AFRO-NETS> Supercourse-Newsletter, October 7

[Ron Laporte <super3+@pitt.edu>]

Supercourse-Newsletter, October 7
---------------------------------

www.pitt.edu/~super1/

Dear Friend,

We are getting closer and closer to the magic 500-lecture mark. 
Currently we have 477 lectures. In August Eugene in Siberia proc-
essed 25 lectures, and in September 25 also. So far in October we 
have received 3 lectures. If your lecture is a Monet picture of 
prevention, the Supercourse can be your art gallery. We guarantee 
that many more people will see your lecture in the Supercourse 
art gallery than having you lecture in your drawer. It will bene-
fit many more people. We hope that we can treat the ghosts and 
goblins of Halloween with 500 lectures; this will also be a fan-
tastic trick on the diseases of the world. We look forward to 
your Halloween contribution.

Counting the Visitors to the Supercourse: We can now provide a 
very crude estimate of visitors to the Supercourse. (This is a 
little difficult as the University of Pittsburgh Server is an IBM 
XT, (only kidding)). It appears that each month the front page of 
the Supercourse attracts about 10,000 visitors. Over the course 
of the year, this is about 120,000 visits. We currently have 31 
mirrored servers. On average these likely receive half the number 
of visits as ours in Pittsburgh. Thus the mirrored servers would 
be 60,000 x 31 = 1,860,000. Thus the web sites receive about 
2,000,000 visitors a year. We distributed the CDs to 4,000 people 
and they have been replicated for over 20,000 teachers. Poten-
tially each teacher will use the course for 50 students/year, or 
about 1,000,000 visitors from the CDs alone. Overall, therefore, 
potentially 3,000,000 visitors will see the Supercourse each 
year. We plan to put counters on all the mirrored servers at the 
next update so we can tell each of you who contributed a lecture, 
how many visits you have each month.

Clearly this estimate is very crude, but even if it is off by a 
factor of 3, the numbers of people visiting the Supercourse is 
becoming larger, and larger, very likely the greatest for any 
educational program in Public health and prevention. Your lecture 
in your drawer could be seen by a million eyes. It would be won-
derful to have you join.

CDs: After Halloween, and before US Thanksgiving, we will be 
sending out our gift to you. You should receive a new CD before 
January 1. We are working on Supercourse Rap now!! We will be 
able to present to most of you almost 500 of the top lectures in 
the world. As indicated before 
1) these are not to be sold, and 
2) we want you to give the CDs to 5 other people.

Help. We need your thoughts and help. We want to find out what 
lectures you will need in the up coming year. Please send us the 
title of topics that you would like, and we will ask our faculty 
if they, or if they know of someone who will produce lectures on 
these topics. We have a large number of wonderful lectures, but 
we want to make sure we have the lectures that are most helpful 
to you.

Suggestion Box: It would be wonderful if you could send to us any 
suggestions concerning the Supercourse. For really good sugges-
tions we will give you a present (something from Pittsburgh, of 
course).

Social Capital: We went to a wonderful talk on "social capital". 
It appears what we have been doing. Putnam is the person who re-
vived the concept of Social Capital in recent year. His view on 
social capital was "As people encounter each other through commu-
nity group participation they build up a community identity, es-
tablish community norms, learn to trust each other, and commit to 
providing benefits to each other"

It has also been described as "Social capital refers to those 
stocks of social trust, norms and networks that people can draw 
upon to solve common problems. (Networks) facilitate coordination 
and communication, and thus create channels through which infor-
mation about the trustworthiness of other individuals and groups 
can flow and be tested and verified" (Civil Practices Network, 
2000).

Isn't it amazing how with the Internet we can rapidly develop a 
community, and provide benefits to each other, and the world? The 
Internet thus not only is a death to distance. It is one of the 
most potent instruments for "speed of community development". 
Within just a few years we have developed the largest prevention 
community world wide. It would not have been possible had the 
Internet not been available. Also in the area of social capital, 
the accomplishments of the community is less important than how 
the process of community development.

Putnam wrote a book typifying the reduction of social capital in 
the US called "Bowling Alone". Isn't that a neat concept? Well 
the past few weeks have demonstrated to all of us that we are not 
bowling alone in prevention, we can and do all help each other.

We are thinking of developing a Supercourse paper something like 
"Social Capital of the Supercourse", and would love it if you 
wanted to join. 

At the end of this newsletter, we have included a list of new Su-
percourse lectures that we have received in September.

Best regards from Pittsburgh. The leaves are changing. In the 
back yard we see leaves that are red, yellow and green. These are 
some of the most beautiful days in Pennsylvania. 

Ron, Akira, Eun Ryoung, Faina, Eugene, Mita, Fan, Abed, Grace, 
Beatriz, Benjamin, Tom, Deb 

Ron Laporte
mailto:super3+@pitt.edu



Lectures by Peter Russel
Prions
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3481/index.htm
Retroviridae Retroviruses and Lentiviruses. Part I
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3491/index.htm
Retroviridae Retroviruses and Lentiviruses. Part II
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3501/index.htm
Togaviridae, Flaviviridae and Arteriviridae
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3511/index.htm
Caliciviruses
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3581/index.htm
Coronaviruses
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3591/index.htm
Papovaviridae
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3601/index.htm
Parvoviridae
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3611/index.htm
Reoviridae:Rotaviruses and Orbiviruses
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3621/index.htm
Picornaviridae
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3411/index.htm
Paramyxoviridae
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3401/index.htm
Poxviridae
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3421/index.htm
Orthomyxoviridae-Influenza Viruses
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3391/index.htm
Vaccines
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3381/index.htm
Adenoviridae and Iridoviridae
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3371/index.htm
Disease, Recovery and Diagnosis
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3361/index.htm
Virus Replication
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3351/index.htm

Lecture by Izzeldin Hussein
The Herbal Treatment of Disease
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3561/index.htm

Lecture by Miryoung Lee
Falls in the Elderly
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3571/index.htm

Lecture by National Diabetes Education Program.
Changing the way diabetes is treated.
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3141/index.htm

Lecture by Ellen Idler
Self-rated health in Epidemiological Surveys as a Predictor of 
Morbidity and Mortality
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3551/index.htm

Lectures by Jan Dorman
Genetic Testing and the Prevention of Type I diabetes. Part I
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3531/index.htm
Genetic Testing and the Prevention of Type I diabetes. Part II
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3541/index.htm

Lecture by Shiv Mathur
Epidemiology of Endemic Fluorosis
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3521/index.htm

Lecture by Furuse Nobuhiro
Internet for Everyone: Towards Sustainable Development
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3311/index.htm

Lectures by Helene Carabin
Les etudes d'observation en epidemiologie
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3471/index.htm
Les mesures en epidemiologie
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3461/index.htm

Lectures by Barbara Ekbal
Kerala People's Campaign for Decentralized planning
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3441/index.htm

Lectures by Russell Wilkins
Trends in Mortality by Income in Urban Canada from 1971 to 1996. 
Part I
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3431/index.htm
Trends in Mortality by Income in Urban Canada from 1971 to 1996. 
Part II
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec3451/index.htm


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