14 The ASCB  Newsletter,  Vol  24,  No    9 WWW.CELL  BIOLOGY  EDUCATION The ASCB Education Committee calls attention each month to Web sites of educational interest to the cell biology community.  The Committee does not endorse nor guarantee the accuracy of the information at any of the listed sites.  If you wish to comment on the selections or suggest future inclusions, please send a message to rblyston@trinity.edu. 1.   Immunoanimations http://www.blink.uk.com/immunoanimations/ This site is essentially a commercial advertisement for a London graphics house called Blink Studio. Blink has done the graphics for several well-known textbooks such as Wolpert’s Principles of Development. The URL represents animations developed for Immunobiology, 5th edition by Janeway, Travers, Walport and Shlomchick, published by Garland Press. (This review does not represent an endorsement of the book or Web site; however, the animations are too good to overlook.) In order to view the animations, your browser will need Flash V,  available for free from Macromedia. The Blink site has a link to a Flash download site. The page opens with three controlling areas: a subject index, an icon descriptor, and an animation viewing box. There are 27 animations distributed among four topics that are titled: antigen recognition, lymphocyte development, immune response, and responses & disease. Approximately 60 icons have been developed to represent subjects such as lysosomes, T cells, and chemokines. The animations based on this common icon set are from 1 to 3 minutes in length and cover a variety of subjects including the following: dendritic-cell migration, MHC class II processing, TRC signaling, complement system, lymphocyte traffick- ing, and hapten carrier effect. Captions pop up to describe portions of the animations. A 56K modem would be too slow to play these animations effectively. As one would expect, animations developed for a textbook should have high teaching value. These animations do. Enjoy them before the site goes away. 2.   Below is a collection of URLs dealing with stem cells. Clearly research based on embryonic stem cells is of considerable interest. The listed sites have very high educational value and should help your students place the issues associated with stem cell research into context. a)  A Primer on Human Embryonic Stem Cells http://www.metanexus.net/archives/message_fs.asp?listtype=Magazine&ARCHIVEID=3929 Scott Gilbert, a developmental biologist from Swarthmore College, has developed a short and very readable primer on human embryonic stem cells. Students will find this primer to be quite helpful as they grapple with the topic for the first time. His primer is posted on Metanexus, which is an interesting site to explore as it deals with issues concerning science and religion. b)  NIH: News: Stem Cell: Stem Cells; Scientific Progress and Future Research Directions http://www.nih.gov/news/stemcell/scireport.htm This site provides access to an NIH report on stem cells. It is divided into eleven chapters accompanied by seven extensive appendices containing a great deal of resource and reference materials. The entire document can be downloaded as a 20 Mbytes PDF file. The publication is quite timely and useful. c)  NIH: News: Stem Cell Information http://www.nih.gov/news/stemcell/index.htm This page provides links to twenty information sources on stem cells. There are press notices and video broadcasts included among the links. A White House fact sheet, a stem cell primer, and HHS Secretary Thompson’s briefing about federal funding of stem cell research are identified. The free Real Player is needed to view and hear Thompson’s briefing. Students will have access to a broad overview of this subject as they navigate this site. 3.   Panel on Scientific and Medical Aspects of Human Cloning http://www4.nationalacademies.org/pd/cosepup.nsf/web/human_cloning?OpenDocument Joining human stem cell research in the public eye is the possibility of human cloning. The National Academy Board on Life Sciences had a panel meeting on the topic August 7, 2001. The topics covered by the panel were Overview of Embryology, Scientific Issues Underlying Cloning, Reproductive Cloning in Animals, Cloning of Stem Cells, Reproductive Cloning in Humans, Applicability of Animal Cloning Data to Human Cloning, Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Public Policy Issues. Visuals associated with panel presentations are part of this site. Some excellent teaching material can be harvested from the copyrighted material. These sites were checked August 25, 2001.  Previous ASCB columns reviewing Educational Websites with the links to the sites may be found at www.trinity.edu/rblyston/ASCB/ASCB.html.