U. S. Volcanoes and Activity Alerts
From the U. S. Geologic Survey. “The Volcano Hazards Program monitors active and potentially active volcanoes, assesses their hazards, responds to volcanic crises, and conducts research on how volcanoes work to fulfill a Congressional mandate (P.L. 93-288) that the USGS issue “timely warnings” of potential volcanic hazards to responsible emergency-management authorities and to the populace affected.”–From the website.
BioNumbers
http://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/
A database of “useful biological numbers,” complete with a search engine and full citations. If you need to know how many skin cells the human body has or the estimated number of insects on the Earth at a given moment, then this resource has what you need.
The Encyclopedia of Earth
“The Encyclopedia of Earth (EoE) is an electronic reference about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society. The EoE is a free, expert-reviewed collection of content contributed by scholars, professionals, educators, practitioners and other experts who collaborate and review each other’s work. The content is presented in a style intended to be useful to students, educators, scholars, professionals, as well as to the general public.”–From the website.
New Evidence Supports Asteroid or Comet Impact Being the Cause of the Extinction of the Dinosaurs
Scientists at the Berkeley Geochronology Center (BGC), the University of California, Berkeley, and universities in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have issued a report in an article in the Journal Science [Science 8 February 2013: Vol. 339 no. 6120 pp. 684-687. DOI: 10.1126/science 1230492. Time Scales of Critical Events Around the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary.] in which they offer the resluts of their study of the events around the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. They offer more evidence that the impact of an asteroid or comet was at the least the death blow for dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
Near Earth Object Program – NASA
NASA offers its Sentry Risk Table, which “lists potential future Earth impact events that the JPL Sentry System has detected based on currently available observations. Click on the object designation to go to a page with full details on that object.”–From the website.
Holiday Hazards – Tennessee Poison Center
http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/root/vumc.php?site=poisoncenter&doc=26448
“Here is a list of “holiday hazards” the Tennessee Poison Center believes you should know about to keep your children safe during the holidays. If you think someone has been poisoned, call Tennessee Poison Center right away–1-800-222-1222. All calls are free. Interpreters are available.”–From the website.
National Nutrient Database : National Agricultural Library, Agricultural Research Service
http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/list
You can find nutrient information on over 8,000 foods in this database. The search feature is new and improved. You can also acces the USDA Ground Beef Calculator from this same page. This page allows you to view nutrient information tailored to any fat or lean percentage of ground beef within certain ranges, either for raw ground beef, or ground beef cooked in a certain way.
Biodiversity Heritage Library
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/
“Welcome to the Biodiversity Heritage Library, a consortium of natural history and botanical libraries that cooperate to digitize and make accessible the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global “biodiversity commons.” –From the website.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
“The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ is widely recognized as the most comprehensive, objective global approach for evaluating the conservation status of plant and animal species.”–From the website.
Higgs Within Reach
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/
From CERN, the latest information on the discovery of the “god” particle.
Animal Diversity Web
http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/index.html
“Animal Diversity Web (ADW) is an online database of animal natural history, distribution, classification, and conservation biology at the University of Michigan.” –From the website.
Avibase — The World Bird Database
http://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/avibase.jsp?lang=EN&pg=home
“Avibase is an extensive database information system about all birds of the world, containing over 5 million records about 10,000 species and 22,000 subspecies of birds, including distribution information, taxonomy, synonyms in several languages and more. This site is managed by Denis Lepage and hosted by Bird Studies Canada, the Canadian copartner of Birdlife International. Avibase has been a work in progress since 1992 and I am now pleased to offer it as a service to the bird-watching and scientific community.”–From the website.
Historical Oil Spill Information
From NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration, this site provides links to information on particular oil spills in the past, as well as composite news articles on topics such as “10 Famous Spills” and “World’s Largest Oil Rig Sinks.” For general and statistical information, follow the links to “Historical Data” and “Historical Incidents Search Page.” Students might be interested in the photo database, which includes hundreds of images.
Historic Global Weather Conditions
http://www.wunderground.com/history/
View historic global weather conditions here by location and by date, going back to 1945.
The Large Hadron Collider
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/LHC/LHC-en.html
The European Organization For Nuclear Research offers this web site on the Large Hadron Collider, the particle accelerator that will revolutionize our understanding of atoms and the universe.
