NETLINES

• Ohio State University's department of family medicine has produced a clever page about the skills associated with physical examination (http://medicine.osu.edu/exam/). It is ideal for medical students and experienced practitioners alike, as everyone can use it to brush up their skills. Looking through an ophthalmoscope, measuring blood pressure, or reviewing breath sounds are some just of the available features. With just a single page it is not comprehensive, but it has enough to entertain and educate.

• Looking at a much more specific topic, vulvodynia, is a collection of newsletters on the website of the US National Vulvodynia Association (www.nva.org/for_medical_professionals/medical_newsletters.html). The newsletters, available as PDF files, trawl the medical literature and provide summaries of newly published information. There is currently no way to receive the newsletters by email, but you can check regularly to see if anything new has been added.

• From Florida State University comes a stunning pictorial experience, http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/index.html, which cleverly demonstrates the power of size. Start by gazing at the Milky Way from 10 million light years away and then by orders of magnitude (10-fold) you zoom in towards planet earth. Then continuing to zoom in towards an oak tree in Florida and down into the molecular environment of the tree.

• If you want to get more out of the PubMed medical database (www.pubmed.gov), the online tutorial at www.hsl.unc.edu/Services/guides/pubmed10.cfm may help. Its 10 top tips on how to maximise your use of PubMed are clearly written and have plenty of screenshots to illustrate the points made. An extra, 11th tip—a PDF leaflet on PubMed basics—is worth printing off.

• A website does not have to be flashy or even be rich in content to be effective. The page at www.poverty.org.uk/summary/key_facts.htm is a simple listing of facts and figures about the central theme of the site: social exclusion and poverty in the United Kingdom. Listed in bullet points and divided into major subject headings such as child poverty, crime, health education, and elderly people, the bare facts are laid out. Together these sobering statistics deliver a powerful message about the state of the UK population.