The Scout Report -- Volume 19, Number 1

The Scout Report -- Volume 19, Number 1

The Scout Report

January 4, 2013 -- Volume 19, Number 1

A Publication of Internet Scout
Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison




Research and Education

  Introduction to the History and Theory of Architecture

  Return to Mars

  Teaching Channel

  University of Illinois Extension

  USDA: Plants Database [Last reviewed in the Scout Report on January 16, 1998]

  Teaching Geology

  Facing Freedom

  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Environmental Health

General Interest

  National Gallery: 30 Highlight Paintings

  The Ithacan

  Edward Judice Photograph Collection

  Between Liberation Space and Time of Need, 1945-1950

  TED Radio Hour

  Archives of American Mathematics Spotlight

  Fiji Reef

  American Jewess Project

Network Tools

  Voice Shortcuts Launcher

  WorkFlowy

In the News

  An interesting discovery made regarding a historic quarrel in Appalachia




Copyright and subscription information appear at the end of the Scout Report. For more information on all services of Internet Scout, please visit our Website: http://scout.wisc.edu/ If you'd like to know how the Internet Scout team selects resources for inclusion in the Scout Report, visit our Selection Criteria page at: https://scout.wisc.edu/scout-report/selection-criteria The Scout Report on the Web: Current issue: http://scout.wisc.edu/Reports/ScoutReport/Current This issue: http://scout.wisc.edu/Reports/ScoutReport/2013/scout-{filedate} Feedback is always welcome: scout@scout.wisc.edu



Research and Education

Introduction to the History and Theory of Architecture

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/architecture/4-605-introduction-to-the-history-and-theory-of-architecture-spring-2012/

From Vitruvius to Philip Johnson, the history of architecture features a fabulous cast of characters and diverse set of talents. This offering from MIT's OpenCourseWare initiative brings together materials from a delightful architecture course taught by Professor Mark Jarzombek. This version of the course is from spring 2012 and contains lecture notes, a syllabus, readings, lecture handouts, and quizzes. The lecture handouts cover topics such as "Cities, gods and empires," "Grains, animals and the village world," and "Gothic architecture." The site also includes a midterm exam, a final exam, and information about outside reading. While not all of the materials from the class are included here, the collection will inspire others to sit down and learn about this fascinating subject. [KMG]


Return to Mars

http://www.exploratorium.edu/mars/

The Exploratorium always has wonderful interactive features, and this collection is no exception to that trend. This particular offering includes updates from Will Curiosity, NASA's newest rover, which is currently exploring the surface of Mars. Meanwhile, many on Earth wonder whether or not the craft will find evidence that conditions on Mars have ever been favorable for microbial life. The webcasts here profile Curiosity's wanderings, with over twenty archived features. Each webcast features stunning images and expert commentary by a range of staff and visiting scientists. First-time visitors can make their way through overviews of previous explorations by looking at the features "Spirit and Opportunity" and "Highlights of Early Missions." Another nice feature is that four of the webcasts are available in Spanish. [KMG]


Teaching Channel

https://www.teachingchannel.org/

The tagline of Teaching Channel is "Great Teaching. Inspiring Classrooms." Educators from kindergarten to college will find hundreds of great resources here, including fact sheets, lesson plans, videos, and blogs to help them in the classroom. First-time visitors will need to fill out a short free registration to get started. After this, users can click on left-hand side of the page to browse through Topics that include planning, class culture, behavior, engagement, and assessment. The materials are also arranged by subject and grade level. The Featured Videos area is a delight as well, as it contains dozens of offerings, such as "Carbon Cycling: Create Your Own Biology Lab" and "Reading Like a Historian." Finally, the high-quality blog posts are thoughtful and erudite, including offerings like "Setting Goals for 2012: Where Do You Start?" and "10 Common Core 'Ah-Ha' Moments." [KMG]


