Writing Assignment #3                                                                                                                                 NAME __________________________

Format for listing references:  All the authors (last names, first initials). Date. Title. Journal title (not abbreviated). volume: starting page-ending page.  (To find the full name of the journal, click on Journals Database on the left-hand navigation bar in PubMed.)  For example:

Fiore PM, Wagner RS.  1988.  Halloween hazards: ocular injury from flying eggs.  New England Journal of Medicine. 319: 1159
Breitenbach, RA. 1992. 'Halloween diarrhea.'  An unexpected trick of sorbitol-containing candy. Postgraduate Medicine. 92: 63-66.

1.  Topic search

A.  Search for articles on superantigens.  How many are there? ___________

B.  You've no idea what superantigens are, so instead of a primary research article, you'd like to and want to know what it is, but a primary research article will be too detailed and specific.  Instead, you'd like to read a review article on this topic.   Click on Limits, and limit your search in these ways:  a) Superantigens is in the Title, b) the type of article is Review, c) the language is English, d) an abstract is included.  Now Go and search on superantigen again.

How many articles are there? ________

C.  When you click on the authors' names, you'll get an abstract which summarizes the article.  Look through some of these abstracts of review articles, and list five diseases that are thought to be related to superantigens:  _____________________________________________________

D.  You'd like to read one of these articles without going to the library.  At the top of some of the abstracts, you'll see a link that indicates that the full-text of the article is on-line.  Find one review article that you might like to read (but you don't have to read it!), that has a link to the full-text, and write the reference here:

E.  For one of the articles where the text is not available on-line, write reference here:

F.  You'd like to read this article anyway.  Look up the journal title in Clio.  Is the journal available in Columbia's library?  If yes, which library?

2.  Author search

A. I mentioned that Dr. Silver had done some research on mast cells in the brain.  Do a search on silver.  How many entries are there?

B. Now click on Limit, and limit your search to those where silver is in the Author field.  How many are there?

C. Devise a strategy to use Medline to find all the articles published by the Dr. Silver I mentioned in class.  What strategy would you use? 

D. How many articles do you find?

3. Geographic search

A.  Search for articles on stress. How many are there? _______

B. Too many to look through!  You need to narrow your search, so search again, this time entering    stress AND immune.   How many are there? _______

C.  Still too many!  You'd like to work in the lab of someone who publishes research in this topic, so you further narrow your search to  stress AND immune AND "Columbia University".  Write the reference for one article you might like to read.  (You don't have to read the article!)

Your own search

Come up with two interesting questions of your own that relate to any of the topics we've covered in Physiology so far.  If you can't think of any, try these:

Thermoregulation:  Is it dangerous to spend lots of time in a sauna?
Reproduction:  I always feel like scarfing down a pint of chocolate ice cream before I get my period.  Do my hormones make me do that?
Reproduction:  My friend told me that all the licorice I eat is going to make my testosterone levels drop.  Is this true?
Calcium:  Does drinking carbonated beverages make it more likely that I'll get osteoporosis?
Calcium:  How are the bones of astronauts affected by being in a low-gravity environment?
Stress:  I get so stressed out by exams in college, and I've heard that medical school is even worse.  Has anyone studied whether this kind of stress affects the nervous and endocrine systems?
Immune:  Can inflammation occur in the brain like it does in the skin?

Use Medline to search for one article that you think will answer your question.  Your article should be from a scientific journal, not Newsweek or a popular journal like Scientific American. You don't need to answer the question, and you don't need to read the article.  Just find an article that you think will answer it.

For each question, indicate:

A.  Your question.

B.  The strategy you used to search for an article that would answer it.   That is, what terms did you enter?  Did you have to refine your search by entering additional terms?  Did you look for primary research articles or review articles?

C.  The complete reference for one article that you think might have an answer.