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NETSURFER SCIENCE
More Signal, Less Noise |
Volume 01, Issue 08 Wednesday, September 09, 1998 |
EARTH SYSTEMS
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EARTH SYSTEMS Everything on Earthquakes from New Scientist Magazine This site may have you filling old milk jugs with water, and stashing toilet paper and Spam under your desk. Should The Big One hit, relax: you won't need 'em if you live in a place with lax building codes and derelict emergency systems. Compare recent disasters in Afghanistan, Los Angeles, Kobe, and San Francisco. Read about Big Ones in history. In the early 1800s, three gigantic quakes centered in Missouri reversed the flow of the Mississippi River and rang church bells in Boston; in 551 CE, researchers believe, a quake razed every building, every portico, every pillar in Beirut, Lebanon. Articles published by "New Scientist" magazine point out both those faults could rise again - with a vengeance. Don't forget to pack the freeze-dried ice cream.http://www.newscientist.com/nsplus/insight/quakes/quakes.html "Wild Inside Nature Programs" seems dedicated to providing nature park and wildlife information to schools and homeschoolers. Although the reams of text on a lime green background gave this Netsurfer a bit of eyestrain, the information presented here is copious. With everything from nature-related lesson plans to quizzes and activities for kids, you can be sure you'll be ready for your next field trip to the local nature park. http://www.naturepark.com/wihome.htm#Top COMPUTING AND ENGINEERING Washington DC: America's First Attempt at City Planning With its beaux-arts architectural style, the monumental core of Washington DC evokes in many the ideals of Jeffersonian democracy. Yet when The Mall was built in the beginning of this century, some said it set domestic architecture back 100 years. And in the most practical sense, America's first attempt at city planning was a dismal failure. This grand inner city renovation was supposed to inspire poor Washingtonians to pull themselves up by their boot straps. The poor stayed poor. Bureaucrats nested behind marble walls and, at this very moment, tour buses are discharging thousands of people from all over the world who can't wait to see the Lincoln Monument, the Washington Monument, and the rest. This site's packed with perspective on architecture, American history and human nature that no tour guide could ever give you.http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CAP/CITYBEAUTIFUL/dchome.html
Mice and Monkeys and More in Space The US Biomedical Space Research Timeline gives the history of flora, fauna, mousie, and more in outer space. You can learn how Gordo, the squirrel monkey, had his heart rate monitored in 1958, and contemplate the possible entertainment enacted by Rhesus monkeys Sam and Miss Sam in 1959 and 1960. Quite a picture, that is, of mice and monkeys - on our behalf - "going where no one has gone before".http://shuttle-mir.nasa.gov/science/history/ustime.htm Fractal Robots and Nanotechnology from the Top Down There are two approaches to developing nanotechnology machines. In the bottom-up approach, you try to build simple tiny machines and then make them complex. In the top-down approach, you build complex large machines and then try to scale them down. It's the latter approach that's being used by an intriguing new company called Robotic Construction International (RCI). RCI is trying to develop a specific type of machine called a fractal robot. Fractal Robots are self-assembling machines made of numerous identical parts - in this case, cubes that can move and climb against each other under their own power. It's an intriguing concept, and the RCI home site has a very clear and well illustrated description of the technology. There are several graphics animations and the company proposes a variety of possible applications. As an added bonus, the site also has a copy of the company's business plan - though as usual, caveat emptor if you're thinking of investing.http://DevelopNanotechnology.com/bridge/ Every so often, a new "Virus Alert!" spreads from user to user, just like the winter flu. Problem is, you never know whether it's a real virus, or just another idiot's attempt to stir up trouble. The Antivirus Online Web site does a nice job of defining just what the heck a computer virus is. There's info on antivirus programs as well. While the site also serves as a promotional piece for IBM's AntiVirus, you can get some useful insights about the general nature of those nasty bugs. http://www.av.ibm.com/InsideTheLab/Bookshelf/Understanding/ Only a couple decades ago, a printers' union