BME 1 Winter Quarter 2024

Following are hints for the project:

1. Read the assignment carefully - 3 parts - -1) each group will select the cancer they will study; attend one of the group Zoom meetings with librarian scheduled over next week, assignment of all group members jobs, selection of cancer type and assignments due Wednesday, January 17; 2) the Progress Check for the annotated bibliography due Wednesday, January 24 ; 3) final paper is due Wednesday, January 31.
2. Consider consulting or reading some important literature such as Conquering Cancer (2020),  Cancer Blueprint of a Tumor (2018), Rethinking Cancer in the LA TImes (Oct 12, 2017) Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us (2013)
3. Establish roles for each member of the group - Leader, Editor, Curator, Journal Researcher and Art Director - please realize that everyone will be conducting research for their contribution as noted in #7 - some group members may be performing multiple roles
4. Consider creating workspace to share on Google Drive and create outline of final report - learn more about options for UCI students at http://www.google.uci.edu/
5. This project is divided into 3 tasks: 1) meet with group, determine assignments & responsibilities - review cancer types; 2) conduct literature review and identify coverage to be included in the annotated bibliography - this includes: general sources from books, encyclopedias, websites, journal review articles covering last 5 years, current research articles from last 1-2 years that are "hot off the press" containing clinical, basic science or technologies ; 3) compose report with references, relevant figures and images
6. the following topics must be addressed, so divide up the assignment as follows:

   - incidence and impact statistics - background, population demographics, mortality, # of cases

   - relevant biological and anatomical features related to malignancy - medical, physiological, anatomical, biological

   - how are malignancies detected? - symptoms, diagnostics, biopsies, scans, etc

   - how are they treated? - therapies & treatments, drug interventions, chemo cocktail, radiation, surgeries, rehabilitation

   - what are the critical needs going forward? - clinical trials, stem cell therapies, new & emerging research directions

7. Librarian Meetings: - as many group members as can should attend that meeting; it is a big responsibility for your group leaders to translate or share all the details for every assignment, even if the session is recorded.  Once your group has selected the type of cancer you will work on, find a time that cancer session is scheduled and register  This is also a good set up for your other two assignments about how to find and use the appropriate resources.  Please try and have the entire group come from Friday, January 12- Monday, January 15 - sign up at https://tinyurl.com/nheafnax   using your UCI.edu eMail address with phone # in case I need to change schedule and with at least 4 hours notice.  Please keep the appointments for each hour uniform for a subject, except for the open sessions where we will review what groups are interested in - if you can't come at the time your group is coming, please try and join another group working on the same cancer - these sessions are particularly relevant to your topic. I can also meet outside of these time slots if necessary - just contact me directly via eMail (jgelfand@uci.edu)  indicating the best times, including weekends and I will confirm.   There will be separate sign up sheets for each of the three assigned projects. Please note that representatives of multiple groups working on the same cancer can come to the same meeting.   Please sign in to this Google doc reservation form with your UCI eMail address, for example, xyz@uci.edu - you can find additional information about Google Apps for UCI users at http://www.google.uci.edu/ - this is a required activity - the goal is for the entire group to be present for PROJECT 1.  It is helpful if you can turn on your cameras and participate in the session with questions.  It is likely that if you have a question so do your teammates and others working on the same form of cancer,
8. Terminology is important - neoplasms is used in PubMed instead of cancers; some cancers are about certain parts of the body, ie) you will find references to gastric cancer as well as stomach cancer, or another example is anal/renal cancer; some emphasis is placed on staging of cancer - 1 refers to least advanced and 5 would suggest a far more advanced case; cancer travels and the first diagnosis of cancer is what the patient suffers from even though it may have metasticized many years later somewhere else and that ultimately caused death
9. the 6 databases that index journal articles, PubMed, CINAHL, Annual Reviews, Google Scholar,  the Web of Science and, Scopus all contain peer-reviewed journal articles all focus on diagnosis and therapies when searches are conducted with proper terms and strategies - conduct literature searches for journal articles in databases, and trace references found in other reference sources
10. recognize that peer review refers to the publication process - specialists comment upon submissions to ascertain that the research and data can be replicated, the findings are accurate and that new contributions of the literature are made - searching the PubMed database will assure that content has been peer reviewed

Research background of specific diagnostic - remember that in the clinical cancer literature, neoplasm is used instead of cancer

Consider age factors, predisposition, family health history, external & environmental factors

Develop chronology

Consider form of cancer, history of patient attributes, legitimate & bonafide treatments

Examine technologies - find short films on MedlinePlus, YouTube; or journal content that incorporates sound, images and text in JoVE, images (on the Subject Guide under Finding Images or Medical Images)

Sources - you should examine:

1. Reference tools - encyclopedias (Medline Plus or WebMD), handbooks that contain background information - often the medical and specifically the cancer literature is released by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) which is the umbrella governmental unit over the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Library of Medicine (NLM), and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) all excellent sources of information.   
2. Journals - peer reviewed from a database such as PubMed (use the link to the UCI version below so that you get the UC eLinks), Google Scholar, or Web of Science.  Make sure that all journal references come from journals noted on the assignment list - or on "Prof. Haun's list arranged by Impact Factor."
3. Medical Textbooks - ex) Encyclopedia of Cancer (is an eBook listed below), or search concordances such as CriticalKey, Access Medicine, or on the lists of eBooks below,  in Library Search for other books or eBooks
4. Support group information directed for the patient and their family - from the American Cancer Society or the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society; from the national cancer centers or major hospitals

Citing your sources - this may be a bit complicated depending on what the source is and in what format it was that you consulted.  For journal articles, the format is:

Author(s). Title of article.  Source (Title of Publication) volume # (issue #), pages, (date). 

If you do not have all these elements and it was an online article, enter the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) which is a unique number corresponding to the article.  Do not use the URL except for a website and date in parentheses when you last visited site.

References should reflect the following categories:

1. general reference materials - books, book chapters, encyclopedias, websites
2. websites focused specifically on your type of cancer
3. journal reviews covering recent last 5 yrs for diagnosis/therapy information
4. current research articles that are "hot off the press" - clinical, basic biology or technology studies - you may want to consult Factiva, a fulltext global professional news service - the default is to 90 days but you can increase it to 1, 5 yrs.

Submit in an annotated bibliography.  Include a brief summary of the information you will use for references 3 & 4

Be sure to convey your 2 critical needs and 1 solution in the summaries. 

This assignment asks that you include at least 5 references that meet the following criteria:

• papers published from 2018 to current date (latest 3 years & 5 yrs for Review articles))
• that three articles are from the list noted in above link about high impact journals and one is from the current year; searching for "Review Articles" can be helpful because of the many references they include
• they contain a PMID # - obtained from the PubMed entry (if you find an article in another source enter the journal title in PubMed to obtain the PMID #
• try and include from a variety of sources that also reflect the different components of the paper

How do you know if the journal articles that you find meet the criteria established in class?  You want to make sure the articles:

• Are peer-reviewed
• Reflect clinical research that has been tested on a significant population of afflicted patients
• Are from major respected journals and not from small insignificant sources

Lists of highly ranked journals in cancer research include: