tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2941680388511545172024-03-13T23:20:41.132-05:00AM in practiceA reboot. A reblog. Adaptively managing my health, your education, our environment.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.comBlogger245125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-73760260644896712612016-08-30T13:01:00.002-05:002016-08-30T13:01:50.590-05:00Moving on ... In case you missed it, I decided back in 2015 to stop blogging here and moved over to A few cheap shots. I wanted to experiment with using Github in science and there seems to be better support for Markdown and putting R code in the posts.
Hope to see you there!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-49148698211916000862015-04-01T06:00:00.000-05:002015-04-01T06:00:03.575-05:00Walkabout Wednesday: low carb and T3, gender bias in STEM, and VR goggles.Eating low carb will lower your T3 levels, gender bias in STEM is still a thing, and VR goggles can save the planet.
My health
I have seen various references to the idea that dietary carbohydrates are necessary for thyroid function, so this post from the KetoThrive team made for interesting reading. Yes, eating low carb leads to lower T3 levels. No, it doesn't indicate a disease state, Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-60940470835377196462015-03-27T06:00:00.000-05:002015-03-27T06:00:04.344-05:00Why I don't plan to take PhD students in the futureIn a recent Walkabout I let slip that I don't plan to take PhD students in the future. That triggered some comments on FB wanting more details, so here goes.
Before I go any further, I should make one thing very clear. This decision was not a result of my experiences advising PhD students. Max, Adam, and Trevor were great students, and those experiences are not why I am choosing to stop training Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-24141021034115433872015-03-25T06:00:00.000-05:002015-03-25T06:00:05.613-05:00Walkabout Wednesday: what you study is more important than where, and dead geese.
Blood sugar targets, what you should study is more valuable than where you study it, and dead geese. Lots of dead geese.
My health
Dr. Richard Bernstein's book was one of the first I read after being diagnosed with Type II diabetes. In this short video he explains why endocrinologists (and presumably other doctors) set ridiculously high blood sugar targets for their patients. I won't make Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-73996921910932890212015-03-18T06:00:00.000-05:002015-03-18T06:00:09.405-05:00Walkabout wednesday: Wolves, deer and TV ownership. Yes, really. Really. I'm not really sure how to categorize some of these things I've wondered about this week. Mostly "Our Environment".
My Health
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Your Education
I've always spouted the party line on methods sections: the goal is to enable someone else to reproduce your research. Stephen Heard argues cogently that is fundamentally wrong, and has been wrong for Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-12062951202073499582015-03-16T06:00:00.000-05:002015-03-16T06:00:07.731-05:00More on the credibility of science, and why it is hard to believe.Science is hard to believe. But can any of that be blamed on scientists?
A few weeks ago now Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) went on a bit of a rant, nominating nutrition science as the biggest Science Fail. I went a bit further, and argued that any time scientists act as stealth issue advocates we risk a Science Fail, ultimately reducing the credibility of science in the public view. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-8320658822456105202015-03-13T06:00:00.000-05:002015-03-13T06:00:04.320-05:00Can or should UNL reduce carbon emissions in NebraskaIt's a simple idea. We should set a goal to reduce carbon emissions in the state of Nebraska. Shouldn't we?
I'm leading the development of the Academic Program Review report for the School of Natural Resources, the academic unit where I work at the University of Nebraska. As part of that I've been facilitating a number of discussions with faculty, staff, and students to figure out what our Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-28052800324138759242015-03-11T14:38:00.000-05:002015-03-11T14:53:57.605-05:00Walkabout wednesday: are carbohydrates bad, improving representation in STEM, and DRONES! Not necessarily, maybe or maybe not, and DRONES. Too cool for words.
My health
A population study in Finland has shown a link between statin use and an increased risk of developing Type II diabetes. They have a mechanism too; people on statins had a dose dependent increase in insulin resistance and insulin secretion. I'm curious because I started a statin in the mid-noughties, and was diagnosedAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-28032666250345697702015-03-09T06:00:00.000-05:002015-03-09T06:00:08.146-05:00How much is too much exercise?And how do we know?
