Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Swine Flu Data

The past week I've been enmeshed in writing the disaster policy manual for Chadwick Library. It has been a very time consuming process, but that's a post for another day. But, the importance of doing this has been underscored by the latest world event, that of the swine flu that has recently grabbed the attention of the world headlines.

While participating in the listserv for the disaster preparedness forum, there has been much discussion pertaining to the rapid response and appropriate forms of communicating about swine flu.

I came across this very interesting map that shows where outbreaks of diseases exist. Its creators are affliated with Harvard, but uses sources from various national (CDC) and world (WHO)agencies. It also adds in other data sources such as Google News, and ProMed to add to the comprehensive view of the current state of global infectious diseases.

HealthMap provides a jumping-off point for real-time information on emerging infectious diseases and has particular interest for public health officials and international travelers.

Take a look:
http://www.healthmap.org/en

Also interesting is the "Twitter" posts. Check them out at the top of the page.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Business Website

Business Daily
http://businessdaily.com/

One of the largest international news sites on the Internet.

Nursing and Health Websites--March

Recommended health and nursing websites from the March issue of Choice Reviews:

American Association of the History of Nursing
http://www.aahn.org/position.html

Contagion: Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics

http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/contagion/

Genes and Disease
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/disease/

Smoking and Health Resource Library

http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/shrl/QuickSearch.aspx

Science Websites of Interest

Recommended Internet Resources from Choice Reviews (March)


Plant Evolution Timeline
http://www.ensemble.ac.uk/projects/plantsci/timeline/

The Chemistry of Amino Acids
http://www.biology.arizona.edu/biochemistry/problem_sets/aa/aa.html


Freshwater Ecoregions of the World
http://www.feow.org/

Tiempo Climate Cyberlibrary
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/tiempo/

Online Resources for Writers

Another highly recommended website from Choice Reviews. This one focuses on writing resources.


Check it out here:
https://www.amherst.edu/academiclife/support/writingcenter/resourcesforwriters

UChannel

As I was perusing the latest issue of Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, the following website caught my eye and I wanted to share it with all of you. It's call UChannel and is academically oriented, offering, "lectures, open panel discussions, and presentations by experts from universities the world over--all touching on some aspect of public or international affairs." Lectures can be streamlined for immediate use or downloaded for later use. Permission is granted to the user to add these lectures to their course guides, sites or computer. It's even possible (in many instances) to download in MP3 format. Podcast and RSS subscription feeds are available. All UChannel participating universities are responsible for content. It received a highly recommended rating from Choice.

Here's the URL if you want to check it out:
http://uc.princeton.edu/main/