===================================================================== AMERICAN VETERINARY COMPUTER SOCIETY NEWSLETTER May - June, 1994 ===================================================================== Richard B. Talbot (Virginia Tech) - President; James T. Case (UC-Davis) - Secretary Treasurer; Robert Featherston (Tulsa, OK) - President elect; Ronald D. Smith (Illinois) - Newsletter Editor. ===================================================================== IN THIS ISSUE SOCIETY NEWS From the Editor AVCS Annual Meeting at AVMA AVCS Newsletters Now Available and Searchable via Gopher How to Contact AVCS LETTERS TO THE EDITOR VIN Mentor ("Adopt a Vet") Program JOURNAL OF VETERINARY INFORMATICS AND COMPUTING (JVIC) PRODUCT AVAILABILITY/REVIEWS/COMPARISONS Power PC Chip on IBM Computers National Information Infrastructure Report Released NEWS AND COMMENTARY UGA Vet Med FTP Site Mississippi State CVM Library Receives NLM Award E-Mail Server for Medical Informatics Training Program Information Medical Informatics Academic Department at Columbia Hospitals Seek Electronic Ordering Standard More Government Gophers Internet ABCs Essential Commodore Calls it Quits X-Rays Don't Damage Floppies Body of Knowledge MEETINGS AND EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical. Engineering, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Int'l Conf on Neural Networks & Expert Systems in Med. & Healthcare, Plymouth, England 18th Annual Symposium On Computer Applications In Medical Care, Washington, DC International Congress on Medical Informatics, Havana, Cuba Asia Pacific Association For Medical Informatics, (APAMI '94), Singapore ANNIE'94, Emerging Technologies in Medicine and Biology, St. Louis, MO Computers in Healthcare Education Symposium, Philadelphia, PA MEDINFO'95 - 8th World Congress on Medical Informatics, Vancouver, BC, Canada SUGGESTED READING CLOSING BITS ===================================================================== SOCIETY NEWS ===================================================================== FROM THE EDITOR Well, I've done it again. The Newsletter is later than I had hoped, due primarily to a one-month assignment in southern Brazil and Uruguay. Prior to leaving I made arrangements to have internet access from the work sites. This worked out well and I was able to keep in touch with the office and respond to the more urgent e-mail. However, I was not able to work on the Newsletter as much as I would have liked. While in South America I presented a seminar and poster session entitled "Internet Resources to Support Animal Health Programs". Both were very popular and confirmed in my mind the universal appeal of computer-mediated communications. This issue's feature article isn't an article at all but rather a call for papers for our new journal, Veterinary Informatics and Computing. We have decided to distribute JVIC in electronic format only using a variety of internet services. In this way we hope to achieve the broadest possible distribution at minimal cost, and increase the value of JVIC by archiving it in a searchable and retrievable form. ===================================================================== AVCS ANNUAL MEETING AT AVMA The AVCS will hold it's annual meeting from 3:00 to 4:00 PM on Monday, July 11 at the Sonoma Hilton. Veterinarians and others interested in joining are encouraged to attend. ===================================================================== AVCS NEWSLETTERS NOW AVAILABLE AND SEARCHABLE VIA GOPHER Current and past issues of the AVCS Newsletter can be searched and downloaded from the NetVet Gopher server set up and maintained by Dr. Ken Boschert. Ken has put pointers to the NetVet server in several prominent places such as the State of Missouri Gopher menu (accessible from Gopher Servers in the United States) and the Agricultural Folder ofAmerica Online's Gopher area. The fact that it's searchable makes the AVCS Newsletter even more useful. ===================================================================== HOW TO CONTACT AVCS Applications for membership, accompanied by a check for $20 payable to the AVCS, should be sent to Dr. James T. Case; AVCS Secretary Treasurer; School of Veterinary Medicine; University of California; P.O. Box 1770; Davis, CA 95617 (Phone: 916/752-4408; FAX: 916/752-5680; e-mail: jcase@ucdcvdls.bitnet). Dr. Case is responsible for distribution of the hardcopy version of the AVCS Newsletter. Newsletter items can be sent to Dr. Ronald D. Smith, AVCS Newsletter Editor; UI College of Veterinary Medicine; 2001 South Lincoln; Urbana, IL 61801. Telephone: 217/333-2449; FAX: 217/333-4628; AOL: RDSmith; Internet: r-smith19@uiuc.edu If you would like to be on the AVCS Newsletter electronic distribution list, send an e-mail message to the Newsletter Editor. Although the electronic