·http://fusedweb.llnl.gov/CPEP/

The basics of fusion are deceptively simple: the process powers the sun and other stars, and it all takes place when atomic nuclei collide at high speed. But many questions remain. How can humans develop and exploit fusion energy? Is there a way to convert it more efficiently into useful mechanical, electrical, or thermal energy? This intriguing site, created by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, presents an online fusion course designed to teach students and others about how fusion works and how it might be harnessed in the future. Visitors can try out The Guided Tour to get started, or they can click on one of the Main Topics. These include Energy Sources and Conversions, Two Key Fusion Reactions, and Creating the Conditions for Fusion. Each section contains graphics, explanatory text, and various diagrams. The site also includes charts which can be printed out for classroom use. [KMG]

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·http://www.maine.gov/doc/nrimc/mgs/education/

The Maine Geological Survey (MGS) has crafted a fine set of materials for those interested in learning more about the state's natural history via virtual tours, lesson plans, and maps. First up is the Virtual Tour of Maine Geology, which includes photographs of bedrock geology, geologic hazards, mineral collecting, and surficial geology. The Lesson Plans area contains 51 lessons, including "Igneous Rock Identification" and "Composition of Topsoil." A number of MGS maps are available online in the Maps and Publications area. The site includes a Bibliography of Maine Geology, which contains over 12,000 references. Additionally, the site contains a link to the MGS publications page, which has official state of Maine wall maps available for purchase. [KMG]

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·http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/?source=hp_phenomena

In the 19th century, the height of a learned experience might be taking part in a salon in the grand quarters of a beautiful manse. In our own time, it's much easier to take part in such erudite explorations. This online Phenomena salon is "a gathering of spirited science writers who take delight in the new, the strange, the beautiful and awe-inspiring details of our world." Hosted by National Geographic's Jamie Shreeve, the site includes thought-provoking essays, reader feedback, and an ongoing conversation about the very broad and deep world of science. Visitors can search all of the entries, or they can look through sections that include The Loom (which houses work by Carl Zimmer) and Only Human (written by Virginia Hughes). Recent entries include "With Alzheimer's Comes Empathy" and "For the Love of Dinosaurs." Overall, the material is accessible, thoughtful and well worth a close look. [KMG]

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·http://www.wv.nrcs.usda.gov/

West Virginia is a state diverse in its natural resources: the United States Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has a presence in all 55 counties. One of the NRCS's key activities in the state is to craft conversation plans, which are designed to outline the different measures that a land owner can take to protect the natural resources on his or her property. Interested parties can learn about those plans on the site, check in on news releases, and also explore partnerships with organizations such as the West Virginia Association of Professional Soil Scientists. The Programs area is quite useful, and it contains information about financial assistance for wetlands and grasslands preservation, along with links to ongoing dam mitigation programs and watershed protection initiatives. The site also features a Conservation Education area, where visitors can find lesson plans, ideas for science fair projects, and other materials. [KMG]

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·http://nursing.unm.edu/resources/teaching-and-learning-strategies.html

As the health care professions experience continued growth, more and more people are seeking to enter the field of nursing. Nursing educators will appreciate these materials designed to engage their students. Crafted by the University of New Mexico's College of Nursing, these teaching and learning strategies help promote critical thinking and other key skills applicable to the field. There are nine sections here, including Analogy, Case Study, Debate, Jigsaw, and Role Playing. Each area contains examples (some with videos) of each activity or concept, along with information about the strategy's potential use in the classroom. The site is rounded out by a section of Selected Journal Articles, which deal with pedagogy, course development, and student engagement. [KMG]

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·http://airandspace.si.edu/education/onlinelearning.cfm

The staff at the National Air and Space Museum have worked tirelessly to create these nice online activities for people seeking to learn about aviation, space photography, and the basic principles of flight. There are six separate activities here, including Geography From Space, Airplane Anatomy, and the planetary CyberCenter. Visitors should start with the Geography From Space area. Here they test their mettle as they are guided through a variety of high-altitude photographs of the Earth taken from space and asked to correctly identify each area. The Airplane Anatomy contains a series of activities focused on the Wright brothers and the first airplane. Other activities, such as Black Wings and America by Air, take a more historical view of aviation, while How Things Fly teaches students the basic principles of flight. [KMG]

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·http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/gos/

