Research and Education
If you're hoping to test your mettle in the world of computer science, you'd do well to check out this informative and erudite course offered as part of the OpenCourseWare initiative at MIT. The course was created by Professors Eric Grimson and John Guttag, and it includes a syllabus, readings, lecture videos, assignments, and exams. The materials here are "aimed at students with little or no programming experience." Visitors might want to start out by looking over the syllabus, and then move on to the "Readings" area. Here they can find selected excerpts from key texts, including "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist". Even better are the lecture videos from the course, such as "Binary search, bubble and selection sorts" and "Divide and conquer methods, merge sort, exceptions". The truly ambitious will also want to look over the assignments and exams offered here.
[KMG]
To find this resource and more high-quality online resources in math and science visit Scout's sister site - AMSER, the Applied Math and Science Educational Repository at
http://amser.org.
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/health/
The link between geology and human health may not seem obvious, but it many ways geology can affect public health in a variety of crucial ways. Certainly, the relationship between geological factors and water and air quality is one that continues to interest policy makers and others. This site explores these issues, and it was created by the people at Carleton College's Professional Development for Geoscience Faculty initiative. Here visitors can make use of a wide range of educational and supporting materials, including classroom activities, key visualizations, and collections of external links. First-time users may wish to start at the "Resources for Educators" area, which includes a brief overview titled "Essential components of geology and human health" and several helpful posters. The remaining materials can be viewed in sections that include "Bookshelf", "Visualizations", and "Internet Resources".
[KMG]
To find this resource and more high-quality online resources in math and science visit Scout's sister site - AMSER, the Applied Math and Science Educational Repository at
http://amser.org.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/linguistics/
The American Memory Project at the Library of Congress has struck gold again with this most excellent digital collection. The Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) Collection features approximately 118 hours of recordings documenting North American English dialects. These recordings were made from 1941 to 1984, and they reveal "distinctions in speech related to gender, race, social class, education, age, literacy, ethnic background, and occupational group." Visitors to the site can read the final report created by the CAL after the completion of this project, and they view an interactive map of the survey locations throughout the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Browsing the collection is a snap, and visitors can look through the offerings here by title, name, subject, and place. Some of the subjects covered here include rabbit hunting, racial discrimination, tall tales, and Halloween. [KMG]
http://www.texasheartinstitute.org/HIC/his.cfm
Interested parties who care about their own heart, or the heart of a loved one, will find that the Texas Heart Institute website has a wealth of information in the "For Patients and Consumers" section on the homepage. Researchers and doctors will also find much to love about the Texas Heart Institute website, with its "For Medical Professionals" section, also on its homepage. Patients interested in enrolling in the Stem Cell Center's clinical trials, can click on the "Enrolling Patients" tab near the top of the page on the left hand side. Patients interested in finding out if they have the ten classic risk factors that lead to an unhealthy heart, can click "How healthy is your heart?", near the bottom of the page, to take the quiz. Doctors can read a guide to the website by clicking on the link "Resources for Physicians" at the top of the section of the homepage designated "For Medical Professionals". Information on Continuing Medical Education (CME) is available on the left hand side of the page, as well as the upcoming Texas Heart Institute "symposia" topics. Clicking on one of the topics will take the medical professional to an online registration form for the symposia, along with a synopsis of the topic that will be discussed. [KMG]
http://advertising.utexas.edu/resources/law/index.htm
The University of Texas at Austin's College of Communication devotes a section of its website to law and ethics about advertising. It's an important topic that is often misunderstood by consumers. This site will help explain to consumers how they are protected, or left unprotected, under state and federal law, when it comes to advertising and visitors will find more than fifteen topics to peruse, including "First Amendment", "Children", and "Subliminal Appeals". There are many regulations that govern particular types of advertising, and this site offers the actual statutes from which the regulations are informed, as well as a very readable analysis of what the statute means. A few of the heavily regulated areas of advertising include "Tobacco & Alcohol", "Sweepstakes, Contest & Lotteries", and increasingly, "Telemarketing". Visitors shouldn't miss the link "Recent Examples", in the middle of the list of topics, to read summaries of advertising that has caused companies to rethink their violent, sexist, or repugnant strategies for luring customers. [KMG]
Art education teachers and those majoring in art education will definitely find this website useful for their work. The ArtsConnected website combines the collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Art Center. There are over 100,000 images, texts, audio, video, and interactive resources available to visitors to the site. A newly added feature is "Ask an Educator", which allows users to ask questions of the museum educators at both the Institute and the Walker Art Center. Also, visitors can view the questions and answers to past questions submitted by other interested parties. Once visitors have registered, they can search and find all the resources they need using Art Finder, then use Art Collector to "save, combine, annotate and present" the selections. Finally, they can go to the "Recent Activity" tab to see what fellow art educators are saving in their Art Collector. [KMG]
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/GN/
In 1967, Dr. Adrian Kantrowitz performed the first human heart transplant in the United States. Throughout this life he was both a surgeon and a prolific inventor, developing devices such as cardiac pacemakers, mechanical left heart devices, and the intraaortic balloon pump. Dr. Kantrowitz passed away in 2008, and his papers were donated to the National Library of Medicine shortly afterwards. As part of its Profiles in Science Project, the Library has digitized a portion of these papers and included a finding aid and a biographical essay. Users can click on the "All Documents" area to look through all the printed papers, or move along to the "All Visuals" area to view photographs of Kantrowitz at work in a surgical setting and at leisure. The other areas are divided up chronologically, and they include "Expanding Technological Possibilities, 1955-1970" and "Replacing Hearts: Left Ventricle Assist Devices and Transplants, 1960-1970". [KMG]
The British Library has done historians a tremendous service by creating this extensive and thoroughly engaging collection of British newspapers from 1800 to 1900. The site contains over two million pages of 19th century newspapers, though it is worth noting that many of them require the payment of a fee. Visitors can browse complete articles from the "Penny Illustrated Paper" and "The Graphic" free of charge, and they should also click on the "Topical Articles" area. This area contains thematic essays on matters such as the Sepoy Mutiny, the Napoleonic Wars, and the abolition of slavery. Each essay also includes access to relevant articles from the newspapers of the day. This area also includes detailed information on how best to use the search engine in order to locate items of interest. [KMG]
