AFRO-NETS> Supercourse Newsletter - October 31, 2002

[Ron LaPorte <super1+@pitt.edu>]

Supercourse Newsletter - October 31, 2002
-----------------------------------------

http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/

Boo, it is Goblins and Ghosts night:

Well, our friends it is Halloween, the day we have all been waiting 
for. Many have asked 'What is Halloween?' Is it Halloween 13 the 
movie? No it is Halloween 1020 the lecture!! We are going to prepare 
the CD with 1020 prevention lectures on it and send them out next 
month.
 
For those not familiar with Halloween please look at 
http://wilstar.com/holidays/hallown.htm

it was once a religious holiday, but now is one of the non-holiday, 
holidays. The customs are that you take your children to your 
neighbors dressed in frightening outfits. This year the BIG outfit is 
Spiderman. Then at the door of your neighbors house you yell trick or 
treat. When people come to Jan's and my house, we typically give the 
children a Snicker or Milky Way candy bar. This year we decided to be 
a little different and give the 5 and 6 year old children a Super-
course Prevention CD, and highlight the lectures on dental cavities. 

It is indeed a time to celebrate.

Survey: 
Friends, EunRyoung Sa has been working with us for about 4 years. She 
is from Korea, and just in the process of finishing up her Ph.D. She 
will be doing an Internet survey to evaluate the Supercourse, and 
will be randomly sending to some of you a survey. We would very much 
appreciate if you could complete the survey. It only takes 15 minutes 
to complete but it will be important to determine reasons for utili-
zation of the Supercourse.

Lancet and BMJ: 
The Lancet last week described a little bit of the work we were doing 
at the Library of Alexandria (Lancet 360:1188,02). We have also just 
had a paper accepted in the BMJ titled from Papyrus to PowerPoint, 
the metamorphosis of biomedical journals. This will appear in the 
Christmas edition, we argue that PowerPoint will take over biomedical 
research communications. It will be most fun as we are going to put 
up our journal article also as a PowerPoint file, and we will query 
people, as to what is the best form of research communication. 

Disability and Access to science: 
We have been looking at various approaches to sound PowerPoint 
slides. People with impaired vision or who cannot read have very lit-
tle access to the world's scientific literature. We see several means 
by which we can machine sound the lectures so that your lectures can 
be read to people, and sight would not be needed. 

WHO EMRO:
We had a unique opportunity to demonstrate to WHO EMRO (Eastern Medi-
terranean Region) about the Supercourse. Dr. Najeeb Alshorbaji, M.D. 
from WHO held a very important meeting in Cairo. He invited me to 
present by satellite (Ron) at 8:30-9:00 AM. The only problem is I 
thought it was 8:30 Pittsburgh but it was in fact 8:30 Cairo time, 
which is 1:30 in the morning in Pittsburgh. It was not possible to 
get a connection. Najeeb is fantastic, as we sent him a PowerPoint 
lecture of my talk, and he gave it with about 2 minutes of practice. 
It was a hit!! It showed the power of lecture sharing to everyone 
there. It was wonderful. It will be most fun to develop an EMRO Su-
percourse!

Please come to our house tonight, and Jan and I will not only give 
you a CD for Halloween, but also some Super-man-Supercourse cookies!! 

Please write to <Ronlaporte@aol.com> any comments. The leaves are 
really, really beautiful this year, yellows and reds and greens. This 
is the nicest season in Pittsburgh.

Best regards,

Ron, Akira, Ghosts, Faina, EunRyoung, Mita, Eugene, Julia, Rania, 
Abed, Tom, Spiderman, Deb, Beatriz
mailto:super1+@pitt.edu

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