Index

Metabolism & Nutrition – Tutorial 7: Eatmeter

During the last tutorial in the RuG Metabolism & Nutrition course, Janine used the aggregated data from all the eatmeter food logs submitted by Group C to bring much of the course's material closer to home. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 5 years ago, on April 01, 2015, at 15:04 | 2 comments

Metabolism & Nutrition – Tutorial 6: Metabolic regulation

Tutorial no. 6 for the RuG Metabolism & Nutrition course builds on the lecture [Lecture 5] on the same subject by Hans Jonker. It is also the subject which me and two others have to give a presentation on this Friday for the rest of Group C to initiate the group discussion. The article which is to be discussed during our presentation and the rest of the tutorial is a 2014 Nature publication [doi:10.1038/nm.3760] by Sungsoon Fang et al., titled “Intestinal FXR agonism promotes adipose tissue browning and reduces obesity and insulin resistance.” Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 5 years ago, on March 25, 2015, at 15:03 | 3 comments

Metabolism & Nutrition – Lecture 5: Metabolic regulation

The topic of the fifth lecture in the RuG Metabolism & Nutrition course, delivered by Hans Jonker, was regulation of energy metabolism, detailing how the body maintains the homeostatic balance between energy storage (when feeding) and energy burning (during fasting or exercise). Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 5 years ago, on March 24, 2015, at 22:03 | 2 comments

Metabolism & Nutrition – Lecture 2: Energy metabolism

The second lecture in the Metabolism & Nutrition course was delivered by Bert Groen, from the department of Pediatrics. [It was originally planned after the Fat metabolism lecture, which was rescheduled for the day after, due to Janine's absence the previous day.] The unifying thread in this lecture is how metabolic pathways that have evolved for efficient energy use and storage pose serious health threats in the current age of abundant calory-dense food. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 5 years ago, on March 20, 2015, at 09:03 | 3 comments

Using papercite WordPress plugin for academic note-taking

During most of my bachelor, I've used paper and pen or pencil to take notes. Halfway my second minor [Okasys], though, I switched to my laptop and LaTeX, which I preferred, because typing is faster than writing and reworking my notes into a halfway decent summary usually proved too time-consuming with hand-written notes. Admittedly, though, although reorganizing my notes became easier with LaTeX, I still didn't really get to the finished summary stage, because I'm still way too obsessive-compulsive about the whole thing, most of the time. Now, since I figured I use my blog for all sorts of notes, I can just as well let WordPress and Google do some of the organizing for me, while taking notes for my present course. I just have to be a bit more careful about copyright issues (but, if the need strikes, I can always set a post to private). Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 5 years ago, on March 19, 2015, at 14:03 | 1 comment

Metabolism & Nutrition – Eatmeter

One of the tutorials for the RuG Metabolism & Nutrition course involves keeping a food log for at least 5 days. During the introductory lecture today, we were told to use the “My diary” (NL: Mijn dagboek) function offered by the Dutch Voedingscentrum. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 5 years ago, on March 17, 2015, at 22:03 | 4 comments

Metabolism & Nutrition – Lecture 1: Introduction

Janine Kruit, as the coordinator of the RuG Metabolism & Nutrition course, delivered the introductory lecture today, a day late, because she was too sick to teach yesterday. The altered course schedule is now available on the course's Nestor environment [Blackboard]. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 5 years ago, on March 17, 2015, at 22:03 | 1 comment

Metabolism & Nutrition – Editorial on metabolic regulation

For the 2015 RuG Metabolism & Nutrition course, 25% of the final grade is determined by an editorial I have to write with 3 other students. Scratch that; one of them is no longer enrolled. Good for me! The less, the merrier! The remaining two students in group C with the same subject—metabolic regulation—are: Jesse E. Kuindersma and Vera E. Otten. Based on the editorial, we also have to prepare a presentation. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 5 years ago, on March 17, 2015, at 17:03 | 3 comments

Programming is talking to the future

One day, some day long ago, I said to Jeroen Dekker, a photographer friend of mine, who was still learning to program at the time: “Programming is talking to the future.” He thought it was a good quote. Coming across it again now, so do I. It's good because it's true, which everybody who has ever debugged some old code—be it their own or someone else's—can attest to. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 5 years ago, on March 16, 2015, at 21:03 | Comments closed

Installed MathJax-LaTeX WordPress plugin for blog.bigsmoke.us

Soon, I wish to document some statistical issues I've been running into lately due to the lack of understanding maintained by my recipe-level statistics training. Also, I'd like to document some of the things I did learn over the years, and, hopefully, the things I find out while working myself out of the modelling mountain that I currently find so difficult to mount. For this I will need to use some mathematical language, which is why I just installed the MathJaX-LaTeX WordPress plugin. MathJax-LaTeX uses the MathJax JavaScript library to support LaTeX and MathML math equations in WordPress without requiring the browser to have MathML support. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 5 years ago, on March 16, 2015, at 16:03 | 1 comment