The Scout Report - January 17, 1997

January 17, 1997

A Publication of Internet Scout
Computer Science Department, University of Wisconsin

A Project of the InterNIC

The Scout Report is a weekly publication offering a selection of new and newly discovered Internet resources of interest to researchers and educators, the InterNIC's primary audience. However, everyone is welcome to subscribe to one of the mailing lists (plain text or HTML). Subscription instructions are included at the end of each report.

The Annotated Constitution--GPO, CRS [ASCII, .pdf], 2,444p.
http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate/constitution/
Adobe Acrobat Reader
http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html
The Library of Congress' Congressional Research Service, in cooperation with the U.S. Senate and Government Printing Office (GPO) has made the massive The Constitution of the United States of America Analysis and Interpretation: Annotations of Cases Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States to June 29, 1992 available at the GPO web site. The volume is both searchable and browsable, and contains annotated references to Supreme Court decisions in their constitutional context. It is arranged by article and amendment and is available in both plain-text and Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) formats. Unfortunately, files are also arranged by article and amendment, making for some extremely large file sizes (over 1 megabyte in some cases). Still, this is a small price to pay for an indispensable constitutional law and history reference. Note that the site will be shut down for server maintenance January 18 and 19, 1997. [JS]
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1996 Digest of Education Statistics--NCES [HTML, .pdf] 523p.
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs/D96/index.html
1992-1995 Digest of Education Statistics [.zip]
gopher://gopher.ed.gov:10000/11/publications/majorpub/digest/
gopher to: gopher.ed.gov:10000
select: NCES Publications and Reports/Major NCES Publications/Digest of Education Statistics
The US Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics has recently made available this exhaustive compendium of education statistics. The bulk of the work is contained in 418 tables covering elementary, secondary, and post-secondary education, as well as federal programs for education, outcomes, international comparisons, and library resources and technology. This is the 32nd in a series of publications begun in 1962. Many tables are updated through 1994 or later, and all are available in ASCII text format. The report can also be downloaded by chapter in .pdf format. The site is organized by subject, and offers as well a complete list of tables. There is a link to the 1995 Digest at the site, and NCES has also made 1992-1995 Digests available (tables in .zip format) at the Education Department's Gopher site. The Digest is one of the most respected and referenced sources for US education statistics. [JS]
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.edu--U.S. News and World Report Colleges and Careers Center
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/home.htm
This new site contains much information that prospective undergraduates and graduates will find useful. It is highlighted by several rankings for US undergraduate and graduate schools, and also contains customizable search engines to find suitable schools from over 1400 undergraduate and 800 graduate schools. There is also information on the application process for undergraduates, career information for the prospective graduate student, and financial aid information. [JS]
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Viral Load Measurement Expert Discussion and Background: Clinical Perspectives Toward Managing HIV Disease
http://www.iapac.org/clinmgt/vload/vloadms/index.html
IAPAC
http://www.iapac.org/index.html
Provided by the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care, this site offers an in-depth dialogue about viral load testing, the latest advance in HIV treatment and management. The issues are presented in a somewhat novel format; there are at present sixteen questions posed about viral load measurement, to which two clinicians respond in a dialogue. The experts, Dr. Andrew Pavia (Director of Clinical Research, Health Sciences and AIDS, University of Utah) and Dr. Gabriel Torres (Medical Director, AIDS Center at Saint Vincent's Hospital), provide not only descriptions of the procedures and measurements, but also tables, graphs, and flow charts to help users of the site understand the sometimes advanced concepts involved. Throughout, terms that may not be widely known are linked to entries in the site's glossary. The main page of the IAPAC contains a wide range of AIDS/HIV information for both clinicians and consumers. [ML]
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National Science & Technology Week Online
http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/nstw/start.htm
"Webs, Wires, Waves: The Science and Technology of Communication" is the theme for the 1997 National Science & Technology Week (NSTW), April 20-26, 1997. This year's focus "is designed to help children explore and understand the myriad ways we communicate with one another." The NSTW Online site provides teachers, parents, and youth leaders with hands-on teaching activities that coincide with this year's theme (as well as those for the past two years). The goal of the project is to "teach children how to observe real-world phenomena, analyze variables, draw conclusions, and evaluate findings." Another feature here, designed "just for kids," is "Ask a Scientist or Engineer," where kids can submit questions, and browse or search questions and answers from previous years. In addition to the English language version, the 1997 teaching activities will soon be available in Spanish at this site. [AG]
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National Geophysical Data Center
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/
gopher://gopher.ngdc.noaa.gov/
ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/
The National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC), located in Boulder, Colorado is a project of the US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, and National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service. This site is an informational resource for glaciology, marine geology and geophysics, paleoclimatology, solar-terrestrial physics, and solid earth geophysics. The glaciology section is linked to the National Snow and Ice Data Center website, which offers resources for those interested in studying snow and ice and their relation to Earth systems. The other four sections contain data (often searchable), images, reports, publications and general information on a variety of areas such as bathymetry, ocean drilling/seafloor sediment/rock sample data, the geomagnetic field, solar and upper atmospheric data, global climate, heatflow, and much more. [TB]
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LIBLICENSE-L--Electronic content licensing discussion list
Electronic Content Licensing Project:
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/index.shtml
LIBLICENSE-L is a moderated list for the discussion of issues related to the licensing of digital information by academic and research libraries. Increasingly, libraries are being inundated with information created in digital format and transmitted and accessed via computers. This list is designed to assist librarians and others concerned with the licensing of information in digital format in dealing with some of the unique challenges faced by this new medium. Information providers (creators, publishers and vendors) who deal with libraries are welcomed as members of LIBLECENSE-L. LIBLICENSE-L is an outgrowth of the Electronic Content Licensing Project. [JS]