version is only an ASCII (text) file, it's faster, searchable, easier to store and retrieve, and environmentally friendly. Current and past issues of the Newsletter can also be downloaded from the Associations and Foundations Library of America Online's Veterinary Information Network. Issues remain there for one year. Current and past issues of the Newsletter are also accessible via Gopher. All can be searched with user-defined key words. Point your Gopher client to netvet.wustl.edu. ===================================================================== LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ===================================================================== VIN MENTOR ("ADOPT A VET") PROGRAM From: RD Smith, AVCS Newsletter Editor Some time ago I posted a message to several electronic discussion groups asking "What's on the Internet for veterinarians." I received several responses describing the America OnLine VIN Mentor Program which took place during the spring of 1994. I have included highlights for your information. The concept of matching veterinary students to practitioner "mentors" around the country through e-mail sounds like something others might wish to try. ======================== From: Warren Brunton Ron, Concerning students using Internet......are you familiar with the VIN Mentor program Paul Pion (PDP1) started at UCDavis? Veterinary students are in contact via e-mail and Internet with real live veterinarians (VIN members). ======================== From: Paul Pion Ron, So far I think we have 2/3 of the first yr class participating -- and the vets are very enthusiastic. You can read through more of the messages on VIN in the VET TO VET BOARD in the Letters to Vets to Be folder. I started the program by posting the announcement below, getting vets online to respond and posting the responses outside of class -- then students began to sign up on a sheet. =================== Subj: HELP GROW A VET Date: 93-10-24 00:18:35 EST Posted on: America Online I will soon be starting a 5 week course in CV physiology for freshman students. I would like to show them what life is like in the REAL WORLD. During the next 1.5 months I'd appreciate people opening up their doors by posting interesting cases in the INTERESTING CASES FOLDER. This folder is a place for you to communicate to these newest entrants to our profession: 1. what you have learned that you think every vet should know 2. what you wish someone had told you in vet school but they didn't 3. what they told you in vet school that was useful 4. what they told you in vet school that was useless 5. whatever else you want to tell them I think this will be fun and very valuable. Here is your chance to make a difference in a vet student's education. And if anyone would like to "ADOPT A VET STUDENT", post your desire here. If some of you would like to ADOPT students and MENTOR them from afar I will offer the students the opportunity to BE ADOPTED and maybe we can start a new, and what I think will be a valuable, program for all:. Thanks for your support! Paul ======================== From: lboggs@aol.com Ron, The vet/student program at Davis has been working out awfully well - lots of enthusiastic comments from both vets and students. So far, we have 86 active pairs. Discussion has ranged from, "how important are these grades?" to clinical cases. I've tried to match vet/student pairs that have similar practice interests. Lynne Boggs ===================================================================== JOURNAL OF VETERINARY INFORMATICS AND COMPUTING (JVIC) AUTHOR AND SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Ronald D. Smith ===================================================================== The Journal of Veterinary Informatics and Computing is a new peer-reviewed journal intended to foster, encourage, advance and communicate both scholarly and practical information on veterinary informatics. The JVIC will be published electronically and distributed via the internet, permitting much shorter turnaround of articles than hard copy journals. All issues will be archived and searchable online indefinitely. The JVIC is jointly sponsored by the American Veterinary Computer Society and the American Academy of Veterinary Informatics. Online distribution and archiving will be provided through the Scholarly Communications Project of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The journal will be free to users with internet access. Submissions may be in the form of original research, reviews of software and hardware, literature reviews, conference reports, and letters to the editor. An article may be submitted to JVIC at any time for peer-review. Receipt of the article will be acknowledged within 24 hours of arrival. Notification of acceptance or rejection shall be sent to