Infowatch November 1996

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                                 InfoWatch
       Tracking Networked Scientific Information Sources and Services
           (An electronic update service brought to you by NCSI)

                               November, 1996
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In this issue :

  1. ChemCenter
  2. Chemicool Periodic Table
  3. Electronic Medical Journals from Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and
     Sciences (KNAW)
  4. Exercises in Math Readiness For University Study
  5. Far Eastern Economic Review
  6. Greatest Films of All Time
  7. "The Impact of Electronic Journals on Scholarly Communication:A
     Citation Analysis"
  8. Internet Engineering Curriculum
  9. JayDoc HistoWeb--Histology on the Net
 10. Macmillan Computer Publishing Home Page
 11. Manager's Resource Bank
 12. Mass Media, Cybercommunication and Telecom
 13. MathMol Hypermedia Textbook--Mathematics and Molecules for K-12
     Students
 14. MediLife Diabetes Center
 15. Querying Internet Search Indexes by Email
 16. Shareware Tracking with Freeware
 17. Teachers.Net's Website Handbook and Homepage Maker 2.0
 18. Tutorials on Networking
 19. The Ultimate News Links Page
 20. World Wide Web Virtual Library--Microscopy
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1. ChemCenter

The new online home of the American Chemical Society, ChemCenter intends to be the starting point for those seeking chemistry resources on the Internet. The full text of current-year issues of several ACS journals is available: Biochemistry, The Journal of Physical Chemistry, and Environmental Science & Technology. Articles may be read in HTML format or downloaded as Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) files. The journal pages make intensive, though effective, use of browser frames. The site currently offers links to the home pages of the ACS's other journals, as well as Chemical Patents Plus and Analytical Chemistry's LabGuide; slated for availability in the next two months are a Graduate School Finder and a Chemcyclopedia. Links to the ACS's many professional services (career, membership, and grants) are arranged on a single page for easy reference. The "Conferences and Communications" page provides links to meetings, conferences, newsletters, policy groups, and outreach programs, as well as other Internet resources for chemists. The "Education Center" provides access to the ACS's extensive range of instructional offerings. Free registration, though not currently required, will be necessary to access special services in the future. URL: http://www.ChemCenter.org/

2. Chemicool Periodic Table

The Chemicool Periodic Table, provided by a student at MIT, is a simple yet elegant site that allows users to click on their element of choice, or type in its name or symbol. Element names are color coded (solid, liquid, gas, as well as synthetic or naturally occurring) and information is provided in ten categories including general (atomic number and weight), states, energies, appearance, reactions, and abundance, to name a few. Also available is a unit conversion calculator (only from the more graphical site). URL: http://the-tech.mit.edu/Chemicool/

3. Electronic Medical Journals from Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW)

The Electronic Medical Journals page is part of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences' Medical Information Centre, a large medical resource site. The Electronic Journals page contains links to approximately 55 freely accessible scientific and biomedical electronic journals. Most journals offer full-text web versions of articles previously published in printed form. The Medical Information Centre offers article title, journal title, and key word searches of a much larger set of medical articles (taken from approximately 750 biomedical journals), and allows users to order (for a fee) copies of the articles in print, HTML, or email form. Numerous links to other websites, newsgroups, discussion groups, and email lists as well as a database (currently under construction) that will allow users to search for Internet medical resources, make the Medical Information Centre a great starting point for the netizen with an interest in medicine.

URL:http://www.library.knaw.nl/www/ejournals/elecjour.htm

4. Exercises in Math Readiness For University Study

This site, provided by the University of Saskatchewan Mathematics Department, contains a collection of exercises "on those high school mathematics topics that seem to be most important for university study in mathematics, the other sciences, engineering, and commerce." Exercises are available at three levels of difficulty in fifteen subject areas ranging from absolute value and distance to polynomials and roots. In addition to the exercises, there is an explanation of each topic. Solutions are provided for all exercises, and, for more advanced exercises, hints are available as well. At present seven additional topics contain explanations but not exercises. This site is an effective resource foradvanced high school math students preparing for college classes. Note that your browser must support subscripts and superscripts in order to get the most out of the exercises (version 2 of both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer will work fine).

URL: http://math.usask.ca/readin/

5. Far Eastern Economic Review

A weekly publication from Review Publishing Company, the Far Eastern Economic Review "is a world authority on Asian current affairs, business, economies and investment," now available in an interactive edition on the web. This frames-based, free (after registration) site contains the contents of each week's issue, as well as a searchable archive of articles previously published on the site. In addition, articles from recent issues can be browsed by country and topic (under "Business News") The site also provides up-to-the-minute Asian business news, and pointers to Asian web sites. Note that the registration process is lengthy, but the content behind it is well worth the wait.

URL: http://www.feer.com/

6. Greatest Films of All Time

Greatest Films of All Time is a loving tribute to great films, provided by Tim Dirks. Here you can find plot information on hundreds of classic films, arranged by year, genre, and title. Also, there are sections on memorable film quotations (which are linked to the movie they came from), as well as great scenes. Possibly the best part of the entire site is the large bibliography of film reference books. The only drawback to the site is that it is not searchable.

