The first year of the new millennium is shaping up to be an exciting one for our society. Firstly, we prepared a revised more up-to-date constitution printed in this newsletter (please vote as instructed—see page3). Secondly, we will have a number of interesting presentations relating to the "Pathology of the Nervous System" at our annual Companion Meeting, Sunday March 26, 2000, at the USCAP meeting in New Orleans (see back page for program). Thirdly, an exciting program is being prepared for our biennial Ultrapath meeting, Ultrapath X, in the beautiful city of Florence, Italy, July 2-7, 2000. We hope to have a program brochure ready for distribution soon. I and the other members of the Executive Council hope that you will be able to attend and participate in this educational as well as socially rewarding conference.
John Hicks reports that 13, very good quality, abstracts were received for review for the March 2000 USCAP meeting. Not a bad beginning for this new subsection for posters and another way of emphasizing the value of electron microscopy. No word yet on how many of these have been accepted. This, however, should be a section worth visiting.
The SUP website was established in
1996. The server for the site is a 90 Mhz Pentium with O’Reilly’s
Website Pro running under the operating system Windows NT Server
4.0. The recent installation of a CISCO 2600 series router completes
the adaptations needed to make the site Y2K compliant.
The content on the site is broadly classified as either dynamic
content or static content. The static website content consists
of information about the society, such as contact information,
information about society officers, the society programs and information
about membership in the society. Dynamic website content consists
of the monthly cases, the newsletter, the list server and a conference
area (http://sup.ultrakohl.com:8080/~2).
Analysis of the website logs gives important feedback about site
usage. Snapshots of the activity from these logs were done during
January to June of 1998 and September to October of 1999 (Table
1). The site analysis shows a steady rate of users (unique visitors).
The average number of daily visitors ranges from 32 to 64. There
is an apparent increase in average daily visitors during the period
September to October 1999. However, it is felt that the short
observation time of 29 days, accounts for this apparent increase.
As always, domestic (US-based) visitors are the primary users
of the website. Detailed analysis of international visitors shows
that this group consists of visitors from a variety of countries,
some countries as close as Barbados and others as far as Taiwan.
International visitors have been noted from Oman, Croatia, Uruguay,
Kuwait, Korea, Mauritius, Malta, and Macedonia.
| Log File Data |
Sept 25/99 to Oct 30/99 |
Mar 29/99 to June 15/99 |
Jan 11/99 to Mar 29/99 |
| Total number of days covered by log file | 29 | 80 | 78 |
| Total number of requests | 7,852 | 12,949 | 12,550 |
| Average requests per day | 271 | 162 | 161 |
| Total number of visits | 3,337 | 4,551 | 3,577 |
| Average visits per day | 115 | 57 | 46 |
| Total number of visitors | 1,864 | 2,814 | 2,513 |
| Average visitors per day | 64 | 35 | 32 |
| Requests from domestic visitors | 3,367 | 6,366 | 5,527 |
| Requests from international visitors | 1,491 | 2,401 | 2,462 |
| Requests from other visitors | 2,994 | 4,182 | 4,561 |
An additional important aspect of
the analysis of the website log is to determine what web pages
are the most requested pages. The most popular pages during the
period January 1998 to March 1998 were: the August 96 case of
the month, Role of EM in Spindle cell Sarcomas (Irving
Dardick); Mucin Positive Epithelial Mesotheliomas (Sam
Hammar) and the July 96 Case of the month—The Role of
EM in the Fine Needle Aspiration Biopsy of a Mediastinal Tumor
(Irving Dardick). During the period March through June 1998, the
most frequently requested pages were: Unexpected Artifacts
in Liver Biopsies (Joe Harb), Role of EM in Spindle cell
Sarcomas (Irving Dardick), a case of the month; Mucin Positive
Epithelial Mesotheliomas (Sam Hammar) and Off Line Browsers
(Irvine Dardick). For the period September 1999 to October 1999,
the most requested pages were: Pathology of the Mitochondrion
(Josep Lloreta), Review of Pediatric Neoplasms (John Hicks),
Ovarian Small Cell Tumors (Richard Dickerson) and the case
of the month index.
The SUP website is alive and well. There is a constant stream
of international and domestic visitors who continue to express
a keen interest in the current and archived scientific content
that is available on the website. The members of SUP can further
contribute to the health of the SUP website and increase the website
traffic by fully utilizing dynamic features, such as the available
listserver and conference as well as continued scientific contributions
through the newsletter, technical tips and cases of the month.
Central Nervous System Neoplasms — Lauren A. Langford, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
Cerebral Autosomal Dominant Arteriopathy with Subcortical Infarcts and Leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL) — Douglas W. Henderson, Flinders Medical Center, Adelaide Australia
Inherited and Storage Diseases of Peripheral Nerve — Douglas C. Anthony, Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA
Neurofibroma — Robert A. Erlandson, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY
Perineuromas and Cellular Schwannomas — Bernd W. Scheithauer, Mayo Clinic and Mayo Graduate School of Medicine, Rochester, MN