You'd had to have been buried under a rock to have missed the headlines a few weeks back: "Excessive Jogging will Kill You"! etc. All of them traced back to this article on the Copenhagen City Heart Study. When I looked at the article, the purported U shaped risk curve looked to me like anything but -- for every group past the first two, the confidence limits included 1, Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-37982698679328874872015-03-06T06:00:00.000-06:002015-03-06T06:00:00.841-06:00Do you speak data science?If I can describe myself as anything these days, it's "self-taught (ie. underqualified) data scientist". Then I read this, and maybe I don't want to be a data scientist! Too funny. Good to take a hard look at the latest fads. Most of this too will pass, and what remains will be useful.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-54537327102904950072015-03-05T06:00:00.000-06:002015-03-11T16:36:37.439-05:00Walkabout Wednesday: I mean Thursday!
I'm a bit late this week. A busy couple of weeks of talks on the road, and a couple days of illness to seal the deal. All's good now!
My Health
I hate stretching, so the idea that it might not be helpful for workouts was good news. I'm still going to do it though, because I really like the flexibility I'm achieving after doing yoga for ~5 years.
I've seen a 'meme' that said there Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-35931559344703735812015-02-25T06:00:00.000-06:002015-02-25T06:00:09.947-06:00Walkabout wednesday: dietary fat isn't bad and what's the best way to move crude oil?IS there a good way to move crude oil?
My Health
In case you didn't get the memo, dietary fat isn't bad for you.
This is a nice summary of a recent conference focused on Low Carb High Fat from South Africa. I like it primarily because he highlights how focusing on a narrow slice of the science can be misleading, and arguably some proponents of LCHF are well on their way to what Tom Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-34028519706221458602015-02-23T06:00:00.000-06:002015-03-08T17:09:01.926-05:00Did my LDL particles get larger?Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL)l, commonly called the "bad cholesterol", is linked with high risk of heart disease. But just the total mass of LDL doesn't tell the whole story.
The size of the particles matters too. In particular, small dense LDL particles are the ones that cause atherosclerotic plaques to form in your arteries. I have lots of small dense particles. I realized the otherAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-73886096538056423642015-02-18T06:00:00.000-06:002015-02-18T06:00:01.667-06:00Walkabout wednesdayWhy don't epidemiologists use model simplification?
My Health
This is a nice little video on why you should regard epidemiological studies with a grain of salt (or a rock ...). I wish someone would explain to me why epidemiologists don't use model simplification approaches when using multiple regression to control for confounding variables.
This is an interesting story about how Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-44589312386325154762015-02-16T06:00:00.000-06:002015-02-16T06:00:06.670-06:00Sometimes we should not avoid Type I errorsIn any introductory statistics course you will learn how to control the probability of making a Type I error. This is the error of concluding that the alternative hypothesis is true, when in fact it is not. But sometimes that kind of error is much, much better than the opposite.
Scott Field first got me thinking about this more than 20 years ago in the context of deciding to protect a Koala Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-2786621926402956542015-02-13T06:00:00.000-06:002015-02-13T06:00:07.561-06:00Gluten, again.A colleague brought this post on the fivethirtyeight blog on the gluten free fad to my attention. They make a couple of good points about Non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS), focusing mainly on a couple of studies done by a group in Australia. I wrote about these 2 studies in my post on why I went gluten free. The 2011 study found that NCGS was real, and found that perhaps 10% of people sufferedAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-51009423135779179552015-02-11T06:00:00.000-06:002015-02-11T06:00:01.830-06:00Walkabout Wednesday: angiogenisis is interesting, and more politics in the environment (surprise ...) Angiogenisis is the formation of blood vessels, are your professors lazy, and politics taking over sage grouse management in Montana.
My Health
Eat your vegies! And drink tea and red wine. This interesting TED talk, byWilliam Li, illustrates a nifty idea for cutting off cancer development by cutting the development of blood vessels to tumors. It also helps prevent the development of fat Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-52818885533447774522015-02-10T09:58:00.001-06:002015-02-10T11:27:10.057-06:00Bad science journalism 101: ignoring confidence limitsYou might have seen the news articles -- JOGGING CAN KILL! Well, I agree, but this article provides only sketchy evidence at best.