strike could bring down a city's principal news outlet. Today, it's hard to imagine all the specialized physical labor that went into setting lead type and printing a newspaper. At the Excelsior Printing Museum, read about how printing was done in small letterpress shops in the first half of this century. Curator Alan Rundfeldt houses and restores antique presses in a old barn-museum in Frenchtown, New Jersey, sharing space with a Heidelberg Windmill, a Vandercook Proof Press, and cases and cases of lead type. Rundfeldt would be happy to answer your questions. And links send you to many of the dwindling number of fine printing houses left. http://alanr.com/epmuseum/ Inventors Hall of Fame Museum Online Feeling dull? The Inventure Place site aims to wake up the sleeping inventor in all of us. Biographies and stories bring to life some of the most significant developments to emerge from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (which sponsors the museum with the National Council of Intellectual Property Law Associations). Where did the startlingly original idea come from for the MRI scanner, which revolutionized diagnostic medicine? From a former child prodigy violinist-turned-doctor/physicist. Find out about plastic, the integrated circuit, the oral contraceptive and hundreds more seminal inventions. Links for kids and for business people strive to promote techniques for infusing routine living with creative vitality.http://www.invent.org/index.html You thought they were safe up on the shelf. Temperature's right, not too much humidity. One day you pull one of the books down. As you turn a page, it cracks, leaving your leaf in two pieces. The next tome, leather bound, turns to red dust as you reach for it. Frantically, you pull down book after book to find networks of tiny tunnels, chapters eaten by mice, faded photographs, and disintegrated bindings. Such things are happening in libraries everywhere. Until very recently, books used paper treated with acid, resulting in a gradual breakdown of the material. Mold, insects, and rodents can have substantial - and frequently unnoticed - effect on the life span of printed material. Estimates suggest that around 25% of Harvard's 12 million books suffer severe paper embrittlement due to acidic paper, and many libraries are taking steps to stanch the deterioration. The Preservation Department at Stanford University Libraries has established a repository of information on this subject. Learn how highly volatile diethyl zinc gas, Krylon, zinc phosphide, carbon dioxide, orhto-phenylphenol, and chloronicotinyl can be your friends. http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/ The Internet Law and Policy Forum (ILPF) As boundaries among individuals, vendors and consumers, institutions, governments, and cultures are redrawn, new legal issues surface. In the area of digital signatures alone, there are now some 60 proposed standards to ensure authentication of electronic documents. The ILPF focuses on the need for binding international standards and regulation. Working groups examine digital signatures, content blocking, and electronic commerce certification. Members, who pay a $10,000 annual fee, include corporations such as GTE, AT&T, Netscape, America OnLine, Bell Canada, IBM, Visa, Oracle, and Microsoft. A nonprofit organization called The Discovery Institute handles the money.http://www.ilpf.org/ Leonardo: The Genius, Not the Other Guy One of the hallmarks of Leonardo Da Vinci's genius was intense observation of the natural world. He spent a lot of time looking at water. From this came inventions to measure the speed of ships and ecologically superior ways to dam, divert, and bridge rivers. Read about these and other bursts of scientific innovation in the 72-page so-called Codex Leicester, now owned by Bill Gates. New York's American Museum of Natural History has taken great care to honor Da Vinci's brilliant musings with commensurate scholarship and style. This site is a wonderful cyberspace echo of the museum's more elaborate exhibit, which closed in January of 1997.http://www.amnh.org/Exhibition/Codex/index.html ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS Dust Bunnies of Galactic Proportions You think your dust bunnies got girth? Take a look at the one Orion sports on his belt! The Horse's Head and Sombrero nebulae are composed of interstellar dust; we detect the nebulae and their evocative forms because they intrude on the appearance of other formations emitting light behind them. Interstellar dust isn't your garden variety dirt, though. Studies into how distant dust absorbs, emits, and reflects light tell us that it's not at all the same as the cell- and lint-based dust that plagues the corners and recesses of our homes. Our dust is positively gargantuan compared to interstellar dust grains, made up mainly of carbon, silicon, and oxygen and generally measuring less than .001 mm across. Of course, even the dust bunnies at Netsurfer World Headquarters haven't been coalescing long enough to earn their own names or eclipse our sun - 'though one of them might have been around long enough to have become vested in our enviable pension plan.http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap980104.html
