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| Solar Maximums and Aurora Earthbound and Extraterrestrial |
| The Perfect Storm |
| Geological Time Machine |
| This Site Went South on Us. Good Show! |
| Surveillance Technology |
| Historic Microscopes, Up Close |
| Greatest Engineering Achievements |
| Progress in NonLethal Weapons Research |
| Just Wait 'Til They Find The Dog It Belongs To |
| The Geosphere |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| ..But Does It Note Which Elements are Flammable? |
| Electronic Conferences Take Great Advantage of the Net. This One's on Chemistry. |
| What is a Trilobite? |
| Merck Manual Online |
| Gakken's Photo Encyclopedia: Ants |
| The Stuff of Tears |
| Ojibway |
| Museum of Television & Radio |
| Aphrodisiac Exchange. |
| Academic Press Dictionary of Science and Technology |
| T-13 - Los Alamos Complex Systems Group |
| We Get the Big Picture! |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
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| Credits |
| Netsurfer Digest |
REVIEWERS' CHOICE
Stuff we really, really liked
Solar Maximums and Aurora Earthbound and Extraterrestrial
Did you get out last week to take a look at the evidence of the latest cycle of the solar maximum? No? Or are the lights too bright where you live anyway? We have the remedy right here. Not only will you find photos of auroras northern and southern here on Earth, but you can also get a glimpse of the show on Jupiter, where the view is largely unspoiled. We won't break the sites down page by page, but we will say that for the most part these are pretty spiffy efforts, telling a good scientific tale and couching it (mostly) in design worthy of the eminently photogenic subject. Enjoy.Solar maximum: http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/istp/outreach/solarmax/learnmain.html
Exploratorium auroras: http://www.exploratorium.edu/learning_studio/auroras/
Aurora Australis: http://www.es.co.nz/~bevans/aurora.htm
Photographing auroras: http://www.ptialaska.net/~hutch/aurora.html
Hubble's Jupiter auroras: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/hst6.html
Geospace Environment: http://gedds.pfrr.alaska.edu/aurora/english/intro1.htm
EARTH SYSTEMS
No matter where you go, there you are
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/039304016X/netsurferdigest">">
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/satgallery/cyclones/pfctstorm91/pfctstorm.html
If you can't quite distinguish the Ordovician from the Devonian (we've always had trouble with that), this site will clarify all, but there's much more to it than just the clarity of knowing that the Precambrian stretches all the way back from 544 mya (we know you can figure it out) to the hot rock. Here you get chunks of geological time scale information diced finer and finer as you descend through the layers of timely pages. Click on a major period name and you get a compact chart showing how it's divided into time slices and a little essay with technical terms linked to explanations. Click on the chart and you get further information. The site provides nicely sized chunks of info, never overwhelms, and takes you as deep as you care to explore. The depth of this resource is deceptive. At first it looks just like a pretty chart with numbers, but in fact it's a time machine to explore the past. If you just want the names and the time periods, it's all there on the first chart, but can you just stop there, that's what we want to know. Look without clicking? We didn't think so! The only flaw here is that reverse navigation isn't clear (back button necessary). Dice and slice as fine as is nice
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/help/timeform.html
This Site Went South on Us. Good Show!
It's difficult to think there might be another place on Earth as inhospitable and isolated as the South Pole. Even if you find your way to the research station on Antarctica's coast at McMurdo, it's still three hours away by air transport to the Pole. And then, only if the weather cooperates. Since you're probably not going in the flesh, this virtual trip is the next best thing. What do I wear? Can I go skiing? (Well, there are T-shirts at the Pole describing the conditions - base 2 miles, powder 2 inches.) What about the altitude? Why are there three South Poles? All these questions are answered as well as any travel agent could. This site is very cool. Well, maybe frigid is a better description.http://astro.uchicago.edu/cara/vtour/pole/
COMPUTING AND ENGINEERING
Open the pod bay doors, Hal
http://cryptome.org/dst-1.htm
Historic Microscopes, Up Close
Modern microscopes have ancestors. Compared to their modern descendants, those microscopes may resemble today's toys, but their structure is the same as that of cutting-edge microscopes. Technology has changed, ideas haven't. One of the major collections of microscopes owned by an academic institution in the United States belongs to the Moody Medical Library. Its collection, available online, comprises elegant 18th-, 19th- and early 20th-century microscopes, many of them gracefully minimalist. The library also explains how microscopes work, offers a bibliography, and provides a detailed list of other (physical) collections.http://www.utmb.edu/mml/scopes/welcome.htm
Greatest Engineering Achievements
The new year saw a slew of retrospectives on the last century, but mostly from a political or social point of view. For a better understanding on how technology (and not just hi-tech) has truly changed our lives, one should consult this site from the National Academy of Engineering on the Greatest Engineering Achievements of the 20th Century. Click on any item and you get an in-depth examination of the technology and its spin-offs, as well a timeline of invention and development. While one could argue about the order of importance (and we're sure people will), the extrapolations are extremely enlightening. It is not widely known, for instance that many pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, fabrics, building materials, and cosmetics are by-products of the petrochemical industry (number 17). Yes, there is much we've learned to take for granted in the last 100 years.http://www.greatachievements.org/
Progress in NonLethal Weapons Research
