Research Grid and Annotations

Title	Citation	Aims	Findings	Methods	Summary
Glycogen storage: illusions of easy weight loss, excessive weight regain, and distortions in estimates of body composition	Stephen N Kreitzman, Ann Y Coxon, Kalman F Szaz. Am J C/in Nuir 1992:56:2925-35. P	The apparent ease ofearly weight losses can also lead to unrealistic expectations of the ability of a modest energy restriction or even exercise to achieve significant weight losses. Quantitative estimation ofglycogen storage would provide insight into early weight loss and rapid recidivism upon eating after a diet.	Potassium loss on VLCD associated with rapid loss of glycogen stores;	Measured glycogen levels in 11 adult women undergoing a10-week VLCD (very low calorie ketogenic diet)
Glycogen storage disease type III: modified Atkins diet improves myopathy.	Mayorandan S1,2, Meyer U3, Hartmann H4, Das AM. Orphanet J Rare Dis. 2014 Nov 28;9:196	Modified Atkins diet leads to increased blood levels of ketone bodies and fatty acids. We hypothesize that this health care intervention improves the energetic balance of muscles.	Patients with glycogenosis IIIa benefit from an improved energetic state of heart and skeletal muscle by introduction of Atkins diet both on a biochemical and clinical level.	We treated 2 boys with glycogenosis IIIa aged 9 and 11 years with a modified Atkins diet (10 g carbohydrate per day, protein and fatty acids ad libitum) over a period of 32 and 26 months, respectively.
The Ketogenic Diet and Sport: A Possible Marriage?
The effect of weight loss by ketogenic diet on the body composition, performance-related physical fitness factors and cytokines of Taekwondo athletes.	Rhyu HS1, Cho SY. J Exerc Rehabil. 2014 Oct 31;10(5):326-31	The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the weight loss through 3 weeks of ketogenic diet on performance-related physical fitness and inflammatory cytokines in Taekwondo athletes.	This result suggests that KD diet can be helpful for weight category athletes, such as Taekwondo athletes, by improving aerobic capacity and fatigue resistance capacity, and also by exerting positive effect on inflammatory response.	20 Taekwondo athletes of the high schools; measurments taken before and after ketogenic, calorie-restricted diet (25% fewer calories)

Here’s a great resource on active reading and annotating difficult science texts, such as those you’ll be spending time with for the annotated bibliography assignment and the review essay. Here’s the big takeaway from that article:

To summarize how you will annotate text:

1. Identify the BIG IDEA
2. Underline topic sentences or main ideas
3. Connect ideas with arrows
4. Ask questions
5. Add personal notes
6. Define technical words

Here’s another worthwhile resource. We’ll look through the sample annotations it provides in class. It gives the following advice:

Elements of an Annotation

Information found in an annotation may include:

1. qualifications of author(s);

“Based on 20 years of study, William A. Smith, Professor of English at XYZ University…”;

2. purpose/scope:

“…sets out to place John Turner in eighteenth century England and show the development of his philosophy in relation to contemporary social mores”;

3. audience and level of reading difficulty:

“Smith addresses himself to the scholar, albeit the concluding chapters on capital punishment will be clear to any informed layman”;

4. bias or standpoint of author :

“Turner gears his study more to the romantic aspects of the age than the scientific and rational developments”;

5. relationship to other works in the field:

“Here Turner departs drastically from A. F. Johnson (Two will not, New York, Riposte Press, 1964) who not only has developed the rational themes of the eighteenth century but is convinced the romantic elements at best are only a skein through the major prose and poetry”;

6. findings, results, and conclusions (if available); and

CARS and rhetorical analysis

Today, we’ll apply the CARS methodology to this essay on ketogenic diets and Taekwondo athletes.

Remember the three steps of CARS:

• Establish a territory
• Find a niche
• Occupy the niche

Writing Studies scholar Joe Harris says that academics generally follow a pattern in their introductions. He says: “There is a kind of template for many academic essays in which a writer says something like this: Until now, writers on this subject have disagreed on points a, b, and c. However, underlying this disagreement, there is a consensus on point d. In this essay, I will show why point d is wrong” (Rewriting, 64)

Some science writing, especially with dedicated “Literature Review” sections, does that kind of field-wide surveying explicitly. Other writing is less explicit–but if you look, it’s still there. Essentially, almost all published academic writing challenges some viewpoint held by a portion of the field (or, at least, offers a new way of understanding).

How does this article–and more importantly, the Introduction–use the CARS model? Other questions to ask yourself as you analyze this article (and as you write your rhetorical analysis):

• Who is the audience, and how do you know?
• Does the argument achieve its aims? Are there other field-wide paradigms that the article challenges?
• What are the typical ways scholars treat this topic?

Basics of color theory

http://www.helpscout.net/blog/psychology-of-color/

http://www.colormatters.com/color-and-design/basic-color-theory

https://cs.nyu.edu/courses/fall02/V22.0380-001/color_theory.htm (read the section on “color schemes” here)

http://www.tigercolor.com/color-lab/color-theory/color-theory-intro.htm#Color_Wheel (and here on “color harmony”)

This is a useful “color palette generator”: http://coolors.co/app/1c2321-7d98a1-5e6572-a9b4c2-eef1ef

Sample template for posters (http://mast.unco.edu/services/poster_printing.html)

Sample abstracts/annotations

HOW TO WRITE AN ABSTRACT: Tips and Samples Leah Carroll, Ph.D., Director, Office of Undergraduate Research. (Read the entirety here, at U Berkeley’s Undergrad Research site; check here, also, for Tufts University’s suggestions and samples.)

