The Scout Report -- Volume 22, Number 31

The Open Notebook is a resource designed to help science journalists and journalism students hone their reporting and writing skills. Although targeted specifically to science writers, The Open Notebook provides discussion and advice about pitching stories, reporting, and writing that will be of interest to any journalist. Readers will find insightful interviews with science writers about their craft, an advice column, and a Pitch Database that allows visitors to search for successful article pitches by publication. The Interviews section features conversations with writers on various approaches to reporting and writing. For instance, visitors can read a conversation with Jessica Wapner about how she built rapport and trust with individuals in Austin, Indiana for a story about drug addiction in the region. In another interview, Elizabeth Kolbert describes the challenges of writing a book and her use of intellectual history to explore how scientists have understood species extinction. Another highlight of The Open Notebook is the Storygram series, presenting annotations of award-winning science articles that examine successful rhetorical techniques. [MMB]

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For the past several years, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Department of History, in partnership with a number of museums and organizations, has hosted a series of history harvests across the state. At each harvest, "community-members are invited to bring and share their letters, photographs, objects and stories, and participate in a conversation about the significance and meaning of their materials." Students and faculty then digitize, curate, and organize these materials into a series of collections and exhibits. The result is a collection of primary documents that reveal the diverse lives and experiences of multiple generations of Nebraska residents and comprise a great resource for any history classroom. Highlights from this digital project include a collection of letters and artifacts from Eugene Sengstake, who served as a pilot during World War II and was tragically killed in action in 1944; a collection about Nebraska's African-American Community; and a moving exhibit about refugee communities in Lincoln, Nebraska. [MMB]

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The team behind the popular PBS series NOVA, produced by WGBH in Boston, has created a collection of online Labs that provide interactive learning experiences relating to a number of scientific topics. (The Scout Report featured NOVA Labs in its 07-23-2013 report.) The most recent addition to the series is the Evolution Lab. In this engaging resource, learners can participate in two activities: Build a Tree and Deep Tree. In the Build a Tree activity, students create an evolutionary tree by reading about a variety of species and identifying the traits that connect them to one another. Meanwhile, Deep Tree is an interactive chart that demonstrates the connections between 70,000 species, from algae to bananas to human beings. Visitors can search for any species to learn about their classification and characteristics or to explore how any two species are related to each other. These two interactive activities are accompanied by an educator's guide, which includes lesson plans and worksheets for the classroom. In addition, this page includes Videos, an Evolution Quiz, and a Meet the Experts component. [MMB]

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Lovers of the humanities and social sciences will find much to appreciate with Palgrave Communications, an open access journal created by the international academic press, Palgrave MacMillan. The journal publishes original research across a variety of disciplines (including business), and welcomes interdisciplinary approaches. On this website, visitors can browse current and archived articles by subject. The site also contains Article Collections that highlight works by theme, including Shakespeare, Interdisciplinarity, Global Governance, and Gender Studies. As one can tell by these categories, the scope of Palgrave Communication is broad and inclusive. Recently published research includes an examination of the themes of "anxieties about fidelity, honesty and truthfulness in marriage," All's Well That Ends Well, an exploration of the role of science advisory boards in Canadian governance, and the history of therapeutic relaxation in Great Britain. [MMB]

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For Better for Verse is "an interactive online tutorial that can train you to scan traditionally metered English poetry." Created by the University of Virginia Department of English, this site allows visitors to learn the Rules of Thumb for scanning poetry, look up key terms related to the craft of scanning in the Glossary, and try their hand at scanning a number of poems by famous authors. To practice scanning, visitors can search for poems by author, type of poem (i.e. blank verse, couplet, etc.), or By Difficulty (from Warming Up to Special Challenge). The site includes poems by William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and William Wordsworth, among a number of other renowned poets. Once visitors select a poem, they can work to identify the stress, feet, and meter of the poem. After scanning each line, users then check their work and revise their answers until they can correctly scan the line. Occasionally, a light bulb will appear next to a specific verse. By clicking on the light bulb, the scanner may learn additional "oddities or beauties of the line in question." For Better for Verse is a great tool for any poetry classroom or for anyone looking to better appreciate famous English-language poetry. [MMB]

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Doctoral dissertations include innovative scholarship, new topics of inquiry, and fresh approaches to longstanding topics in any academic discipline. However, most dissertations do not become available to the general public until the author is able to convert their dissertation into a book manuscript. Dissertation Reviews is designed to "offer readers a glimpse of each discipline's immediate present by focusing on the window of time between dissertation defense and first book publication." On this site, visitors can read reviews of over 1,000 dissertations in the humanities and social science fields from around the globe. In each review, an early career scholar in the field outlines the dissertator's main argument and sources and discusses how the dissertation fits into the field's existing body of scholarship. Visitors to this website can search for dissertation by institution or academic subject. In addition, Dissertation Reviews contains Fresh from the Archives, which reviews the many libraries, archives, and databases used by scholars to complete their dissertations. [MMB]

