harnad@psycho.Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad) (06/29/91)
This important message from Herman Woltring, moderator of the BIOMCH-L list, about electronic communication with scientists in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and the Far East, is being reposted on PSYCOLOQUY. We are actively inviting distinguished biobehavioral scientists from these newly linked countries to join the PSYCOLOQUY Editorial Board to integrate them into the network as soon as possible. With the financial difficulties that limit the library book and journal holdings as well as the travel possibilities of these colleagues, the net has the enormous potential for serving their scholarly needs. Date: Thu, 27 Jun 91 18:52 MET From: "Herman J. Woltring" <UGDIST@NICI.KUN.NL> The following article was published in the International Society of Bio- mechanics Newsletter, ISSUE Number 42, MAY/JUNE 1991, pp. 9 - 10 (Editor: Dr. Graeme Wood, Dept. of Human Movement Studies, The University of Western Australia, NEDLANDS (Perth), WA 6009, Australia, Tel. +61.9.380-2361, FAX +61.9.380-1039, email G_Wood@fennel.cc.uwa.oz.au. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BIOMCH-L and Eastern Europe, the U.S.S.R. and the P.R. China The recent political developments worldwide have a beneficial effect on scientific communication with formerly rather inaccessible countries as seen through West-European eyes. In IEEE Computer 24/3, pp. 81-84 of March 1991, there is a highly interesting article "International electronic mail gains significance in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe" by Joel M. Sny- der, A. Tomasz Jarmoszko & Seymour E. Goodman at the University of Arizona, while the current `bible' on electronic networking, John S. Quarterman's "The Matrix -- Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems worldwide" (Digital Press, Bedford, MA/USA 1990) mentions one public email channel with the People's Republic of China. A few months ago, another book (not yet seen by me) of a perhaps more practical nature was also published by Digital Press: Tracey L. LaQuey (Ed.), "The User's Directory of Computer Networks" (1990 - Paperbound - 630 pp., order No. EY-C200E-DP). The publisher's flyer quotes Stephen Wolff, Director of DNCRI, US National Science Foundation as follows: "Full of poetry, history and facts both useful and arcane, the *Directory* is at once a networker's almanac and a browser's delight", and it goes on by saying: "Here's how to track down virtually every network available to academics and researchers. This new book, with its detailed compilation of host-level information, provides everything you need to locate resources, send mail to colleagues and friends world-wide, and answer questions about how to access major national and international net- works (...). Since the "Biomch-L Update" in the previous ISB Newsletter, the first two sources have been useful starting points to explore email connections with mid-European and Eastern countries. While email is only beginning to evolve there, some new subscribers have joined Biomch-L from Czechoslovakia, Poland and the USSR, so Biomch-L is beginning to serve its intended purpose of a truely international, fast and rather informal communication channel that might complement usually more formal and slow, classical communication forms such as private letters, this Newsletter, Conference presentations, and pub- lished journal articles. At the time of writing (3 June 1991), Biomch-L has more than 300 subscribers on all six continents. This article is mainly intended to provide some information on email net- working in general, with special emphasis on our `Eastern' colleagues, and some familiarity with these channels is expected. Since my main experience is with EARN/BITNET communication, I am somewhat biased in this respect. EARN, the European Academic Research Network, with extensions into Asia and Africa, is fully integrated with the USA's CREN/BITNET, Canada's NETNORTH, and Japan's BITNETJP. Usually, the name BITNET encompasses all these administratively distinct partners. In Mid-Eastern Europe, Czechoslavakia, Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia are currently full partners in EARN, and the USSR is expected to join EARN later this year. Names of BITNET-nodes can be found in the file BITNET NODELST which can be retrieved with the following request from an automatic file- server NETSERV@backbone.BITNET, where `backbone' is the name of any BITNET country's major node for international communication: SEND BITNET NODELST (N.B.: *not* NODELIST) If you do not know which one this is for your country, send the request to NETSERV@BITNIC.BITNET if you are in America, to NETSERV@JPNSUT00.BITNET if you are in Japan or Taiwan, and to NETSERV@HEARN.BITNET if you are located in Europe or elsewhere. The NETSERVer will provide you with a list of about 3500 EARN/BITNET nodes, and possibly inform you of a NETSERVer closer to your location. For each entry, there is