Science Resources

GENERAL RESOURCES
• The Federation of American Scientists

• New Scientist

• Merhaze
Cutting edge technology centre on the web for a large number of companies. he network "Merzhase" offers the possibility to present your ideas to a broad range of people. "Merzhase" is a kind of portal site, which deals with innovations in design, art and technology. You should think about ways of presenting your work in a network like the World Wide Web, for example as a website or a PDF - file. "Merzhase" links its contents. Use "Merzhase" to share knowledge.

• Natural Environment Research Council
Find out about the latest UK research into subjects such as global warming, the effects of deplete uranium on the environment and more...

• Technology Research News
Technology Research News (TRN) is an independent publisher and news service dedicated to covering technology research developments in university, corporate and government labs. Every story published by TRN is the result of direct, original reporting.

BIOLOGY

INSECTS
• Insecta.com
A web site totally devoted to every creepy crawlie imaginable. Plenty of ideas for alien behaviours here! (Though of course it wouldn't then be 'real' alien behaviour!)
Sadly, the The Spencer Entomological Museum that maintains this wonderful site, located at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada is currently closed (and has been since Jan. 1993) due to budget constraints. It is maintained by a volunteer staff of up to 4 students per year, plus the Director (Dr. G. Scudder) and the Curator (K.M. Needham).

EXTINCT ANIMALS
• MegaFauna
Link: www.kokogiak.com/megafauna
Extinct Animals. Normally one would hear those words used to describe the dinosaurs - or perhaps the Dodo Bird. But what people don't often think of are the thousands of interesting creatures that lived and died on this planet of ours in the "in-between" years. The last dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago, the last Dodo died over 300 years ago. The millions of years between the two (The Cenozoic Era) have been populated (off and on) by some of the largest mammals the world has ever seen. Some familiar, some bizarre - often gigantic, these Megafauna (Latin for "large animals") can be every bit as intriguing as the dinosaurs.
This site gathers 30 representative animals together for a glimpse at some of the remarkable beasts that walked the same Earth we now live on. All images have a human figure, used for scale. His name is Graham, he is 5ft 10in (1.8m) tall and he gets around. They also list the generally accepted height of the animal, the time period it walked the earth, a short description, and several outside links for more information.

REPTILES
• British Reptiles: An Online Field Guide
Link: www.onewildworld.co.uk/reptiles
Detailing native and foreign reptiles of the UK. In the last hundred or so years the British Isles have seen the arrival of an ever increasing number of foreign reptile species brought here by man.

• NeMys: Generic Biological information system
Link: http://intramar.ugent.be/nemys/
Developed at the Marine Biology Section at Ghent University mainly with focus on marine Nematoda and Mysida, NeMys is a database system developed to store as many as possible types of biological information on mainly marine taxa in a fully digital way.
Data input is done at the Marine Biology Section (Ghent University) (Mysida by Tim Deprez, Nematoda by several meiobenthic researchers). For both Mysida and Nematoda, information on species worldwide is entered. Especially for nematoda, priorities for data logging follow from the activities of the section. For Mysida, data is entered systematically for all species, in the framework of the PhD research of Tim Deprez.
The site includes the EUROHERP database which aims to provide a centre of knowledge on European herpetofauna (amphibians and reptiles) in the wild.

• Reptiles and Amphibians of the UK
Link: www.herpetofauna.co.uk
I came across this web site while trying to track down naturalist Alan Hyde, who kindly gave me images used on my old Turkish pages. This is a wonderful site with news and information about all things slithery. Sadly, many species are under threat from development (bypasses, for example). Find out more.



STRANGE MATTER
• www.strangematterexhibit.com
Found by KenRadio: Did you know an entire field of science exists that is dedicated to the study of everyday stuff? It's called materials science, and believe it or not, it's a booming business. There are 300,000 (and counting) known materials, and all are either natural substances like metals, wood, or the silicon that allows you to read this Yahoo! Pick, or man-made ones such as plastics, polymers, and the like. Even more elaborate are new-fangled carbon composites and gravity-defying aerogels that are cooked up in the lab in the interest of the greater good. What material kicks the most butt? Find out who'll crack under pressure in the head-to-head smackdown. See how sand becomes a cell phone, athletes stay ahead of the curve, and bridges stay in place. When the next indispensable convenience hits mainstream, you can be sure materials scientists were in on the action early.

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• Exploring Space
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