Valerie Cowan Surfs the Net

ONE OF my favourite things about the Internet is the way it allows you to follow the activities of scientists and researchers working in far off places.

Where once you would have had to wait until the team returned from their travels to find out how they got on, the Internet allows despatches to be posted daily to a worldwide audience.

Over the last few months, I've followed an expedition to a sunken ship, a project to find out how the statues on Easter Island were erected and the progress of a charity dog trek across America.

This week two new expeditions have launched websites.

The first is to the Antarctic sea ice, which grows at 22 square miles a minute in the Antarctic autumn to an area twice the size of the USA - only to disappear at the rate of 44 square miles a minute in the spring.

The ice is home to a vast array of plant and animal life and a team of scientists have headed out there to try to find out more about it, from the penguins and seals to the tiny organisms which live in the ice itself.

The second expedition is to somewhere slightly warmer - the tropical country of Belize. The student-led expedition aims to study the unique terrain and exotic creatures of Belize, with the promise that their web pages will be updated hour by hour.

And next month you can join two hour-long live chats with the research team.

WEBSITES: http://www.discovery.com/exp/antarctica/antar

ctica.html

http://www.treeseeds.org/

Spy in the sky

IF YOU ever get the feeling that someone is watching you, there is a website which proves you right.

Microsoft's Terraserver pages contain detailed aerial photographs taken by the United States Geological Survey and Russian mapping satellites.

America is fairly comprehensively covered and there is patchy coverage of Europe (which unfortunately doesn't include East Lancashire), but Microsoft promise that more locations are being added all the time.

You can search for somewhere by place name or map reference, or go straight to any of a range of famous places, including Central Park in New York, the Grand Canyon, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the Pentagon.

WEBSITE: http://terraserver.micosoft.com/

Nostalgic interlude

FANS of the classic television drama Upstairs, Downstairs can wallow in nostalgia on the Internet. An episode-by-episode guide to the show, complete with cast lists and production credits, is now available on the Internet.

There are also photographs of many of the series' stars, who included Gordon Jackson, Nicola Pagett and Pauline Collins.

WEBSITE: http://www-phm.umds.ac.uk/Steve_P/ud/UD.HTM

States jobsearch

IF you are interested in working in the United States, you can search the classified columns of many American newspapers through this website.

You can browse the classified ads for free or pay for extra services which could help you get that job.

WEBSITE: http://www.careerpath.com/index.html

Truly bananas

IT IS no surprise that Ann Lovell was known as Anna Banana in her younger days. She has collected more than 3,500 items relating to the curvy yellow fruit.

And she is now curator of the Banana Museum in Auburn, Washington, and has a website dedicated to the displays.

WEBSITE: http://www.geocities.co

m/NapaValley/1799/

IF you've found something interesting on the Internet, send me an e-mail at vcowan@lancashire.newsquest.co.uk.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.