Grant Prideco: Engineering Toolkit
The Engineering Toolkit is a diverse assortment of utilities and interactive tools developed by a drilling manufacturing company. Possibly the most useful item in the toolkit is the Equation Bank, which contains nearly 100 equation solvers. Most are related to civil engineering and calculate effects due to pressure, parameters for pipe threading, and more. Another resource is the unit converter, a powerful tool with both metric and English units and over 20 dimensions from which to choose. A lar
Association for Biology Laboratory Education
Established in 1979, the Association for Biology Laboratory Education (ABLE) promotes "information exchange among university and college educators actively concerned with teaching biology in a laboratory setting." The ABLE website contains information about grants, past and future annual conferences, and membership. ABLE also posts employment opportunities, and an extensive array of links organized into categories for General Biology, Online Journals, Biological Animations, Suppliers of Biologic
CSU Engine Web Pages
This resource on internal combustion engines comes from a mechanical engineering professor at Colorado State University. It is essentially an online textbook with three main chapters, which cover the topics of thermodynamics, heat transfer, and fluid mechanics involved in engine operation. Users should have an understanding of basic engine components, and a background in calculus would be helpful. Some of the material is fairly conceptual, while other parts involve analytical derivations. Many s
World AIDS Day 2004
From the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, this website provides information and images related to Worlds AIDS Day 2004. Notably, the site contains a downloadable version of the _AIDS Epidemic Update 2004_, which "provides the most recent estimates of the epidemic's scope and human toll, explores new trends in the epidemic's evolution, and features a special section on women and AIDS." In addition, site visitors can download a set of eleven epidemiological PowerPoint slides based on th
Extrasolar Visions
The Extrasolar Visions Web site provides a searchable guide to extra solar planets. These include planets of normal stars, pulsar planets, brown dwarfs, protoplanetary disks and protoplanets, extragalactic worlds, massive compact halo objects, and disproven or doubtful worlds. Visitors can search for these objects or view the week's 20 most popular systems, 20 most interesting systems, or the 20 most recently updated systems. Once chosen, the objects name, mass, average distance, and type is giv
Nutrition Café
Developed jointly by the Pacific Science Center and the Washington State Dairy Council, Nutrition Café offers students three interactive games to explore the world of nutrition. The first game, Nutrient Sleuth, is an entertaining hangman-style game where students try to discover what nutrients different characters are missing based on clues and letter guesses. Another enjoyable offering is Grab A Grape, a Jeopardy-style game where site visitors try to match nutrition-related questions with answ
White House: President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board
A draft of the Bush administration's National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace was released September 18, 2002. The 65-page report, spurred primarily by the risk of cyber terrorism, can be viewed at this Web site. It assesses the most serious threats to, and most vulnerable areas in, small operations, large enterprises, and critical sectors like government. After identifying some of the current weak areas in Internet infrastructure, the report makes suggestions about the best practices for correcti
Seaworld: Water
An educational lesson plan entitled Water is offered by the Seaworld teacher resources Web site. Objectives of the unit include having students identify the three phases of water, discuss the hydrologic cycle, describe the structure of the water molecule and the properties of water, explain ocean currents, and more. The well designed lesson allows students to study various topics by reading provided text and completing the activities described such as measuring salt content in water and estimati
The High Energy Weapons Archive: A Guide to Nuclear Weapons
Nuclear weapons are arguably the most destructive force invented by humans. The High Energy Weapons Archive has material on the history of their development, post World War II testing, and country-specific nuclear programs. There are facts about countries that could soon have nuclear weapon technology, including Iraq and Israel. Several links to government and news related sites are also given. Simply a source of information, the archive in no way condones nuclear weapons; this is stated repeate
Coral Reef Information System: Discover NOAA's Data
Part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coral Reef Information System (CoRIS), this Web site is "designed to be a single point of access to NOAA coral reef information and data products, especially those derived from NOAA's Coral Reef Initiative Program." With Discover NOAA's Data, users can access information by a text search of metadata records, or by a spatial search using an Arc IMS application. The two approaches share many of the same data sets. With the text search,
