• Key
• Strong Points
• Weak Points
• Ratings
• Excellent
• Very Good
• Good

• Good writing, easy to read
• A bit too focused on music
• Rating

• Art Ludwig's Sound Page
• www.silcom.com/~aludwig
• Here's another first for On the Web. I've previously covered vision-, touch-, and smell–related pages, so I guess it is time to cover sound. Art Ludwig's Sound Page is an excellent place to start. Begin with What is Sound to get a non–techie, but interesting read on the topic. Move to My Music Room to learn how the author used his knowledge of sound to construct his music room. If you're looking for techno descriptions of sound, check out Music/Human Hearing or Physics of Sound, which provide excellent coverage of these aspects of sound. Finally, to applications of sound knowledge, look to Room Acoustics and Sound System Design, where the author comes back to his interest in sound relative to room design and music. Other features include links to different sound considerations (Table of Contents) and a Microsoft rant (Bill Gates gives me the shaft once again). A fun and informative read.

• Database access
• Narrow focus
• Rating

• Elemental Data Index: Abstract
• www.physics.nist.gov/PhysRefData/Elements/cover.html
• I've covered the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) site in On the Web previously, but had apparently overlooked this aspect of the site and it is worth a mention. The Elemental Data Index pages are an effort to make available in a simple format NIST's informational holdings on the elements. Thanks to a design based on the periodic table, access to the data is quite straightforward. Clicking on an element in the table brings up links relevant to atomic spectroscopy, x-ray/gamma rays, radiation dosimetry, nuclear physics, and condensed matter physics, Yes, that's rather techie and focused on chemists and physicists, but there are many of you out there reading this, right?

• Biological info
• Not for everyone
• Rating

• Figs and Fig Wasps
• www.figweb.org
• In my never-ending search for the most obscure corners of the online biological universe, I've covered sites with topic areas ranging from armadillos to pillow mites. It was with this in mind that I knew I couldn't resist a site that promised information on Fig Wasps. Having led a sheltered life, I wasn't aware that such creatures even existed (talk about your niche!), but to my amazement, I learned that there is not only one species of wasp that likes figs, but over 640 that are known. Gulp. Indeed, it is estimated that there are another 2000 or so yet to be discovered. Ever curious, I dug through the site's descriptive "Interaction of Figs and Fig Wasps" section and learned that pollination of fig trees occurs as a result of the action of Fig Wasps, and that these species (Figs and Fig Wasps) have been evolving together for the past 90 million or so years!

• Broadness of information
• Nothing significant
• Rating

• International Bibliographic Information on Dietary Supplements (IBIDS) Database
• dietary-supplements.info.nih.gov/Health_Information/IBIDS.aspx
• From the Office of Dietary Supplements at the NIH and the Food and Nutrition Information Center (FNIC) at the USDA comes this informative database to help us better understand what is in our food. Covering over 700,000 citations on dietary supplements, the IBIDS database is an important source of information on vitamin, mineral, phytochemical, botanical, and herbal supplements in human nutrition. Journal citations come from popular online sources, including MEDLINE, AGRICOLA, nutrition journals, and AGRIS International. The search interface provides users with multiple options for narrowing down information and reveals an interesting "Top 5 Most Common Search Terms." This alone was quite informative. They are, "Metabolism Boosters", "Creatine", "Vitamin B12", "Flax", and "Book". You don't have to be a techie or a researcher to uncover interesting information here.

• Useful analysis for medical professionals
• No specific scientific interest
• Rating

• Medical Resource Reviews Database
• hpdrc.cs.fiu.edu/med.resource
• I haven't reviewed a medical site here for a while, so I jumped at the chance when I discovered the Medical Resource Reviews Database. Describing its focus is a bit of a challenge, but here goes. First, the target audience is a wide range of medical professionals– M.D.s, dentists, students, nurses, and patients. OK, that includes most of the world. The site's "beat" is also ambitious, with a "database (that) contains summaries and reviews of electronic medical information resources available by any of the following means: browsable www sites, downloadable datasets and software, or on CD–ROMs." Areas of medicine covered run the gamut from urology to infectious diseases to surgery, dentistry, and everything in between as well as beyond, like acupuncture. Numerous search options are available too.

• Great idea
• Could be broader in coverage
• Rating

• NASA Virtual Lab
• learn.arc.nasa.gov/vlab/features.html
• A colleague of mine has, in recent years, become very involved with NASA's biological sciences division, so I thought it might be an appropriate time to look into what they offer in this area. I was not disappointed. Thinking of NASA, one usually pictures high tech. That is the gist of NASA's Virtual Lab site. Aimed at education, the site is designed around an interesting idea—providing virtual access to a scanning electron microscope (SEM). By giving users tools for zooming, it gives the "feel" of an SEM and the educational materials provide movies of the real thing in action. This is a great idea and one that could be duplicated for many other scientific instruments. To get the full effect users download software that, because it uses Java, runs on Macs and various flavors of Windows. Definitely worth a look–see for scientific educators.

• Links
• Needs more organization
• Rating

• ScienceMan.com
• www.scienceman.com
• Being an interesting site on which I wrote about in this column five years ago, ScienceMan is due for an updated report and I'm happy to oblige. ScienceMan.com is pretty much a links-based site spanning biology, chemistry, ecology, geology, and physics. Organization is a strong point, with subject headings providing the main means of access to the information. I found the actual links in each category to be quite varied, but I was disappointed that they were rather randomly arranged. Alphabetization of the site names should be at least a minimal priority. In addition to the subject-specific categories, there are also links to general science sites (BBC, for example) that appear to be a concession to more general education. Don't be misled, though. The site has a lot to offer to scientists, as well.

• Well organized/well written
• None
• Rating

• The Grapes of Staph
• student.ccbcmd.edu/~gkaiser/goshp.html
• When you find a site with a title like The Grapes of Staph, you know you're dealing with a fun designer. In this case, it is Dr. Gary E. Kaiser, who is at the Community College of Baltimore County, Catonsville Campus. Apparently the home site for a class he teaches, The Grapes of Staph provide an informative collection of notes, illustrations, pictures, and even animations relevant to his lectures. With topics that range from a review of general biology to an online lab manual, apparently for the lab portion of his course, the site scores major points for educational content and understandability. I would recommend the site to anyone wanting to learn more about microbiology, who had never taken a course. I'm sure Dr. Kaiser's students have benefited from his efforts and now GEN readers can as well.

*The opinions expressed are solely those of the author(s) and should not be construed as reflecting the viewpoints of the publisher, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., the publishing house, or employees and affiliates thereof.

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