Real-Time Web-Based Space Shuttle, ISS, and Satellite Tracking Tools
+ Shuttle and ISS Tracker #1 (Java)
+ Real Time Shuttle, ISS and Satellite Tracking (Java)
+ JTrack 3D (Java)
+ Space Shuttle and ISS Real Time Ground Spotting Opportunities
+++++ Skywatch 2.0 App (Java)
Archive for May, 2008
Real-Time Space Shuttle, International Space Station, and Satellite Tracking Tools
Saturday, May 31st, 2008Health and Physical Activity Reference Database
Saturday, May 31st, 2008Health and Physical Activity Reference Database
The American College of Sports Medicine Office of Museum, History, and Archives is pleased to provide the Health and Physical Activity Reference Database of articles and books published over the past 200 years or more related generally, to the connection between health and physical exercise and the early history of the physiology of exercise. Most of the material was written in English and was published in North America. However, some material was published in France, Germany, and England, among a few other countries.
The references were selected from a large number of published material and are by no means a complete listing. The listings are divided into two distinct reference databases. One, titled “Health and Physical Activity”, includes 3,131 separate citations to literature. The second, titled “Exercise Physiology”, includes 223 references from the literature.
The members of the Office of Museum, History, and Archives hope these two searchable reference databases will be helpful to researchers in the field, but warn that they are not exhaustive lists of the entire published literature on these topics. Instead, they are “selected†lists and should be supplemented by searching other available databases.
Source: American College of Sports Medicine
Widgets to the rescue — USASearch.gov aims to make agency info easier to find with new spotlight tool
Saturday, May 31st, 2008The rise of widgets on the Web has spawned a virtual industry of plug-in capabilities. Now a Web services group in the federal government is entering the fray with a new set of search widgets aimed at improving government Web sites.
The new plug-in applications, developed for USASearch.gov by Vivisimo, are in final testing and due for release next month. They are designed to address a frequent failure of search engines tethered to agency Web sites: getting often-sought government information and services to appear prominently in the search results.
The widgets aim to solve that problem by giving agency Web managers new tools to spotlight selected information and extend the capabilities of USASearch.gov, a customized search engine launched three years ago by USA Services, a unit of the General Services Administration’s Office of Citizen Services and Communications.
Source: Government Computer News
New from National Geographic: TOPO! Explorer
Friday, May 30th, 2008Browse and download topo maps and trails from our new recreation database.
Source: NGS
Database Briefs
Friday, May 30th, 2008+ ImportGenius: The Disruptive Shipping Database (via TechCrunch)
+ Combining OA, wikis, community annotation, semantic processing, and text mining (via OA News)
+ GrantGopher.com Launches Free Available Grant Database to Connect Nonprofits with Funding Resources
+ Prof Creates Tattoo Database For Police (via Detroit News)
New Genealogy Database from Canada: Immigrants from China
Friday, May 30th, 2008New Genealogy Database from Library and Archives Canada: Immigrants from China
The Government of Canada created documents specifically for new arrivals from China. This research tool provides access to 98,361 references to Chinese immigrants who arrived in Canada between 1885 and 1949.
The General Registers of Chinese Immigration were indexed by the Department of History at the University of British Columbia (www.ubc.ca/). This index is intended for personal genealogical use only.
Source: Library and Archives Canada
Agriculture: New database consolidates feed information
Friday, May 30th, 2008The USDA’s Economic Research Service has launched a new online service providing statistics on feed grains, hay and related items. The database includes information published in the monthly Feed Outlook and previously annual Feed Yearbook.
Source: Dairy Heard
Consumers Union To Launch Online Hospital Ratings Service
Friday, May 30th, 2008From the article:
The new online service will rate an estimated 3,000 hospitals nationwide on the intensity of care for nine serious medical conditions. Consumers Union, the not-for-profit group that publishes Consumer Reports magazine, currently rates health plans, medications and some medical treatments and might rate physician groups and elder care in the future.
Source: iHealthBeat
New Science Reference Guide: Solar Ovens and Solar Cooking
Friday, May 30th, 2008Cooking with the sun’s power is a fun way to use a renewable resource, and with excellent results. This guide lists books on solar oven design, solar cookbooks and Internet resources for the solar chef.
Source: Science Reference Division, Library of Congress
Biomass Document Database
Friday, May 30th, 2008The Biomass Document Database is a collection of public documents of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Biomass Program. This includes most documents prepared since 1980 by the Biofuels Technology Program, many of the more recent documents for the whole Biomass Program, and selected “related” documents that are relevant to the Biomass Program, even if not produced by it. Each citation contains a short abstract, and is coded to allow search by key words, author, and title.