The basic idea is that they asked people already enrolled in a different study of heart disease incidence if and how much they jogged. Then they did a Cox proportional hazards model to look at the effects of jogging. The conclusion that was reported was that a Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-20044291261276476062015-02-05T06:00:00.000-06:002015-02-05T06:00:09.281-06:00Science has a credibility issueScott Adams, creator of the cartoon Dilbert, says that "...everything about science and nutrition." is Science's biggest fail. But I think it's deeper than that.
He sort of nails it here:
Science is an amazing thing. But it has a credibility issue that it earned. Should we fix the credibility situation by brainwashing skeptical citizens to believe in science despite its spotty track record, or Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-58122422112594123522015-02-04T06:00:00.000-06:002015-02-04T11:31:14.208-06:00Walkabout Wednesday: missed a week! Insulin can be a weapon, who's the richest college grads again? and babies. Baby pallid sturgeon ...
My Health
This is a bit off topic, but I was intrigued to discover that insulin can be a weapon! It is sort of related, as I try hard to avoid increasing my insulin levels.
Grass fed beef costs more than twice as much as the same cut from grain finished cows. Is it worth it? These guys say Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-1560106847761636612015-01-21T06:00:00.000-06:002015-01-21T06:00:05.544-06:00Walkabout wednesday: I'm really messed up, gender equality in hiring, and pretty pictures!
My Health
Cristi Vlad has a nice post this week looking at a carefully controlled, but short, dietary intervention on a bunch of physiological metrics. My typical "low carb" gets into the range of the low carb diet there in terms of total grams, but not in terms of percentage calories. These folks were eating way more than me! Of course, the subjects were all obese, with average BMI of 34 (mine Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-32693530302465579012015-01-14T06:00:00.000-06:002015-01-14T06:00:04.151-06:00Walkabout Wednesday: vampire aphidsDoes red meat trigger immune reactions, what is the value of a postdoc, and vampire aphids. No kidding.
My Health
Nothing new here. Really. Blog post or two in the offing.
Your Education
This article on the value of a postdoc prompted a fair bit of discussion on my Facebook feed this week. Then I saw this infographic which concludes that < 8% of starting PhDs in Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-85795116645770333792015-01-13T09:53:00.000-06:002015-01-13T09:53:50.627-06:00How do perennial plants avoid senescence?If you know, please tell me! The following is part of a pre-proposal that Brigitte and I are submitting to NSF. This is our justification for continuing to spend a week each summer counting fruits on a small shrubby, not particularly attractive plant. I mean, other than the fantastic hiking and fishing in the area. Senescence is a widely observed phenomenon describing the decrease in survival andAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-29424017660589216272014-12-10T06:00:00.000-06:002014-12-10T06:00:08.515-06:00Walkabout Wednesday: is your liver screaming, campus drinking, and independent monitoring of energy impacts on wildlife.Your liver starts screaming long before you're diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic, UNL is a leader in tackling on campus drinking, and we should have independent monitoring of energy impacts on wildlife.
My Health
Jason Fung posted a new video on the "Twin cycles hypothesis" for diabetes. It's long (54 minutes), so I'll summarize what I found exciting. Onset of T2 is a tipping point process, Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-294168038851154517.post-28670644173129915522014-12-03T06:00:00.000-06:002014-12-03T06:00:06.384-06:00Walkabout Wednesday: saturated fat is good for you, tailgating?, and CANADA WINS!Saturated fat is good for you, tailgating?, and CANADA WINS!
My Health
Jason Fung has a nice post summarizing some experimental studies and meta-analyses that highlight how saturated fat protects against heart disease. I noticed that the studies from Japan were publicly funded. The others were behind paywalls.
BUT, you should eat your fruit. Bears prefer berries over salmon. All that Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16749417303643546408noreply@blogger.com0