Supercourse Newsletter - January 1, 2004
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Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.
- Oprah Winfrey (1954 - ), O Magazine
We are pleased that we did get quite a few things right this
year!!
Happy New Year, HAPPY NEW YEAR
It is now 2004, and we look forward to another exciting year. We
briefly wanted to go over what developed in 2003, as you will
see it was a remarkable year. Let�s first go over the increase
in the number of faculty and lectures.
Year - Faculty - Lectures/year - Total lectures
2000 800 70 70
2001 1750 225 295
2002 4700 305 600
2003 10000 500 1100
2004 14000 500 1611
Our evolution has been amazing. When we were funded by NIH for 4
years we indicated that there would be 300 faculty recruited and
only 200 lectures. Instead we have received 1,611 lectures in 4
years. For the past two years we have received an amazing 1,011
lectures. This represents 42 lectures each month. Last year we
received 511 wonderful lectures. We have a lot to thank you for.
We currently have over 14,000 faculty members from 151 coun-
tries, making us one of the largest networks of individuals in-
volved with prevention.
January 1 is Jan Dorman�s birthday (jansdorman@aol.com)
Major Accomplishments:
During 2003 we have seen major developments in the Supercourse
besides all the people and the lectures that came pouring in.
JIT- Dr. Chotin created two beautiful 'Just in Time' (JIT) lec-
tures for SARS and Monkey pox. These were updated almost daily,
and was published in the Lancet.
JIT- Mad Cow and Disasters: We started to create two new lec-
tures on Mad Cow Disease and the Iranian Earthquake. We are
talking with major newspapers to create links. This has been
lead by Denish Moorthy, and Eugene Shubnikov.
Faina created the "Golden lecture" which taught experts in 138
countries.
Google searches in slides: Wendy developed a system where it is
now possible to search for individual slides. Thus one could
search on diabetes and find every slide that mentioned diabetes.
Soni had been working to build a school of public health and
telepreventive medicine in Pakistan. There is an interest in
other countries to do the same
The surgeon General of the US contributed a lecture.
A large number of full courses were contributed to the Super-
course in 2003.
Establishment of a Malaysian collaboration through Akram.
Faina analyzed our quality control system that is built on the
Amazon.com model. Our system appears to have a large amount of
throughput and is powerful.
We submitted a controversial paper asking what a Peer Reviewed
Journal was.
There was considerable interest in our work in the food safety
industry.
Lead by Wendy, we effectively recruited through the NIH CRISP
system which is a listing of all investigators who have an NIH
grant.
Our mirrored servers lead by Eun Ryoung have expanded into 42
centers, including Mongolia, Pakistan and the Sudan.
We see a future to build a Social Entrepreneurialism system with
the Supercourse.
We submitted 8 grants, hopefully several will be funded.
Translation of the Women's health Supercourse into Spanish
(Nicolas Padilla).
We are very pleased as to how much everyone has contributed to
this effort.
A Vision of 2004
It is very difficult to predict as to where we will be this time
next year. We would very much appreciate your thoughts. Here is
what we envision:
Faculty: + 2,000 to 16,000
Lecturers: + 400 to 2,000
JIT lectures: 4 JIT lectures in relationship to disasters, plus
a location targeted specifically to JIT lectures on our web
site.
Possible theme based lectures, perhaps in line with WHO�s theme
Schools of Public Health (Pakistan? And others?)
Targeting the Internet Generation, students aged 20-29 who have
always known the internet.
Faculty "idea" page (Dr. Suad Suliman)
Ask the Expert�s page (Dr. Suad Suliman)
Questions for the authors system
Machine translation into different languages
Evidenced based lectures
We wanted to leave you with a song by Robert Burns. (it is best
sung in Karaoke). We all know the first 8 lines. It has been la-
belled as a song that "nobody knows" and "nobody understands".
Here we provide the words and translation.. We wish we could
sing it with you.
Words adapted from a traditional song
by Rabbie Burns (1759-96)
Auld lang syne
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne? < literally means "old long ago". Better
translation is perhaps "times gone by">
CHORUS:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup of kindness yet,
For auld lang syne!
And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp, < pay for>, < pint tankard>
And surely I'll be mine,
And we'll tak a cup o kindness yet,
For auld lang syne!
We twa hae run about the braes, < hills>
And pou'd the gowans fine, < pulled> < daisies>
But we've wander'd monie a weary fit, < many> < foot>
Sin auld lang syne.
We twa hae paidl'd in the burn < two ><pulled> < stream>
Frae morning sun till dine, < noon> < dinner/ evening time>
But seas between us braid hae roar'd < broad>
Sin auld lang syne.
And there's a hand my trusty fiere, < friend>
And gie's a hand o thine,
And we'll tak a right guid-willie waught, < goodwill drink>
For auld lang syne
For all our friends on the Supercourse,
Her�s our hand, our trusty fiere
We shake hands and we are fine
But we share a cup of knowledge
Sin auld lang syne
2004 should be an outstanding year. Thanks for helping so much
in 2003. We will be discussing in future newsletters the possi-
ble directions to head in 2004. Please send in any idea.
We also must thank Eugene, Faina, Mita, Soni, Denish, Akira, To-
moko, Abed, Rania, Julia, Wendy, Charles and Fred who have made
this all possible.