http://www.universitybusiness.com/

For good or ill, the landscape of higher education throughout the United States is changing rapidly, and the University Business website is a good way to keep in touch with the related transformations. Visitors to the site can read the contents of the current issue, which features articles on a myriad of subjects ranging from graduate student unions to new distance education technology, or browse through the online archive dating back to 2002. The site also contains special sections such as a calendar of upcoming conferences and workshops, case studies, and white papers. Users will also appreciate the Best Of feature, which brings together the most compelling writings from University Business on finance and technology-related issues in higher education. For those who find this information particularly relevant and helpful, the website also has a place where they may sign up to receive UBDaily, the e-newsletter delivered (at no charge) every business day. [KMG]

http://www.museum.upenn.edu/MIS/

Since 1887, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (UPM) has sponsored a number of extremely valuable archaeological expeditions to sites on every inhabited continent. With the significant financial generosity of the Mellon Foundation, the UPM has begun the Museum Information System project in order to make a good portion of these highly detailed archaeological field notes and other items (such as photographs of artifacts) available online. So far, the museum has placed materials from three sites online: the Minoan site of Gournia Crete, Pech de l'Aze IV, a Middle Paleolithic site in France, and a pre-Columbian cemetery at Sitio Conte, Panama. For each site, the people at the project have offered a brief introduction to each expedition, along with offering digitized images of artifacts from each site. In the case of Pech de l'Aze, the original field notebooks have been digitized, and are available for general consideration on the website. [KMG]

http://mgd.nacse.org/cgi-bin/hyperSQL_gateway?/hyperSQL/herbtype/hsql/nu98search.hsql

Representing the collections of the Oregon State University Herbarium, the Vascular Plants database "provides access to all known vascular plant holotypes (ferns, gymnosperms, and angiosperms) and isotypes..." all within three herbaria housed at Oregon State University, University of Oregon, and Willamette University. Although the Herbarium collections have a "strong emphasis on the state of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest" their scope is worldwide. The database search engine provides ten fields with pull-down menus including Genus, Species, Authority, County, and more. Furthermore, "searches can be conducted by both basionyms (the original published name) and current names (i.e., the most recent annotation of the type specimen)." Searchers can retrieve from 10 to 5,000 Records/Page. [NL] This site is also reviewed in the February 20, 2004 NSDL Life Sciences Report.

http://www.pewhispanic.org/index.jsp

Founded by The Pew Charitable Trusts in 2001, the Pew Hispanic Center is located in Washington, D.C., and has as its prime mission "to improve understanding of the U.S. Hispanic population and to chronicle Latinos' growing impact on the entire nation." To achieve this goal, the Center has embarked on a number of ambitious projects, including a regular program of research papers, performing an annual survey of Latino attitudes, and communicating these findings to policy-makers, business leaders, and various media organizations. Visitors to the site will want to take a look at the basic information about the Center, peruse the helpful daily news digest of items related to the Latino community in the U.S., and make sure to examine the publications section, which is divided by topic. There are quite a few publications (fact sheets, research reports, survey summaries) archived here, including the recent and timely survey on Latino attitudes towards education, which was released in January 2004. [KMG]

Cities Feeding People: International Development Research Centre
http://network.idrc.ca/en/ev-5911-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
Georgia Center for Urban Agriculture [pdf]
http://www.griffin.peachnet.edu/urbanag/

As various organizations and think-tanks continue to develop programmatic strategies to improve the welfare of the world's poor, one intriguing idea that has met with marked success is the incorporation of agriculture into the very fabric of urban areas. One such organization is the International Development Research Centre (based in Canada), and its Cities Feeding People program. At the website, visitors can learn about the centre's research agenda, read various working papers and online books on the subject of urban agriculture (such as the recently released, Urban Agriculture Policy Briefs for Local Governments in Latin America), and read news updates. In that same vein, and found at the second link, is the Georgia Center for Urban Agriculture which is also committed "to promoting environmental stewardship and the delivery of science-based information." Here visitors can learn more about urban agriculture, read about creating and maintaining a successful urban agriculture, and the organization of the Center. [KMG]

http://hakone.eri.u-tokyo.ac.jp/vrc/VRC.html

This website discusses the Volcano Research Center's (VRC) work to improve predictions of volcanic eruptions by conducting research on volcanic processes. Users can find out about Asama, Kirishima, Izu-Oshima, and other VRC volcano observatories. The website features information on many continuing and recent eruptions in Japan. Visitors can view many images of volcanic eruptions and disaster relief missions. Researchers can learn about the international cooperative drilling operation at the Unzen Volcano to understand the eruption mechanisms and magnetic activity. [RME] This site is also reviewed in the February 20, 2004 NSDL Physical Sciences Report.

http://www.lewisandclarkexhibit.org/

Beginning in January 2004, the Lewis & Clark National Bicentennial Exhibition was set on display in St. Louis to commemorate this rather pivotal event in American history -- the first transcontinental journey across North America. This complementary online exhibition is designed to let people follow in the footsteps of the expedition, and in the words of the introduction, "to meet people different from us in mind and time, and to learn to know them." The exhibit's materials can be accessed in a number of ways, including by theme, through following the trail with an interactive map, or by searching or browsing a gallery of the many pieces of visual and historical ephemera digitally archived here. Using the interactive map is wholly engrossing, as each site allows users to toggle the historic map of the journey with a contemporary map, listen to various sounds associated with each place, and in a few instances, listen to readings from the words of various persons on the expedition. In the themes area, visitors can browse through such topically arranged pieces on Discovering of Diplomacy, A World of Women, and Trade and Property. Finally, there is the collection of over 350 artifacts available for online viewing, including Meriwether Lewis's watch and the will of William Clark. [KMG]

http://ds9.ssl.berkeley.edu/viewer/flash/flash.html

Developed jointly by NASA and the University of California at Berkeley, this elegant site allows the general public to look at a number of truly astonishing images of the sun, as rendered from various telescopes and other image-capturing devices such as NASA's Image Spacecraft. On the main page, there are twelve different views (all updated daily). Visitors can zoom in and out around areas of interest and read a helpful description of what they are observing, as well as how the image was captured. The Illustrations section is another treat, as viewers can peruse 12 high quality illustrations of such important phenomena as the electromagnetic radiation into the atmosphere and the four phases of matter. Within the visualization section, viewers can watch short movies of oxygen atoms in the near-Earth environment and take a virtual tour of the Earth's magnetosphere. The site is completed with a number of interviews with scientists answering questions about solar wind, the sun, Venus, and auroras. [KMG]