Created by Tom Costa on behalf of the University of Virginia, the Geography of Slavery in Virginia presents full transcriptions and images of over 4,000 runaway and captured ads for slaves and servants placed in Virginia newspapers from 1736 to 1790. Additionally, the project offers a number of documents related to slaves, servants, and slaveholders, including court records, other newspapers notices, slaveholder correspondence, and assorted literature about slavery and indentured servitude. Photos of advertisements for escaped slaves, often situated beside other ads describing missing livestock, offer a chilling reminder of a time when humans were considered property. Users of the site can browse the advertisements by month or by location, or use the full-text search. The Essays area contains a rather fine piece which places Virginia slavery into the context of the larger colonial America and Atlantic picture. [KMG]

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·http://www.gis.ttu.edu/center/DataCatalog/CntyDownload.php

Created by the Center for Geosptial Technology at Texas Tech University, this digital atlas is a fantastic find. It brings together information about all of Texas's counties, including satellite relief maps and data sets about the roads, rivers, lakes, and other features in each area. Visitors can use the interactive map to click on a county of interest, or use the drop down menu to select a region. Once users select a county, they can download information about it for future use. The site also contains a number of Featured Links to resources from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Texas Association of Counties, and several tourism agencies. [KMG]

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·http://www.mitosisapp.com/

As many of us remember from high school science, mitosis is the process of cell division. It is a key concept for anyone seeking to learn the basics of biology. This rather useful site contains a free application (available for iPhone or iPod touch) for those who would like to learn more about mitosis "on the go." The application contains a Library, which features videos of the various stages of mitosis. Additionally, there is a thorough Images gallery, along with a Glossary and set of links to additional resources. The Tutor area is most useful, as it features interactive ways to learn about the material, including self-guided quizzes, the useful Read and Listen feature, and finally, Test Yourself. The functionality of the entire application is well-thought out and it can be used to complement traditional classroom activities. [KMG]

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·http://www.wagner200.co.uk/

Richard Wagner's music has been featured prominently in everything from well-received stagings in Tokyo to Warner Brothers cartoons starring Bugs Bunny. His music has endured over 150 years and this website presents material related to the bicentenary of his birth in 1813. The site contains six sections, including About, Events, News, and 200 Years of Wagner. The 200 Years of Wagner is a timeline of Wagner's life and legacy, which is a great way for visitors to learn about the cultural and social milieu of his time. The Events area provides details on events designed to complement this occasion, including concerts at London area venues, including the Barbican Centre, Royal Festival Hall, and the Royal Opera House. The site also includes a Links area and a News section which includes reviews of performances and recitals. [KMG]

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·http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/overdrive/

Using a wide variety of materials culled from archival collections, primarily the Getty Research Institute, the J. Paul Getty Museum presents Overdrive, an exhibition of Los Angeles's urban landscape, presented in a way that would be almost impossible to recreate from ground level in L.A. Drawings, photographs, models, films, animations, oral histories, and ephemera provide a view of L.A.'s "ambitious freeway network, sleek corporate towers, whimsical coffee shops, popular shopping malls, refined steel-and-glass residences, and eclectic cultural institutions." For example, visit the Engines of Innovation section to watch a video on how the Capitol Records building, a round, 13-story tower, was designed and built, and take a peek inside its recording studios, built underground to be soundproof. Community Magnets discusses institutions and buildings that draw people to Los Angeles and promote the city's culture. These include concert halls such as the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 1964; structures built for the 1984 Olympic games; shopping malls, and churches. The last section of the exhibition is a video gallery that brings together all the videos from other parts of the site, plus oral histories and animated maps.[DS]

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·http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/hb8489p15p/

The distribution of major land grants in the Golden State was of major concern as the state entered the union in 1850. Of course, these land grants had once been made by the Spanish government to a range of private investors, and it was no simple matter to determine the legality of various land claims. This remarkable collection from the Bancroft Library collects maps that supported private land claim cases from 1850 to approximately 1890. Visitors should first look over the collection's finding aid, which is available in several formats. In total, there are over 1,400 maps here, some of which are exquisitely hand-colored. It's a fascinating way to learn about legal history, geography, and the complex interactions between the United States government and the newly formed U.S. District Courts of California. [KMG]

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·http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/natsci/herbarium/cat/

The University of Florida Herbarium collection contains over 450,000 specimens in the vascular plant and bryophyte and lichen collections. Currently, over 55,000 of these specimens are available on this searchable database. The project was sponsored by a range of institutions, including the United States Department of Agriculture, the Florida Museum of Natural History, and the Florida Center for Library Automation. First-time visitors should use the About the Catalog area to learn more about the functionality and setup of the project. The Search the Catalog area contains ten different fields to facilitate searches, including family, genus, country, state, county, collector, and accession number. Additionally, many of the items have digitized photographs and other visual material attached to their records. [KMG]

