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NETSURFER SCIENCE
More Signal, Less Noise |
Volume 01, Issue 07 Tuesday, August 18, 1998 |
EARTH SYSTEMS
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EARTH SYSTEMS Meyers-Rice: http://www.sarracenia.com/ Zenner: http://www.rdrop.com/users/mvz/plants.htm Schmidt: http://www.schwaben.de/home/schmidt/nepenthes/cpframes.html The ancients believed that tides were caused by the breath of a gargantuan land monster. Galileo believed that tides were caused by the natural motion of the Earth, and hotly disputed Kepler's "puerile" theories that the Moon could somehow exert a mystical influence over water. You may have seen tidal charts in an almanac, and surmised that they were either the product of 1) the mumblings of ancient sea mariners, 2) some skinny guys with slide rules and charts, or 3) some massive supercomputer. The truth, according to the information presented at this site by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is that tides are the result of a complex set of forces, including those gravitational, centrifugal, hydraulic, hydrodynamic, hydrographic, topographic and meteorological. Not only is the problem set too large for any computer to use purely computational methods, but to provide a basis for further calculations, observers must gather empirical data for 18.6 years at each site at which predictions are to be made. Review the details yourself - but we'll stick with the big monster theory. NOAA: http://www.opsd.nos.noaa.gov/predtide.html Old Farmers' Almanac: http://www.almanac.com/index.html Between dry texts that cram pages with mind-bending concepts and pictorial references that oversimplify the subject, it's often hard to find a reference that speaks plain English but doesn't dumb down its subject matter. Enter the Maricopa Community College System; in methodical prose that covers everything from P680 to thylakoids, this Arizona college's guide to photosynthesis is a godsend to students (or anyone else) wanting to know more than the typical children's science book provides. With illustrations modified from several different biology books and a glossary that makes good use of hypertext, this lesson on photosynthesis will have you fluent on ATP and RuBP in no time. http://gened.emc.maricopa.edu/bio/bio181/BIOBK/BioBookPS.html COMPUTING AND ENGINEERING http://heiwww.unige.ch/girardin/cgv/www5/ There's a repetitive chirping belting forth from the speaker, a sound that conjures up the image (in this reviewer's mind) of frogs toking helium. Yet for people who are blind, this sound may conjure up a much different image. The computer program generating this rhythmic rapture is a Java applet known as the vOICe, a program that takes a 64 x 64 pixel grayscale image and turns it into a column of sound that varies with the lightness or darkness of pixels in the image. Although it would take quite some time to learn how to interpret the sounds of complex pictures, play around with the applet's pixelized canvas for a few minutes, and you'll start to recognize what certain shapes sound like. Creator Peter B.L. Meijer is working with Phillips Research Labs to refine the technology; ergonomic, portable mainstream devices may be on the horizon. For now, get a glimpse (no pun intended) of the future here on the Web. http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Peter_Meijer/ Counterfeit Currency: Hard Cash is Not Easy Money This Department of the Treasury site proves the adage, "You gotta have money to make money". After you ingest all the elaborate new security measures in currency manufacture since about 1990, you might shelve that basement bill-mill prospectus. First you'll have to get the special cotton-linen paper, then weave an engraved polyester thread through it, and embed special red and blue fibers on top of that. And on and on. It's almost more trouble than a dumb job. But if it's your karma to attenuate world currency markets, make sure you don't miss the page about the brand new American $20 bill, scheduled for release this fall. For parole stiffs, the history of American currency page is sterling.http://woodrow.mpls.frb.fed.us/econed/curric/counter.html ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS http://www.discover.com/august_issue/gthere.html?article=astro.html Don't let the children's-book-style graphics on this page dissuade you. In Solar Flare Theory, NASA has created yet another winner. With enough information to sate a grad student, in prose simple enough for a middle-schooler, this set of pages talks about thermal plasma and bremsstrahlung in a way that makes you think you're smart. If you've ever wanted to know more about solar flares and space weather but were put off the subject by over- or underdetailed books that couldn't quite communicate the answers you were seeking, consider this your invitation back into the fold. http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/sftheory/ MATHEMATICS, PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY http://onin.com/fp/fp.html Let's say it's the third century BCE. What would you think if your neighbor made his very own mechanical planetarium that tracked the movement of the stars, thought up a math problem that was printed in Homer's Odyssey (and took experts 22 centuries to solve), developed the see-saw, invented a giant screw to pump water from ships, and constructed giant mirrors to focus the heat of the sun on enemy ships to burn them down? You'd be glad that this guy is on good terms with you. The man in question: mathematician Archimedes. Unfortunately, grade school teaching often oversimplifies Archimedes' colorful character, turning him into a toga-clad man running around screaming "Eureka". But his life and times were obviously much more interesting than that. And an interesting man merits an equally interesting (and ironic) death ... but you'll have to check out the site below to find out just how this great man died. http://www.mcs.drexel.