HotSites --14sept97
Four Star Sites
Evironmental News Network (ENN). The home page is a virtual environmental news clearinghouse, collecting info from sources as widespread as the Swedish government to U.S. green-beat reporters. The vast database is updated regularly to include breaking eco-news as it happens daily around the world. During the ruckus over French nuclear testing in the South Pacific, for instance, ENN fed continuous reports to its "Daily News" file, including an eyewitness account of a Tahitian riot and commentary from France's top political and environmental journalists. ENN also maintains an extensive library of resources: abstracts, articles and papers can be searched by topic or date.
U.C. Berkeley's Earth Sciences and Map Libraries. Colorful global graphics and growing collection of online maps. The digital maps are organized into areas such as nautical charts, topographic maps, transportation and communications maps, fascimile maps and reproductions, and aerial photography. You'll also find research round-ups of fire insurance maps -- invaluable historical, building-by-building cartographic community portraits. Though once used by insurance companies to assess risk, the site notes that "Today these maps are used by scholars and researchers in such fields as history, urban geography, architectural history and preservation, ethnic studies, and urban archaeology."
New Scientist is one of the world's leading science newsweekly. Planet Science, a fruit of the New Scientist staff's labor, certainly ranks near the pinnacle of science on the Web. (It's free, but registration is required.) Pleasant to look at and easy to understand without resorting to "science lite," Planet science posts the latest New Scientist plus material from the magazine's archives, arranged by category. The section that really jumps out is "strange science," with topics like "Why orange juice tastes terrible after brushing teeth," and "Why eating asparagus causes aromatic urine." There's of plenty of more pertinent and timely scinece news, too, providing edification for both pro scientists and the merely curious.
More HotSites
For more hot science sites visit the Editors' Selections page from Scientific American.
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