MATHEMATICS, PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY Nuclear Physics: Past, Present and Future Soon the Internet will force dissolution of traditional geopolitical boundaries, and network administrators will amass weapons cast off by bankrupt governments. Then, it'll be important for those IT folk to understand nuclear physics, so they can manage the arsenal defending their servers and routers. Knowledge of the subject's history, including the development of nuclear models, mass/energy equivalence, binding energy, radioactive decay, fission, fusion, and related subjects will be important in the arms race of the future, when computer rooms have raised floors, halon systems, and ICBM launch tubes. Three students - under the direction of a physics teacher and a basketball coach - have assembled documents of critical mass on the benefits and hazards of nuclear energy. In addition to nuclear weapons and electrical power generation, they discuss other applications such as medical imaging, radioactive dating, and radiation detection. They also present political aspects, offering balanced, opposing viewpoints. The site bears the fingerprint of its authors, however, and careful editing (and a spelling checker) could have corrected some of the more obvious errors. Firewalls cannot protect you from spam! Consider undersea mobile launch pads for massive retaliation!http://tqd.advanced.org/3471/index_netscape.html
Attention: Police, Attorneys, Screen Writers With the half-dozen trials of the century we’ve seen in the past decade, everybody knows how crime scene investigation can sway a court case. Forensic specialists say, in many cases, that bloodstains can be better documented using video rather than still photography. Gunshot powder burns can often be documented if the photographer knows to shoot immediately with infrared film. The University of California Riverside Crime Scene Investigation site introduces many aspects of forensic science, from photography, to response guidelines, to special procedures if sexual assault is suspected. Links include pages sponsored by California State University at Long Beach, the Criminal Justice Institute in Little Rock, Arkansas, and other law enforcement educators.http://police2.ucr.edu/csi.htm ARCHEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY Center for the Study of Eurasian Nomads Women were not denigrated, but often celebrated at the highest levels of society by 5th-century BCE tribes of the Kazakh steppe. How do we know? Graves. One skeleton archaeologists believe to be that of a priestess-warrior has been unearthed bejeweled with more than 4000 gold pieces. The vast Eurasian steppe is rich with archeological sites which tell stories of cultures dating from about 4000 BCE up to the 18th century. The Berkeley, California based Center for the Study of Eurasian Nomads has assembled lecture and scholarly article abstracts, photos, sketches of artifacts and bibliographies. Find out how to get work on a dig in Mongolia.http://garnet.berkeley.edu/~jkimball/index.html MEDICINE, BIOLOGY AND ZOOLOGY http://www.vampyres-only.com/faqs/faqs.html Warning: Bad puns ahead. Although it's bloody slow to download (well, we warned you...), the Journal of Hematology's Internet site is veined (oops!) with fascinating links for those intrigued by blood, its uses and its diseases. Haematologica may be the official publication of the Italian Society of Hematology and Experimental Hematology, as well as the journal for the Spanish Society of Hematology, but the English version is far from skimpy. The published manuscripts are highly technical, but an informed layperson can follow most of the discourse. Dare we mention that there's no record of the journal's circulation? OK, we're done. http://www.haematologica.it/ That funny twitch you've had for the past few days may not be a direct result of the head trauma and subsequent anoxia that you experienced on your last boating excursion; it could simply be a side effect of the drug prescribed for you afterward. Now you can look up all those side effects on the Web. Over 4000 drugs are listed here (including Viagra), and a fuzzy search engine will help you find yours even if you can't quite remember the spelling. The index offers a detailed description, along with pharmacology, clinical study reports, indications, drug interactions, adverse reactions, and dosage. The top 200 drugs are also listed for your perusal (listed by consumption, not esteemed value like the AFI movie list). The top 10 are: amoxicillin (no surprise if you have kids), estrogen, levothyroxine (hypothyroidism), hydrocodone (pain), Prozac, digoxin (heart), omeprazole (ulcers), enalapril (hypertension), azithromycin (antibiotic), and amlodipine (heart). Funny, we couldn't find "placebo" listed anywhere. http://www.rxlist.com/ Mild-Mannered Barnacles: Just Looking at Them, You'd Never Guess... Like most of us, barnacles start life looking cute and lithe, like little shrimp - and end up looking like the surface of Pluto. Those craggy crustacean shells are their homes, and there's more going on behind closed doors than you'd think. Most barnacles are hermaphrodites, and even though both sex organs cohabit, to reproduce the female still has to hail a neighborhood male. Enter, a handy retractable tube notable for being, proportionally, probably the largest penis in the animal kingdom. Surprised? You'll never guess what they can do with their feet.http://www.barnacle.com/barnacles.html You'd be hard-pressed to find it in a library, you'd get strange looks from the clerk at the bookstore, no videos will show you how, but here, on the Web (where else?) you can find out how to raise and care for cockroaches, woodlice, ground beetles, scorpions, giant millipedes, crickets, and tarantulas. While some people are more likely to squash insects or bomb them from a distance, others of us are fascinated; this site is dedicated to the latter group. Literally hundreds of pages of information provide pictures, taxonomy charts, suppliers, and reviews. You can learn about anatomy, life cycles, terms, and just about every insect you could imagine. Unfortunately, there's heavy emphasis on scientific names and classes rather than the common names, so casual observers may be distanced a bit. It's decent navigation, but don't be too surprised if you feel something crawling up your leg while you're visiting this site. http://www.ex.ac.uk/~gjlramel/welcome.html If you haven't lived in a cave for the past decade, you've probably heard about the O.J. Simpson trial. Although the media frenzy has long since subsided, an Australian law student took time during the heyday to write a well-reasoned term paper on the lessons that could be learned from the trial, particularly in the field of DNA fingerprinting. In a society where science is often synonymous with truth, it's prudent to keep in mind that some research is still so new that it may be unreviewed, unreliable or impenetrable even to the people involved in the event. http://www.ozemail.aust.com/~dtebbutt/oj/ojsci1.html ANTHROPOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY, ECONOMICS, AND GEOGRAPHY http://www.bell.lib.umn.edu/mps.html RESIDUE http://www.netsurf.com/nss/letters/sletter.01.08.html Tequila! Science is probably one of the last things on your mind if you're drinking it, but without the wonders of modern science, you'd be woefully dry. Drink up all the intoxicating details of the process of making tequila at the address below. http://www.tequila-don-avelino.com/process.htm New MLA Style for College Students Most colleges require students to observe the MLA (Modern Language Association) Style Handbook guidelines when writing papers and dissertations. The original manual was published in 1985 before Web sites, user groups, and other electronic sources were available. The MLA's second edition, updated this spring, has guidelines for citing the myriad new sources, plus a chapter on legal issues in scholarly publishing.http://www.mla.org/ Sandlot Science Optical Illusions Remember those optical illusions that they used to have on place mats in restaurants when you were a kid? "Which line is longer?" "Do you see an old hag, or a young lady?" Now you can annoy coworkers with these puzzles the same way you used to annoy your brother. Marvel at the impossible objects with conflicting perspectives. Strain to see the hidden figure within the obvious one. Let your eyes trick your brain by misjudging geometric figures and misreading written text. Learn how to use camouflage to your advantage in the workplace. Download projects in Adobe Acrobat format. Befuddle yourself with java demonstrations, games, and puzzles. Become a master of illusion!http://www.sandlotscience.com/ |
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