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Welcome to Carlsonhome.net. I use this space mainly to collect things I find online and find them later, but if other people find them interesting or useful, bonus! My name is Eric Carlson, and I'm currently a PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins studying systems neuroscience. When I'm not doing that, I'm either working on my house, or photographing - examples of the latter can be found in my personal and professional galleries: http://www.carlsonhome.net/gallery/ericspics and http://www.ellipsisphotography.com. For more information about me, please see my About Me page. It also seems like a lot of people come here for my computer help section, which can now be found here.

 

Python bibtex integration

In updating my custom science paper notes software I'm switching from perl to python - perl required too many dependencies to install that are just a pain in the butt.  Just starting the switch, but it looks like importing the bibtex data into python will be easy - just installed pybtex, then use this code from python:

# from pybtex.database.input import bibtex

# parser = bibtex.Parser()

# bib_data = parser.parse_file('erics_papers.bib')

Yet another brown fat article...

It'll be interesting to see if this develops into anything useful...

"Fat people have less than thin people. Older people have less than younger people. Men have less than younger women.

"It is brown fat, actually brown in color, and its great appeal is that it burns calories like a furnace. A new study finds that one form of it, which is turned on when people get cold, sucks fat out of the rest of the body to fuel itself. Another new study finds that a second form of brown fat can be created from ordinary white fat by exercise."

Brown fat conversion

Interesting articles on the difficulties of weight loss, an effect of exercise, and how diet is necessary to lose weight, with consistent exercise required to keep it off.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-fat-trap.htm...

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/exercise-hormone-helps-keep-us-...

People becoming fed-up with air pollution in China

"The ceaseless churning of factories and automobile engines in and around Beijing has led to this: hundreds of flights canceled since Sunday because of smog, stores sold out of face masks, and many Chinese complaining on the Internet that officials are failing to level with them about air quality or make any improvements to the environment."

Your brain on Exercise

"First, the young men watched a rapid-fire lineup of photos with the faces and names of strangers. After a break, they tried to recall the names they had just seen as the photos again zipped across a computer screen.

"Afterward, half of the students rode a stationary bicycle, at an increasingly strenuous pace, until they were exhausted. The others sat quietly for 30 minutes. Then both groups took the brain-teaser test again.

Mmmm... beer...

Looking forward to trying these - I wonder if the beer store around the corner has them in stock...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/dining/sour-beers-review.html?ref=dining

Dr. Crappy Beats

I see these everywhere - what an annoying "fashion statement"

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/business/beats-headphones-expand-dr-dr...

The trouble with mice

Interesting (and long) article about the use of mice in science...

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_mouse_trap/2011/11/...