently was the subject of an extensive underwater archaeology study by a team of researchers from Brown University, Colby College, and the University of Kiev. Visitors interested in this work will most definitely enjoy this latest Interactive Dig feature offered by Archaeology Magazine, as it features reports from the underwater exploration which took place in the summer of 2006. The site also includes a selection of photos, an interview with one of the primary investigators, and an Ask the Archaeologist forum. [KMG]

http://www.theparisreview.com/literature.php

While its celebrated editor George Plimpton, the noted author, critic, and one-time Detroit Lion is no longer with us, the Paris Review continues to delight and stimulate readers around the world. Recently, the Review received a substantial grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to place all of their Writer at Work interviews online so that anyone around the world can read them at their leisure. The project is well on its way, and visitors with a literary bent (or those who hope to acquire such a bent), can look over the fruits of their labor on this site. Titled The DNA of Literature, the collection can be viewed by decade, or alphabetically. Some of those authors interviewed include Nelson Algren, T. S. Eliot, Robert Lowell, Conraid Aiken, Saul Bellow, and the poet Marianne Moore. The site is quite a wonder, and will no doubt warrant several visits. [KMG]

Forms [pdf]
http://criminaljustice.state.ny.us/ops/docs/index.htm#sgtraining

Security guards are an important part of maintaining civil order, and more and more public and private groups are relying on their services. A number of resources have been created to assist those who might be interested in entering the field, and some of them may complement existing training programs quite nicely. The New York State Division of Criminal Justices Office of Public Safety has compiled a number of helpful forms that include guides on how to photograph crime scenes, fingerprinting suspected criminals, along with offering basic canine standards for those persons who may work with such partners. Along with these materials, the site also includes instructor materials for the fingerprinting module, and a list of approved security guard training schools. [KMG]

http://pewresearch.org/assets/social/pdf/Ladder.pdf

A recent study conducted by the Pew Research Center would seem to indicate that Americans might be a bit less optimistic as of late. In one of their latest surveys, the Center noted that the overall downturn in personal optimism since the year 2002 is the sharpest recorded in over 40 years. Interestingly enough, not all Americans feel the same way about their future. The report notes that the groups most likely to forecast future personal progress include Hispanics, African Americans, and young adults. Visitors to the full report will enjoy making use of the tables and charts in the document, and also learning a bit more about the methodology used by the researchers in their work. [KMG]

http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/

It seems like every organization has a manager, that unsung person who is responsible for getting things organized, maintaining order, and keeping everyone else on task. It makes sense then that computer downloads might need their own equivalent application to keep important files in order. This application helps speed up the download process and also offers previews of files along the way. Additionally, Free Download Manager 2.1 functions with a wide range of browsers. This version is compatible with all computers running Windows 95 and newer. [KMG]

http://www.chimoosoft.com/captureme.html

Cameras can capture a moment forever, but what can help astute Mac OS X users capture a screen image? One potential answer would be Capture Me 1.3, an application that will allow those users to save screens of interest in a variety of formats and also, in some instances, also capture sounds as well. One other nice little feature allows users to use a floating sizable window to merely capture whatever is covered within the window. This version is compatible with computers running Mac OS X 10.4 and newer. [KMG]

Tourist jungle grows over Angkor Wat
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0918/p06s01-woap.html

Tourism official proposes elephant ban at Angkor
http://english.people.com.cn/200609/20/eng20060920_304606.html

APSARA [Macromedia Flash Player]
http://www.autoriteapsara.org/

Is Angkor Wat too touristy?
http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,18409-2363554,00.html

Great Buildings Online: Angkor Wat
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Angkor_Wat.html

Interactive Map of World Heritage Properties [Macromedia Flash Player]
http://whc.unesco.org/en/map

Cambodia Post
http://www.cambodiajournal.com/

Rulers have long sought to create lasting landmarks through grand buildings and public works projects, and Angkor Wat is certainly one of the most well known places in South East Asia, if not the entire world. Initially built in the early 12th century, the temple and its surrounding grounds have long been popular tourist destinations, and they have survived a number of potential threats, including the long civil war in Cambodia that engulfed the entire country and the region for several decades. However, another threat is looming that could have even more dire consequences, namely the arrival of millions of tourists. Tourism officials recently reported that close to two million tourists will visit the temples this year, and almost 500,000 of them will arrive in November and December. In the town of Siem Reap, which serves as the gateway to the Angkor complex, the bureau chief of the towns tourism department remarked that There are too many people, and its difficult to supply and feed them. The situation is also rather complex due to the fact that Cambodia as a whole is heavily reliant on tourism, and a number of government officials are hard pressed to reign in this booming sector of the nations economy. In the meantime, there are plans in place to improve the local infrastructure problems around Siem Reap, but it remains to be seen what sustainable measures might need to be taken to ensure the integrity of these important elements of the historical and cultural landscape. [KMG]

The first link will take users to piece on the issues raised by increased tourism around Angkor Wat from the Christian Science Monitors Adam Piore. The second link leads to a news story from the Peoples Daily Online that talks about the proposal offered by one tourism official which would ban elephants from the grounds. The third link leads to the website of the APSARA agency, which is responsible for providing stewardship of the buildings and the grounds. Here, visitor can learn about the areas history and art, and see maps of each monument. The fourth link whisks users away to a piece in the Sunday Times that offers some expert advice (along with the observations of other tourists) about whether or not Angkor Wat has become too touristy. The fifth link leads to the entry from Great Buildings Online on Angkor Wat, which includes some basic history of the complex, along with a number of aerial photographs. The sixth link leads to the interactive map of World Heritage properties. Finally, the last link leads to a nice site that culls news stories about Cambodia and the region into one nice package for visitors who would like to stay abreast of ongoing events in the area. [KMG]