authors within 30 days of the arrival of the submission. Submissions are acceptable only by electronic mail or on diskette; hardcopy will be returned to the author. The first issue of JVIC is scheduled for publication during October of 1994. Submissions should be received by August 1 to qualify for inclusion in the inaugural issue. EDITORIAL GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS ORIGINAL ARTICLES (research, literature reviews, conference reports). Use a recognized standard form and style. Consult the Fall, 1993 hardcopy [Vol. 20(2)] or electronic [Vol. 20(3)] versions of the Journal of Veterinary Medical Education for examples. Include a brief abstract of your article. SOFTWARE REVIEWS Software reviews need not be complete or formal; short comments are welcome. However, they should make clear the context on which the review is based. Criticism should be thoughtful and constructive. Emphasize the strong points and suggest how the developer might upgrade the product or do a better job next time. All reviews submitted should include the information listed below as items 1 through 9, but they do not need to conform to a rigid format. For example, it will often be appropriate to combine items 7 and 8 in a descriptive paragraph that provides readers with a good picture of how the particular reviewer's experience with the software relates to their own situation or expectations. Required background information ------------------------------- 1. Title of software package being reviewed (including version) 2. Operating system - hardware platform 3. Name of reviewer: 4. Affiliation of reviewer: 5. Phone: 6. E-mail: Either a phone number or electronic mail address is necessary for acceptance of a review. Please indicate if you do NOT want this information to be part of the online record. 7. Status of reviewer (professional/graduate student, faculty, instructional design/informatics specialist, etc): 8. Basis for review (personal use, evaluation in learning center, hospital, laboratory, etc.): 9. In the review itself, divide your comments into the following aspects, as appropriate: -Content. -Interface. -Technical requirements (ease of networking, etc.). -Support from vendor/developer. -Particular strengths of the program. -Suggestions for most appropriate use. -Comparison with other packages. -Summary evaluation HARDARE REVIEWS Hardware reviews should follow the same basic format as used for software reviews. Item 9 should be adjusted to reflect the type of hardware being reviewed (computer, digitizing board/scanner, pen interface, etc.). SUBMISSION PROCESS Since the reviews will be primarily accessible by Gopher, they should be prepared as simple text (ASCII) files, without use of bold typefaces, underlining, italics, or automatic indenting. Figures or diagrams should not be included. The text should be prepared in a fixed-space font such as Courier or Monaco. Use blank lines to separate paragraphs. Such files can then be saved as text (ASCII) files and transmitted by electronic mail or on diskette. To submit an article via e-mail, send it as an ASCII file to: rd-smith@uiuc.edu You may also send your ASCII file on a 3.5" diskette to: Dr. Ronald D. Smith, Editor Journal of Veterinary Informatics and Computing College of Veterinary Medicine University of Illinois 2001 South Lincoln Urbana, IL 61801, USA Currently, we are not able to publish photographs, diagrams or graphics. JVIC will be published in the simplest ASCII format to reach the largest audience possible. For more information contact the Editor at the above e-mail or surface mail addresses, by telephone (217/333-2449) or fax (217/244-7421). ===================================================================== PRODUCT AVAILABILITY/REVIEWS/COMPARISONS ===================================================================== POWER PC CHIP ON IBM COMPUTERS From: Atlanta Journal-Constitution 3/31/94 F2 The PowerPC chip developed jointly by Apple, IBM and Motorola and now available on Macintoshes will be available this Fall on three new IBM PCs, one of which is a laptop with a CD ROM option. All three will have a microphone and will feature IBM's personal dictation system, allowing spoken English to be translated into text on the screen. ===================================================================== NATIONAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE REPORT RELEASED BNA Daily Report for Executives 5/5/94 A10 A report outlining the benefits and obstacles to using the information superhighway was released last week and the Commerce Department is requesting comments on the findings. "Putting the Information Infrastructure to Work" predicts the new data highway will improve the competitiveness of the U.S. manufacturing base; speed the efficiency of electronic commerce and business-to-business