Summary: At the time the Roman Empire supplanted the failed Republic, the Rhine River marked Rome's northern frontier in western Europe-until Emperor Augustus tried to push the boundary east to the Elbe. Focusing on the events during the 1st through 4th centuries, this program traces the movements of the Goths and the tribes of Germania, including the epic battle in the year 9 when Arminius, leader of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Many consider Alan Turing to be the father of computer science-mainly because of his cryptography machine, which cracked the German code during World War II. But Turing created his device before the war-not for military purposes, but in the hope of disproving the Riemann hypothesis. This program gives an account of Turing's unresolved zeta function research, the tragic conclusion of his life,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: By the 6th century, the migrating peoples of Europe had begun to settle down, establishing the boundaries of their domains-but not of their ambitions. Who would become the heirs of the Roman Empire and the allies-and enemies-of the Church? This program reconstructs the development of key non-Roman kingdoms including those of the Ostrogoths in Italy, the Merovingians in Gaul, and the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The special characteristics of prime numbers have intrigued and confounded mathematicians since ancient times. Outlining the basics of primes-including their unique multiplicative properties and their supposedly random appearance in the number line-this program details the early history of prime number theory, beginning with discoveries that took place in the Hellenistic world. The film...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In the 2nd century BCE, the Cimbri and Teuton tribes began to move southward from their Scandinavian homeland, Jutland. Soundly defeating the Roman army at Noricum in 113 BCE, they set in motion an era of migration that spelled the beginning of the end of Roman military and political supremacy. This program examines the reasons why these Germanic peoples left their homeland, explores their...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: With the advent of Bernhard Riemann's zeta-hypothesis, the study of prime numbers took on astonishing new dimensions-including a way to predict the appearance of primes. This program focuses on the numerical landscape which Riemann's calculations opened up and examines the work of subsequent mathematicians who challenged the notion of a finite set of prime numbers. Using state-of-the-art 3-D...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: When the Huns charged into the lands of the Goths and then, in the 5th century, into Europe, they started a new wave of terror and tribal relocation. This program tracks the displacement of the Visigoths to Spain and the Vandals to North Africa. Both succeeded in defeating proud and once-mighty Rome in its own capital-but who would stop the hordes of Attila as they raced onwards into the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: American pioneers had to overcome the dangerous wilderness; Americans at rest want to return to nature-not the wilderness, but a tamed and peaceful nature. Having cut down nature to build cities, we bring back the country through parks: New York's Central Park gives us a dreamlike, idealized New York with forests, lakes, hills, meadows, foot and bridle paths, and architecture to complement the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: The corridors of power, in business and government, lead to heroic interior spaces, and business has frequently appropriated the architecture of power—that is, of government. Interior spaces symbolize as well as contain function. The ambiguous relationship to nature is seen in the American desire to bring a scaled-down outdoors inside; the incorporation of the past takes different shapes. ...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Architecture grows out of a people's shared past. But in America, where ties to ancient cultures have been broken, we have individually and collectively invented a usable past. From the practical shelters built by the Pilgrims at Plymouth Plantation to the classic ideals of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello to the stylistic diversity of our own time, our buildings reflect the strong-willed...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Americans dream of owning a single-family home—ideally in some leafy Arcadia not too far from the city workplace. There are many shapes to this dream—Gothic cottages and mini-castles surrounded by manicured wilderness, like the first planned suburban development in Llewellyn Park, N.J.; detached dwellings in sylvan surroundings, with restrictive land use and minimum cost regulations...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia—the first American campus—is like its founder in exemplifying the national capacity for self-invention. Palladio's shade hangs over the individual house-temples which line the landscaped mall—a uniquely American idea. University builders have sought to separate the campus, by locating it in the country or by erecting walls—walls of stone or of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: A person's home is his self-image, his autobiography as ghost-written by the architect. Mark Twain's house suited him so well that he became convinced he had himself designed it. A more imposing self-portrait is Fenway Court, which ignores the Colonial past and industrial present to recreate a Venetian palazzo in Boston; the American industrialist as Renaissance Italian prince is seen in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Villages may spring up but great cities are laid out by surveyors measuring out divisible grids to suit the visions of real estate entrepreneurs, designers of space or social policy. The effort to renew the aged, replace the obsolete or provide for growth, to connect business with residential centers and cities with nature, has provided a range of solutions that range from Colonial...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Swimming, bathing, washing clothes, and fishing-these are everyday activities that put people in the developing world at risk of catching bilharzia (or schistosomiasis), if the water is infected with eggs of the schistosome worm. Left untreated, the disease can eventually block internal organs such as the liver and intestine, often leading to death. Children are especially at risk, with even a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: Kala-azar, the common name for visceral leishmaniasis, is characterized by irregular bouts of fever, substantial weight loss, swelling of the spleen and liver, and anemia. If left untreated it is almost certainly fatal. This program was filmed in the Indian state of Bihar, where 90 percent of the country's kala-azar cases are located. Forty per cent of these cases are now resistant to the drugs...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Lymphatic filariasis, a mosquito-borne parasitic disease commonly known as elephantiasis, results in massive swelling of the limbs and genitals, leading to severe disability. Over 40 million people are seriously incapacitated and disfigured by it, with millions more at risk. Now an ambitious campaign is underway to eliminate the disease globally by interrupting its transmission. Two...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: When polio vaccines were first developed, many experts thought the disease would be fully eradicated within decades. Tragically, as this film shows, it has survived in places like Afghanistan and northern Nigeria. These locations are now acting as disease reservoirs, with children the hardest-hit demographic and with travelers re-infecting other countries once thought invulnerable....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2004
View online at AVOD
Summary: This year alone, eight million people will become infected with tuberculosis. Like the common cold, TB spreads through the air when sufferers cough, sneeze, spit, or just talk. One needs only to inhale a few germs to catch it. This program tracks the disease, its impact, and the science behind it, from the U.K. to India to Malawi. At the Imperial College in London, Professor Douglas Young is...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program travels to Cambodia, where 1 in 10 people carry hepatitis B, a major cause of liver cancer. Mothers often transmit the virus to their babies during childbirth, and children can pass the infection to each other through even the most minor cuts and scratches. At London's Hammersmith Hospital, pioneering new surgery makes it possible for patients to survive advanced liver cancer. In...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: It is estimated that every 30 seconds a child dies from malaria. Medicines continue to be the main tool in fighting it-but, with growing resistance to existing drugs, there is an urgent need to discover new ones and distribute them at affordable prices in poor, disease-endemic countries. The major obstacle to the discovery of new anti-malarials is the lack of global investment in drug research...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Alternative framing techniques can reduce structural lumber requirements and costs, as well as offer design improvements, such as openings in steel-frame studs that allow for the running of plumbing or electrical systems. This video looks at some of the more popular industry options in terms of materials and construction plans. Correlates to the Competencies and Objectives of the National...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: How much siding will you need for a medium-sized house? How much lumber will it take? In this program, students will learn a number of industry-standard techniques used to calculate the amounts of building materials for many common construction projects. Correlates to the Competencies and Objectives of the National Center for Construction Education & Research.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Every house begins with a foundation, but you'll need to determine what kind. This program explains the three types of foundations-basement foundation, crawl space foundation, and slab-on-grade-and uses a full basement foundation in a seasonal climate to illustrate basic techniques and concerns, including the use of footings, building forms, load-bearing values of the soil, and methods for...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005