If you intend to live in the student dorms next year, you should sign up now at the Dorm Administration Office.
Also, don’t forget to drop a 30,000 SYP in your student account, or you will lose out on your reserved room for next year.
Money, money, money… 
Below is a recent post on the university website that explains to students that they will now be able to receive SMS notifications from the university straight to their mobile phones. In order to do this, you must go to the link provided here. Login and register your mobile number, you will receive a text message with a code which you will be required to verify and then you’ll be fine. You should know though, that if you don’t register and you don’t receive notification, you will be considered notified and responsible regardless. I love logical thinking, don’t you? 
حرصاً من جامعة القلمون الخاصة على تطوير التواصل مع الطلبة, فقد تم اعتماد خدمة الرسائل النصية SMS لتبليغهم بالقرارات والإعلانات الضرورية, كما ستتيح هذه الخدمة مستقبلا تزويد الطلبة بعلاماتهم وببرامج الدوام والامتحان…., وستكون وسيلة فعالة جدا في التواصل الفوري مع كل طالب عند أي أمر طارئ أو أي تبليغ يحتاج إلى سرعة فائقة أو خصوصية, لذا نرجو من جميع الطلبة وبدون استثناء أن يقوموا إدخال أرقام هواتفهم النقالة في الصفحة الخاصة بكل منهم على الموقع www.kalamoon.edu.sy وستصل رسالة تأكيد على هاتف كل من أدخل رقمه تحتوي على رقم خاص يجب تسجيله في الموقع للتأكيد.
وننوه بأن آخر موعد لتسجيل الأرقام للحصول على هذه الميزة هو الأربعاء 23/2/2011 , وسيعد الطالب بعدها مبلغا بكل إعلان يرسل عبر الرسائل النصية
“Even though Mr. Smith was facing death, he could not have a standard heart transplant,” explained Dr. Michael Madani, associate professor of surgery and co-director of the UC San Diego Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center, in a release. “Removing the old heart and replacing it with a new heart would have caused the new heart to fail because resistance to flow in his lungs-called pulmonary hypertension-was so high. But together, the two hearts share the work and get the job done.” – Gizmodo
This procedure called “Heterotropic Heart Transplant” saved this man’s life. Its not the first time the procedure has been done, but it is still amazing nonetheless. You can actually see footage of the hearts beating here on YouTube (I love that its not banned! 
) Its almost science fiction, but the images are incredible proof.
Enjoy
So, say goodbye to proxies, and so long to VPN’s! Syria has lifted the ban on popular sites Facebook and Youtube, and people are fighting back the tears of joy as they log in for the first time without having to type a stupid “s” right after the “http”, use a proxy server, or constantly search for free proxy sites.
The ban that lasted five years, since 2007, was lifted on Tuesday, February 8 2011. I fond myself wanting to say more, but I am honestly at a loss for words. I’m anything but an avid Facebook user, its not something I enjoy wasting time on, but I love YouTube and not just for the endless supply of funny clips. YouTube is an amazing source for medical videos and tutorials for everything you could ever think to learn, its a TV, a teacher, and an endless portal to everything good. Unfortunately though, Wikipedia still faces some censoring and Amazon.com is still blocked (not that we want to buy off of it, so much as we want to check pricing).
We Salute You President Bashar!
UPDATE: Google Earth can now be downloaded, but other Google features like Chrome Gestures are still forbidden
Mnemonics are neat tricks to help you remember lists or something difficult to memorize. I thought the one posted on Herkat recently was pretty useful, Herkat’s new frontpage has a section dedicated to Mnemonics. I did my own searching and found a whole collection of them on the web. It doesn’t always have to be a clever phrase though, it can also be an acronym type word. One that I really like is PULSE, its used to determine symptoms of Myocardial Infarction (heart attack).
PULSE stands for:
Persistent chest pains
Upset stomach
Lightheadedness
Shortness of breath
Excessive sweating
Click this post to get a link to thousands more useful medical mnemonics.
The process of healing a wound isn’t a short one, and it isn’t a fun one either. Especially if it is more serious wound, it must be constantly cared for, and kept clean and bandaged. Not to mention the pain for the duration of the healing process.
It seems that most of that is soon to be behind us, as we move further into the era of stem cell research. The skin gun is a medical device that literally sprays skin cells onto burn victims to re-grow skin. Old methods like skin grafts took weeks to heal; the skin gun needs about an hour. It sounds almost like something out of Star Trek, but the invention of the “Skin Gun” is very real and has gone into the official testing stage.
WHAT: Medical Book Fair
WHEN: Sunday Jan 30, 2011 – Wednesday Feb 2, 2011
WHERE: Basement Floor of Medical Labs Building
Students are invited to visit the book fair where they will find medical texts in both Arabic and English. Books on clinical training, and even Kaplan USMLE Steps 1 and 2-CK Packages (package is sold for 2500SYP, regular is 3500SYP). All the texts found on the Herkat eBook Library will be there, and you will even find medical tools like otoscopes, stethoscopes, and ophthalmoscopes. Everyday they offer deals of up to 40% in savings.
I took a look around today and found many useful items I plan to purchase, especially the Kaplan USMLE package which for me is an essential purchase.
So don’t forget to make your way over there, and tell your friends too!
The new Herkat homepage is up, and if you ask me, it looks great!
Thanks to a lot of hard work from our very own Dr. Hogir Massum Housen and friends, the site is more organized and accessible. It even offers services like an online Medical Textbook Library where you’ll find curriculum eBooks.
You will also be able to read up on events and updates in the post section in the center of the page, and you might even be lucky enough to read a post written by me personally! Yes, that’s right, the MedStu DailyBlog is now in collaboration with Herkat. You can find a link to the blog on the Herkat site located in the right-hand section. So, be sure to check it out and explore everything the site has to offer.