University of Illinois Extension

http://web.extension.illinois.edu/state

The University of Illinois Extension's catchphrase is "Your doorway to the University," and this website offers exactly that. The Extension's work is designed to create learning partnerships that put knowledge to work in areas including food security and safety, environmental stewardship, and sustainable and profitable food production and marketing systems. Over 2.5 million Illinois residents take part in Extension programs every year, and many people visit this website to download and view their web-based materials. On the homepage, visitors can use the Learn more about? area to investigate topics such as commercial agriculture, energy, and natural resources and the environment. Each of these areas contains helpful lessons, fact sheets, and more dealing with topics as varied as firewood in Illinois, choosing a financial professional, and growing strawberries. Visitors can also use the Today's Events area to browse through upcoming events sponsored by Extension, or follow Extension on a range of social media. [KMG]


USDA: Plants Database [Last reviewed in the Scout Report on January 16, 1998]

http://plants.usda.gov/java/

The United States Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service has created this remarkable database to provide standardized information about the vascular plants, mosses, liverworts, hornworts, and lichens of the United States and its territories. As there is a wealth of information here, first-time visitors may wish to start with the I Want to? area. Here they can make their way through shortcuts that include "See a list of the plants in my state" or "Search for and view images of plants." On the left-hand side of the page, visitors can look over topics that include Cover Crops, Documentation, and Culturally Significant. Moving on, the News area contains links to newly released resources, such as the annual National Wetland Plant List and the plant hardiness map. Of course, visitors should not miss the Image Gallery, which contains over 40,000 plant images available for general use. [KMG]


Teaching Geology

http://www.colorado.edu/geolsci/Resources/

This rather remarkable website contains a great collection of resources for web-based instruction and demonstrations of geology concepts. The collection includes, under Classroom demonstration, the very useful SeisMac 3.0, which is an application for Mac OS X that turns a laptop computer into a " low-resolution strong-motion accelerometer," or a basic seismograph. It works by accessing the computer's Sudden Motion Sensor in order to display real-time, three axis accelerations graphs. Visitors can use the application to watch the seismic waves go up and down just by tapping their feet on the floor nearby. Other resources include Virtual Earth (an "interactive minicourse on thermal convection") and a link to Geology in the news, which collates important news stories with a geological theme. [KMG]


Facing Freedom

http://facingfreedom.org/

This fine site from the Chicago History Museum asks the question: "What would you do for freedom?" With this in mind, the site encourages young people to "experience four ways Americans have defined freedom:" through workers' rights, armed conflict, race and citizenship, and public protest. The four themes are further divided into eight specific historical occurrences, including strikes by the United Farm Workers in California and the struggle for American Indian rights in South Dakota in 1973. Visitors young and old can use the primary and secondary sources here (including photos, audio clips, and videos) to interpret the history featured in the exhibit. It's a thoughtful and interactive way to explore these issues, and visitors who wish to participate more can add to the online if they so chose. [KMG]


Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Environmental Health

http://www.cdc.gov/features/environmentalhealth.html

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a wide range of materials at its disposal, and does a great job of bringing these resources to the general public, journalists, and fellow scientists. This particular section of the fine CDC site brings together items related to environmental health. The items are arranged chronologically and date back to October 2011. The fact sheets, papers, and other documents here include "Lead in Toys," "After a Flood," "Green Holidays," and "Earth Day." Visitors can search for items of interest, sign up for email updates, and also follow the CDC on a range of social media. As a whole, these are great resources that visitors will find accessible, compelling, and well-written. [KMG]



General Interest

National Gallery: 30 Highlight Paintings

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/explore-the-paintings/30-highlight-paintings/

Where to start with a collection like that held by the National Gallery? It's a truly daunting challenge, but fortunately the curators there have done some of the hard work already. This remarkable offering brings together 30 of their finest works, including Vermeer's "A Young Woman standing at a Virginal," Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne," and Van Gogh's "Sunflowers." Visitors can click on each image to get in close to each item and read the brief essay accompanies each work. Also, each item has an Essentials area which features key facts about the work and an artist biography. The In Depth area of each site includes a technical bulletin and information from the National Gallery's. Finally, visitors can buy prints of their favorite paintings or look into purchasing licensing rights. [KMG]


