Enter Laughing

Anyone who has ever done a Ph.D. has been there. Those endless nights, insane undergraduates in the classes you TA for, and that research mentor who drives you nuts. In the middle of it, you've got two choices: you can either beat your head on the wall or laugh at the absurdity of the whole thing. Taking the considerably less painful of these two approaches is Piled Higher and Deeper (PHD) Comics, an insightful, delightful collection of clever comics and witticisms that remind us of the foibles of life in graduate school. If you don't look at anything else at the site, check out Newton's Law of Inertia—“A grad student in procrastination tends to stay in procrastination unless an external force is applied to it”—and you'll probably be hooked.

[www.phdcomics.com]

A Better Ewe

Organized as a collaborative multinational partnership of scientists from widely separated regions of the world (Australia, France, Kenya, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S.), the International Sheep Genomics Consortium hosts a tidily designed collection of pages showcasing their efforts, all of which are ultimately aimed at determining the genomic sequence of this agriculturally important species. Visitors can blast information as it comes in, view NCBI sequences, track the progress of the effort, and read the latest news at this one-stop sheep shop.

[www.sheephapmap.org]

The Bean Scene

You've heard how it's good for you. You keep meaning to get more in your diet. It was one of your New Year's resolutions. Is it time to get a bit more soy, Roy? The United Soybean Board, a 68-member group representing 680,000 U.S. farmers, thinks so, and they make a pretty good case for it at their SoyConnections web site, where visitors can practically wear out their mouse clicking through content that is as informative as it is extensive. Focused mainly on the nutritional benefits of soy protein, SoyConnections delivers useful information on everything from the dangers of trans fats in diets to considerations for heart health and the latest news in bean cuisine.

[www.soyconnection.com]

BiocheM.D.

Click on the awards page of a very good web site and you'll find a collection of accolades from other places that specialize in giving awards. Click on the same link at the Medical Biochemistry Page (MBP), poke around a bit, and you'll discover something unusual and impressive: not only has the MBP site gotten a fair share of awards for its overall excellence, but some of its individual pages, such as the Oncogenes Page and the Vitamins Page, have received recognition on their own. Michael King—creator of the popular collection of online biochemistry information at the University of Indiana Medical School—probably has made a few textbook publishers unhappy, but students will rejoice at his free, educational offerings.

[themedicalbiochemistrypage.org]

Chemical Cauldron

Chemistry has come a long way from the days of ‘eye of newt, toe of frog, wool of bat, tongue of dog,’ though you may wonder about it while reading through the comments on the forum at WebQC, a multi-faceted site aimed at helping students and researchers do chemistry more easily. Help is available in the form of multiple online postings and the dialog appears to be pretty rapid-fire. There is an equation balancer for those who won't (or can't) do it themselves and many other online helpers, from a pH calculator to math tools and numerous unit converters. You can learn about symmetry, see more constants than you can shake a test tube brush at, and read the latest in chemical news at this surprisingly diverse site.

[www.webqc.org]

Biocatalyst's Lists

We worry about the effects environmental pollutants have on life on Earth, at least to a point. No one wants PCBs in their diet or in their food chain, but virtually everyone will, without hesitation, feed the most toxic compounds on earth to one living system—bacteria—so long as they chew them up and spit out something less harmful. That's the capital idea behind bioremediation, of course, and the concept behind the Biocatalysis/Bioremediation Database at the University of Minnesota, which provides abundant opportunities to learn more about this increasingly popular approach to toxic cleanup. With information on over 180 pathways, 1250 reactions, 1150 compounds, and 450 microorganisms, this is the place with a solution for pollution.

[umbbd.msi.umn.edu]