This paper highlights the role that the World Wide Web (WWW) has to play as an aid to psychiatry. A basic history of the WWW is provided as is an introduction to some search techniques involved with the WWW. The literature on applications potentially relevant to psychiatry is reviewed using computer search facilities (BIDS, PsychLit and Medline). The WWW is one of the aspects of the Internet that possesses a huge potential for exploitation, both the clinical and research psychiatrist are able to benefit from its use.

Fourier coefficients are a valuable tool in the study of a wide variety of pulsating stars. They can be used to derive various physical parameters, including mass, luminosity, metallicity and effective temperature and are frequently used to discriminate between different pulsation modes. With the increase in large-scale surveys and the availability of data on the Internet, the number of Fourier coefficients available for study has expanded greatly and it is difficult to find all current data for individual stars or a subset of stars. To assist others in obtaining and making use of Fourier coefficients, an archive of published values of Fourier coefficients has been set up. Users can search for data on individual stars or for a range of parameters. Several Java programs are used to display the data in a variety of ways. The archive is located at the Web site http://www.earth.uni.edu/fourier/.

We have used the Automated Plate Scanner (APS) at the University of Minnesota to digitize glass copies of the blue and red plates of the original Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS I) with |b| > 20°. The APS Image Database is a database of all digitized images larger than the photographic noise threshold. It includes all of the matched images in the object catalog, as well as those unmatched images above the noise threshold. The matched image data of the catalog has the advantage of confirming the reality of the image. This is especially important for small images near the plate limit. But these are not all of the detected real images; very blue or very red faint objects may be excluded by this matching requirement. The image database allows information on them to be retrieved, and is therefore a valuable complement to the object catalog. The operation of the APS and the scanning procedures are described in detail in Pennington et al. (1993). We are now processing plate data into the image database. A set of query forms, a tutorial and documentation can be found at http://isis.spa.umn.edu/IDB/homepage.idb.html.

Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) hub websites are a critical communication gateway to assist the clinical and translational science community and promote CTSA hub offerings. The objective of this funded pilot project was to create a website and online database for the CTSA consortium that allows users to conduct structured searches among the 50 + CTSA hub websites. The result is CTSA Search Solutions, an online, searchable database that includes access to 50 + CTSA hub websites with 80+ structured search term options and over 800 links collected, organized, and published. Hubs can be searched by name and filtered by a specific CTSA topic, state, region, or even number of years funded to make detailed comparisons with the data identified. The home page for each hub can be accessed directly from the search page. The CTSA Search Solutions online database will allow for a wide breadth of CTSA personnel (core leads, researchers, administrators, communicators, and evaluators) to find consolidated information to learn about specific CTSA hub program highlights, as well as conduct research into program hub outputs and best practices across the nationwide CTSA consortium.

Since the 1990s, the number of websites and web users, especially older users, has increased extensively. Despite the rapid growth in the number of websites, a significant number of ergonomic violations still hinder the information search activity performed by web users. As ageing is associated with reduced working memory capacity, inhibition failure, slowing of processing speed and more generally impaired executive functioning, older adult web users may experience difficulties while searching for information, especially when the website includes ergonomic violations, such as usability and accessibility violations. In this experiment, the navigation activities of younger and older web users were compared while they were searching for information on a website that met ergonomic guidelines and on a website that included ergonomic violations. The participants then performed a free, delayed-recall task to assess their mental representation of the website they had just navigated. The main findings showed that ageing had a negative impact on search performance but few effects on mental representation built by participants. On the contrary, the ergonomic quality of the website had an impact on search performance and mental representation built by the participants.

Online sales of pharmaceuticals are a rapidly growing phenomenon. Yet despite the dangers of purchasing drugs over the Internet, sales continue to escalate. These dangers include patient harm from fake or tainted drugs, lack of clinical oversight, and financial loss. Patients, and in particular vulnerable groups such as seniors and minorities, purchase drugs online either naïvely or because they lack the ability to access medications from other sources due to price considerations. Unfortunately, high risk online drug sources dominate the Internet, and virtually no accountability exists to ensure safety of purchased products. Importantly, search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN, although purportedly requiring “verification” of Internet drug sellers using PharmacyChecker.com requirements, actually allow and profit from illicit drug sales from unverified websites. These search engines are not held accountable for facilitating clearly illegal activities. Both website drug seller anonymity and unethical physicians approving or writing prescriptions without seeing the patient contribute to rampant illegal online drug sales. Efforts in this country and around the world to stem the tide of these sales have had extremely limited effectiveness. Unfortunately, current congressional proposals are fractionated and do not address the key issues of demand by vulnerable patient populations, search engine accountability, and the ease with which financial transactions can be consummated to promote illegal online sales. To deal with the social scourge of illicit online drug sales, this article proposes a comprehensive statutory solution that creates a no-cost/low-cost national Drug Access Program to break the chain of demand from vulnerable patient populations and illicit online sellers, makes all Internet drug sales illegal unless the Internet pharmacy is licensed through a national Internet pharmacy licensing program, prohibits financial transactions for illegal online drug sales, and establishes criminal penalties for all parties—including websites, search engines, and health care providers—who engage in and facilitate this harmful activity.

The observation of an area of 120° × 56° centered on RA=8h DEC=20° at 408 MHz was the first astronomical use of the MPIfR 100-m telescope (1970) and was designed to compile a complete sky survey using also data from Jodrell Bank and Parkes (Haslam et al., 1982). The observation of the northern sky at 1420 MHz started in 1972 using the Stockert 25-m telescope and was finished in 1976 (Reich and Reich 1986). This survey has been completed to an all sky survey using data from Villa Elisa (Argentina). The two surveys are absolutely calibrated. The angular resolutions are 0.8° and 0.59°, respectively. A number of surveys of the Galactic plane have been made with the 100-m telescope at arc minute angular resolution. Surveys at 2695 MHz (|b| ≤ 5°) (Reich et al. 1990, Fürst et al. 1990) and at 1410 MHz (|b| < 4°) (Reich et al. 1990) are public.

At medium Galactic latitudes (up to |b| = 20°) the emission consists mainly of faint extended ridges or arcs superimposed on the still dominating, about 10 times stronger, diffuse Galactic emission. They have never been investigated in a systematic way although they provide important clues for the understanding of the “disk-halo connection”. This region is covered by new observations at 1400 MHz with the 100-m telescope.

The status of the WWW-based Fourier Coefficient web site is presented. Currently the database has coefficients for not only galactic field variables, but also those found in globular clusters and other galaxies, including the Magellanic Clouds. The database can be used to show various correlations between physical characteristics of the stars and the coefficients, as well as inter-relationships between the coefficients themselves. The database is accessible at http://nitro9.earth.uni.edu/fourier/.