To subscribe send email to:
listproc@pantheon.yale.edu
In the body of the message type:
subscribe LIBLICENSE-L Firstname Lastname
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Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.--San Diego County Democratic Party
http://www.netgaincc.com/sddemocrats/mlk.html
Martin Luther King, Jr. Directory--Stanford University and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center
http://www-leland.stanford.edu/group/King/
The San Diego (California) County Democratic Party has recently made a tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. available at its web site, in honor of the civil rights leader's birthday and U.S. national holiday commemorating it. At the heart of the site are its links, which include the Seattle Times Martin Luther King web site ( discussed in the January 12, 1996 issue of the Scout Report), the Martin Luther King Directory at Stanford University, which contains full text of a small selection of his papers (free access after registration), pictures from Life Magazine, and several newspaper articles, among others. While this is an excellent bookmark page, the pages to really bookmark are the Seattle Times page and especially the King Directory, which, while very limited in content at present, still contains much biographical and chronological information, as well as promising to eventually be an invaluable King archive. [JS]
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Celebrating Democracy--The Presidential Inauguration
http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/celeb/celeb.html
There are many sites for Internauts interested in the upcoming US presidential inauguration, and the Smithsonian Institution, Library of Congress, National Archives, National Endowment for the Arts, and Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts have combined to create a site (hosted at the Kennedy Center) that points to over 20 inauguration and related sites. Included in this smorgasbord are the Smithsonian's live coverage of inaugural events, selected presidential and inaugural information from LOC's American Memory pages, the official Inaugural Home Page (sponsored by the Presidential Inaugural Committee), the National Portrait Gallery's Hall of Presidents, PBS's Inaugural Classroom, the White House's Presidential Biographies, and Columbia University's Project Bartleby Inaugural Addresses site (unfortunately the link is broken from the Celebrating Democracy site, but it can be accessed from the White House Biographies site). There's more, of course--this is an excellent bookmark page from which to observe the festivities and learn more about this quadrennial celebration. [JS]
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TV Guide Entertainment Network
http://www.tvgen.com/
Movie database:
http://www.tvgen.com/movies/database/index.htm
Sporting a new, customizable interface, the best selling magazine in America is making a bid to be your choice for entertainment news on the web. More than television listings, the site offers news on all entertainment fronts: television, movies, music, and sports. There is a chat/BBS area that offers live events with celebrities. A very rewarding aspect of the revamped site is the television listing section. After (free) registration, users can view a television viewing grid that lists only the stations they're interested in. The Quick Pick section will suggest shows based on user input; this section of the site is still undergoing final bullet-proofing, so the occasional 404-Not Found may result. For those users who have to budget their television time, a Planner section will help make the most of those precious moments in the blue glow. However, the hidden gem of the site is its movie database, a searchable archive of over 30,000 movie reviews taken from the 23 volume Motion Picture Guide, as well as annotations from Ephraim Katz's nearly 1500 page Film Encyclopedia, one of the most authoritative references in the field. [ML]
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Two Cartographic Sites
National Geographic Map Machine [Shockwave]
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/resources/ngo/maps/
Color Landform Atlas of the United States
http://fermi.jhuapl.edu/states/states.html
For those interested in map information, National Geographic's Map Machine and the Landform Atlas of the United States, provided by Ray Sterner of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, are effective places to start. Map Machine's Atlas allows users to click on a world map or on continent or country menus to retrieve country maps, with concise information and flags. There are also selected area maps available, created from weather satellite data, as well as political and physical maps and a Macromedia Shockwave enhanced world map that allows users to view a world map interactively. The quality of the maps is the quality of the site. Color Landform Atlas, while only containing US state maps, delivers a topographical and county boundary (without county names, unfortunately) map as well as pointers to Yahoo, City Net, and Virtual Tourist information about that state. As might be expected, both these sites are extremely graphical and download times can be long. [JS]
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Institute of Management & Administration
http://www.ioma.com/index.html
The Institute of Management & Administration contains both original content and pointers to, broadly defined, "business information." While much of the content is in the form of articles meant to entice the reader into purchasing a subscription, these freebee articles are substantive. Located under "Newsletters" and "Management News," they include tips for getting employees to use direct deposit, advice on developing disaster recovery plans for mail centers, and suggestions on how to encourage suppliers to reduce costs. The Business Directory section contains Business News pointers and pointers to information on topics from Competitive Intelligence and Strategy to Small Business. This categorization is quite helpful. From a navigational perspective, what isn't very helpful is that this section is divided into two pages in an unclear way. The last major section, IOMARate, collects and quantifies money managers' performance data. [ATW]
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RARA-AVIS--Hardboiled fiction discussion list
http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
RARA-AVIS is for the discussion of hardboiled fiction, in and out of the mystery genre. Possible topics for discussion include: just what is hardboiled fiction?; how does it relate to film noir and/or the pulps?; who's better, Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett?; who are the best modern practitioners? do they in fact exist?; are there any truly hardboiled women writers?; and, how does the genre fit into modern literature? A web page for the list is available. [JS]