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Formed in 1996, UNAIDS is consortium of six organizations headed by the United Nations. One of UNAIDS four key stated goals is "reducing vulnerability of individuals and communities to HIV/AIDS." On this website, UNAIDS provides data about the rates of people living with HIV around the world with a focus on Key Populations - those communities that UNAIDS have identified as especially vulnerable to HIV infection. The Key Populations examined in this online atlas include sex workers, intravenous drug users, and incarcerated individuals. When data is available, visitors can click on an individual country to see the rate of HIV infection in that demographic in that nation. Visitors can also view statistics about a variety of social customs, public policies, and laws across these countries, providing clues to practices and laws that may help alleviate infection rates. This atlas provides valuable information to students and researchers alike and may be a powerful resource for any health or social science classroom. [MMB]

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If you are looking for a resource to help mathematics students complete homework assignments and learn outside of the classroom, you may want to check out Math Planet, an easily navigable online resource for mathematics students and instructors. Designed specifically for American high school students, the majority of Math Planet functions like an online textbook. Users can browse through subjects (Pre-Algebra, Algebra 1, Algebra 2, and Geometry) and select specific topics (e.g. linear equations, quadrilaterals, complex numbers) within these subjects. Each topic is accompanied by a written explanation of key concepts and a short Video Lesson that models how to do related math problems. In addition, Math Planet includes 60 ACT practice questions and 70 SAT practice questions. After attempting to solve these questions, visitors then learn the answers and may watch a video explanation. [MMB]

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Classical music fans will want to check out the Juilliard Manuscripts Collection, a spectacular collection of very rare manuscripts. These documents were donated to the school in 2006 by Bruce Kovner, a business professional and philanthropist who served as chair of the board at Juilliard. This collection includes engraved first editions of manuscripts by Johannes Sebastian Bach; an autographed letter from Ludwig van Beethoven; a copy of Beethoven's 9th Symphony - with his own annotations - that may have been used in the symphony's very first performance; and a signed holograph by Claude Debussy. Visitors to this website can search for manuscripts by composer. In addition to the luminaries mentioned above, this collection contains manuscripts by Johannes Brahms, Aaron Copland, Dmitri Shostakovich, Richard Wagner, and more. Each manuscript is accompanied with complete bibliographic information. [MMB]

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According to Lindsey Fitzharris, a medical historian with a Ph.D. in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology from the University of Oxford, "[a]t the beginning of the 17th century, 'chirurgeons' [surgeons] were closely related to barbers and other craftsmen who learned their trade through apprenticeships." Fitzharris's website, which is not for the faint of heart, chronicles this early history of surgery before the field became an established medical practice. On the site's Blog, readers can learn about the history of bloodletting and cadaver dissections. Readers can also read the story of Mary I's "phantom pregnancy," discover the toxic ingredients of seventeenth century make-up, or hear Fitzharris's reflections on changing views of death throughout history. This website also includes a link to Fitzharris's YouTube series, Under the Knife, a collection of short videos about medical history. (Instructors and parents should note that this website contains some mature content, specifically relating to violent treatment of alleged criminals and the history of sexuality.) [MMB]

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The New Yorker's Video page features numerous engrossing short videos - including interviews, short documentary features, roundtable discussions, and animations - covering a great variety of topics. Many of these videos are based on bits of journalism or fiction in the magazine, and all are free to view online. Visitors can check out the latest videos on the landing page or browse for videos by Genre, including Books, Business, Culture, Humor, Politics, and Science and Technology. Alternatively, visitors can check out videos by popularity or explore some of the magazine's video series. Here, one can watch "Seventy Years of Los Angeles," a mesmerizing video that uses split screen to compare the contemporary city to its past. Other highlights of this site include extensive author interviews, short documentaries that provide multiple perspectives regarding contemporary issues, and the Three Minute Lives series, which creates captivating three-minute-long documentaries based on interviews with authors and artists. [MMB]

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The Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria aims to consolidate and digitize all existing herbaria records in order to "provide the scientific community, land management agencies, conservation organizations, and the interested public with a single online access point to the wealth of existing information about the Pacific Northwest Flora." The result is an extensive, searchable online database that will be of interest for flora identification. This website, hosted by the Burke Museum at the University of Washington, allows visitors to explore data in a variety of ways. In the Specimen Databases, visitors can search for flora by scientific name, region, or elevation. Visitors can also chose to search through all databases collected by the Consortium, or to search within a single database participating in this partnership. Alternatively, visitors can search by region or county within the Pacific Northwest, download the complete data set, or download a data set especially for use on a mobile phone. This website also contains information about how specimens are digitized - providing insight into this important project. [MMB]