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/contents.html Statistics for the Mathematically-Challenged Scientists and mathematicians have a bad reputation when it comes to explaining things in simple terms. Leave it to a journalist to cut through the mumbo-jumbo and the daunting equations of statistics, putting the subject in simple words that even the math-phobic can swallow. Robert Niles, an experienced journalist/editor/Webmaster with a degree in statistical analysis, provides a helpful tutorial on his Web site that tries to demystify the basics of statistics. Although it's aimed at newswriters, Niles' patient prose can help even the most mathematically-challenged learn how statistics find use in their everyday lives.http://nilesonline.com/stats/ Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you've heard an expert witness testify that this fatal bullet and this shell casing had to have been fired by this gun. You've seen him prove with gunshot residue evidence that the gun was fired from no farther than one foot away from the victim. And, after your visit to the Introduction to Forensic Firearms Identification Web site, you yourselves know how the theory and practice of forensic science can come to these inescapable conclusions. There can be only one verdict: guilty! http://www.geocities.com/~jsdoyle/ ARCHEOLOGY, PALEONTOLOGY, AND ANTHROPOLOGY http://www.nrm.se/virtexhi/mammsaga/welcome.html.en MEDICINE, BIOLOGY AND ZOOLOGY Dolly, Cindy, and Biotechnology Patent Law Modern biological experimentation produces many perplexing questions. If I use human genetic material to develop a cure for disease, do I owe royalties to the person from whom the material was extracted? If I clone Cindy Crawford, can I keep her? Do biological computers have rights? If I secure a patent in this country for a microorganism that converts cheese into construction-grade adhesive, will France honor that patent? Do you forfeit rights over your genetic material by leaving your clippings at the hair stylist's? Faced with such difficult questions, it's always best to enlist the aid of professional legal counsel. Attorney William Warren offers a summary of biotechnology patent law in the international community, including discussions on the implications of the NAFTA and GATT treaties and the European Directive on Patents in Biotechnology. So, if I insert human genes into a mouse, do I owe money to Disney?http://www.jonesaskew.com/articles/96/296devbiopat.html How does one go about creating a museum for a science that no one seems comfortable talking about? And how exactly do you explain your motivations for creating this museum when you're a man, the science is menstruation, and you're running the only museum on the subject in the world? Harry Finley, an illustrator working in Washington, DC, found himself answering these questions when an interest in antique ads in German magazines sparked a peculiar quest for information that was more than slightly out of the mainstream. Harry's answers, posted in the museum's FAQ, are surprisingly frank, and his museum, in both corporeal and digital forms, is continually lauded as a resource for the history and science of an issue that few people, including women, have been willing to address in the history of civilization. Hate it or love it, the Museum of Menstruation (MUM) will educate you. http://www.mum.org/ Scientists study humpback whales for a number of reasons. Fortunately for us, researchers at Simon Fraser University have the resources to convert their work into multimedia presentations for the Web. Prepared with the proper panoply of plug-ins, visitors can listen to humpback calls and view VRML animations and QuickTime movies of whales in action. Some of the files are downright cetacean in size, so bring a book and a bag of herring to devour during the wait. http://fas.sfu.ca/cs/research/projects/Whales/ If, one day, while combing the beaches, looking for shells, treasure, parts of Amelia Earhart's airplane, tennis shoes, or what have you, you stumble upon an assortment of Lego building blocks affixed to rocks, you should not disturb them; they may have been placed there by biology graduate student Adrian Clayton as part of his PhD thesis. What's more, the blocks could contain a variety of small creatures known collectively as cryptofauna - little beasties like pseudoscorpions, mites, crustaceans, mollusks, snails, insect larvae, and various worms. Such creatures are the object of Clayton's studies, and the Legos provide a perfect uniform habitat, as opposed to the randomly-shaped