a 2-letter code (preceded by a comma) for the country in which the relevant node is located, e.g. ",NL" for The Netherlands, ",UK" for the United Kingdom, ,PL" for Poland, and ",US" for the USA. If you wish to know what nodes are located in any particular country, just scan the BITNET NODELST file for the relevant country code *with* the comma. If you don't know the 2-letter country code for a particular country, just send the request SEND COUNTRY ISOCODES to the NETSERVer. Each entry usually contains a summary description (organisation, location); once you know the node_name of a particular EARN/BITNET station, further details can be obtained by sending the request SEND NODENTRY node_name to the NETSERVer; this entry contains names, telefone numbers, postal and email addresses of relevant contact persons. For example, there are cur- rently 6 EARN nodes in Czechoslovakia, 2 in Hungary, 15 in Poland, and 4 in Yugoslavia. From the coordinators preparing the Russian EARN partner- ship I have received a list of more than 100 institutions planning to join EARN throughout the USSR. Other networks such as the Internet and UUCP/EUnet/EurOpen have a large number of connections with our Eastern friends including tha Baltic republics. One organisation mentioned in the IEEE Computer article is RelCom in the USSR, with about 125 connections of which some 40 are on-line; the remaining ones have to dial in by telephone at their own discretion to retrieve and to send email. The Chinese Academic NETwork (CANET) has a small number of partners using the special email connection between the Institute for Computer Applica- tions in Beijing and the University of Karlsruhe in Germany. Electronic addresses on these other networks are not as easy to come by as in the case of BITNET; however, some contact persons are mentioned below (work is in progress to provide netwide directories, but the present state is far from ideal). Funding of these new partners in `Netland' is a major problem; for example, the USSR's EARN connection is funded for one year by American sources, and a call for funding support for CANET was posted from Karlsruhe onto Usenet's soc.culture.china email newsgroup last November (Usenet is a worldwide electronic discussion and news propagation system also accessible in Eastern Europe and in the USSR; for the USSR, just send the one-line email requests HELP and LIST to news@kiae.su or to news%kiae.su@ussr.eu.net. How- ever, Biomch-L is currently not accessible via Usenet. Hopefully, the entries below will be useful for our fellow-biomechanicians from Mid-Eastern Europe, the USSR and the P.R. China, and help them to im- prove their contacts with the rest of the world. There are many fine groups in these countries as apparent from presentations at previous ISB Congresses, and I understand that there are many more submissions for this year's meeting in Perth. Further details are available in the references mentioned above, and at the computer centres of many academic and research institutions in East and West. Also, I'll be happy to entertain any particular questions if recei- ved via my email forwarding address on the Numerical Analysis discussion forum mentioned below. Herman J. Woltring, Eindhoven/NL <na.woltring@na-net.ornl.gov> Moderator, Biomch-L@hearn.bitnet / Biomch-L@nic.surfnet.nl - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - CZECHOSLOVAKIA: EARN backbone CSEARN Contact: Petr Kral, PKL@CSEARN (+42 2 3110275) University Regional Computing Centre Czech Technical University Zikova 4 CS - 166 35 Prague 6, Czechoslovakia HUNGARY: EARN backbone HUEARN Contact: Sandor Aranyi, IB001ARA@HUEARN (+36 1 1497984) Computer and Automation Institute Hungarian Academy of Sciences Victor Hugo 18-22 HU - 1132 Budapest, Hungary POLAND: EARN backbone PLEARN Contact: A.Smereczynski, OEK05@PLEARN (+48 22 200381 448) Informatics Center of Warsaw University ul.Krakowskie Przedmiescie 26/28 PL - 00-927 Warsaw, Poland YUGOSLAVIA: EARN backbone YUBGSS21 Contact: Mirjana Tasic, SYSTEM3@YUBGSS21 (+38 11 419 895) Republicki Zavod za Statistiku Srbije Milana Rakica 5 YU - 11000 Beograd, Yugoslavia USSR/EARN: Future EARN backbone SUEARN Contact: Evgeny Mironov, KEL2BS@VMS2.UNI-C.DK (+7 095 1354133) Chief Network Administrator (fax +7 095 1355328) SUEARN NIC BBS (X.25): (0)2502160315 Evgeny M USSR/RELCOM: USSR EUnet backbone site Dmitry Volodin, DVV@HQ.DEMOS.SU (+7 095 231 2129) Demos Co-operative pod.1 d.6 Ovchinnikovskaya nab. SU - 113035 Moscow, USSR PRC: At present, CANET is accessible for any academic community in China through CHINAPAC (national X.25 PDN) or dialup telephone links. The participants should pay the international communication fees between Karlsruhe and China, and the initial installation fee. Administrative contact: Tian-Bai Qian Institute for Computer Applications (ICA) P.O. Box. 2418-26 10 Che Dao Gou St. Beijing, 100081, P.R. China Tel. +86.1.8413654 Fax +86.1.8414913 EMAIL: qian@ica.beijing.canet.cn or qian%ica.beijing.canet.cn@ira.uka.de