NEXRAD National Mosaic Reflectivity Images
The NEXRAD National Mosaic Reflectivity site allows users to search for reflectivity images by date. Daily images are available for 1 April 1995 to 18 April 1997, and hourly images are available for 19 April 1997 to 22 March 2004. The images are clickable maps that allows users to zoom in and out of the United States reflectivity images.
Color Schemes
'Color Schemes' features twelve performers and writers of color who collaborate to recount incidents of racism, particularly racism in the entertainment industry. The work uses the metaphor of washing a load of colored clothing and is divided up into four sections based on laundry cycles. Cycle One, 'Soak,' opens with an archival piece of animation about the price of labor, with a particularly offensive rendition of a Chinese man who is referred to repeatedly as a 'coolie.' In a staged vignette,
Volcano Saga
Based on a thirteenth-century Icelandic myth, 'Volcano Saga' recounts the tales of a young woman (portrayed by Tilda Swinton) whose dreams foretell the future.
21st Century Explorer
This site answers questions that include: Why do we want to travel to Mars? How would your body change in space? Where would a space explorer find water and oxygen? How can we travel faster in space? Student actors (on video) and hands-on activities are featured with each answer. The site is for Grades 3-5 and available in Spanish.
Investigating the Climate System: Clouds
This activity casts students as interns in a state climatology office. Their assignment: to investigate how clouds form, how they're classified, and their role in heating and cooling the earth. This 30-page guide also helps students understand why clouds (and the study of them) are important.
Curso Cero para EconomÃa (spanish)
Materiales didácticos on-line para preparar el estudio de un curso de introducción a la EconomÃa, especialmente para estudiantes de ciencias sociales.
History's Warming
An ancient global warming episode drastically changed the planet. Life on Earth needed 200,000 years to recover. What we're headed for in the next century could be even bigger.
Evolution of High-Throughput Data
Approaches to gene therapy and computational models. Lecture from the Women in Bioinformatics series. Tina M. Hernandez-Boussard, Ph.D. Scientific Curator, Computational Biologist, Department of Genetics, School of Medicine. PharmGKB at Stanford University.
Black Smokers: Life Forms
This educational web site features life forms of deep sea hydrothermal systems. Hosted by the American Museum of Natural History, this site offers a brief introduction of the community and then focuses on Vestimentiferan tube worms, Vescomyid clams, and Bathymodiolid mussels. The site includes interactive games, teacher resources, a glossary, and more.
WebMapper Presentations
This mirror site for NOAA's World Data Center (WDC) for Paleoclimatology offers Java applets on annual records of tropical systems (ARTS) and WDC data on coral, sclerosponge, ice core, plant microfossil, pollen, and tree rings. Each animation displays summary information (e.g., site name, investigator, latitude, longitude (in decimal degrees), place, altitude, the number of samples, variables, radiocarbon dates, species, date ranges, etc.); as well as the publications associated with the site; d
It's an ad!
How do marketers target kids -- and how can we teach kids to know the difference between advertising and fact? These websites provide strategies to build critical thinking skills for media literate kids.
Becoming an online teacher
For even the most experienced classroom teacher, teaching online requires a thoughtful transition to the new environment.
Greeting your Limited English Proficient (LEP) students in their own language
Even a simple "Hello" or "How are you today?" can help to integrate a student into a new environment. This article offers strategies and tools for teachers wishing to learn a few words of a new language.
Smithsonian Kids: Collecting
This site invites kids to start a collection of rocks, shells, postcards, posters, or something else that interests them. Three Smithsonian collections are sampled. Rocks and Minerals includes the Hope Diamond; Stamps includes Western Cattle in Storm (1898); Historic Coins includes the Jefferson Indian Peace Medal.
Whatzzzup-Stream?
In this set of exercises, students will study rivers and waterways around them by using the Internet, maps, and their knowledge of local landscapes. The students will use an EPA Web site to investigate what is upstream and downstream of them. They will also look at graphs of flow in familiar river locations on a live U.S. Geological Survey Web site. Using small rocks and a washbasin, students will build a model that leads to extending their understanding of streams in different geographic locati
Calisphere Themed Collection - 1939-1945: World War II: California and the Postwar Suburban Home
These images by Los Angeles–based photographer Maynard L. Parker show suburban homes in California in the two decades following World War II. Many appeared in popular house and design magazines of the era. They offered middle–class consumers a new way of living that emphasized a relaxed, low–maintenance, private, indoor–outdoor experience.
Phylogenetic analysis
This exercise introduces students to analysis of evolutionary relationships both by analysis of molecular similarity and by cladistic techniques. The molecular analysis uses both paper-and-pencil and bioinformatics comparison of the amino acid sequence of the hemoglobin beta chain of eight vertebrates. The cladistic exercises introduce students to cladistic principles, and then allow students to solve hypothetical problems both with and without homoplasy. Students then test their cladistic abili
Plant Hormones: Bioassay for Gibberellin
This simple assay makes use of the ability of the plant hormone GA3 to induce starch breakdown in the endosperm of a barley seed from which the embryo has been removed. The effect of the hormone is clear and repeatable. This exercise can be used in introductory biology courses to demonstrate a basic plant process, or can be modified and used to investigate more sophisticated questions in a developmental biology course.
Principles of Autonomy and Decision Making, Fall 2003
This course surveys a variety of reasoning, optimization, and decision-making methodologies for creating highly autonomous systems and decision support aids. The focus is on principles, algorithms, and their applications, taken from the disciplines of artificial intelligence and operations research. Reasoning paradigms include logic and deduction, heuristic and constraint-based search, model-based reasoning, planning and execution, reasoning under uncertainty, and machine learning. Optimization
Communication Systems Engineering, Spring 2003
Introduces the fundamentals of digital communications and networking. Topics covered include elements of information theory, sampling and quantization, coding, modulation, signal detection and system performance in the presence of noise. Study of data networking includes multiple access, reliable packet transmission, routing and protocols of the internet. Concepts discussed in the context of aerospace communication systems: aircraft communications, satellite communications, and deep space commun