To subscribe send email to:
majordomo@icomm.ca
In the body of the message type:
subscribe rara-avis
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WebPainter-- Web animation authoring tool
http://www.totallyhip.com/
Web authors in search of a high-quality tool for creating GIF animations should consider WebPainter by Totally Hip Software. Animated GIFs are viewable with most browsers, and are an easy way to spice up a Web site. WebPainter includes excellent bitmap drawing and animation tools, including an "onion skin" feature that allows users to draw a new animation frame while seeing a lightened version of the previous frame underneath. Pricing information is available at the site. An evaluation version of both the Mac and Windows 95/NT versions of WebPainter, which allows users save the first five frames of animation, is available for download. WebPainter is an excellent product for Web authors who would like to create animated graphics. [PJD]
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Infoseek's Premier News
http://infoseek.go.com/news?pg=yournews.html
Infoseek has added a new capability to its searching service. Premier News allows users to search recent stories in The Chicago Tribune, CNN, MSNBC, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The San Jose Mercury News, and The Washington Post (or any combination of them), retrieving recent stories in relevance ranked order. Although the search engine offers no sophisticated options at this time, the ability to retrieve current articles from multiple news sites of this quality is a very powerful feature, adding to an already excellent Internet subject directory. Note that for stories in the New York Times, registration is required. [JS]
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Doctor HTML
http://www2.imagiware.com/RxHTML/
Many Web authors would appreciate a site that will test HTML pages for design and syntax flaws automatically. One of the best is Doctor HTML, which will test single Web pages for free. The company also offers a complete site analysis service for a fee. Doctor HTML checks spelling, image syntax, form structure, document structure, table structure, and analyzes images and verifies links. To use the free service, simply enter the URL for the page to test. The site then produces an extensive report on the page. As HTML pages get more complex, this tool is very helpful in finding mismatched tags and other errors. The site also offers another useful feature: it will give an estimated download time for the page based on a 14.4Kb/s connection (though other factors, such as an over-burdened Web server, may increase the download time). One limitation is that Doctor HTML does not give a complete report of frame-based pages; like Lynx or Netscape Navigator 1.x, it ignores the frame information and returns a report only on the code existing between the FRAMES and NO FRAMES tags. Even with this minor flaw, the Doctor HTML site is a great tool for creating better Web pages. [PJD]
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Copyright Susan Calcari, 1996. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the Scout Report provided the copyright notice and this paragraph is preserved on all copies. The InterNIC provides information about the Internet to the US research and education community under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation: NCR-9218742. The Government has certain rights in this material.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Wisconsin - Madison, the National Science Foundation, AT&T, or Network Solutions, Inc.

The Scout Report is published weekly by Internet Scout

Susan Calcari
Jack Solock
Matt Livesey
Pete DeVries
Amy Tracy Wells
Aimee Glassel
Teri Boomsma
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The Scout Report - January 17, 1997

January 17, 1997

Research and Education

General Interest

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