Issued by the Department of Peace Studies at the Centre for Conflict Resolution and written by Dr Nick Lewer, Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project, Research Report Number 2 is up online. Sounds like a must read, right? As in when you must get to sleep and just can't. With topics such as Modular Crowd Control Munition, Ground Vehicle Stopper, Maritime Vessel Stopper Acoustic Programme, and Vortex Ring Gundetails, the report makes fascinating reading. Still, although there's no denying we'd rather be hit by rubber bullets than the lead kind, the document leaves the nagging concern that the easier and more effective nonlethal methods of control are, the more likely they are to be used to excess. And, indeed, the report reflects such worries, with its reference to the UK police regularly breaching guidelines for correct use of 5% spray, and mention of the potential use of nonlethal weapons for repression. The tone of the report is matter of fact and sober, and there's lots more of like ilk here as well, including a link to Research Report No. 1, if your thirst isn't fully slakedby quaffing this document. http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/nlw/censdera.html
ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away
Just Wait 'Til They Find The Dog It Belongs To
For over 120 years, "Kleopatra" was just a blurry, odd-looking asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. But when Steven Ostro's team of astronomers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) hit it with a fine-tuned beam of radar, they found out it was actually a metallic dog-bone roughly the size of New Jersey. Using the giant radio telescope dish at Arecibo, Puerto Rico - star of movies "Contact" and "Goldeneye", and an early episode of "The X-Files" - the folks from JPL sent radar waves on a 212-million-mile round trip to get information on Kleo. They then crunched the data with computers to get a three-dimensional picture so crisp they could tell that the surface of the asteroid was powdery. Science news site UniSci gives a well rounded summation of the discovery, bringing the sighting into the context of near-earth asteroid tracking; Discovery.com laments the untold mineral riches of the asteroid could never be feasibly mined for profit; and JPL's page on Kleo just cuts to the chase, offering the curious-looking radar images themselves.UniSci: http://unisci.com/stories/20002/0505002.htm
Discovery.com: http://www.discovery.com/news/briefs/20000505/space_asteroid.html
JPL: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/kleopatra/
Simply put, geospace is Earth's little neighborhood. This site looks at the intereaction between the Sun and our geosphere. It's a subject that has been and continues to be studied in great detail at NASA. That's especially true with the Sun near the peak of activity in its 11 year solar cycle. We could be snobbish about this and say it was the scholarly articles that droves us deep within this site. Alas, the truth lies, as it so often does on the Web, in the pictures. No one takes more pictures of the Earth, Sun and space in general than NASA. Especially photogenic is the "Home, Sweet Home: Earth from Space" gallery and loads of pictures of the aurora. There's also a really interesting page with answers from a geophysicist to questions posed, mostly by students.
http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/istp/outreach/
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On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the KitchenMATHEMATICS, PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY
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..But Does It Note Which Elements are Flammable?
We've seen quite a few Web-based periodic tables here at Netsurfer, but Los Alamos National Lab's execution of the table stands out for a few reasons. It's rendered completely in HTML, so it's rather quick-loading; it's well-designed so the whole table fits on your screen; the linked information for each element is manageably comprehensive, being drawn from the venerable CRC Handbook and the American Chemical Society; and, it's one of the few sites that explains chemistry "in a nutshell" (and explains it well, at that) in only five paragraphs. With tutorials explaining how to read the table, a history of the table, and the option to search the contents of the site (a feature that wasn't working when we reviewed it), this periodic table is a handy one. Incidentally, some of the elements have links to isotopes you can acquire from the LANL itself - which is quite fine, by the way, despite the recent conflagration that ravaged its hometown.Periodic table: http://pearl1.lanl.gov/periodic/
Cerro Grande fire page: http://www.lanl.gov/worldview/news/fire/fire.shtml
Electronic Conferences Take Great Advantage of the Net. This One's on Chemistry.
ECTOC sounds like some weighty Latin phrase but, trust us, it isn't. Here are links to electronic conferences - from 1995 to 1998 - on trends in organic chemistry. We looked mostly at the '98 one to assess the site. The home page lists the links and sports a fairly elaborate search engine so you can dive right in and search against the whole slew of them. Let's say you're not really into heterocyclic or organometallic chemistry - hard though that may be to imagine. Why might you be interested in this site? One reason might be the notion that electronic conferences are bound to become part of the way in which colleagues interact, knowledge is transmitted, and ideas shared, either as supplements to live conferences, or as extensions to the kind of electronic collaboratories that professionals engage in these days. The '98 author instructions are detailed and helpful - especially for writers intending to use the full range of multimedia options - and include tips for .html treatment of those pesky subscripts, superscripts, and Greek characters, without which self-respecting chemists can't possibly be expected to express themselves. This place doesn't send you off hither and yon for the full papers, either, chasing possibly vanished links, but provides all the material under its navigation-rich embrace. However, with the full panoply of colored structure diagrams, editable structures and reaction schemes, and rotatable 3D molecular images available to authors, loading speed is slow for ordinary mortals with sluggish connections. One regret: we couldn't gauge how useful, stimulating, or extensive the discussions were because all those links but the first proved dead.http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/ectoc/
ARCHEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY
What is past is prologue
http://www.aloha.net/~smgon/trilobite.htm
MEDICINE, BIOLOGY AND ZOOLOGY
It's alive! It's alive!
