Corn Oil and Cancer?

The benefits of corn oil keep rolling in. In a new study by Stephen Freedland's group at Duke, feeding mice a diet rich in butter and lard didn't promote the growth of transplanted human prostate cancer cells any more than a low-fat diet (1). Why do we care? Because other studies, including one from the same investigators, show that corn oil and other industrial seed oils strongly promote prostate cancer cell growth and increase mortality in similar...

when life gives you lemons....

3:14 yesterday i found out the fate of my next 17 weeks...bed rest. with taylor, i spent 3 months on bed rest. and while people think that bed rest would be a luxury, i can assure you otherwise. only being allowed to get up to shower and go to the potty is not what i consider a luxury item....having to have someone wait on you 24/7 and take care of your child is like a prison sentence. it's hard...

Olga's CVPR paper

I'd like to congratulate my colleague Olga Barinova on the paper, which is accepted to CVPR international conference! To my knowledge, it is the first paper from our lab, which is accepted to a Rank 1 conference (though it was written during Olga's internship at Microsoft Research).The paper is on multiple object retrieval. They extend the Hough transform with some graphical model, which makes the results more robust. As soon as the paper become...

a fish and a hat....

the next time your significant other says 'i am going to mount a fish in our house', say 'that's fine...i'm going to spray paint it gold and make it wear a hat'...then you have a happy compromise ;)*images courtesy of brabourne farms, peacock feather eve...

Buah Keben, utk atasi Katarak..

Tanaman keben mudah sekali ditemukan di sepanjang pantai papua. saat itu di papua Heinrich sedang mengamati penduduk papua yang sedang membius ikan menggunakan biji keben yang dilumatkan dengan atau tanpa dicampur akar tuba dan ditaburkan ke permukaan kolam.Setelah beberapa saat, ikan-ikan yang bersembunyi di dalam lopak-lopak dan paluh-paluh kolam akan mengambang di permukaan sehingga lebih...

Magnesium and Insulin Sensitivity

From a paper based on US NHANES nutrition and health survey data (1):During 1999–2000, the diet of a large proportion of the U.S. population did not contain adequate magnesium... Furthermore, racial or ethnic differences in magnesium persist and may contribute to some health disparities.... Because magnesium intake is low among many people in the United States and inadequate magnesium status is associated with increased risk of acute and chronic...

Lindeberg on Obesity

I'm currently reading Dr. Staffan Lindeberg's magnum opus Food and Western Disease, recently published in English for the first time. Dr. Lindeberg is one of the world's leading experts on the health and diet of non-industrial cultures, particularly in Papua New Guinea. The book contains 2,034 references. It's also full of quotable statements. Here's what he has to say about obesity:Middle-age spread is a normal phenomenon - assuming you live...

New Year New Post

Hello everyone, I'm still alive, sorry for the lapse in content for the last 6 months. The second edition of the book is out, we will be at the RSA conference doing a book signing next week so make sure to stop by and say hi.I'll be finishing the current series today and then moving on to new topi...

monday's....

sometimes when your child wakes you up really early, it's hard to get out words to go along w/ posts....so will a collection of pretty images do?*images courtesy of barbourne farm, house beautiful, city sage, tartanscot blog, high street mar...

Visual Assist's Tip of the Century

Probably you know the Visual Assist plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio, which makes C++ programming in the environment zillion times handier. The story is about the bootstrap tip that highlights the feature of restoring files. While the tip window is shown, there is a second dialog box painted in the window. Since it is centred w.r.t. the screen, you perceive it as a real dialog box. Moreover, it...

if these walls could talk.

sometimes it's a good thing that people can't see you....i'm waiting on a phone interview i have in thirty minutes for a magazine shoot that is coming out this summer. if only the interviewer knew i was hanging out in my bathrobe, pj pants, and had a towel in my hair. i swear i'm professional :) and that my sweet husband had to put a post it note on my desk lamp to make sure i remembered about...

i have a secret....i love watching the halfpipe (although i have to admit, i have been calling it the half pike until my husband corrected me last night)...shaun white ROCKS!! he is so good!! the olympics was so fun to watch last night...i am so happy for lindsey vonn too.*images courtesy of concrete and honey, brilliant asylum, la masion boheme, canadian house and home, bryn alexan...

tay's room....

last night taylor told me she missed her pink room...i guess that means it's time to give her new room a little attention....starting w/ the walls.....*images courtesy of unknown, new york times, hgtv, unknown, domino, ny social diary, pottery barn kids, this is glamourous, serena and lilly, elle decor (please forgive me, i have had a lot of these images saved in my personal folder which is why the...

snow...

49 states got snow this weekend....quite a big deal for a girl who grew up in middle GA and now lives on the coast in SC b/c snow is something i rarely see or drive in.....*images courtesy of unknown, elizabeth bauer, katey elliot, yay every...

Quantum Machine Learning

Recently, Google announced their intentions to use quantum algorithms for the search. They implemented Grover's algorithm on the D-Wave chip. Whatever they say about D-Wave, we should admit that quantum computers are going to change the nature of machine learning, it is only a matter of time.In spite of I had the university course on quantum computing, I am not able to make head or tails of it. (See my recent post about our university education)...

heart u

happy valentine's day to you and you and you.....*images courtesy of house of bliss, snippet and ink, kate french, daisy ch...

University education reform

Recently, me and my friend Andrew Korolev came up with the plan of reforming Russian higher education system.There are some evident problems in the system one can notice even in our faculty. The most courses are obsolete (or, well, legacy), a lot of courses are not enough developed (e.g. they contain only lectures without any support), some of them are also over-theorized and not applicable in real world (or at least they don't touch upon their applications)....

our valentine's cards...

so here's my attempt to get the mommy of the year award: homemade valentine's day cards made with taylor. i saw the cutest ones in february's better homes and gardens (it's not online for some reason) and thought i could totally do that. and we did :) well, let's just say taylor did a lot of cutting on a random sheet of paper (she got bored pretty quickly) and then her little helpers pasted, cut,...

Saturated Fat and Insulin Sensitivity

Insulin sensitivity is a measure of the tissue response to insulin. Typically, it refers to insulin's ability to cause tissues to absorb glucose from the blood. A loss of insulin sensitivity, also called insulin resistance, is a core part of the metabolic disorder that affects many people in industrial nations. It is commonly asserted in journal articles and on the internet that saturated fat reduces insulin sensitivity. The idea is that saturated...

industrialized.....

isn't it insane how something so simple can make such an amazing impact?*images courtesy of the laurel hedge, lake jane, patricia mcdonagh, name is grace, sarah's fab ...

How NOT to finish a 100km race

Jennifer Anne Meneray showing off her bandages that were put on at an aid station so she could complete the 100Km portion of the HURT 100 in Hawaii....

Thank You

I'd like to extend my sincere thanks to everyone who has supported me through donations this year. The money has allowed me to buy materials that I wouldn't otherwise have been able to afford, and I feel it has enriched the blog for everyone. Here are some of the books I've bought using donations. Some were quite expensive:Food and western disease: health and nutrition from an evolutionary perspective. Staffan Lindeberg (just released!!)Nutrition...

it's the weekend....

yay! we have officially almost made it through the week....and my cold is almost gone. we are suppose to go to an oyster roast tonight but there is a 100% chance of rain....not ideal for outdoor cooking. i hope y'all have a fabulous weekend!*images courtesy of pink monkey, real living, katie brown, unknown, you are my fav, yay every...