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·http://teachers.guardian.co.uk/resources.aspx?q=archaeology

Working with a a team of educational partners from around the world, the Guardian newspaper has created the Teacher Network site to offer up carefully curated articles, lesson plans, interactive features, and other pedagogical tools in a range of disciplines. This particular set of resources deals with archaeology and includes titles like "How to Teach Archaeology: Writing in Hieroglyphics" and "How To Teach Archaeology: Thames in Prehistory." The materials are drawn from institutions such as the Museum of London and the actual Guardian newspaper. They are all great ways to educate students about key issues in archaeology, along with offering a mix of thematic materials in various subtopics within the field. [KMG]

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·http://epfl.mdch.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/scsc

The Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration produced travel guides to various parts of the United States, along with offering artists an opportunity to paint and sketch everywhere from San Diego to Portland, Maine. This lovely digital collection from the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore brings together over 120 drawings, watercolors, and other items by the artist Aaron Sopher. Sopher was born in East Baltimore in 1905 and after attending the Maryland Institute, College of Art he worked for the Baltimore Sun as a freelancer and also drew cartoons for the New Yorker. In the late 1930s he was under the employ of the Writers' Program, and during that time he produced these works, drawn with distinctive style. They include views from Riverside Park, images of colorful characters at the race track, and the Maryland Yacht Club. It's a fine look back in time and a possible source of inspiration for artists and other creative types. [KMG]

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·https://www.rescuetime.com

Almost everyone has had the experience of stopping work for a quick email check...and losing an hour in the process. RescueTime is designed to help users become better at self-management of time by showing them where they spend the most time on the computer. Users can choose when to turn the application on, set goals and track progress towards them, and sign up to receive weekly email summaries of their productivity. This program is compatible with Windows, OS X, Linux, and Android operating systems. [CM]

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·http://thumb.it/

How many times have you wanted a second opinion, but had no one to ask in the moment? Thumb is designed to ensure you're never alone with questions about music, artwork, shopping, movies, food, or anything else. Visitors can elicit opinions quickly by creating a short profile and offering up their question. The company's pledge is that users will receive anywhere from 50 to 100 responses from real people within a matter of minutes, and it's definitely worth a try. This particular version is compatible with a variety of browsers, and is also available in app form for iPhones and Android devices. [KMG]

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Scientists Revive 400 Year-Old Frozen Plants
http://io9.com/scientists-revive-400-year-old-frozen-plants-510006344

Plants revived after 400 years in ice
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2013/05/28/science-plants.html

400-year-old frozen moss brought back to life in scientist's lab
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/technology/year+frozen+moss+brought+back+life+scientist/8441111/story.html

Bryophytes
http://bryophytes.plant.siu.edu/

USDA Plants Database
http://plants.usda.gov/java/

Mars One Project
http://applicants.mars-one.com/

It would seem to be the stuff of science fiction. After 400 years buried under Arctic glaciers, a mass of plants is brought back to life in a laboratory. It is, however, the stuff of reality, and came to fruition in a laboratory in Edmonton, Canada. Over the past several years, University of Alberta researcher Catherine La Farge and her colleagues have been traveling to Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic to collect moss specimens from the rapidly receding Teardrop Glacier there. Commenting on the discovery, La Farge noted "We were sort of blown away by the biomass of intact communities being exhumed from the rapidly retreating glaciers." The bryophytes they collected seemed to still have a greenish tinge, despite their time below the ice. The team took plant samples back from the glacier and were surprised to learn that they could be brought back to life. This particular development is rather intriguing to people looking into survival beyond earth. Plants as adaptable as these mosses could theoretically be used to help colonize other planets (a goal of the Mars One Project). [KMG]

The first link will take visitors to a nice piece from the i09 website's Joseph Bennington-Castro on this recent notable discovery. The second link will take interested parties to another piece from this Monday's Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) about the discovery, along with additional commentary from Professor La Farge. The third link will whisk users away to another article on this find from Monday's Edmonton Journal. The fourth link leads to a fine resource on bryophytes from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. The site includes images, monographic studies, and a basic overview in the What are Bryophytes? area. The fifth link leads to the voluminous USDA Plants database, which includes thousands of images, scientific studies, and background materials. The final link leads to the curious website of the Mars One project, which aims to bring people to Mars by 2023.