Approval of a Topic Diabetes for My Research Project - Assignment Example

A Blue Print for a Research Project Part Topic Approval Initially I had thought focusing my research on another topic, as global warming, but I have already seen so many television programs regarding that subject, that the research would have lost its value and interest. The topic that I have selected for my research project is Diabetes, the reason I have chosen that topic is because I found that Diabetes is the number 5 cause of death in the world. It is my interest to learn more about the disease, its causes, its possible cures and/or alternative treatments. The following is the communication sustained with my instructor: To: instructor@university.com From: student@home.com Subject: Approval of a topic for my Research Project Dr. Instructor: Regarding the topic for my Research Project and after a preliminary verbal research, I have decided to work on Diabetes, since it is a disease that affects a large number of our population. Based upon my preliminary research and the results I may find, I should narrow it down to diets, medicines, side effects, etc. Thank you for your consideration and time Student To: student@home.com From: instructor@university.com Subject: RE: Approval of a topic for my Research Project Student: Your topic has been approved, you may start working on it at your convenience. Instructor Part 2, Search Directories As I have mentioned before, Diabetes is a very mortal disease, ranked as the fifth cause of death in the world. While trying to understand the disease I found out the different types of Diabetes. Once on that stage I found out that Diabetes could be treated, in some cases, by reforming one's diet. For that reason I have decided to focus my research on diets for the several types of Diabetes, including the ones affecting children. The list of the 20 -30 web pages that I have considered are: 1. The mayo clinic.com . 2. University of Maryland Medical Center.com 3. Lifeclinic.com . 4. WebMD.com . 5. American Diabetes Association.com 6. diabetes-diabetic-diet.com 7. MyDiabetesCentral.com . 8. Introduction to Diabetes Diet. second-opinions.co.uk . 9. Blanchette, K. RD, CDE. The "Diabetic" Diet. . 10. The Australian Nutrition Foundation. Diet and Diabetes. 11. nutritionaustralia.org 12. Bernstein, K.. The Diabetes Diet. Diabete911.net 13. USA TODAY. Fighting Diabetes. 14. Helpguide. Diabetes Diet and Nutrition. .Patient.co.uk 15. Patienplus. Diabetes, Diet and Exercise. . 16. BeatingDiabetes. Beating Diabetes.org. . 17. Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia. Diabetic Diet. . 18. CNN.com. Diabetes. . 19. Rosenzweig J., M.D. Hamdy, O., M.D., Ph.D and Campbell, A. M.S., R.D., C.D.E. Diet and Diabetes: A Personalized Approach. . 20. The New York Times. Diabetes diet. . In order to compose the previous list, I have followed these next steps. Three different search engines were used: Yahoo.com, Google.com and MSN.com For the Yahoo.com search engine the key words used were: Diabetes diet, and the number of hits produced were about 66,600,000. The first one hundred pages from the list, were surfed, in order to obtain the addresses of some of the web pages from the previous list. For the second search engine, google.com, the key words used were: Diabetes diet, and it produced about 1,330,000 hits. Also for this search engine, the first one hundred web pages were examined in order to develop the previous list. For the last search engine, MSN.com, the key words used were also Diabetes diet, and it produced about 21.400.000 hits. Only sixty pages were examined in order to develop the previous list. The procedure used, was not effective since the three search engines produced about the same internet pages. Also each search engine lists the pages most related to the key words first and as it goes down the relevancy reduces. Also the search engine starts listing the same web page, with different approaches. Part 3, Find and search a specialized database In order to find my topic within a specialized database, the search engine google.com was used, using the keywords, specialized database. The first result that it was obtained, from about 664,000 hits, was the net.TUTOR page from the Ohio State University Libraries. Since this information related one hundred percent to my inquire, I decided to follow its instructions which directed me to the government medicine free specialized database www.pubmed.gov. Once inside the specialized database www.pubmed.gov, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez, the keywords Diabetes diet were introduced and a total number of 22149 hits came up. Since two keywords were introduced and a substantive result came up, the next step was to place some limits within the search. A limit on the language of the article was set, and that reduced the number of hits to 1468. Based upon the previous results, one can assert that the Boolean logic could be applied in this case. The next step was to find the URL for the help option within this database; However, the help option was immediately directed to a window with a form to fill out without the URL. Instead an e-mail address, custserv@nlm.nih.gov, was supplied in order to contact them, in case the form could not be loaded. The URL of the site related to my topic is: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18394213ordinalpos=20&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum Part 4, Query Search Engines For this portion, in order to find more detailed or exact information on my topic, more advance query search engines were used. The three different search engines used were: Altavista.com, Google.com and Yahoo.com For the search engine Altavista it was used: Boolean logic, where about 12,600,000 hits were obtained, and the keywords used were Diabetes and Diet. Wildcards, where about 12,600,000 hits were obtained, and the keywords used were Diabetes* and Diet*. For this particular engine about twenty pages were surfed. For the search engine google.com it was used: Boolean logic, where about 597,000 hits were obtained, and the keywords used were Diabetes and Diet. Wildcards, where about 546,000 hits were obtained, and the keywords used were Diabetes* and Diet*. For this particular engine I surfed about twenty pages. For the search engine Yahoo.com it was used: Boolean logic, where about 75,200,000 hits were obtained, and the keywords used were Diabetes and Diet. Wildcards, where about 75,200,000 hits were obtained, and the keywords used were Diabetes* and Diet*. For this particular engine about twenty pages were surfed. The following are the excellent five web sites related to my topic 1.Webmed.com (http://diabetes.webmd.com/features/diabetes-risk-fad-diets). 