ECSITE-UK: The science and discovery centre network - If you're hoping to find a decent science and discovery centre in the UK, then this site could be the best place to go for your search. More than 40 centres are represented from the Almond Valley Heritage Centre, an independent museum in Scotland to the Yorkshire Museum, inŠYorkshire, which has collections of Roman, Viking, Anglo-Saxon and mediaeval artefacts, and decorative arts, as well as geology and natural sciences exhibits. The ECSITE network was funded initially by the Wellcome Trust as well as the government and the British Association for the Advancement of Science. So, it's credentials are sound. The entry for each centre provides all the basic information you need from phone number to location as well as linking to the centre's own site where applicable (most science centres seem to have their own sites, unsurprisingly). Each centre also gets a descriptive paragraph to itself in the listing to entice you to make that extra click. Rating: 7 out of 10 (10 February 2003) DB
http://www.ecsite-uk.net/
Math Reference - I love the quote from Albert Einstein on the front page of this site - "Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater." There are many more of Einstein's quirky comments dotted through this interesting and useful site created by Jennifer Ledbetter, a major in mathematics at Arkansas State University, who put the site together because when looking for references during her own studies she was unable to find one site that had all she needed. Math Reference must surely come close to her wish and is an excellent resource for anyone studying mathematics at school or college, or those who just want to know more about numbers in general. The site is more of a reference aid than a teaching tool per se, providing numerous definitions, charts, equations and graphs; from the exceedingly simple, such as multiplication tables, to the more complex such as rectangular, cylindrical and spherical coordinates, and from serious calculus to a list of odds for poker hands and probabilities in a game of dice. All aspects of mathematics are covered and although currently incomplete, the site is updated regularly. The website is functional in design, with the front page acting as the site directory, however the pages are easy to navigate and a search function is also available. Rating: 7 out of 10 (27 January 2003) LH
http://www.MathReference.net/
Edgar Fahs Smith Collection - An unusual and dark layout provides an apt backdrop for Pennsylvania University's Special Collections Library. The site was established in 1996 to provide the scholarly community with web access to virtual facsimiles of original texts, documents, and sources from Penn's collections. It now carries printed books, manuscripts, photographs, maps, broadsides, ephemera, and recorded sound. And, there is a lot of them. Much of the material here will be of use in researching American history but much of it will be of rather limited appeal. More, specifically, the Edgar Fahs Smith Collection provides plenty of photos of plenty of scientists from Ernst Abbe to William Christopher Zeise. There are so fascinating images of archaic scientific instruments and equipment including 37 different pictures of alembics and a reverberatory furnace. Reprints of images and other materials can also be ordered if you are very keen to have a tangible piece of science history. Not for the faint hearted but certainly for the science historian. Rating: 6 out of 10 (5 January 2003) DB
http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/smith/
Genomics Glossary - A site that does pretty much what it says on the tin. The basic, almost graphics-free format provides a fairly clear in-road to the terms, words and definitions peculiar to the cutting- edge biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries and generally not found in everyday dictionaries. The entries for everything from genetics to genomics are well hyperlinked so that almost every term in some explanatory paragraph carries a cross reference to an explanation. Click "genomics" and you get a quick tour of the subject with terms such as bioinformatics and chemoinformatics neatly explained, followed by sequencing, microarrays, mass spectrometry and structural genomics. Ironically, there's even an entry for "information overload" although it's not so much a definition as an example at the other end of the hyperlink as you have to scroll down several screens to see the first mention of the phrase and even then it's not a definition per se. The site was created by Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI), which was formerly a conference organiser but has since evolved into an information resource for life science professionals. The logic of the linking is not at first glance straightforward and would likely put off anyone simply looking for a quick lay definition of a term. Indeed, a service like xrefer might be more suited to the simpler search. But, like it says on the tin this is a Genomics Glossary and you're likely to find here definitions and information untouched by many other reference works. Rating: 8 out of 10 (23 November 2002) DB
http://genomicglossaries.com/
Scirus.com - Scirus claims to be the most comprehensive science-specific search engine available on the Internet. It was created by New Scientist parent company Elsevier Science and enables scientists, students and anyone searching for scientific information to chart and pinpoint data, locate university sites and find reports and articles quickly and easily. A "Basic Search" on my own name, brings up my website as the first entry, so I am pleased with its approach so far. A basic search on the phrase "polyaromatic hydrocarbons" too brings up some pertinent results, Found: 4,126 total | 1,899 journal results | 2,227 Web results. A search on the same phrase on Google, however, generated 7680. It is difficult to tell how many of those would be relevant to a particular subject search. Scouring even the first couple of hundred would take quite some time. SoŠ Šan advanced search on polyaromatic hydrocarbons using Scirus various options comes in particularly handy allowing one to narrow the search to just journals (only Elsevier's repertoire mind) or web sources, which might include the ChemWeb chemistry preprint server (another Elsevier product). Subject area can be narrowed as can time range from 1973 to the present. Scirus as part of a wider search of the literature without having to resort to proprietary abstract and literature databases should therefore offer a useful starting point. Users must from the off realise that the range of journals searched is limited to a single, albeit large, publisher. Rating: 7 out of 10 (10 November 2002) DB
http://www.scirus.com/
Gateway to US Government Science and Technology Resources - Have you ever wondered where on the Internet you can find science and technology information from the U.S. government? SciTech Resources, in conjunction with Science.gov, has been created to provide easy access to the many government websites supporting scientific, engineering, technology, and consumer needs. Select a general category for browsing from the main page, and then complete a search page with advanced searching capabilities. The search results are listings of appropriate websites, with links to the site and a detailed overview of each siteąs contents. Specialized lists provide links to web portals and gateways, research and development sites, and general interest sites, along with a listing of websites by government agency. A guide for first time users provides an overview of the site, along with detailed instructions for creating an effective site search. It is important to understand that searching on this site does not conduct searches on the other sites, but instead, identifies which of the other sites are most likely to contain your desired information. With an easy layout and consistent searching options, this site makes the task of locating government sources of information easier than ever before. Rating: 9 out of 10 (10 March 2002) CK
http://www.scitechresources.gov/
USGS National Geologic Map Database - The US Geological Survey provides a convenient searchable database of maps and related data covering all Earth Science disciplines. Both paper and digital maps have been catalogued and can be queried on a number of criteria such as theme, geographic area, state, author, scale, publisher etc. Current mapping projects are also available and can be selected from a base map at two scales. Links are provided to other USGS earth science databases including coal resources for example. At present, however, this portion of the site was under construction. Overall, the easy to use search engine and a web resource section make this a valuable resource for mainly American published data. (27 December 2001) NJF
http://ngmdb.usgs.gov/