You know how urine has been boring old yellow for thousands of years, well now we have evolved to new and improved purple!
Well, not exactly, this is a phenomenon quite literally named, Purple Urine Bag Syndrome. It was first described in 1978, when elderly patients with catheters began filling their urine bags with grape juice colored urine. What is interesting is that patients don’t complain of any symptoms, purple discoloration of urine is often the only finding.
The cause is simple enough, bacteria (Klebsiella pneumoniae) in the urine produce the enzyme indoxyl phosphatase. This converts indoxyl sulfate in the urine into the red and blue colored indirubin and indigo compounds, respectively. Easy right?
If you would like your urine to turn funny colors, check out this site with tips on how.
Today the University of Kalamoon posted an official “press” release on their website (here) regarding the accusations of insufficient teaching staff made by the Syrian Ministry of Higher Education. View full article »
If you haven’t made your university payments already, you better get to it or else you’ll be paying fines if you miss the deadline on Jan 27, 2011.
In case you haven’t forked over your cash by then, a 5% fine will be charged to your account if you pay between Jan 29, 2011 and Feb 10, 2011.
Hopefully, you will have paid the bills by then, but if you still haven’t done so you’ll find yet another fine added to your account. This time though, its a 10% fine for the week of Feb 12-17, 2011. But wait a minute, there is also a 10% fine if you miss that in addition to a 5,000 SYP in late re-registration fees.
And if you haven’t had enough yet, they’ll come to your house and leave a dead goat’s head in your bed while your sleeping. But that rarely happens
I was skimming over the forum at Herkat and I came across a recommendation to visit a site called Medilexicon, its a great medical site offering a medical dictionary, news updates about the medical world, and even a medical abbreviation glossary that we could find very useful.
Then I realized that I have my own list of pretty great websites that I often use, that could be pretty useful to all of you too. So, I made a list and here it is: View full article »
Roof of the Library at University of Kalamoon – Picture Taken by: Shams Al-KariHow did I come across this, well it all started with a courteous “hello” on the bus with an insider who was part of the team that installed the system. I was told that the library was heated, and by none other than an expensive but very GREEN Water Underfloor Heating System. The insider also boasted that our ‘humble’ university is part of an ongoing environmental effort to reduce it’s carbon footprint. If you ask me, they were just looking for a way to save money on energy costs. But I guess it means heat in the library, although it was literally freezing in there today. I must remind you though that the effort transcends from the recently adopted Bicycle program. Which I for one am happy to see in place, since I myself brought my own bike in to replace the cab/bus ride to class every morning.
After hearing the news I wanted to see for myself, so I took it upon myself to do a little Lois and Clark (me being Clark Kent a.k.a Superman) for the DailyBlog. Needless to say, it payed off with these ‘hot’ (heheh, get it?) photos.
More pictures to prove it after the jump…
The saying goes, “If you don’t know what to answer on multiple-choice questions, choose C”.
Well this student took the saying all too seriously when he walked in for an exam he didn’t know any of the answers to. So, he answered ‘C’ for everything, hoping to score some points.
Unfortunately, he didn’t realize that the test was True/False, and the only possible answers were ‘A’ or ‘B’.
His Professor found it so interesting he mailed the student with this message:
Dear Michael,
Every year I attempt to boost my students’ final grades by giving them this relatively simple exam consisting of 100 True/False questions from only 3 chapters of material. For the past 20 years that I have taught Intro Communications 101 at this institution I have never once seen someone score below a 65 on this exam. Consequently, your score of a zero is the first in history and ultimately brought the entire class average down a whole 8 points.
There were two possible answer choices: A (True) and B (False). You chose C for all 100 questions in an obvious attempt to get lucky with a least a quarter of the answers. It’s as if you didn’t look at a single question. Unfortunately, this brings your final grade in this class to failing. See you next year!
May God have mercy on your soul.
Sincerely,
Professor William Turner
P.S. If all else fails, go with B from now on.
B is the new C
When I saw this i couldn’t believe what I have read and saw! This was by far the weirdest thing I have ever seen and read about!
An ambulance rushed the 36-year-old farmer to the hospital. Doctors thought he might have a giant tumor, so they decided to operate and remove the source of the bulge in his belly.
“Basically, the tumor was so big that it was pressing on his diaphragm and that’s why he was very breathless,” said Dr. Ajay Mehta of Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai. “Because of the sheer size of the tumor, it makes it difficult [to operate]. We anticipated a lot of problems.”
Mehta said that he can usually spot a tumor just after he begins an operation. But while operating on Bhagat, Mehta saw something he had never encountered. As he cut deeper into Bhagat’s stomach, gallons of fluid spilled out — and then something extraordinary happened.
“To my surprise and horror, I could shake hands with somebody inside,” he said. “It was a bit shocking for me.”
Bhagat had one of the world’s most bizarre medical conditions, fetus in fetu. It is an extremely rare abnormality that occurs when a fetus gets trapped inside its twin. The trapped fetus can survive as a parasite even past birth by forming an umbilical cord-like structure that leaches its twin’s blood supply until it grows so large that it starts to harm the host.
Enjoy my first post!
- Alaaden
For more info on this visit ABC News
This post was created by Alaaden Labban, a new author at UOKMed, and edited by Shams Al-Kari. If you would like to become a contributing author, look back soon for updates on how to do so in a coming post.
In July, nine-year-old Ming Li lost her hand in a tractor accident. Her arm was too damaged to reattach it, so doctors at Zhengzhou hospital grafted it to her leg instead. Three months later, View full article »
(et. al. Chappelle Show)