and organized barnacle shells in which they normally make their home. Inspired by this research, we here at NSS are curious to find out what might take up seaside residence inside a Barrel of Monkeys, perhaps a Barbie Dream House, or even a stack of 8-track tapes. Every good question in science raises even more questions. http://info.exeter.ac.uk/biology/adrianc.html ANTHROPOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY, ECONOMICS, AND GEOGRAPHY Unsolved Mystery in Eastern Tennessee A mysterious people - tall, dark eyed, olive skinned, fine boned - has lived in isolated pockets of the southern Appalachian Mountains since at least the 1700s. In the early 1800s, Anglo-Saxon settlers found them farming prime valley land, dubbed them "Melungeons", declared them mixed-race Negroes, and passed laws making it illegal for African-Americans to own land. The swindled Melungeons lost their farms and their status as a "legitimate" culture. Read the many unproved theories of their ethnic origin: Portuguese, Berber, Cherokee, Phoenician, Welsh. Pseudoanthropological studies in the past century reveal as much about America's struggle with racism as about the Melungeons themselves.http://www.clinch.edu/appalachia/melungeon/index.html During the last century, intrepid surveyors blazed trails across North America, often facing hostile terrain, climate, and Native Americans under threat. They carefully recorded their measurements with ink on paper to produce maps that would be used to lay railroad lines. Modern technology has rendered obsolete both the manner in which geographic data were collected and the means by which the maps were reproduced. Similarly, many of the railroad lines themselves have been abandoned, rendered obsolete by more economical forms of transportation. It's a peculiar irony that the most modern forms of data storage and transmission (computers and the Internet) are being used to archive more than 600 selected maps of railroad lines from the last century. This effort by the Library of Congress is not without value, however, even to the casual observer; the railroads were the primary path of settlement through the US, so the towns and cities along these routes often contain the most interesting historic sites and architecture. Because they are relatively level and straight, many of the abandoned lines are being reclaimed by local governments for recreational purposes. As a result, these old maps can be valuable to those planning to explore an area when modern counterparts fail to show those abandoned lines. The site also offers brief histories of railroads, mapmaking and printing. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/rrhtml/rrhome.html SCIENCE LITE Guide to Breaking Your Computer Having trouble installing that new scanner? Does Windows 98 not recognize your COM ports? Did your system lock just before you were going to save that really long document that you've been working on for the last three hours? Have you had your fill of this "time saving" marvel of modern technology? Find relief from your tensions at this entertaining and informative Web site. Learn practical tips, such as how to degauss your monitor using a hammer, partition your drive with a hacksaw, stress-test your circuit boards by subjecting them to extreme temperatures, and eliminate that annoying clacking sound from your keyboard with a power drill. Prove that you are master of the machine, and be grateful that they haven't yet learned to fight back.http://members.aol.com/spoons1000/break/index.html
RESIDUE http://bunurong.com.au/3CrematoriumTour1.htm It's not often that you run across a site on the Internet that explains the science of everyday things in simple terms. It's also not often that the site you run across will be written by a person whose real name is Mr. Brain (no kidding). If his name alone isn't credential enough for you, perhaps his work as a teacher of computer science at North Carolina State University or his authorship of ten published books will sway you. Either way, his straightforward articles on "how stuff works" will appeal to the curious kid in anyone. http://www.bygpub.com/HowStuffWorks/index.htm CORRECTIONS AND UPDATES http://www.Iris-Publishing.com/sleep.html In NSS 1.05, we reviewed a site that offers the songs of Brazilian birds, many of which are in danger of eradication. Our reviewer used the word "sodade" in relation to the songs and birds, referring to its meaning as a yearning lament. Several Portuguese-speaking readers wrote to let us know that the word should be "saudade". Our reviewer was surprised because she'd taken the word from a Cesaria Evora song; we speculated that the variation might be a regionalism. Finally, we have word from reader Jorge Adelino, who informs us that the song title comes from "criolo, a dialect of Cabo Verde". It's likely not, he says, Portuguese, but a word imported from Portuguese; Cabo Verde was a colony of Portugal until 1974. He claims to have no special linguistic training, but his explanation makes a good deal of sense to us. By the way, the editor, intrigued by descriptions of Evora's music, can now personally recommend the marvellous concentric rhythms and mature phrasings of Evora's music. |
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