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://artificialretina.energy.gov

Four groups around the world have built artificial retinas and subjected the devices to clinical trials. One of the groups, The Artificial Retina Project, is a Department of Energy–sponsored collaboration among five national labs, three universities, and one company. The project’s website includes an overview of the project, a patient’s story, and the inaugural issue of the project’s newsletter.

http://gene.phys.washington.edu/∼intuser/ld.html

George Bertsch’s online tool, Liquid Drop Model of Nuclear Binding Energy, lets you evaluate how well the venerable model accounts for the measured binding energy of nuclides. The tool comes with the formula’s standard terms and coefficients, which you can alter to explore how the model depends on them.

http://www.digitallockeproject.nl

In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which first appeared in 1689, John Locke argued that knowledge of the world reaches our brains through our senses. Locke’s “empiricism” underlies the scientific method and contrasts with the “rationalism” of René Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, and others, who believed in the existence of universal truths. The Digital Locke Project aims to collect the original versions of Locke’s works in a convenient, searchable database.