Outline below the fold…
Article Outline: Ischemic Ventricular Fibrillation: The Importance of Being Spontaneous by Ouyang et al.
I outline the bits of papers I find interesting for reference. I’m going to try posting some of these outlines in the hopes that someone finds them useful. It’s very easy for me to export them from FreeMind. The article is Ischemic Ventricular Fibrillation: The Importance of Being Spontaneous(Cite-U-Like) by Ouyang et al.
My Article on EP in New Orleans Post-Katrina
I was invited to write another article for EP Lab Digest, and while I got my copies of the print version a few weeks ago, the online version just came out. I apologize in advance for the trite bit at the end, but I was under time pressure and had a hard time figuring out how to wrap it up.
Omega-3 Fatty Acids Linked to Improved Prisoner Behavior
The Guardian has an article up about studies involving omega-3 fatty acids and populations of alocholics and violent prisoners. Some of the scientists quoted in the article suspect that an increase in omega-6 fatty acids and decrease in omega-3 fatty acids in the diet has affected people’s brains over the last century.
The results are not entirely conclusive, and the article does note that, but I found it to be really interesting nonetheless.
Mind-Mapping and Reference Digging – Time Frame
As I’ve noted in previous posts, as I read a paper, I underline relevant passages. I also circle references I’m interested in. The paper then goes into my “to-map” file.
I like to “map” papers when I’m feeling braindead — when I’m too tired or too mentally exhausted to do things requiring extensive thought. This consists of loading relevant details for a paper into a mind map and then looking up all of the references I found interesting and adding them to my Cite-U-Like library.
I am feeling a bit tired today, and I just finished mapping a paper. By my timer, it took about 55 minutes for an 8-page paper. This is a pretty substantial amount of time (about 6.875 min/page). However, it allows me to browse or search a complete list of the relevant facts from papers I’ve read. This is much, much faster than re-reading each paper, and much more powerful than trying to keep track of all of the salient details in my head. I haven’t timed how long it takes me to map a paper before, and I’m going to try to remember to do it more. I’d like to get an average pages/minute. Of course, the times will be longer for “interesting” papers and shorter for less-“interesting” papers.
What do you do to keep track of important information from papers you’ve read?