National Science Foundation: Tour of the Cell

National Science Foundation: Tour of the Cell

http://www.nsf.gov/news/overviews/biology/interactive.jsp

A cell happens to be the smallest unit of life, but there's a tremendous amount of activity going on within this very fascinating place. The talented people at the National Science Foundation (NSF) are well aware of this fact, and they have created this illuminating and interactive visual feature to help people learn about the cell's different components. On the homepage, visitors are presented with a clickable illustration of the cell's primary components, including the nucleus, the cell membrane, and mitochondria. Clicking on any of these various items brings up a detailed illustration, complete with a brief description of its function. Finally, visitors can also view the complete illustration by clicking on the "Full Illustration" link. >From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2009. http://scout.wisc.edu/

ToxLearn: A Multi-Module Toxicology Tutorial

ToxLearn: A Multi-Module Toxicology Tutorial

http://toxlearn.nlm.nih.gov/

The U.S. National Library of Medicine's Toxicology and Environmental Health Information Program and the U.S. Society of Toxicology have teamed up to create ToxLearn which is an interactive multi-module learning tool. The purpose of this tool is to provide an introduction to fundamental toxicological principles and concepts, and it does not require any knowledge beyond a basic understanding of biology and chemistry. First-time visitors can click on the "Overview" area to learn more about the modules, which can also be used as an ancillary curriculum to an undergraduate level toxicology course. There are three modules in the course, and while only one is currently available in its entirety, the other two will be added shortly. Each of the modules contains a series of slides and text passages, along with a link to a glossary. This is a tremendous resource, and medical educational professionals and others will find it invaluable. >From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2009. http://scout.wisc.edu/

Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils

Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils [Flash Player]

http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/rembrandt_drawings/interactive.html

This interactive website from the Getty Museum feels almost like a game that teaches players to distinguish the work of the master, Rembrandt, from that of his pupils. Pairs of drawings are presented for viewers to compare, for example, Rembrandt's Daniel in the Lions' Den, 1649, is matched with a drawing of the same subject by Constantijn Daniel van Renesse. Viewers can zoom in or out, for closer examination of the works, and expand and collapse item information. There is even a cheater's button, titled "show point of interest", that will reveal the major differences between the drawings. Clicking this button for the Daniel pair brings up the differing details - the master depicts the lions as ferocious beasts with open jaws and shaggy manes, while the pupil's animals are smaller and less menacing and are drawn with "regular, even" lines. >From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2009. http://scout.wisc.edu/

Brecht's Works in English: A Bibliography

Brecht's Works in English: A Bibliography [http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/BrechtGuide/] - In the United States, Bertolt Brecht is perhaps best known as the composer of the Threepenny Opera with Kurt Weill, which gave birth to the popular song known in English as "Mack the Knife". He is generally regarded as a tremendously prolific playwright, poet, and theatre director, and his works have been translated into a host of different productions and settings during the 20th and 21st centuries. This bibliography of Brecht's works in English contains over 2600 bibliographical entries and is a cooperative project between the International Brecht Society and the Bertolt-Brecht-Archiv in Berlin. The bibliography is hosted by the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections, though it should be noted that the database is not a record of the holdings of the University of Wisconsin Libraries. Visitors can scan down the homepage to access specific citation sets for Brecht's journals, essays, interviews, letters, plays, poems, and songs. The site is rounded out by a list of links to related materials, including the German Studies collection at the University of Wisconsin and the International Brecht Society. >From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2009. http://scout.wisc.edu/

In & Out of Amsterdam: Travels in Conceptual Art, 1960-1976

In & Out of Amsterdam: Travels in Conceptual Art, 1960-1976

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2009/inandout/

This small show from MoMA showcases the work of 10 artists: Bas Jan Ader, Allen Ruppersberg, Jan Dibbets, Gilbert & George, Stanley Brouwn, Hanne Darboven, Lawrence Weiner, Charlotte Posenenske, Ger van Elk, and Sol LeWitt. The exhibit is, in the words of a recent review "odd, offbeat and often thrillingly intelligent." The show captures the essence of the art scene in Amsterdam from 1960-1976, when many avant-garde artists from Holland, the rest of Europe, and the United States congregated there. Several of the works in the exhibition are performance-based, such as Ger van Elk's Paul Klee—Um den Fisch, 1926 (Around the Fish), a set of 8 slides projected on a table, showing the artist eating a fish similar to the one in Klee's more well-known painting (only one frame is shown in the web exhibition). Other works also comment on the fleetingness of time, such as Jan Dibbets' The Shortest Day at my House in Amsterdam, 80 color prints taken at eight-minute intervals between dawn and dusk on the winter solstice in 1970; or Hanne Darboven's 100 Books 00–99, 100 open books, each representing a year in a century, arranged face up on a table. [>From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2009. http://scout.wisc.edu/]

Langston Hughes Papers

Langston Hughes Papers

http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/digitallibrary/hughes.html

A portion of the Langston Hughes Papers are available here on Yale University’s Digital Library site. Hughes' complete papers (1862-1980) are comprised of "letters, manuscripts, personal items, photographs, clippings, artworks, and objects" and are available at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. For the digitized collection, visitors should click on the "See All Images" option on the left hand side of the page to view the nine pages of thumbnail images. Each thumbnail image can be expanded so that visitors can view each image in detail. Each document can also be saved, by clicking "Save" above the thumbnail. The saved images are then moved to a folder that can hold saved images to be ordered, or just viewed again. The folder is called "My Group", and can be found below the pink menu near the top of the page. Visitors shouldn't miss the beautiful poem entitled "For A'lelia" that Hughes wrote for A'Lelia Walker after she died in 1931, and which was subsequently read at her funeral. It can be found in the second row of images, in the first spot, when "See All Images" is selected on the homepage. [>From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2009. http://scout.wisc.edu/]

In Transition: Selected Poems by the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

In Transition: Selected Poems by the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

http://www.lib.umd.edu/digital/transition/index.jsp

Noted editor and literary critic Margaret Anderson once referred to the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven as "perhaps the only figure of our generation who deserves the epithet extraordinary." The future Baroness was born Else Hildegard Ploetz in 1874 and she came to the United States in 1910. After her husband committed suicide, Else become a part of the Greenwich Village artist milieu, where she began her productive, albeit brief, writing career. The twelve texts offered here by the University of Maryland are related through their themes (which include an interest in emerging scientific technologies) and their publication within "little" magazines. Visitors can get a sense of the background behind the project by reading the “Introduction”, and then moving on to look through some of the works. What is perhaps most compelling about the site is that visitors can make their way through various drafts of each work, along with commentary and other germane details. [>From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2009. http://scout.wisc.edu/]