“For several centuries artists have depicted the human figure, still-lifes, landscapes or non-figurative motives. One subject has been widely neglected all those years: Micro organisms!

“The Micropolitan Museum finally exhibits these often overlooked works of art which are only visible with the aid of the microscope. Curator Wim van Egmond has collected the finest microscopic masterpieces nature has ever produced during eons of natural selection and other life-sculpting mechanisms.”

The 140 year old Quekett Microscopical Club is an amazing resource that strives to remain connected to its roots as an organization devoted to amateur scientists. They meet once a month at London’s Natural History Museum.

Founded in 1865, the Club is second only in seniority to the Royal Microscopical Society, but the first members deliberately chose to call themselves a ‘Club’ rather than a society to emphasize the amateur nature of the membership. Nonetheless we are both a registered charity and a ‘learned society’ and our Journal is a reputable scientific publication, citable in other journals and papers. We also publish a less formal Bulletin, full of tips, hints and articles, as well as reports of our regular monthly meetings, and of course, this Web Site.

Other membership benefits include a lending library, a slide borrowing program, lectures and excursions. They also hold an annual exhibition:

…this is the Big One! Held in October at the Natural History Museum, members make a special effort to mount exhibits ranging from magnificent Victorian instruments to live material and video microscopy.

The mission of the Telemedicine Information Exchange is to be “an unbiased and all-inclusive platform for information on telemedicine and telehealth.” The TIE was created and is maintained by the Telemedicine Research Center with financial support from the National Library of Medicine.

The list of what’s available on the site includes:

• A bi-monthly column covering what’s new in the world of telemedicine.
• A searchable database of 16151 citations (many with abstracts).
• A searchable database of 217 active telemedicine programs.
• A list of funding sources for telemedicine and telehealth activity

The other sections of the site are: Journals; Legislative, Legal and Policy Issues; Vendors; Home Health; Links; Jobs; and Telemedicine 101. Seems pretty all-inclusive to me.

(One of the many benefits of HeSCA membership is the vast collection of knowledge and experience accessible through the association listserve. I’d like to thank Lillian Scanlon for bringing this resource to my attention when responding to another member’s request for information on the listserve.)

“The purpose of Oak Ridge Associated Universities’ Health Physics Historical Instrumentation Museum Collection is to chronicle the scientific and commercial history of radioactivity and radiation. It has been deemed the official repository for historical radiological instruments by the Health Physics Society, and the Society has been generous in its financial support for the purchase of items.”

A dermatology image atlas from Johns Hopkins University that has more than 7700 images. Although it’s a great resource, it’s not for those who are easily rendered queasy. The image to the left of a typical child’s water-based tattoo is one of the tamest on the site. At a previous job, I skipped more than one lunch after stumbling across the wrong image in a dermatology textbook while working on projects related to an anti-baldness medication. Sometimes visual communications shouldn’t be quite so visual.

This site is particularly notable because it has an interesting graphical user interface that’s actually a graphic. Rather it’s a homunculus that assists in finding images related to a particular part of the body. Worth a visit just to give this a spin.