As many documents as possible are attached as PDFs. However, many journal articles, book chapters, and other documents cannot be posted as PDFs because of their copyright status. These documents should be available from your library. The document database will indicate this while providing sufficient bibliographic information for you to locate them.
Source: U.S. Department of Energy
Fast Facts and Stats About Television in the United States
Friday, May 30th, 2008A new “Fact for Features” guide from the U.S. Census Bureau. Some of the stats include:
+ 110 million
The number of households with a television set in 2006, compared with 76 million households in 1980.
+ 2.6
The average number of television sets per home in 2005. In 1980, that number was 1.7.
+ More than 1,600
The number of television stations in the United States already broadcasting digital programs.
Many more stats on the page.
Source: U.S. Census
Library Briefs
Friday, May 30th, 2008Shrinking the Carbon Footprint of Metropolitan America…and other full-text reports on DocuTicker
Friday, May 30th, 2008Posted 29 May 2008 on DocuTicker:
+ Shrinking the Carbon Footprint of Metropolitan America (The Brookings Institution)
+ Air Travelers Avoided 41 Million Trips in Past Year – U.S. Economy Takes $26.5 Billion Hit (Travel Industry Association)
+ Canada becoming haven for would be terrorists while politicians look the other way in search of votes (The Fraser Institute)
The British Library 19th Century Book Digitisation Project
Thursday, May 29th, 2008The British Library has over 20 years of experience digitising its collections. The mass digitisation of 19th century literature in partnership with Microsoft is one of fifteen British Library-led digitisation initiatives, currently taking place…Approximately 75,000 pages are being scanned daily by the digitisation studios at the British Library. A further 40,000 out-of-copyright books will be scanned as agreed in the Library’s contract with Microsoft.
New Online: Programme for the 74th IFLA General Conference and Council
Thursday, May 29th, 2008Here’s the complete programme. We will feature papers and presentations that will be presented at the conference (and linked in the programme, as they become available) in upcoming RS posts. This years conference theme: “Libraries without borders: Navigating towards global understanding”. The conference will take place this August in Quebec City.
Source: International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
Take the Flickr Search Challenge
Thursday, May 29th, 2008Via an email:
With the CLEF Flickr Challenge, now you can prove that you are also a great searcher in the context of a challenging retrieval task, where you have to find images without a-priori knowledge of the language(s) used to annotate them. You can go straight to:
http://soporte1.lsi.uned.es/flickling
and start testing your search skills.
The challenge is simple: you will be given raw (unannotated) images, and your goal is to find them in the Flickr.com image repository, using textual search facilities. The more images you find (and the less hints you need), the better you score in the ranking.
The Flickr challenge is an initiative of the interactive CLEF (http://www.clef-campaign.org) track. Visit http://nlp.uned.es/iCLEF for details.
The (anonymized) logs of your search activity will contribute to a log analysis task in the context of interactive cross-language search studies.
New Web Guide: How to Find a Novel, Short Story, or Poem Without Knowing its Title or Author
Thursday, May 29th, 2008How to Find a Novel, Short Story, or Poem Without Knowing its Title or Author
Browsers Are a Battleground Once Again
Thursday, May 29th, 2008Browsers Are a Battleground Once Again
The browser, that porthole onto the broad horizon of the Web, is about to get some fancy new window dressing.
Next month, after three years of development and six months of public testing, Mozilla, the insurgent browser developer that rose from the ashes of Netscape, will release Firefox 3.0. It will feature a few tricks that could change the way people organize and find the sites they visit most frequently.
Not to be outdone, Microsoft recently took the wraps off the first public test version of the latest edition of Internet Explorer, which is used by about 75 percent of all computer owners, according to Net Applications, a market share tracking firm. The finished version of Internet Explorer 8 could be released by the end of the year and is expected to have additional features.
Even Apple, which once politely kept its Safari browser within the confines of its own devices, is making a somewhat controversial push to get it onto the computers of people who use Windows PCs.
In other words, the browser war — the skirmish that landed Microsoft in antitrust trouble in the ’90s — is heating up again.
Source: New York Times
Categorizing Junk eMail
Thursday, May 29th, 2008Usually our eyes glaze over when we look at the enormous pile of spam in our inbox. It all seems like such nonsense, an electronic Tower of Babel that loses any specific meaning in an ocean of noise. However, there a many different kinds of kinds of Junk eMail and understanding the difference and details of each kind helps fight the problem. KnujOn recognizes these various types and has a different process for each one. As a victim of Junk eMail it is important to understand the different threat each one represents and why it is necessary to address these threats head-on. The format of these reports are designed to give you the most useful and actionable information by addressing these questions: What is it? Why is it a problem? How would it affect me? and What can be done? We provide samples, resources and specific cases for each.
Source: KnujOn
