From WorldStart.com

I'm a sucker for photographs. The Internet Public Library has a great collection of Lighthouse photographs.

A Concrete Curtain: The Life and Death of the Berlin Wall is an in-depth look at "the Berlin Wall from its creation to it's destruction."
Get a cup of coffee, and take a long, hard look at the price of slavery.

The Era of the Clipper Ships features images, stories of individual ships, and maritime history.
You don't want to miss it.

The South Street Seaport, with its own Museum, is one of the most popular tourist attractions in New York City

Sometimes it seems as if nuclear power is very unpopular. But it's still fascinating. The Virtual Nuclear Tourist allows you to tour plants around the world. The explanations for nuclear power are very thorough, and easy to understand.

It's ironic that with all the talk about the Internet making libraries obsolete, one of the prettiest sites I've ever seen is paperonline.
You'll learn way more than you cared to know about paper.

Here's a nice site dedicated to the wonders of the camera obscura. What's a camera obscura, you ask?
Sorry, you'll have to go and see.
While you're there, check out the Bright Bytes Studio.

from NewsWire

Fifty years ago, on April 26, 1954, thousands of parents drove their school-age children to designated sites across the country for immunizations of an experimental vaccine that they hoped would stop, once and for all, the raging polio epidemic that was leaving young Americans paralyzed and sometimes dead. One year later, after the largest voluntary clinical field trial ever undertaken, the Salk vaccine was declared "safe, potent and effective." Polio was virtually eliminated from North America and, hopefully, from the
world by 2005.
There's a fascinating, informative timeline at the March of Dimes site.

A new Web site is connecting U.S. private industry and technologies developed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) $1 billion research and development program.
The VA Medical Research Technologies site, developed and maintained by the National Technology Transfer Center (NTTC), is designed to help bring inventions resulting from world-class VA research to commercial production to benefit both veterans and the general population.

While human sexual chemistry may seem beyond rational explanation, scientific understanding of the sexual chemistry of sea slugs has just taken a great leap forward.
In a paper to be published next week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston report the results of six years of biochemical, structural biological and behavioral studies of the water-borne protein pheromones that sea slugs {members of the genus Aplysia) use to attract mates. UTMB scientists led by Gregg Nagle and Sherry D. Painter (also authors on this paper) discovered these attractins, the first water-borne invertebrate pheromones to be found in the late 1990s. The chemicals are so powerful that even a teaspoonful in a swimming-pool-sized tank would be enough to elicit sea-slug mating behavior.
Although hermaphroditic, Aplysia almost never fertilize themselves. Instead, they make attractins, which perform the dual function of summoning a mate (no easy task for a nearly blind animal in dark waters) and stimulating it to take on a male role in copulation - unless, as often happens, more than one Aplysia shows up, in which case the creatures form chains with the Aplysia in the middle acting as both male and female.
Aiiieeee!! TMI! TMI!

The Association of American Geographers (AAG) has recognized Charles "Fritz" Gritzner for his tremendous impact on geography education in South Dakota. The distinguished professor of geography at South Dakota State University has received the 2004 Distinguished Teaching Honors award for outstanding contributions to geographical education. The AAG plaque states that Gritzner "is a model teacher who has worked tirelessly to ensure that geography is both required and taught well within schools throughout South Dakota."
In 1984, Gritzner successfully lobbied for what became the nation's first high school geography requirement. Effective in 1988, all South Dakota students were required to successfully complete one geography course in order to graduate. About half of all States now either require geography for graduation or have enhanced its position in the curriculum.
In 1984, the first year of the geography requirement, very few teachers had a geography background. So Gritzner and several colleagues began teaching short courses for teachers, which he's still doing 20 years later.
"It's probably safe to say I've taught 75 percent of the geography taken by 75 percent of the South Dakota teachers who've had a geography course," he said. That adds up to some 800 teachers, give or take, thus far.
"We've been told that figure represents more K-12 educators that have master's degrees in geography than in all other states combined," Gritzner said.
Only one of these awards is given each year.
You've earned it, Prof

A nationwide survey of parents with children under the age of 15 indicates that TV and movies play a significant role in educating children about good hygiene.
Nancy Bock, Soap and Detergent Association Vice President of Education, said, "Children's programming can play a critical role in educating youth about cleanliness, which is directly linked to today's societal health issues, such as asthma and disease prevention."
Unfortuately, that's where they learn everything else.

At the age of 61, Clarence "Nic" Nicodemus is getting ready to take that next step in his life, and it's not retirement.
At a time when most people are beginning to slow down, Nicodemus is graduating from the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine (COM) and is preparing for his one-year internship.
You go, Nic!

Type "biology" into the Google or Yahoo! search engines and the first entry that comes up is the University of Arizona's Biology Project, an on-line interactive resource for learning biology.
And Google visitors who feel lucky in their search for biology link straight into the project, which can be found at http://www.biology.arizona.edu/.
The Web site began life as a way to provide additional help and materials to students taking UA's introductory Biology 181 course. The site now has users in more than 160 countries.
I'm Bookmarking it now.