URL: http://www.filmsite.org/films.html

7. "The Impact of Electronic Journals on Scholarly Communication: A Citation Analysis"

"The Impact of Electronic Journals on Scholarly Communication: A Citation Analysis," a refereed article by Stephen P. Harter of the University of Indiana, appeared in the Public-Access Computer Systems Review, (Vol. 7, No. 5), and is available in HTML and ASCII text. It "reports hard empirical data on the impact of the first wave of e-journals on the scholarly communities they serve. It assesses the extent to which scholars and researchers are aware of, are influenced by, and build their own work upon research published in e-journals. It does this by examining the artifacts of scholarly communication--the journal article and the references it makes." The study, based on citation data collected in February 1996, concludes that "the great majority of scholarly, peer-reviewed e-journals have had essentially no impact on scholarly communication in their respective fields. Only eight of the 39 e-journals studied have been cited ten or more times over their lifetimes. Given that eleven of the e-journals have print counterparts, these findings are especially telling."

URL: http://info.lib.uh.edu/pr/v7/n5/hart7n5.html

8. Internet Engineering Curriculum

The Internet Engineering Curriculum, a frames-based site provided by the National Laboratory for Applied Network Research (NLANR), attempts to "coordinate and make available on the web a 'distributed living curriculum' in network engineering." At present, it contains sections on Infrastructure Support, Developing Protocols,Applications, Social, Code Development, and Imminent Technologies. Each of these categories is further subdivided; these subcategories point to existing highereducation classes in the topic, when available, as well as to other resources relating to the topic. The "distributed" aspect of this project means that the site will always be a work in progress; where class information is presently missing, a forms-based interface allows you to add the URL of your class. In this way, a "living curriculum" can be built over time.

URL: http://iec.nlanr.net/

9. JayDoc HistoWeb--Histology on the Net

JayDoc HistoWeb, provided by two medical students at the University of Kansas, is a frames-based site that provides hundreds of microscopic anatomical images, topically arranged in 19 categories ranging from blood & bone marrow to vascular system. Each image is accompanied by a short annotation and scale bar. Interested users have the option of clicking a button for a much larger view. Note that though this site is extremely graphical and may be a challenge to those with slow connections, it is a treasure house of anatomical information. URL: http://www.kumc.edu/instruction/medicine/anatomy/histoweb/

10. Macmillan Computer Publishing Home Page

Highlight of the Macmillan Computer Publishing web site is the large collection of free online books available from its subsidiaries Que and Sams. Que's Digital Bookshelf at present contains 30 online books in topics including world wide web, web publishing, web programming, web servers, and networking, among others. Sams Publishing offers over 15 online books on topics such as web site construction, Java, Netscape 3.0, and Javascript. Also offered are _The Internet Starter Kit_, _The Computer Trainer's Personal Training Guide_, and early galleys from portions of _The Electronic Citizen: How to Speak Out and Organize on the Internet_, as well as an Internet glossary. Both the Que and Sams libraries can be searched as well as browsed. While the Macmillan site is designed to sell books, the publishers have made a staggering amount of their product freely available, and in so doing have rendered a great service to the net community. URL: http://www.mcp.com/mcp/

11. Manager's Resource Bank

This is a highly rated site facilitating quick identification of information on management, in general, and management information systems (MIS), in particular, over the Web. Maintained by Yogesh Malhotra, an MIS consultant of Indian origin, manages a depository of hot links to sites on information systems, management journals, reengineering, innovation, virtual organisations, electronic commerce, et al. URL: http://www.brint.com/interest.html

12. Mass media, Cybercommunications and Telecom

This site is for media junkies - it is supposed to cover everything and anything about mass media, cybercommunications and telecom. The tone is academic - the site is sponsored by the Institute for Tele-Information at Columbia University - but there are plenty of links to related telecom sites. Visitors can also start a discussion forum or even add hotlinks to the site's database.

URL: http://www.ctr.columbia.edu/vi

13. MathMol Hypermedia Textbook--Mathematics and Molecules for K-12 Students

The New York University Scientific Visualization Laboratory has created a cyber textbook for elementary (grade 3-5), middle, and secondary students. It is designed to connect molecules and mathematics, and contains elementary sections on matter, energy, and water, and secondary sections on mass, volume, density, 2- and 3-dimensional geometry, and mathematical equations. The whole "textbook" is quite graphical, but the secondary section is particularly so, making use of frames, VRML, and interactive questions and answers (accompanied by an online calculator). Simple content is conveyed graphically and imaginatively at this site. Users with slower connections should be patient, however.

