Towse: views from the hill

This is a crafty site: http://www.bookofages.com/.

The site revolves around the Book of Ages, a series, the first of which (the age 30) is out. Need to know any factoids about thirty year olds? This book’s for you. The site’s crafty because it’s an excellent marketing tool. The site provides enough meaty info that you can knowledgeably decide whether you are or are not interested in what the book might offer. Interesting factoids. Did you know that at age 30 both Harrison Ford and Jesus were carpenters?

Just sent off the April 2004 column for Computer Bits which goes into long and gory (but less long and gory than it had been) detail on kewl-ish Web sites I came across at AAAS in Seattle over the Presidents’ Day weekend.

Amazing stuff out there.

OSTI, the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information: http://www.osti.gov — deep Web stuff

Science.gov: http://www.science.gov – access to over 1,700 government information resources

National Academies: http://www.nationalacademies.org) – publications and Web pages produced by the academies

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST): http://www.nist.gov

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory at Hanford: http://www.pnl.gov

EurekAlert: http://www.eurekalert.org – cutting edge science news

SCIRUS: http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/ a science-specific search engine

Public Library of Science: http://plos.org – an interesting concept. Hope it works.

the Sheffield Chemdex: http://www.chemdex.org – over 7K chemistry links

ChemWeb.com: http://www.chemweb.com – “the largest online chemical community in the world”

US Geological Survey (USGS)’ “Status and Trends of the Nation’s Biological Resources”: http://biology.usgs.gov/s+t/SNT/index.htm – used to be available as two thick volumes of data. Now? … it’s all there on the Web. Download as PDF files.

USGS: http://www.usgs.gov/ – all hail the USGS

USGS’ publications warehouse: http://infotrek.er.usgs.gov/pubs/ – to buy or download for free

USGS’ national map: http://nationalmap.usgs.gov – more cool technology

USGS’ earthquake info: http://earthquake.usgs.gov – real time earthshaking info

USGS’ Advanced National Seismic Survey: http://www.anss.org/

Earthquakes in Oregon: http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/states/oregon/

National Library of Medicine: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gquery/gquery.fcgi – awash with useful information

PubMedCentral: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/ – an archive of life sciences journal articles provided free online

MedLinePlus’s drug information online: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginformation.html

UC’s BioTech programs: http://ucbiotech.org

Genome information: http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/posters/chromosome

DOE’s Genome programs: http://doegenomes.org

Human Gene Therapy, the magazine: http://www.liebertpub.com/hum/default1.asp

Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, the magazine: http://www.biosecurityjournal.com/

Annals of Improbable Research: http://improbable.com

More info available when the April column goes up at the Computer Bits site, sometime after the beginning of April.