communications; improve health care delivery and help contain medical costs; promote access to the educational system; and enable government to dispense services to the public faster, more responsively and more efficiently. To order copies, call (202) 783-3238 and request NIST Special Publication 857. ===================================================================== NEWS AND COMMENTARY ===================================================================== MISS STATE UNIV VET MED FTP SITE Posted to: Veterinary Medicine By: Lynch Paul I'm a 2nd year student at MSU-CVM. When I came here, I found that I would continue working with macs probably for the rest of my life. We had to buy Powerbooks since several of our classes used HyperCard, Clarisworks and Powerpoint for study aides. Recently, My poor PB/140 bit the dust as the hard drive crashed from over use. Hence, heading into the final 5 weeks of class, I headed into a panic! I needed a new hard drive that would last, FAST. I bought a 240Meg internal hard drive so I could reload all our stuff and be able to carry all our notes, the Merck manual (IBM), and tutorials with me whereever I go. (It occurred to me that there should) be an FTP site that was tailored to veterinary students. I've seen several for human medicine, but I haven't found anything specificly for veterinary medicine. I (have) set up an FTP site as a trial on my mac where any vet student can exchange tutorial, graphices, notes, etc at: IP: 130.18.100.66 user: vet pw: student You can reach this site with many FTP programs like Fetch or Xferit, (Gopher isn't up yet). Browse around. Take anything you think you can use. Donate any images, notes,tutorials you think would be helpful to your future colleagues. It will start out small, but will grow with time. This is the only one I know of. I hope the idea of a network site for vet med catches on. If you have any questions or suggestions you can reach me at: Lynch@cvmmdL2.Msstate.edu The site should be up from 8 A.M.- 5 P.M. Central time. If you would like to set up your own FTP site, I have a site installer that I just made that you can get from this site. Its very quick and easy to use. Read the readme. Paul Lynch; Mississippi State University; Class of 96' ===================================================================== UGA VET MED FTP SITE Posted to: Veterinary Medicine By: Fred Smith Paul Lynch just mentioned a new FTP site at MS State. We also have one here at UGA. It's address is: FTP.VET.UGA.EDU There are several sections in the \pub\freedemo area you might want to take a look at. You can also upload files for inclusion on the site to: \UPLOAD I hope you find this useful and I would welcome any suggestions for improvement. Fred G. Smith; College of Veterinary Medicine; University of Georgia E-mail: SMITH.F@CALC.VET.UGA.EDU; Voice: (706) 542-5550; FAX : (706) 542-0051 ===================================================================== MISSISSIPPI STATE CVM LIBRARY RECEIVES NLM AWARD From MSU Veterinary Medicine Library Update, April 25, 1994 Forwarded by Rose Davis The Mississippi Health Information Network (MisHIN) proposal written two years ago by June Breland as part of a larger consortium grant has been funded by the National Library of Medicine for three years. The CVM Library portion of the grant will mainly purchase equipment needed to train Phase 3 and 4 veterinary medical students to access the National Library of Medicine's Grateful Med databases and to use the interlibrary loan component known as Loansome Doc. The grant will also allow the library to put its holdings in a union catalog with other members of the network. ===================================================================== E-MAIL SERVER FOR MEDICAL INFORMATICS TRAINING PROGRAM INFORMATION Posted to: MEDINF-L By: Ted Shortliffe We have established an email server on the CAMIS computer at Stanford University that will permit you to request information regarding the PhD and MS training programs in medical informatics at our institution. There are currently two files available for email request: program.summary and bioinformatics.supplement. If you are interested in one or both of these subjects, send email to: mis-request@camis.stanford.edu The following commands are supported by the automated reply system. HELP - returns this command summary LIST - returns list of available archive files. SEND [name] - requests system to send archive file [name]. PATH
- Asks that system use
