Web watch

To suggest topics or sites for Web Watch, please visit http://www.physicstoday.org/suggestwebwatch.html . Compiled and edited by Charles Day

http://www.ipy.org

In 1879, the International Polar Commission, chaired by Georg von Neumayer and Karl Weyprecht, established 1882–83 as the first International Polar year. The third and latest IPY begins in March and will run through March 2009. True to its founders’ vision, the new IPY will bring countries together to meet the cost and difficulty of exploring Earth’s polar regions.

http://www.envision.purdue.edu/4kstream/video.html

Researchers of Purdue University have created a 10-gigabyte animation of a 90 000-atom cell structure from a bacterium—and then streamed the video through the high-speed National LambdaRail research network. The exercise foreshadows how scientists will be able to exchange rich, copious visual data. A clip from the video is available from Purdue’s Envision Center.

http://ep.espacenet.com

In recent years, the world’s inventors have submitted patent applications at a rate of about 1 million per year. More than 4 million patents are now in force worldwide. Most of that vast trove of human ingenuity and knowledge is available online through the European Patent Office, which provides a convenient search engine called esp@cenet .