URL: ://www.nyu.edu/pages/mathmol/textbook/

14. MediLife Diabetes Center

Sponsored by Medilife, Inc., makers of diabetes management software, this web site offers resources for those with diabetes and those interested in finding out more about the condition. From the main page users can select: a library of information about the various forms of diabetes and innovations in treatment; a set of pages on exercise programs; two interactive tests that help users determine their possible risk for diabetes; a nutrition section that covers meal planning and special diets, and offers gourmet recipes; a medical supplies area that details the offerings of many medicine and equipment vendors; and an "ask the educator page," on which a diabetes nurse educator answers questions from visitors to the site. Also available on the site is a diabetes trivia quiz, a Java-based memory game, and "Health University," an evolving series of educational modules designed to increase diabetes awareness.

URL: http://www.medilife.com/medilife/diabetes/

15. Querying Internet Search Indexes by Email

Gerald Boyd has spent much time learning the internal syntax of web search engines. He has made the fruits of his labor available at an ftp site. Interested Internauts can download FAQs on how to query fifteen generic and eight specialty search engines by email. Included are Alta Vista, Excite, Inktomi, Yahoo, Infoseek, OKRA, Open Text, SwitchBoard, TheList, and others. Also included is a FAQ on how to use an Agora Server to use the web by email. The FAQs are of greatest use to those without a web connection, but are also interesting to anyone who is intrigued by the intricacies of search engines. Users should download wsintro.faq (table of contents of FAQs), wscrack.faq (basic strategy for figuring out how to query search indexes via email) and wshelp.faq (Agora help file) before any others. For those who would like to download everything at once, wssearch.zip contains all of the files. Note that while these files are fairly technical, they are very useful for those who need such Internet access.

URL: ftp to: ftp.netcom.com
cd to pub/gb/gboyd

16. Shareware Tracking with Freeware

This site helps you in tracking the latest releases of browser plug-ins, freeware, and shareware. It also comes with a free helper application for Web browsers and runs on end-user PCs and automatically tracks updates for more than 500 Windows applications distributed over the Internet, including Netscape Navigator.

URL:http://www.manageable.com

17. Teachers.Net's Website Handbook and Homepage Maker 2.0M

The well-known Teachers.Net, a collection of resources aimed at helping educators establish a web presence, has added two new services. Homepage Maker 2.0 is a fully automated web page generator. Once you fill out an online form specifying text, bullets, images, and even Java applets, JavaScripts, and other advanced web functions, an HTML file is automatically generated and emailed to you. The Net Website Handbook is not an HTML instructional guide, but rather an introduction to starting a web site. It reviews the various software (commercial and shareware) available and indicates how and where to download it; it also describes the differences between the various browsers, touches on graphics formats, points to various HTML instructional guides, and explains the procedures for getting your pages onto the web.

URL: Website Handbook:

http://teachers.net/manual/
Homepage Maker 2.0:
http://teachers.net/sampler/

18. Tutorials on Networking

This site at Strategic Information Resources' provides very useful tutorials on networking - including white papers on networked video, network applications, and net management. The site has major contribution by Nathan J. Muller - consultant, author and industry expert.

URL: http://www.ddx.com

19. The Ultimate News Links Page

If it's news you're after, this site promises to deliver links to more of it than any other. A simple frames-based interface allows the user to browse through more than 3,700 links to newspapers around the world. The directory is organized geographically, first by continent and then by country and state/province. Clicking on a link to a particular newspaper opens a new browser window with that paper's homepage; this allows the user either to continue searching from the Ultimate News Links site, or to read the local paper. It's a simple site, but it does what it promises to do. URL: http://pppp.net/links/news/

20. World Wide Web Virtual Library--Microscopy

The latest addition to the WWW-VL is the subject area Microscopy, which claims "850 links to sites on all aspects of light microscopy, electron microscopy and other forms of microscopy" and is sponsored by the Samuel Roberts Electron Microscopy Laboratory and the University of Oklahoma. The site includes both a frames-based and non-frames-based version, both of which are easily navigated. As might be expected, it includes a broad spectrum of access points such as Internet Resources; Reference Sites; Laboratories, Organizations and People; Equipment and Technology; Applications and Topics; General and Education; Techniques; and Vendors and Other. Highlights include what is billed as the first photo of the Ebola virus, a Periodic Table of Elements, and the Genome Sequence Database.

URL: http://www.ou.edu/research/electron/www-vl/

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About InfoWatch :

InfoWatch is a monthly electronic newsletter, brought out by the National Centre for Science Information (NCSI), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore - 560 012, INDIA. Information in the newsletter is collected and verified by NCSI staff. The newsletter aims to raise awareness of new sources of information on the Internet, particularly those which are relevant for higher education and research. Some items may be of relevance only to the IISc community. Resources reported here have been taken from various discussion lists and other network tools and no special claims are made for accuracy or originality. Most of the sources cited in the newsletter were checked at the time of publication, however it is possible that some of the resources are no longer available. We welcome comments about the newsletter and suggestions for resources to be featured. Please e-mail your comments to T.B. Rajashekar, editor, InfoWatch (raja@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in).

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