Biological Biochemical Image Database
The National Institute on Aging -- one of the National Institutes of Health -- provides the Biological Biochemical Image Database, "a searchable database of images of putative biological pathways, macromolecular structures, gene families, and cellular relationships." The database is intended for researchers "working with large sets of genes or proteins using cDNA arrays, functional genomics, or proteomics." The database may be searched by gene name, pathway, cell or tissue type, disease name, bi
A Thin Blue Line: The History of the Pregnancy Test
In today's world, the test for pregnancy is only a pharmacy, and minutes, away. This wasn't always the case, however. Until 1978 no definitive means existed for at-home pregnancy testing. This site, from the National Institutes of Health, traces the history of the test back to its earliest roots at NIH. The site includes historical information on the early Egyptian practice of women urinating on wheat and barley to the more modern research into human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), the so-called p
Museum of the Future
This Web site, operated by the Ars Electronica Center in Austria, provides an online tour of a fascinating museum. It can be a little confusing to navigate at first, but it is certainly worth visiting. The main attraction is the Guide through the Museum of the Future. After clicking this link, it is important to note the language selector that chooses between German and English. Six different sections of the museum can be explored by the icons on the right, and each section has several different
Captain Astounding
This is a companion website to the Captain Astounding books, which are "richly illustrated" books intended to make mathematics enjoyable for undergraduate students and adult learners. The books are described as humorous stories addressing topics in math, which the website argues makes them not text books. The website provides information about the books, contests and useful links, as well as a section highlighting some math topics from the featured book. For February, 2005, the featured book is
MIT Space Systems Laboratory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created the Space Systems Laboratory (SSL) in 1995 to engage in "cutting edge research projects with the goal of directly contributing to the present and future exploration and development of space." Users can find materials on current and past flight projects such as the Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) and the Interferometry Program Experiment (IPEX). The website also features SSL's ground programs and re
Switcheroo Zoo
As the name implies, the colorfully animated Switcheroo Zoo -- produced by Tubehead, an interactive multimedia studio -- allows you to swap the heads, legs, or tails of various zoo animals to create fantastical new creatures. Not just a place to watch cool morphing animation, this Web site has educational applications as well. Click on Educators' Resources, and scroll to the bottom of the page for a simple lesson plan geared toward younger students. The lesson plan is designed to "expand student
Great Lakes BeachCast
The Great Lakes Information Network developed this website to "broadcast critical information about beach closings and educational content on human health concerns." The website provides the latest news on erosion control projects, contamination and cleanup efforts, beach testing efforts, and other environmental news. Users can explore monitoring data and maps by location. The website also contains the proceedings from the Great Lakes Beach Conferences from 2001 and 2002 and the US EPA's Beach P
Computer Aided Instruction Project
Central Connecticut State University maintains several tutorials and lecture notes about different programming languages and mathematics. Some of the material, most notably the Introduction to Assembly Language, is primarily intended for computer science students. However, much of the site can be useful for anyone; programming guides for Java and QuickBasic are provided, as well as tutorials on vector mathematics and finite-state automata. All of these topics are presented separately and are qui
NOAA Satellite and Information Service
"The Satellite Services Division of the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) provides real time access to satellite data and products for the public and government." Users can locate Hazard Mapping System (HMS) Fire Analysis, real-time satellite fire monitoring, Web-based GIS fire analysis, and additional fire products. The OSEI (Operational Significant Event Imagery) link supplies archived and current images of flood events, severe weather, tropical cyclones,
Soil Landscapes of Canada
The Canadian Land Resource Networks (CLRN) online mapping application, Soil Landscapes of Canada, utilizes GIS technology to view the major characteristics of soil and land for the country and is "organized according to a uniform national set of soil and landscape criteria based on permanent natural attributes." Users can view coverage from eighteen areas and ten different attributes -- including soil development, surface material, slope, and vegetation cover; with or without cities and roads; a
