General Interest
http://www.loc.gov/vets/stories/thewar/
The films of Ken Burns have covered the exuberance of jazz in the United States, the world of baseball, and most recently, the experiences of Americans during World War II. Working with the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress, Burns and staff members created this companion website to the film series. The site includes letters, diaries, interviews, and memoirs that cover the period from the attack on Pearl Harbor to V-E and V-J Day. Visitors will find seven separate sections here, and will enjoy looking through the different materials at their leisure. Additionally, visitors can view stories by theme, and they can also search the Veterans Database. Finally, there is also a "Field Guide" to the actual film series which serves as a nice complement to the other materials. [KMG]
http://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/exhibition.cfm?key=38&exkey=1051
In October 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to successfully orbit the earth. With its distinctive "beep", it was a very real manifestation of the Soviet Union's growing influence in the realms of science and technology. In the United States, it spurred educators and others to create new and compelling ways to get young people interested and passionate about these fields. This fun and engaging online exhibit created by the National Museum of American History offers an overview of some of these new and emerging educational tools, which included textbooks, diagrams, hands-on activities, and even such seemingly common-place items as slide rules. These items (and much more) are contained within sections like "The Cold War and Sputnik", "Excitement", and "Curricula-Novelty and Diffusion". [KMG]
http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/mahdiyya-quran/index.shtml
A number of institutions such as the British Library and the Library of Congress have made a sustained effort over the past few years to digitize important religious documents. These digitization projects are rather important to religious scholars and theologians, and many members of the web-browsing public will find them engaging and illuminating. The University of Leeds has been doing some of this work as well, and they recently digitized the important Mahdiyya copy of the Qur'an. Professor Roger Boyle was one of those responsible for this fine work, and visitors to the site can learn more about the document and the digitization process within the "About the manuscript" section offered here. Visitors can begin their journey through the work by clicking on "The data" section and browsing through the various pages. The site is rounded out by a nice selection of external links and a publication listing. [KMG]
http://www.fda.gov/cder/index.html
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration maintains a number of important and useful research centers, and the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) is one that many Scout Report readers will want to know more about. As its name implies, the Center evaluates and researches new and experimental drugs before they are approved for use by the general population. Most people will want to start by looking over the "Drug Safety" area, which contains safety information for specific drugs and which also contains FDA drug safety podcasts. Additionally, the site offers access to the FDA Drug Safety Newsletter and the opportunity to learn about safe and approved generic drugs. Moving on, the site also contains thematic areas designed specifically with certain audiences in mind, including consumers, industry representatives, and healthcare professionals. Persons working in public health and related fields will also want to look at the CDER Calendar, which gives up-to-date information on upcoming conferences, workshops, and meetings. [KMG]
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB230/index.htm
In today's rather dynamic world, there are a variety of intelligence organizations that are quite keen on a variety of espionage and spying activities. Of course, there's also the world of counterintelligence, and this latest electronic briefing book from the very diligent staff of The National Security Archive at George Washington University is quite revealing. Compiled by Jeffrey Richelson, this collection of documents looks at the activities of The Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), which was established in 2002 by Department of Defense Directive 5105.67. Interestingly enough, the CIFA's authority was expanded in 2005 when it received mission tasking authority over the counterintelligence organization of such departments as the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. All told, this electronic briefing book contains over eighteen documents, and persons with an interest in researching such matters will definitely want to take note. [KMG]
http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/
Drawing on the expertise of lepidopterists and other such experts at Montana State University's Big Sky Institute and the National Biological Information Infrastructure program, this site is a database that provides easy-to-use information about over 2800 species of butterflies and moths. On the site, visitors will find dynamic distribution maps showing verified species occurrences, photographs of the adult and caterpillar (when available) and a cornucopia of species accounts. Users may wish to look over the "Taxonomic Groups" area if they just wish to browse around, or they can also perform a map search, or even just browse image thumbnails by family. Those who are new to the field may wish to look over the online glossary or external links, and those who are ready to lend assistance should check out the "Get Involved" area. [KMG]
As a part of the World Bank, the stated vision of the International Finance Group (IFC) is "that poor people have the opportunity to escape poverty and to improve their lives." To whit, the IFC works to promote open and competitive markets in developing countries, generate productive jobs and deliver basic services, among other things. First-time visitors will find that the layout of the site is visually stimulating and quite user-friendly. Visitors can look over some of the "Key Links" which include sections such as "How to Apply For Financing", and their "Sustainability Web Portal". A good way to get a sense of the IFC's projects is to look at the featured publications in the "Resources From IFC". Here visitors will find reports on addressing gender inequalities and creative effective business linkages in various developing countries. Finally, visitors can also use the embedded search engine to look for specific materials of interest and also take a look through the "What's New" area for recent additions to the site. [KMG]
http://www.themorgan.org/collections/swf/exhibOnline.asp?id=600
Although there have been other Web-based presentations of van Gogh's letters that are more comprehensive (for example, van Gogh's Letters, Unabridged and Annotated, mentioned in the Sept. 24, 2004 Scout Report http://scout.wisc.edu/Reports/ScoutReport/2004/scout-040924-geninterest.php#2), this set of seven letters between van Gogh and his young colleague, Emile Bernard, presented by the Pierpont Morgan Library, is designed to allow the viewer to get the full visual impact of the letters themselves. Beginning with a thumbnail view of a handwritten letter, one can choose to translate the text, and read, for example, van Gogh critiquing several sonnets his young friend has sent, asking which Albrecht Durer drawing was a poem's inspiration, and concluding, "But all in all it's not as good as your painting yet. Never mind. It'll come, and you must certainly continue doing sonnets." It is also possible to zoom in on the many drawings that decorate the letters, such as Still life with coffee pot, on the back of a letter van Gogh sent to Bernard in June of 1888. Zooming in on another letter from March 18, 1888, decorated with a sketch of people walking on a footpath near a canal, reveals the color words that van Gogh has written on the picture, indicating that the water will be green, the shaded side of a bridge, purple, and the sky, yellow. [DS]