The Ithacan

http://www.ithacalibrary.com/archives/ithacan.php

Many liberal arts colleges have long-standing daily newspapers that chronicle everything from educational changes on campus to telephone-booth stuffing contests. Ithaca College is no exception; The Ithacan was founded in January 1931. It has operated continuously since that date and its back issues "provide a rich historical resource for the College, for its former, current and future students, and for the larger Ithaca community." Visitors to the site will notice that there is a History section where they can learn about The Ithacan's publication history and its various accolades. Clicking on the Search The Ithacan tab will bring up a detailed search engine where visitors can view past issues by date, day of the week, or page. [KMG]


Edward Judice Photograph Collection

http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/umarmot/?p=4675

Ed Judice was raised on Long Island, and he began his long career in photography at the age of 13 when he took a job sweeping floors in a local photo studio. After this, he served in the Army and then moved to New York, where he did commercial work for ad agencies and a range of magazines. He came to live in western Massachusetts, and this digital collection from the University of Massachusetts Libraries celebrates his photo documentation project at the Rodney Hunt Factory in Orange, Massachusetts. Visitors to this collection can make their way through these nicely high-resolution photos, and also several compelling short documentaries about the Three County Fair in Northampton, Massachusetts. [KMG]


Between Liberation Space and Time of Need, 1945-1950

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

The University of Washington Libraries worked tirelessly to create this remarkable digital collection of materials related to rare literary works from the post-WWII period in Korea. This period from 1945 to 1950 is known as the "liberation space," and proved to be a "temporal space of blossoming post-World War Korean art and literature." First-time visitors can read the excellent exhibit essay, peruse the exhibit catalog, or browse the offerings, which include poems, short plays, posters, and a range of artistic ephemera. It's a wonderful set of materials and a great example of how to craft a meaningful digital collection. [KMG]


TED Radio Hour

http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/

If you enjoy TED talks, you'll find the TED Radio Hour most compelling. Each show is dedicated to a different theme, such as the source of happiness, crowd-sourcing innovation, power shifts, or inexplicable connections. The episodes are co-produced by NPR and TED and visitors to the site can make their way through over a dozen programs. Some of the offerings here include "Africa: The Next Chapter," "The Future of Cities," and "Where Ideas Come From." The programs feature guest speakers and commentators from around the world, and could easily be used in any number of settings, including book groups, classrooms, and so on. [KMG]


Archives of American Mathematics Spotlight

http://www.maa.org/spotlight/index.html

The Archives of American Mathematics (AAM) is a unit of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin. It is the only US archival repository dedicated solely to collecting and preserving the papers and records of mathematicians and mathematical organizations. On this site, visitors can read about the history of the AAM in an interview with Carol Mead, who is the chief archivist at the AAM. After that, visitors should go along to the Featured Collections area, which contains papers from over a dozen distinguished mathematicians, including Paul Halmos, William Chinn, and Lawrence Biedenharn. One area that should not be missed is the Two Audio Collections. Here, visitors can listen to selected shows from the "Math Medley Program," which featured interviews with a range of mathematicians, including Sue White and Valerie DeBellis on the "Emotions of Mathematics." [KMG]


Fiji Reef

http://fijireef.ning.com/

On this website, visitors are presented with the question: "Why Reef?" Of course, they are then directed to Dive in and Explore. It's a wonderful invitation, and this site, created by the Field Museum in Chicago, is a delight for the generally curious. The site is a digital community for teens and scientists interested in marine conservation, and it includes captivating videos, blog posts, and information about those who contribute to the site. Visitors will need to create a profile to access the content on the site, but that will only take a minute or two. The strongest aspect of the site is the community component: visitors interact with other members via the blogs, the photo comments section, and other forms of communication available here. [KMG]