explicitly as return path QUIT - Asks system to ignore rest of message Commands may be sent as a subject line, or as lines in the body of the mail message. Thus, to request the program summary, insert the command: send program.summary in the subject field or body of a message to the mis-request server. In the future, as more information is made available in this way, the LIST command will allow you to see the new files. We are using this mechanism for information distribution since not everyone has access to gopher or Mosaic/WWW. The email server will distribute inform ation to anyone who has email access to the internet. ===================================================================== MEDICAL INFORMATICS ACADEMIC DEPARTMENT AT COLUMBIA From: a posting to iaims-l@medicine.wustl.edu By: Mark Frisse Folks, for your information, the Columbia University senate with the enthusiastic support of the executive committee, the Provost and President and the Education Subcommittee today passed the resolution to establish a full fledged academic department of medical informatics at Columbia. The main purpose the creation of this department will serve is that we now have a place where we can promote and appoint faculty on their merits as scholars in medical informatics. Our application for a degree program had passed the senate a year ago and is awaiting expected approval from the nys board of regents. The main hurdle left for the creation of a department is now the Columbia Board of Trustees. The senate vote was unanimous and people were surprised that there was so little comment or controversy. I take this as a recognition of the importance that information will play in the on-going revision of our system for healthcare delivery. We won't celebrate until after the Board of Regents meets but I thought the bit of good news would be interesting for the NLM training meeting and the amia meeting. ===================================================================== HOSPITALS SEEK ELECTRONIC ORDERING STANDARD Wall Street Journal 4/12/94 B6 Four major hospital suppliers are working together to establish a common data standard for both hospitals and suppliers, enabling them to order and pay for supplies electronically. Currently, hospital systems tend to have proprietary systems, often using a different system with each vendor. The project will run on desktop computers and software marketed by TSI International Software. ===================================================================== MORE GOVERNMENT GOPHERS Chronicle of Higher Education 4/13/94 A20 The Census Bureau offers statistics, data on government finances, research papers and other data on-line. Point your gopher to gopher.census.gov. Meanwhile, the Senate has set up a combination gopher/ftp site providing legislation, reports and committee assignments. Connect to gopher.senate.gov, or ftp.senate.gov. ===================================================================== INTERNET ABCS ESSENTIAL Investor's Business Daily 4/14/94 p.4 With twice as many networks connected to the Internet as last year and a new one hooking up every 10 minutes, familiarity with the Internet will become increasingly essential to everyday life, says Mark Gibbs, co-author of "Navigating the Internet": "Not knowing how to use the Internet will be as grave a deficiency as not knowing how to read. The Internet will become the world's primary means of communication and will soon carry more mail than the entire postal services worldwide... The Internet now connects more people, resources and services than any other communications system except for the telephone system." ===================================================================== COMMODORE CALLS IT QUITS Atlanta Journal-Constitution 4/30/94 B3 Commodore, a PC industry pioneer, is going out of business and liquidating its assets for the benefit of its creditors. ===================================================================== X-RAYS DON'T DAMAGE FLOPPIES Bottom Line Personal 5/15/94 p.9 A study by the Mayo Clinic shows that airport X-ray machines can't damage floppy disks. The metal detectors you walk through would have to be at least 300 times more powerful to destroy data on a standard floppy. ===================================================================== BODY OF KNOWLEDGE Chronicle of Higher Education 4/20/94 A26 Researchers at the University of Washington Health Sciences Center are designing a computerized model of the human body using highly detailed images of actual human parts recorded in digital format so they can be stored and manipulated by computers. The final product will be a massive database of images that can be rotated to any angle, zoomed in on, and manipulated. The researchers' ultimate goal is to present a complete model of a body through the Internet or other computer networks. ===================================================================== MEETINGS AND EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES ===================================================================== August 21-26, 1994 World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (See the Jan-Feb 