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Dynamic Dialects is an interactive accent database that allows visitors to compare English dialects from around the world. The research team behind the project - who represent the University of Glasgow, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, University College, London, and Napier University, Edinburgh - use a technique called Ultrasound Tongue Imaging (UTI) to document and analyze these dialects. The UTI is able to record the movement of the tongue and other articulatory organs. (This site contains an extensive explanation in How UTI Works for interested visitors.) Project participants from around the world pronounced the same 28 words in a studio with a UTI. On this website visitors can listen to an audio recording of all participants via an interactive map, which allows one to explore the pronunciation of multiple words by a single speaker. Alternatively, visitors can browse the Accent Chart, which allows visitors to quickly compare the pronunciation of the same word by different speakers. [MMB]

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Created by Nate DiMeo, a public radio veteran and current Artist-in-Residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Memory Palace is a storytelling podcast that highlights remarkable people, peculiar events, and everyday experiences throughout history. On this website, visitors can browse the 93 episodes that DiMeo has created so far. Topics include the strange life of child prodigy William James Sidis (who attended Harvard at age 11 in 1909); the feats of avatar Harriet Quimby (the first women to receive a pilot's license); and the stories behind the Cuyahoga River fires, including the much mythologized 1969 fire. DiMeo releases a new episode each month and episodes vary in length from a few minutes to half an hour. On this website, each episode is accompanied by Music, Footnotes, and Ephemera for visitors who want to further explore topics addressed on the show. New visitors may want to check out Where Do I Start? for DiMeo's favorite episodes. [MMB]

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The Computer History Museum was founded in 1996 in Mountain View, California with the goal of sharing and preserving the "artifacts and stories of the Information Age." The Museum's YouTube channel is a great resource for anyone looking to learn more about the history of computing or gain insights about the future of the field. Here, visitors can listen to oral histories of numerous key figures in information technology and view videos of lectures and educational programs for K-12 students. There are a number of playlists, including Top Picks, Teacher's Resources, and Exhibition: Revolution, the First 2000 Years of Computing. The latter playlist is a fascinating collection of videos about computer history, highlighting the stories of unsung pioneers and early inventions that were critical to modern day computing. Other highlights of this channel include a 1980 video of Steve Jobs and a fascinating discussion about 19th century mathematician Ada Lovelace, who contributed to Charles Babbage's 1832 computer. [MMB]

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Just one among the many digital resources provided by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Agricultural Library, the Pomological Watercolor Collection is a treasure trove for those searching for freely available images of fruits and plants. The collection spans 1886 to 1942, although most paintings are dated between 1894 and 1916. There are close to 7,500 watercolors, including over 3,000 images of apples, painted by approximately 21 artists in the collection. While browsing is limited, it is possible to search by artist name, year, both scientific and common names, and country of origin. Search results are displayed at a lower resolution for online viewing, but higher resolutions can be downloaded. The USDA allows free use of these images, but requires an attribution statement; the text of the statement is provided with each image. [DS]

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Created by Stefan Sinclair at McGill University and Geoffrey Rockwell at the University of Alberta, Voyant is an online tool for analyzing texts. On this website, users can enter text in a variety of forms, including URL links, plain text, Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), Extensible Markup Language (XML), Microsoft Word, Rich Text Format (RTF), and Portable Document Format (PDF). Voyant will then produce a word cloud to represent the frequency that each word appears in the text. By clicking on a single word, users can view an analysis of where in the text that word appears in the Trends box. To analyze or compare multiple documents, users can select Modify under the Documents tab to add additional texts. One notable strength of Voyant, is the various ways it allows visitors to examine written material. While the Trends visualization tool helps visitors analyze where certain words and phrases appear in texts, the Bubble Lines feature allows visitors to compare words across two different texts. A more detailed explanation of how to use and make use of Voyant can be found at http://docs.voyant-tools.org. [MMB]

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Pearltrees is an organizational tool that allows users to clip and save websites, documents, images, and files of interest. Users can group saved items into categories and share their lists with other users. With this resource, instructors can easily share educational resources, group project members can share ideas and resources, or families can plan a vacation. Pearltrees will also suggest additional resources based on web pages you have already listed. Pearltrees can be used online, on any iOS mobile device, or on Android phones. For a monthly fee, users can create a private account with additional features. [MMB]

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