NIBNews
Vol. 1 No. 3 August 1992

A Monthly Electronic Bulletin about Medical Informatics
News from the Center for Biomedical Informatics, State University of Campinas, Campinas SP, Brazil
Editor: Renato M.E. Sabbatini, PhD
Tel. +55 192 397130 Fax. +55 192 394717 Tlx. +55 19 1150 E-mail: SABBATINI@BRUC.BITNET or SABBATINI@TURING.UNICAMP.BR Address: P.O. Box 6005, Campinas, SP 13081 - BRAZIL

In This Issue

MEDINFO 92: SEVENTH WORLD CONGRESS ON MEDICAL INFORMATICS
Geneva, Switzerland, 6-10 September 1992
THE BRAZILIAN PARTICIPATION

This year's MEDINFO marks an all-time high of Brazilian participation. A total of 16 papers and 1 workshop will be presented. It is almost the double of last MEDINFO (China/Singapore) presentations, and it shows the growth of Medical Informatics in Brazil in the last years. No other country in Latin American has so strong a presence (Cuba and Mexico are the only countries present besides Brazil, with a total of 3 posters). In the general ranking, we are already in the ninth place.

In fact, it is comparable to many European countries, such as Italy, which will present 16 papers and 2 workshops.

Next MEDINFO (1995) will be in São Paulo, Brazil, what represents the recognition, by IMIA, of the importance and presence of the Brazilian community of health informaticians in the international context. It is predictable that a new record of Brazilian contributions to the field will be achieved.

If you are coming to MEDINFO'92 at Geneva, do not forget to visit the Brazilian stand in the technical exhibit area, where you will get fresh information about MEDINFO'95, watch beautiful videotapes about Brazil and have a chat with Brazilian colleagues.

We have added email addresses for some of the authors, so you may contact them directly, in case you find some paper of interest.

FTP SITE FOR MEDICAL SOFTWARE

The Center for Biomedical Informatics of the State University of Campinas, Brazil, announces the availability of a new public-access directory containing files for distribution via anonymous FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to all Internet remote sites.

Its domain is MEDICAL APPLICATIONS OF INFORMATICS and contains documents in ASCII format, as well public-domain software.

To access this directory, your local system must have the FTP program. Execute this program by entering the following line:

FTP CCSUN.UNICAMP.BR

or

FTP 143.106.1.5 (the numeric address is better)

When you the prompt FTP> appears, enter:

USER ANONYMOUS

and when prompted for your password, enter your e-mail address.

Having gained access to the system (it's UNIX-based), use

cd pub/medicine

Read the README and 00-INDEX.TXT files first, in order to acknowledge yourself with the norms and contents of this directory.

Attention: This directory continuously receives additional files. You will receive an e-mail message whenever this happens.

We gladly accept contributions to the public-domain directory. Please address all requests for submissions (uploadings) to the directory-owner above. It is our intention to foster educational and practical uses of computers in Medicine and Health Sciences by providing free access to software resources and documentation, to the international community.

FUTURE CONGRESSES AND CALLS FOR PAPERS

FIRST BRAZILIAN WORKSHOP ON NEURAL NETWORKS

This will be the first scientific event of its kind in Brazil. It will take place in the beautiful campus of the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, from 12 to 15 October, 1992. The first two days will be devoted to scientific panels and discussions and a round of presentations made by all groups currently working with theory, tools and applications in artificial neural network research in the country. Proceedings containing all contributions will be available to participants during the Workshop. The last two days will be occupied by an introductory course on neural networks, and lectures about several application areas, including Biology and Medicine (by Renato M.E. Sabbatini, NIBNews' Editor). During the Workshop, the Brazilian Society of Neural Networks will be founded. Ca. 300 participants are expected. Contact: Dr. Carlos E. Pedreira PEDREIRA@ELE.PUC-RIO.BR

RECENT SOFTWARE AND SOFTWARE UPDATES

NEURONET

A neural network emulator for research and educational purposes. It implements in a PC a two- or three- layer perceptron with backpropagation learning rule. Operation is very easy, being done through menus and self-help prompts. A utility program, DBF2NET, converts dBASE III-compatible databases to the NEURONET file format. The program has many resources to facilitate interactive experimentation with networks, such as the recording of learning curves and classification results onto disk, direct classification of disk file records, etc. There is a separate version for PC's with mathematical coprocessors (287, 387, 486).

Note: This software is in the shareware list of UNICAMP. If you are interested in getting a diskette with a printed manual, please send US$ 20/each in UNESCO bonuses or a bank cheque to the address above. Please allow 15-20 days for delivery.

Back to NIBNews HomePage Send your comments to the Editor
Copyright (c) 1995 Renato M.E. Sabbatini The material in this newsletter can be freely copied and redistributed without permission, for non-commercial purposes only. We require only that you cite the source (NIBNews Electronic Newsletter on Medical Informatics, SABBATINI@TURING.UNICAMP.BR).