Writing Assignment

Writing Assignment #2               Fall 2003   Physiology                                                               NAME ______________________________

1.   Searching with Google. http://www.google.com/ This seems like a simple way to start.

A. Enter the words    estrogen dominance syndrome   in the Google search window. How many results do you get? ___________________

B. Next, search on    "estrogen dominance syndrome" in quotes. How many results do you get? _________________________
    How does the use of quotes affect the Google search?

C. Most of those seem to be from commercial sites, and you'd like to see something a little more reliable from a university researcher, so you limit your search to those at university sites, by searching on    "estrogen dominance syndrome" site:.edu       (Note: That's dot edu) How many results do you get? ______

2. Searching with Medline. Medline is a bibliographic database that includes references to published research articles in the medical field.
    You can search Medline through the public PubMed page at the National Library of Medicine http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi
    Or you can search Medline through Ovid, by going to Columbia's Libraries page http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/ then
    Databases > Science and Technology > MEDLINE

A. Search by topic   How many articles do you find if you search for estrogen dominance syndrome as a keyword in Ovid? _______    In PubMed? ________
    Do any of these articles seem related to the syndrome discussed in the article Myanda found?

    Next you search for articles on PMS, by entering the term premenstrual syndrome in either database. How many articles do you find? _________

    Too many articles to read through, and you just want to know the latest concepts in this area, so you search again on premenstrual syndrome, this time limiting your search to Review Articles in English. Choose one review article that looks like it would be interesting and write the reference below.
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Use this 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.

NOTE: Most publications specify the order in which they expect to see the parts of a bibliographic reference written. The format I have given you is accepted by many journals, but it is not identical to what is given in Medline. If you just cut-and-past from Medline you will not get credit for this.
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B. Search by author. The article mentions a Dr. John R. Lee, who "has done extensive research into this phenomenon", so your next step is to search for his articles.     How many articles do you find if you do an author search on Lee JR in Ovid? ________    in PubMed? _________

C. Combine searches. Obviously, Lee is a common name, so to find his articles you look for articles with Lee JR as an author, and that have either estrogen or     progesterone as keywords.   List the references that you find, using the format above.

3. Find the article. The databases here will give you the full bibliographic reference, plus, in most cases, an abstract, or summary, of the article. But as we saw from the previous assignment, to really understand what the authors have done, it's necessary to read the article itself. As it turns out, none of the references written by JR Lee on estrogen or progesterone reports the results of a scientific study. Some are articles that propose a hypothesis, and some are letters to the editor in response to articles published by others. One of these is in Lancet, a prestigious medical journal, so you decide to get that one for Dr. Blank. (Sometimes you can reach the journal article directly from PubMed or Ovid, but that doesn't work in this case. Go to the E-journals link on the Columbia Library homepage http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/ and search for Lancet. You'll be able to get the article at one of the sites there.)    Lancet published 3 letters written in response to an article by Cooper et al., together with Cooper's response to those letters. Read the letters and the authors' response for the general idea - don't worry about about all the details.

4. Write a brief summary of the advice you would give to Myanda. Myanda had wanted to use progesterone cream to restore her hormone balance. Is there evidence that this would work? Would you recommend that she rely on the expert advice she found on the web? Why or why not?   (5-6 sentences is enough! It would be interesting to explore this further and write an entire term paper on this estrogen dominance hypothesis, but that's not the purpose of this assignment.)