Hardships in America: The Real Story of Working Families [.pdf]
http://www.epinet.org/books/hardships.pdf
Family Budgets Calculator
http://www.epinet.org/datazone/fambud/budget.html
Panel Discussion [RealPlayer]
http://www.epinet.org/real_media/010724/index.html
Press Release
http://www.epinet.org/press%20releases/hardships.html
This 115-page report, released by Economic Policy Institute (EPI) at the end of last month, "is the most comprehensive study of family hardships ever published." The report examines the plight of the working poor by determining basic family budgets for communities across the nation -- the amount of money a family needs for food, housing, utilities, child care, transportation, and health care -- and comparing these figures to wage statistics. The report concludes that two-and-a-half times more families fall beneath the basic family budget levels for their communities than fall below the federal poverty line. The Family Budgets Calculator is an online supplement to the report that generates basic budgets for different kinds of families for 400,000 communities. In addition to a standard press release, EPI offers a RealPlayer version of a briefing about the report. [TK]
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Spectroscopy Now
http://www.spectroscopynow.com/
Wiley Publishing presents this spectroscopy portal, intended to be "a definitive spectroscopy resource on the internet," and "fully interactive 'Virtual Community' -- the preferred forum for expert discussion, debate and the exchange of ideas." Spectroscopy Now encompasses news, features, conferences, book releases, jobs, and directories in a variety of subdisciplines of spectroscopy. From the homepage, users can access specialized sections on atomic, infrared, Raman, UV, mass, NMR, and x-ray spectroscopy, as well as chemometrics. Many of the feature articles and primers are contributed by researchers from both public and private universities and laboratories. Also, Spectroscopy Now links to free articles and preprints from peer-reviewed science journals and news from various professional societies. Anyone interested in spectroscopy should definitely peruse this resource. [HCS]
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Emerging Infectious Diseases, Volume 7, Number 4 (July-August 2001) [.pdf]
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/index.htm
The current issue of the Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) Emerging Infectious Diseases (see the January 10, 1997 Scout Report) is devoted to the West Nile Virus. The journal offers a large number of articles, many focused on the virus' presence in New York and the use of birds as early warning systems for the virus. The articles also cover outbreaks in Israel, detection of the virus in other mammals, and more. Users can read articles online in HTML, download them as .pdf files, or download the whole issue as a .pdf file via the link in the upper left-hand corner of the page. [TK]
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Official Scoring Site, International Mathematical Olympiad 2001 [.pdf, Mathematica]
http://imo.wolfram.com/
Held in Washington DC this July, the 2001 International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) attracted talented young mathematicians from 83 nations. The contestants, all under 20 years old and without any post-secondary-school education, had two days to answer six grueling math problems. Visitors to this Website from the IMO (sponsored by Wolfram Research) can learn a little about the history of the IMO, meet the teams, and view scores and statistics. This year's highest scorers came from the USA and China. The real highlight of this site, however, is the Competition Problems section, where users can access the actual math problems posed in the competition and read their solutions (.pdf or Mathematica). Previous years' problems are also accessible. This is a great source of inspiration for mathematics professors. [HCS]
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Two from the Bureau of Labor Statistics [.pdf]
Geographic Profile of Employment and Unemployment, 1999
http://www.bls.gov/opub/gp/laugp.htm
"Highlights of Women's Earnings in 2000"
http://www.bls.gov/pdf/cpswom2000.pdf
Released last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) Geographic Profile of Employment and Unemployment, 1999 presents 28 tables of employment and unemployment data from two sources, the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS) and the Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) program. The 159-page report may be downloaded in its entirety or by table in .pdf format. The second report from BLS, "Highlights of Women's Earnings in 2000," also uses data from the CPS. The report finds that, in 2000, median weekly earnings for women were 76 percent of those for their male counterparts, a gap that varies considerably by demographic group and state. [TK]
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Projections of Education Statistics to 2011 [.pdf]
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfor.asp?pubid=2001083
Released yesterday by the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), this 150-page report is the latest in an annual series (last mentioned in the August 25, 2000 Scout Report). The report covers educational statistics for the past fourteen years and projections to the year 2011 for enrollment, number of graduates and teachers, and expenditures for elementary and secondary schools, and enrollment and graduates of degree-granting institutions. Users can browse tables and highlights online or download the whole report as a .pdf file. [TK]
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Bibliographic Control of Web Resources: A Library of Congress Action Plan"
http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/bibcontrol/draftplan.html
The Library of Congress is seeking input for the next two weeks on this draft of their action plan. The plan grows out of last November's conference, Bibliographic Control for the New Millennium: Confronting the Challenge of Networked Resources and the Web, and also takes into account LC21: A Digital Strategy for the Library of Congress, the National Academy of Sciences report commissioned by the Library (see the August 2, 2000 Scout Report). The goals of the conference were to develop a strategy to improve access to Web resources through cataloging and the use of metadata, and to outline actions to achieve the strategy. The plan is brief and distills the input toward those goals. [TK]
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The Literary Gothic
http://www.litgothic.com/
Brought to the Web by Jack G. Voller, Associate Professor of English at Southern Illinois University, this site bills itself as "the Web's premier guide to Gothic literature," and we can't argue with that. The page offers links to primary and secondary texts (with a cut-off date of the mid-20th century), illustrations, discussion groups, and more. Users can either browse by author name or by title. Those who wish to range further than this site should check out the Resources section, which contains a useful collection of annotated links, or the Community section, which gives descriptions of discussion groups and organizations devoted to the gothic or related subjects. Undergraduate or high school students will find the Research section helpful, as it contains a brief essay on conducting literary research on topics related to the gothic or supernatural literature. Clearly a labor of love, this page should prove to be a useful bookmark for scholars and instructors or those who are simply looking for a creepy tale. [TK]
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