Soma Purana

Most are extraordinary. These would be the best teachers you ever came across. Some are not great teachers. But, I found every MOOC professor is extremely knowledgeable. So far, most enthralling MOOC professors I have had were Mohammed Noor (Duke), Eric Lander (MIT), Walter Lewin (MIT). Eric Lander was the best among the best. 

Out of 20 MOOCs I have completed thus far eight were extremely hard, the hardest I have encountered. Many were extremely easy requiring about a few hours of work every week. These courses start on different dates and run for different lengths of time. So, at times I have too many at the same time. I have had to drop some because it was just impossible to handle the work. For me, MOOCs that are not hard sciences are easy. The traditional hard sciences (biology, physics, math) require a lot of hard work. The hardest courses I have had were aught by professors at MIT, Duke, and Caltech.

When I started in September 2012 my first MOOC, it was just to try. Later as as I learned through genetic testing (go to 23andMe.com) that I carry two copies of APOE Epsilon 4 allele which increases the risk for Alzheimer's, I thought I would take MOOCs to keep my brain busy and fight the risk. First of all the risk is not certain; most risk assessment is based on European population and I don't have family history of AD. As I have completed 20 MOOCs I am just addicted. This is a lot of fun. The majority of the courses (11) are biology related. Three are related to nutrition and exercise. I found the biology courses helped me follow life science news stories that seem to get reported. I have had absolutely no exposure to biology in my schooling before and I found this field absolutely fascinating. If the choice were available to me I would have chosen genetics as my field. Quite a few courses I have taken are Physics or engineering courses. It is a thrill to reengage in ...

I started MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) on 9/17/12. My first course was "Introduction to Mathematical Thinking" by Keith Devlin of Stanford. The following is the list of courses I have completed thus far. I will keep adding to this list as I complete more. Most courses were from Coursera (www.coursera.com). I have begun to take some courses from EdX (www.edx.org). The EdX courses will be marked in Bold Red. Not all courses offer distinction.  The ones where I got distinction are indicated in the course title.           No. Course School Weeks Start 1 Intro to Mathematical Thinking (Distinction) Stanford 7 9/17/12 2 Intro to Genetics and Evolution (Distinction) Duke 10 10/10/12 3 Drugs and Brain Caltech 10 12/1/12 4 Nutrition for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention UC SF 6 1/28/13 5 Energy 101 (Distinction) ...

I am taking a MOOC on "Care of elders with Alzheimer's Disease..." One care giver / assessor went to a patient's house. The patient's wife had said that her father with AD was complaining that  the men in the red hats were coming to take him away and then he would rapidly decline from there. This happened every day at the same time in the evening. The assessor looked outside the window and saw  gorgeous baskets of red flowers on the porch...hanging baskets in line with the front window of the room we were just sitting in.  When the patient began his red hats men complaint the assessor went outside and removed the hanging baskets and returned to the house.  The patient completely  calmed down.  It appears the flowers were casting a red glow on the lower half of the living room window and when you looked at it from where he sat facing the wall, he was seeing the  reflection  of the red flowers which had a sort of hat shape. Often there are simp...