American Jewess Project

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/a/amjewess/

Published in Chicago between 1895 and 1899, the American Jewess described itself as "the only magazine in the world devoted to the interests of Jewish women." The publication was founded by Rosa Sonneschein, and it offered the first sustained critique, by Jewish women, of gender inequities in Jewish worship and communal life. Recently, it was digitized by the Jewish Women's Archive as part of the digital offerings at the University of Michigan Library's website. Visitors can browse or search through all of the issues as they see fit. There are many fascinating articles, including a piece from June 1896 titled "Why Woman Should Ride the Wheel" about why it is important for woman to be involved in cycling. Scholars of American history, women's studies and other related topics will find much of interest here. [KMG]



Network Tools

Voice Shortcuts Launcher

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.projecttrinity.voiceshortcuts.free

Are you looking for a shortcut or two? Look no further than the helpful Voice Shortcuts Launcher. With this application, users can just say a single word to open audio files, websites, files, and so on. Additionally, visitors can use it to view contacts or directly call, message or email any contact in their contact lists. This version of Voice Shortcuts Launcher is compatible with all mobile devices running Android 2.2 and newer. [KMG]


WorkFlowy

https://workflowy.com/

To call WorkFlowy a list-making app undersells its surprising versatility. This browser-based tool allows users to create lists and sub-lists on every topic imaginable, from to-dos to groceries to research annotations. The easy-to-use tag system makes sorting entries easy, and the drag-and-drop interface allows users to modify lists with a click. Because it works through any available browser, it is readily accessible at work, at home, and via mobile devices. [CM]



In the News

An interesting discovery made regarding a historic quarrel in Appalachia


Found: The homestead that burned to the ground by Hatfields in legendary family feud with McCoys
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2255367/Hatfields-McCoys-Homestead-burned-ground-New-Years-Day-massacre-found.html

Discovery of historic artifacts from Hatfield and McCoy Feud announced
http://wvgazette.com/Life/201212310181

Researchers: Bullets found in Kentucky help pinpoint location of key Hatfield-McCoy Battle
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/931f75adb00c47a893944ff7ecacfffb/US--Hatfields--McCoys

The Hatfield and McCoy Feud
http://www.wvculture.org/history/notewv/hatfield.html

Hatfields & McCoys: The Girl Who Loved Too Much
http://blueridgecountry.com/articles/hatfields-mccoys-feud

Center for Appalachian Studies
http://appstudies.appstate.edu/

The Hatfield-McCoy feud is truly the stuff of American legend. This longstanding family fracas started in the 1860s along the West Virginia and Kentucky border and continued in earnest until the early 1890s. During that time, there was murder, intrigue, and serious bad blood between the two families. One of the key encounters between the families occurred on New Year's Day in 1888, when members of the Hatfield family attacked Randolph McCoy's cabin. This past week, a team of researchers (including West Virginia University professor Bill Richardson) announced that they found bullets believed to have been fired by the McCoys during the attack in eastern Kentucky. More research needs to be done, but this is a fascinating discovery about the most infamous long-standing family feud in American history. Of course, local chambers of commerce and tourism boards hope to capitalize on this discovery to boost tourism to the entire region. [KMG]

The first link will take visitors to a great piece from the Daily Mail about this recent discovery, complete with interesting historic photographs and interviews with researchers. The second link will whisk interested parties to a great piece from the Charleston (WV) Gazette by staff reporter Douglas Imbrogno about this compelling piece of research. Moving along, the third link will take users to a short article from the Columbus (IN) Republic that also talks about this new discovery. The fourth link will take visitors to an excellent bibliography of suggested readings on this feud, created by West Virginia Division of Culture and History. The fifth link will take users to a fine piece on the interesting and ill-fated life of Roseanna McCoy, courtesy of the Blue Ridge Country website. The final link will take guests to the homepage of the Center for Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University. Here, visitors can learn more about the region via a series of well-curated links and additional materials.





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