http://www.merck.com/pubs/mmanual_home/
Gakken's Photo Encyclopedia: Ants
The Japanese Ant Color Image Database has proven to be so unexpectedly popular (over 250,000 hits last year) that it's been translated into English and published on the Web. For a short but thorough introduction to myrmecology, click on the Terminology link and you'll get information on castes, body parts, and characteristics, all linked to drawings and photographs that can be enlarged twice. The Contents section deals with ant activities and behavior (feeding, combat, social behavior, mating, rearing, and so on) and there's information for students on catching and keeping specimens and doing research. The heart of the site is the Taxonomy section. All 262 known Japanese ant species are available for viewing with photos, descriptions, and distribution. There are also lists of genera and subfamilies with multiple photos and descriptions; all of the images are remarkably clear and detailed. One can search by image or by region and there's an excellent links list of ants and other social insects resources on the Web.http://ant.edb.miyakyo-u.ac.jp/INTRODUCTION/Gakken79E/title.html
Crying is a "subtle range of corporeal doings (that).. do battle with speech". So begins the University of Chicago Magazine: The Stuff of Tears. We cry, the article tells us, when words just don't make the grade. Without being diagnostic here, let's just say this is the kind of article you'd expect from a university magazine, a bit opaque, a little aloof, a trifle wordy, yet a different take on a topic that involves us all. Crying speaks loudly when speech is impossible or would not suffice. Crying also enables us to deal with events, situations, feelings that overwhelm us, or to communicate messages that cannot or dare not be spoken. The article is a slice of the topic, not exhaustive, and not all there is. We found the illustrations an eye full, but weird.
http://www.alumni.uchicago.edu/magazine/0002/features/0002_tears.html
ANTHROPOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY, ECONOMICS, AND GEOGRAPHY
All that we see or seem
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/5579/ojibwa.html
You say you're a TV addict? Can't get enough of those classic re-runs? Or maybe you just wonder what it was like when radio was the only game in town? Whatever your weakness, this site will quell it with its floor-by-floor virtual tour of the museums of TV and Radio in Los Angeles and New York. This site sponsors the Leonard H. Goldenson University Satellite Seminar Series featuring writers, directors, producers, and actors from contemporary and historic television, as well as influential policy makers and analysts. There's even an opportunity to ask the interviewees questions via telephone at pre-arranged times. You may choose to "adopt a program" where, for the sum of $250USD per half-hour radio or TV show you can count yourself among the people who sponsor the labor-intensive preservation and cataloguing for each new acquisition. There's a members' area where members may preview select screenings. Unfortunately, we were left wondering why there's no area with select clips from classic TV and radio. They seem like such naturals, things like Abbot and Costello's "Who's on First" routine or Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy plaint that "I'm a doctor, Jim, not a bricklayer!".
http://www.mtr.org/
SCIENCE LITE
Where are you, Mulder?
http://www.santesson.com/aphrodis/math.htm
RESIDUE
We can't be sure what else is out there
Academic Press Dictionary of Science and Technology
With over 130,000 terms and claiming to be the world's largest English language scientific dictionary, Harcourt's Dictionary of Science and Technology keeps its definitions short, concise and without illustrations, thus assuring quick answers to the needy, especially useful for those of us with minimalist bandwidth. Search by word or browse the scientific fields (engineering, life sciences, medicine, physical sciences, mathematics and computer sciences, social sciences, and general and miscellaneous) which are further broken down into 130 sciences. Choosing a field will take you to the first page of the alphabetically-organized section. The dictionary is also available in hardcover or CD-ROM. An extremely bookmarkable page.http://www.harcourt.com/dictionary/
T-13 - Los Alamos Complex Systems Group
Well it's reassuring, surely, to find no superstitions here, no arcane worries about the influence of numbers - fire notwithstanding. Yes indeed, Los Alamos National Laboratory boldly labels its Complex Systems Group, T-13, where researchers beaver away at solving complex problems and applying the solutions to challenges at the vanguard of technology. Among the projects are those involving nanotechnology, gene regulation, oil recovery processes, laser-plasma interactions and so forth and the site links to professional articles about many of these topics. We've worked at nuclear facilities and we know what they're like. This Web site is somewhat like wandering around the mostly grubby buildings, poking your nose in laboratories here and there, bumping into folks with lab coats and asking them about their work. Click on Users Guide and you get a list of hardware and software. Only software is linked to further information. Staff listings brings up a list of - surprise - staff and they're linked to a picture and a resume. Fascinating in a voyeuristic sense. The links page is good, and quite eclectic in a scientific sort of way.http://t13.losalamos.org/
CORRECTIONS AND UPDATES
Make it so
NSS 03.08: http://www.netsurf.com/nss/nss.3.08.html