1993 issue of the AVCS Newsletter for details) August 24-26, 1994 Int'l Conf on Neural Networks & Expert Systems in Med. & Healthcare, Plymouth, England (See the Nov-Dec 1993 issue of the AVCS Newsletter for details) November 5-9, 1994 18th Annual Symposium On Computer Applications In Medical Care, Washington, DC (See the March-April 1994 issue of the AVCS Newsletter for details) November 8-11, 1994 International Congress on Medical Informatics, Havana, Cuba (See the Nov-Dec 1993 issue of the AVCS Newsletter for details) November 10-12, 1994 Asia Pacific Association For Medical Informatics, (APAMI '94), Singapore (See the March-April 1994 issue of the AVCS Newsletter for details) November 13-16, 1994 ANNIE'94, Emerging Technologies in Medicine and Biology, St. Louis, MO (See the March-April 1994 issue of the AVCS Newsletter for details) April 26-28, 1995 Computers in Healthcare Education Symposium, Philadelphia, PA From: American Medical Informatics Association Education PSG CALL FOR PAPERS AND PROPOSALS We invite you to participate and join in exploring the 1995 Symposium theme -- "Managing the Information Mosaic" April 26 - 28, 1995; Thomas Jefferson University; Philadelphia, PA Hosted by: Health Sciences Libraries Consortium and Thomas Jefferson University; Sponsored by: Apple Computer, Inc. INVITATION The Symposium serves as a national forum and provides numerous opportunities to share ideas and expertise about the use of technology in healthcare education. We invite you to submit proposals for papers, panels, workshops, posters and demonstrations. The Health Sciences Libraries Consortium (HSLC) reviews all proposals for inclusion in the Symposium program. The HSLC encourages the sharing of resources among Pennsylvania's Health Sciences institutions and towards that end is sponsoring the tenth "Computers in Healthcare Education" Symposium. The Symposium is two full days of speakers, demonstrations and exhibits and one day of pre-conference workshops. SCOPE The Symposium invites papers and proposals on all topics related to Computers in Healthcare Education, this year's theme and the following four tracks: Exploring the World Wide Web and Other Internet Tools (Mosaic, Cello, WAIS, Lynx, Gopher, etc.) GUI and Multimedia Tools for Testing and Evaluation (Certification, CME, MAC, Windows and OS2) New Technologies in Education and Research (PDA's, Wireless, Speech and Voice Recognition and Synthesis) Multimedia and Information Resource Management (Personal Bibliographic Management Software, Image and Sound Archives, Multimedia Databases, Optical Storage) SYMPOSIUM PROGRAM ACTIVITIES The Symposium program includes a wide range of interesting and useful activities including keynote speakers, paper presentations, panel sessions, demonstrations, and hands-on workshops. Papers (45 minutes) - Papers on all aspects of Computers in Healthcare Education are invited. Preference will be given to those papers that address the themes suggested above. Panels (45 minutes) - Panels will consist of at least three members presenting different aspects of a relevant issue and interacting with the audience to widen the discussion. Demonstrations and Posters (2 hours) - Demonstrations enable faculty, students and non-commercial developers to demonstrate and discuss new computer applications for healthcare education. These sessions do not involve a formal presentation and will be located in a special academic exhibit area. They provide opportunities for Symposium attendees to talk with presenters one-on-one in a less formal context. Presenters discuss their work in detail with those attendees most interested in their work. (Note: There are NO phone lines available in this area.) Pre-Conference Hands-on Workshops (2 hours) - Hands-on workshops are intended to provide in-depth professional development opportunities in these and other areas: Collaborative Research Tools; Personal Information Management; Internet Topics; Campus Wide Information Systems; Cross Platform Development; Instructional Design; Multimedia; Technology & Lecture Aids These sessions should include hands-on activities that emphasize developing new skills and professional understanding for the participant. A PC, MAC and mixed lab are available for these sessions. Please specify which lab would be most appropriate for your session. (Note: All fees collected for the workshops go towards the symposium budget, not to the presenter.) For further instruction on presentations and exhibitions contact Jerilyn Garofalo; Health Sciences Libraries Consortium; 3600 Market Street; Suite 550; Philadelphia, PA 19104-2646; garofalo@shrsys.hslc.org September 9-14, 1995 MEDINFO'95 - 8th World Congress on Medical Informatics, Vancouver, BC, Canada (See the Jan-Feb 1993 issue of the AVCS Newsletter for