2. Federal Citizen Information Center (http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/health/noninsulin- diabetes/diet.htm). 3. Endocrine Web's Diabetes Center (http://www.endocrineweb.com/diabetes/treatment.html) 4. Johns Hopkins Health Alert (http://www.johnshopkinshealthalerts.com/alerts/diabetes/JohnsHopkinsDiabetesHealthAlert_179-1.html). 5. Diabetes, diet and herbs by Ronald L. Hoffman, MD, CNS http://www.drhoffman.com/page.cfm/133 Part 5, Library Resources a. In order to find Library catalogs, I used the google.com search engine with the keywords medicine library catalogs. From that query, about 552,000 hits were obtained. In order to find Library databases, the google.com search engine was used with the keywords library databases. From that query, about 132,000,000 hits were obtained. b. From the previous result, the following Library catalogs were used: National Library of Medicine and Houston Academy of Medicine - Texas Medical Center Library. The keywords used were Diet for Diabetes for both library catalogs. And the number of hits obtained for the Houston Academy of Medicine - Texas Medical Center Library was 253. The number of hits obtained for the National Library of Medicine was 565. The online catalogs were very easy to use since the libraries, in most cases, are divided by topics and sometimes each library is highly specialized. The two libraries I found are basically medical libraries. The latter makes the research less complicated and with the chance to obtained more specific information. c. From the result obtained in part a, the Library Databases used were: The New York Public Library and xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. The Keywords used were Diabetes diets for both library databases. And the number of hits obtained for the New York Public Library database was 623. The number of hits obtained for the xxxxxxxxx library database was xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. Based upon my topic, I would not change the query unless I would like to find a more specific subject as diet for diabetes in children. The five best magazine or journal articles found are: 1. Diabetic Diet from the National Library of Medicine http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/diabeticdiet.html. 2. Diet and Exercise Dramatically Delay Type 2 Diabetes from the National Library of Medicine. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/databases/alerts/diabetes01.html 3. Skyler, Jay S. Atlas of diabetes Texas Health Science Libraries Consortium http://thslc.mdacc.tmc.edu/ http://hamtmc.thslc.net/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi 4. Diabetes care. Author: American Diabetes Association. TEXAS HEALTH SCIENCE LIBRARIES CONSORTIUM http://hamtmc.thslc.net/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgiv1=12&ti=1,12&Search%5FArg=Diabetes&Search%5FCode=JKEY%5E%2A&SL=None&CNT=20&PID=2TwhGJrLABhGy87RAkz1qtjBcmmel&SEQ=20080418100058&SID=2 5. Diabetes & heart : healthy cookbook / Author: American Heart Association. American Diabetes Association. http://hamtmc.thslc.net/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgiv1=14&ti=1,14&Search%5FArg=diabetes&SL=None&Search%5FCode=TALL&CNT=20&PID=G1_k4QDBTK-demPdfmd8ziLSvZN_&SEQ=20080418100729&SID=1 Part 6, Usenet Archives Once again the search engine used to find usenet gorup was google.com. The usenet groups that pertained relevant information to my topic were: alt.support.diabetes, misc.health.diabetes and alt.food.diabetic. The key words used to find these groups were Diabetes usenet group. The results were very interesting since it also provides information regarding the current topics being discussed and previous ones that are still active. Amongst the subjects posted are: Vitamins and Diabetes- What Do You Take 27 new of 27 - Apr 17 Fasting Blood Glucose From Hell 14 new of 14 - Apr 17 A study of psoriasis that may lead to help with type 1, 8 new of 8 - Apr 17 Uric acid and diabetic kidney disease in type 1, 2 new of 2 - Apr 15 For pumpers...site question... 6 new of 6 - Apr 14 Watch your toes ! ,16 new of 16 - Apr 13 Coenzyme Q10, 2 new of 2 - Apr 13 Skin Care Tips, 1 new of 1 - Apr 12 Making rain / cold --- Zend Avesta//Veda style, 2 new of 2 - Apr 12 Prediabetes---stressing out! Part 7, Evaluate the resources From the work performed throughout the paper, the information available is enormous. For the type of research I was assigned to, I would suggest performing it through the most common search engines, since the information found comes from different ranges, the basics to the highly specialized information. Also the downside is that the information proceeding from that research could be highly unreliable. Therefore, in order to avoid wasting time and trying to redesign the wheel, it is better to trust and use the information from very well known associations, such as medical associations. The same is true for societies, hospitals, well known individuals affiliated to trusted institutions, etc. One more fact that I find crucial and important, when a web pages makes very big promises and begins to request any amount of money, it is almost all the time, sign of an unreliable source of information. The search procedure less likely to be trusted is the usenet groups, since it is space where any human being can express his feelings, wishes, experiences and lies. It is suggested to take the ideas from that source of information and make a research using the other methods mentioned in this paper. Part 8, Bibliography American Diabetes Association. The Diabetes Food Pyramid.April 17,2008. American Diabetes Association. Diabetes Care. TEXAS HEALTH SCIENCE LIBRARIES CONSORTIUM. 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