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happy valentine's day to you and you and you.....Jumat, 12 Februari 2010
Kamis, 11 Februari 2010
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). As a result, students are not motivated, they don't attend lectures and learn everything during the two-day period prior to the exam. The grades are often lousy, but nobody cares since such grades are sufficient to continue studying. (It is difficult to fail totally, especially for non-freshmen). Such knowledge is not solid and quite useless.
We make use of the following facts. The professors are well-qualified here, the students are witty and communicate with each other and with the graduates. Also, we suppose that everyone wants get more money, which is not always hold though is pretty common.
First, we need to improve the quality of courses. The problem is how to measure the quality. We state that it is proportional to the number of students who choose the course. Since the students have enough information about the course (from the lecturers and other students) and they all want to make a magnificent career, the useful courses become popular. The professors should be paid according to the number of students who attend their courses. But students also want to save their time. So, they are likely to choose the least challenging courses, which are not useful. In order to penalize them, the course part of professor's salary should be eliminated by the fraction of positive grades students get. Thus, a professor is motivated to make a comprehensive course (to attract students) and to implement a severe grade policy (to eliminate the freebie).
However, it will never work if the students are not motivated to get the good grades. In Russia, we have 4-level grades (2 through 5; 3 is enough for the pass), and most of the students are happy with 3s. Today, there are two stimuli to get greater grades, but they are quite subtle. The first is one need almost all 5s to receive the degree with honours, but who needs that? The second is 20% increment to the scholarship, which amounts not as much as one can desire. I have all excellent grades and receive some personal Sberbank scholarship, and totally it is about €100 per month. So, this is not a stimulus.
Well, one can ask, why do the students study now, if the courses are far from perfect? The answer is the conscription. In Russia, while you keep studying, you have a delay. If you fail at an exam, you get expelled and go to the army. Obviously, nobody wants to go to the Russian Army. So, everybody can learn a bit to pass an exam. Our point is to motivate students this way: if you have lousy grades, instead of summer holidays you move to a military camp. Better grades you get, less term you should serve. Thus, students WILL get good grades! But it is hard to get them, because professors loose their money. It is kind of a dual problem.
Surely, the model is way rough and could not be applied directly. Moreover, it is too funny to be taken seriously, though, as Russian proverb says, every joke contains a bit of truth.
Rabu, 10 Februari 2010
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, and assembled. and then she chimed back in to do her own "original artwork" on the inside of the cards. it was a lot of fun and super inexpensive (cupcake holders, construction paper, heart stickers, and scrapbook paper). sadly, we are leaving for atlanta today so she will miss her class valentine's party but i promise to make it up to her :)
Selasa, 09 Februari 2010
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 fat reduces the body's ability to handle glucose effectively, placing people on the road to diabetes, obesity and heart disease. Perhaps this particular claim deserves a closer look.
The Evidence
I found a review article from 2008 that addressed this question (1). I like this review because it only includes high-quality trials that used reliable methods of determining insulin sensitivity*.
On to the meat of it. There were 5 studies in which non-diabetic people were fed diets rich in saturated fat, and compared with a group eating a diet rich in monounsaturated (like olive oil) or polyunsaturated (like corn oil) fat. They ranged in duration from one week to 3 months. Four of the five studies found that fat quality did not affect insulin sensitivity, including one of the 3-month studies.
The fifth study, which is the one that's most commonly cited, requires some discussion. This was the KANWU study (2). Over the course of three months, investigators fed 163 volunteers a diet rich in either saturated fat or monounsaturated fat.
What the authors focused on is the fact that insulin sensitivity declined slightly but significantly on the saturated fat diet compared with the pre-diet baseline. That's why this study is cited as evidence that saturated fat impairs insulin sensitivity. But those of you with a science background may be able to spot the problem here. You need a control group for comparison, to take into account normal fluctuations caused by such things as the season, eating a new diet provided by the investigators, and having a doctor poking at you. That control group was the group eating monounsaturated fat. The comparison between diet groups was the comparison that matters most, and it wasn't quite significant. I think the most you can say about this study is that it provides weak evidence that saturated fat decreases insulin sensitivity.
So we have five studies through 2008, which overall offer little support the idea that saturated fat reduces insulin sensitivity in non-diabetics. Since the review paper was published, I know of one subsequent study that asked the same question (3). Susan J. van Dijk and colleagues fed volunteers with abdominal overweight a diet rich in either saturated fat or monounsaturated fat. I e-mailed the senior author and she said the saturated fat diet was "mostly butter". After 8 weeks, insulin sensitivity was virtually identical between the two groups. This study appeared well controlled and used the gold standard method for assessing insulin sensitivity, called the euglycemic-hyperinsulinemic clamp technique***.