details) ===================================================================== SUGGESTED READING ===================================================================== BOOKS Internet Top Ten Best-Selling Books Internet Business Report May 94 p.5 CPU Publishing Update says the top ten best-selling books on the Internet are: 1. Whole Internet User's Guide (Krol) 2. The Internet Complete Reference (Hahn & Stout) 3. Internet for Dummies (Levine) 4. Mac Internet Tour Guide (Ventana) 5. Complete Internet Directory (Braun) 6. The Internet Companion Plus (LaQuey) 7. Internet Starter Kit for the Mac (Hayden) 8. The Internet Navigator (Glister) 9. Connecting to the Internet (Estrada) 10. Zen and the Art of the Internet (Kehoe) ARTICLES ML Pao, SF Grefsheim, ML Barclay, JO Woolliscroft, M Mcquillan, BL Shipman. 1993. Factors Affecting Students' Use of Medline. Computers and Biomedical Research 26: 6 (DEC 1993): 541-555 ME Johnston, KB Langton, RB Haynes, A Mathieu. 1994. Effects of Computer-Based Clinical Decision Support Systems on Clinician Performance and Patient Outcome - A Critical Appraisal of Research. Annals of Internal Medicine 120: 2 (JAN 15 1994): 135-142 MS Tuttle, SJ Nelson. 1994. The Role of the UMLS in Storing and Sharing Across Systems. International Journal of Bio - Medical Computing 34: 1-4 (JAN 1994): 207-237 C Anderson. 1994. Information Technology - Easy-to-Alter Digital Images Raise Fears of Tampering. Science 263: 5145 (JAN 21 1994): 317-318 L Fio. 1993. State-of-the-Art Blood-Typing Using Computer-Technology and DNA. Journal of Equine Veterinary Science 13: 12 (DEC 1993): 675-676 MA Tomaszewski. 1993. Record-Keeping Systems and Control of Data-Flow and Information-Retrieval to Manage Large High Producing Herds. Journal of Dairy Science 76: 10 (OCT 1993): 3188-3194 SL Spahr. 1993. New Technologies and Decision-Making in High Producing Herds. Journal of Dairy Science 76: 10 (OCT 1993): 3269-3277 IA Gardner, JC Holmes. 1993. Testview - A Spreadsheet Program for Evaluation and Interpretation of Diagnostic-Tests. Preventive Veterinary Medicine 17: 1-2 (OCT 1993): 9-18 MA Varner, J Zdrojewski, J Ehrlich, WM Guterbock, J Fetrow, RA Cady. 1993. Informational Resources for Bovine Practice - New Electronic and Telecommunication Services. Compendium on Continuing Education for the Practicing Veterinarian 15: 12 (DEC 1993): 1655 ===================================================================== CLOSING BITS ===================================================================== EQUALITIES. In memory capacity terms, one human genome equals one-and-one-seventh compact disks equals 536 1.4MB floppy disks equals equals 399,000 pages of text. (Fortune 4/4/94 p.75) THE REAL COST OF COMPUTING. A Gartner Group analyst says a company's real cost of PC ownership is $6K to $12K a year, which takes into account technical and administrative support, as well as the lost time of high-paid nontechnical persons tutoring themselves or others when regular technical support is inadequate. (New York Times 3/27/94 Sec.3 p.10) COMPUTER TO COFFEE TABLE IN ONE STEP. A new Xerox software system that allows copiers and computers to interact has the potential to overhaul the print-on-demand business, as businesses look to the local copy shop for their printing needs. Details still to be worked out include a deal with AT&T that would allow customers to send the text for their books and reports over the phone line. Initial targets for the new service include the college textbook market, and businesses that use a lot of forms, such as banks and insurance companies. (Wall Street Journal 4/12/94 B6) SOFTWARE REPLACES SPORTSWRITERS. A $100 software program called Sportswriter is capable of churning out reasonably good sports copy by intelligently stringing together words between facts. Some 80 small newspapers in the Midwest have purchased the program and are using it to cover high school sports events. (Wall Street Journal 3/29/94 A1) THE SENSE OF A WOMAN. Women love the geometric video game Tetris, and game-makers are dying to find out why. While 99% of the buyers for most other games are male, 40% of Tetris buyers are female. One theory is the appeal of the game's goal, which is to bring order to chaos, resulting in neat little rows of geometric shapes. Women crave order, hypothesizes a sociologist hired by Nintendo to unravel the riddle, and by beating the clock on the game, a woman experiences a rush of endorphins -- "feel good" chemicals produced by the body under stress. (Wall Street Journal 5/10/94 B1) -------------------------------------------------------------- Ronald D. Smith DVM, PhD Voice: (217) 333-3290 College of Veterinary Medicine (217) 333-2449 University of Illinois FAX: (217) 333-4628 2001 South Lincoln Internet: rd-smith@uiuc.edu Urbana, IL 61801 America OnLine: RDSmith USA CompuServe: 72717.1750