Find and post on the Assignment V bulletin board a web site that includes what you think is interesting information on animal structure and function at the level of tissues, organs and organ systems. Do not use a site that has already been posted on the Assignment V bulletin board. Only the first person to post a site will receive full credit.
Your posting should include four parts. These are:
For sites located using search engines, that may require some additional work, since a search engine may drop you many layers down in some web sites. Try looking at higher levels in a long URL (Uniform Resource Locator, or web address). Such a URL is http://www.fi.edu/biosci/books.html. It drops the viewer into a page titled Resource Materials, beginning with information about cardiac physiology, cardiac health and fitness, but the origin of that information is not obvious. If you go to the higher levels in the address, by dropping parts of the URL that follow a backslash /, you can find a lot more information about the site. For example, I looked at http://www.fi.edu to find out about the Franklin Institute, who publishes an educational site about cardiac physiology (see below).
Two example of what I am after are posted below. Since I used them as examples neither of these sites are eligible for credit on this assignment. I found these sites using web search engines like Yahoo and Excite.
Franklin Institute Science Museum The Heart: An Online Exploration
This site is an on-line virtual museum exhibit. It includes video, audio and text information about human cardiac physiology. The quality of the Franklin Institute material is excellent. It may take a while to load some of the graphics. Different sections include heart development, structure, blood flow and the structure of blood vessels, brief descriptions of lung and kidney function, and the role of circulation in those organs, information on cardiac pathologies like hypertension, and information on maintaining cardiac health. There is also a brief discussion of the history of cardiac physiology, and a discussion of methods of monitoring cardiac health (echocardiography and electrocardiography). Many sections have links to other web sites of interest in the area of cardiac biology. The site does not contain as much detail as a biology textbook, but provides a great review of the major features of cardiovascular structure and function.
This site was created and is maintained by the Franklin Institute, a non-profit organization based in Philadelphia. The .edu address suggests that it has the same status on the Internet as universities like ISU. A lot of information (history, annual report, staff E-mail directory) about the Institute is available from its homepage (http://www.fi.edu/) Its mission is "to stimulate interest in science, to promote public understanding of science, and to strengthen science education.". Commercialism is almost absent (no ads, links to the Museum gift shop and to Unisys, who funded the website). I could detect no obvious bias or advocacy (scientific, political or cultural) in the material presented.
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~licht/index.html
This is the home page of Dr. Paul Licht, a comparative endocrinologist at the University of California at Berkeley.
Licht's home page includes a curriculum vita, which details his career history, an extensive (219 references) bibliography of publications from the Licht lab covering reproductive endocrinology, hypothalamic and pituitary endocrine function, and thyroid gland function. Licht's research as mostly focused on reptiles, amphibians and hyenas as study animals. A page of selected recent publications provides information on thyroxine binding proteins in turtles, and the unusual reproductive endocrinology of spotted hyenas, together with discussion of the resulting unusual features of hyena reproductive anatomy and behavior. The recent publication page includes links to abstracts describing the contents of the papers. This page is a great entry into the world of comparative endocrinology. If you need a break from the science part of biology, the Licht site also includes information about Professor Licht's dog and gardening activities, The Licht home page is fast and easy to navigate through.
This is an individual's page on a UC Berkeley server. The site is mainly information about Licht's professional career, and appears to be maintained by Licht himself (at least, no site manager credits). There is no evidence of bias or advocacy that I can detect. I did not notice any publications that were not in the mainstream of scientific literature. The only external links are to UC Berkeley administration web sites. The site has no ads, nothing for sale, and no advocacy of a particular viewpoint.