The evidence from controlled trials is rather consistent that saturated fat has no major effect on insulin sensitivity in humans, at least on time scales of a few months.
UPDATE: other trials have added to this finding. The large European LIPIGENE randomized controlled diet trial found that substantial differences in SFA intake had no effect on insulin sensitivity over 12 weeks in people with the metabolic syndrome (3b).
* For the nerds: euglycemic-hyperinsulinemic clamp (the gold standard), insulin suppression test, or intravenous glucose tolerance test with Minimal Model. They didn't include studies that reported HOMA as their only measure, because it's not very accurate.
*** They did find that markers of inflammation in fat tissue were higher after the saturated fat diet.
It is commonly asserted in journal articles and on the internet that saturated fat reduces insulin sensitivity. The idea is that saturated fat reduces the body's ability to handle glucose effectively, placing people on the road to diabetes, obesity and heart disease. Perhaps this particular claim deserves a closer look.
The Evidence
I found a review article from 2008 that addressed this question (1). I like this review because it only includes high-quality trials that used reliable methods of determining insulin sensitivity*.
On to the meat of it. There were 5 studies in which non-diabetic people were fed diets rich in saturated fat, and compared with a group eating a diet rich in monounsaturated (like olive oil) or polyunsaturated (like corn oil) fat. They ranged in duration from one week to 3 months. Four of the five studies found that fat quality did not affect insulin sensitivity, including one of the 3-month studies.
The fifth study, which is the one that's most commonly cited, requires some discussion. This was the KANWU study (2). Over the course of three months, investigators fed 163 volunteers a diet rich in either saturated fat or monounsaturated fat.
The SAFA diet included butter and a table margarine containing a relatively high proportion of SAFAs. The MUFA diet included a spread and a margarine containing high proportions of oleic acid derived from high-oleic sunflower oil and negligible amounts of trans fatty acids and n-3 fatty acids and olive oil.Yummy. After three months of these diets, there was no significant difference in insulin sensitivity between the saturated fat group and the monounsaturated fat group. Yes, you read that right. Even the study that's commonly cited as evidence that saturated fat causes insulin resistance found no significant difference between the diets. I'll be generous and acknowledge that the small difference was almost statistically significant (p = 0.053).
What the authors focused on is the fact that insulin sensitivity declined slightly but significantly on the saturated fat diet compared with the pre-diet baseline. That's why this study is cited as evidence that saturated fat impairs insulin sensitivity. But those of you with a science background may be able to spot the problem here. You need a control group for comparison, to take into account normal fluctuations caused by such things as the season, eating a new diet provided by the investigators, and having a doctor poking at you. That control group was the group eating monounsaturated fat. The comparison between diet groups was the comparison that matters most, and it wasn't quite significant. I think the most you can say about this study is that it provides weak evidence that saturated fat decreases insulin sensitivity.
So we have five studies through 2008, which overall offer little support the idea that saturated fat reduces insulin sensitivity in non-diabetics. Since the review paper was published, I know of one subsequent study that asked the same question (3). Susan J. van Dijk and colleagues fed volunteers with abdominal overweight a diet rich in either saturated fat or monounsaturated fat. I e-mailed the senior author and she said the saturated fat diet was "mostly butter". After 8 weeks, insulin sensitivity was virtually identical between the two groups. This study appeared well controlled and used the gold standard method for assessing insulin sensitivity, called the euglycemic-hyperinsulinemic clamp technique***.
The evidence from controlled trials is rather consistent that saturated fat has no major effect on insulin sensitivity in humans, at least on time scales of a few months.
UPDATE: other trials have added to this finding. The large European LIPIGENE randomized controlled diet trial found that substantial differences in SFA intake had no effect on insulin sensitivity over 12 weeks in people with the metabolic syndrome (3b).
* For the nerds: euglycemic-hyperinsulinemic clamp (the gold standard), insulin suppression test, or intravenous glucose tolerance test with Minimal Model. They didn't include studies that reported HOMA as their only measure, because it's not very accurate.
*** They did find that markers of inflammation in fat tissue were higher after the saturated fat diet.
industrialized.....
isn't it insane how something so simple can make such an amazing impact?
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