Sci/Tch Web Awards from the "Scientific American" and Other favorites
"I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work." -- Thomas A. Edison
  • Piled Higher and Deeper
  • Panda's thumb
  • Intersection
  • Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

  • MediaResource: Science in the news

    Access the news from my UT email address:yuan.an@utoronto.ca (webmail.utoronto.ca)

  • ZDNet

  • TechNews for IT professionals from ACM

  • American Scientist online

    The magazine of SIGMA XI, the scientific research society, my favorite.

  • Scientific America

    Scientific America, my favorite.

  • Nature

    The world's best science on your desktop, my favorite

  • Popular Science

  • National Geographic

    Natural wonders

  • Interactive Mathematics Miscellany and Puzzles

    "Mathematics professor-turned-software developer Alexander Bogomolny starts off this impressive site with nothing short of a manifesto extolling the importance and impact of math. He goes on to provide visitors with plenty of material--from math-related trivia to Mobius strip movies--to keep visitors busy for hours. Whether you want to explore arithmetic or geometry, probability or proofs, it's all here. What's more, there's probably an interactive Java applet to help further elucidate the theory with a click of the mouse." --Sci. Am.

  • This is Mega-Mathematics

    "The Los Alamos National Laboratory has compiled one of the wackiest math sites ever to hit the Web. How wacky is it? Well, for starters, it's a math site that involves a lot of reading; it's chock-a-block with those mind-benders kids love. Take a trip to "Hotel Infinity" and you'll come out laughing and crying at the mathematical conundra wrapped up in that figure-eight. "The Most Colorful Math of All" includes a large section on coloring maps that teaches the Four-Color Theorem in entertaining fashion. The target audience is certainly kids, but trust us adults with competitive natures will put up their dukes for such stumpers as "Unraveling the Mathematics of Knots" and have a blast reading up on paradoxical finite state machines." --Sci. Am.

  • Game Theory

    "If you want to figure out what you should do if you end up in the clink with your partner in crime being interrogated next door, the exhaustive explanation of the famed Prisoner's Dilemma provided here can help. Interactive applets explain the premise and let you try your luck against a variety of opponents. This extensive site provides plenty of other examples of Game Theory--the study of how people interact and make decisions--including lecture notes, quizzes and recent real-world examples ripped from the headlines. And if you don't get your fill online, the site, administered by Mike Shor of the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University, lists dozens of textbooks and a thorough compilation of examples of Game Theory in popular culture." --Sci. Am.

  • Alan Turing

    "OK, stop reading and move your chair back from your desk. Take a good look at your computer. The man you have to thank for the very existence of that sophisticated piece of technology is Alan Turing, who in 1935 conceived of a rather basic, yet ultimately world-altering computation device known as the "Universal Turing Machine." This web site, devoted to the life and work of the "father of modern computing," contains a large archive of all his work: articles, photographs, reference materials and the like covering not only his groundbreaking Machine, but also his deciphering skills used to break Hitler?s secret code "Enigma," said to shorten the Second World War by at least two years, plus his work on Artificial Intelligence and artificial life forms." --Sci. Am.

  • Cool Robot of the Week

    "NASA's not above cobbling together their own "Best of the Web" sites, and this one's probably one of the coolest, if technically simple (given its content) out there. The title says it all'each week, a website featuring some form of robot, rover, automaton or robotics-related site is bestowed the honor of "Cool Robot of the Week." Recent favorites include a robot that resembles the Segway people-mover'but without the people involved; "swarm robots" that imitate the behavior of bees; and a site devoted to a race of autonomous ground vehicles from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Not surprisingly, many of NASA's favorite sites are NASA-based, but it's got to be pretty hard to out-robo the robo-cops when it comes right down to it!" --Sci. Am.