An abstract is a short summary of your completed research. If done well, it makes the reader want to learn more about your research. These are the basic components of an abstract in any discipline:

1) Motivation/problem statement:Why do we care about the problem? What practical, scientific, theoretical or artistic gap is your research filling?

2) Methods/procedure/approach:What did you actually do to get your results? (e.g. analyzed 3 novels, completed a series of 5 oil paintings, interviewed 17 students)

3) Results/findings/product: As a result of completing the above procedure, what did you learn/invent/create?

4) Conclusion/implications: What are the larger implications of your findings, especially for the problem/gap identified in step 1? However, it’s important to note that the weight accorded to the different components can vary by discipline. For models, try to find abstracts of research that is similar to your research.

The following abstracts have been borrowed from the UWisconsin-Madison Writing Center webpage:

“Biogeography of Chemical Defense in Birch Trees”

Sarah Brown and Michael Stevens (Mentor), Botany

The Latitudinal Defense Hypothesis predicts that levels of defense are highest near the equator and decrease toward the poles.  This hypothesis is based mainly on insect herbivory that occurs during the summer.  Mammilian herbivory in the winter is a more likely driver of plant defense levels in northern latitudes.  Early successional trees such as birches are favored by fire and provide an important food source for mammals like snowshoe hares.  In order to test the Latitudinal Defense Hypothesis, we collected birch seeds from eight locations in northwestern Canada and grew seedlings in a common garden.  We assessed levels of defense by counting resin glands because resin glands are negatively correlated with snowshoe hare preference. This research will provide valuable information regarding the biogeography of defense and address the role of fire in plant-mammal interactions on a continental scale.

“Understanding Cell-Mediated Immune Responses Against Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV)”

Sean Spenser and John Loffredo, David Watkins (Mentors), Primate Research Center

Each day 14,000 people become infected with HIV/AIDS, making the development of an effective vaccine one of the world’s top public health priorities.  David Watkins’ laboratory is attempting to develop HIV vaccines that elicit cellular immune responses utilizing the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) – infected rhesus macaque animal model.  A major component of the cell-mediated immune response are cytotoxic T-lymphocytes (CTL).  It is thought that CTL play an important role in controlling HIV and SIV.  Most standard immunological assays do not measure antiviral activity directly, limiting our understanding of CTL effectiveness. To address this, the Watkins laboratory developed a novel neutralization assay that quantifies the ability of virus-specific CTL populations to control viral growth. Evaluating the antiviral activity of CTL of different specificities will identify those CTL most effective against SIV.  This information will likely impact the design of future HIV vaccines.

“The Genetics of Bone Strength in Mice”

Jonathan Vu and Robert Blank (Mentor), Endocrinology

The purpose of this study is to identify relationships between the physical and genetic characteristics of bones in mice.  The physical characteristics include size, density, and the force required to break the bone, while the genetic ones are the genes of the marker loci associated with the genes that affect these qualities. This study uses strains of mice with reduced genetic variation.  The two strains of mice that are the most phenotypically extreme, meaning those with the strongest and weakest bones, are crossed.  The F2 generation from that cross is then analyzed. The results of this analysis can be used to find which genotypes correlate with specific bone properties like size, density, and failure load.  The anticipated outcome of this lab is the identification of the genotypes that affect bone strength in mice. The findings may be useful in treating medical conditions that are related to bone strength.

Reading Articles

Let’s also think about how people read. How their eyes physically move across the page. This study discusses that many people read web pages and other digital documents according to an “F” pattern, like this:

Look at how Amazon.com, for example, structures their web page, clearly paying attention to this research:

****

The IMRAD structure has been used in scientific journals since the 1940’s. The structure looks like this:

(You will also often see “literature review” between Introduction and methods, and frequently “conclusion,” “acknowledgements,” and “references” will follow Discussion.)

Link to “Study Drugs” article.

Welcome to the course!

Welcome to English 303!

For our first class, we’re going to dive right into the “theme” of the course, which I’ve chosen because it’s near and dear to many Kentuckians: mountain top removal. There are a whole host of technologies, regulations, and ethical concerns surrounding this issue–which makes it an ideal candidate for a course dedicated to scientific and technical writing.

Although this is the course topic, you are not required to write about it. Rather, I’ve supplied this topic only if it makes it easier for you.

To get us started thinking about rhetoric and invention (two key terms we’ll discuss today and on Thursday), let’s look at a few videos on our course topic.

Let’s also look at this short article, which outlines the debate surrounding mountain top removal:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/22/mountaintop-removal-rebat_n_432718.html

To be clear, this is an ethically complex argument about which many of us will have strong personal convictions. I’m not advocating a politics in this course. I don’t want the course to be about the politics of mountain top removal. Instead, the topic provides us with things to write about–things that have social, economic, and environmental exigency.