UNIV 300 – Week 6 Assignment

Part One:

-          What parts of the brain do P. gingivialis bacterial infections affect in Alzheimer’s patients? 

-          What is significant about P. gingivialis bacterial infections that differ from other bacterial infections?

Part Two:

-           a. Look at your question and identify the main concepts of this question. Please list only 2 or 3 primary concepts.

o   In the question above, the main concepts are (1) P. gingivialis bacterial infections (periodontal disease) and (2) Alzheimer’s patients

o    

-          b. Write a search statement that you can use to search for information to address your research question.

o   (gingivialis OR gingivitis OR “periodontal disease”) AND Alzheimer*

o    

-          c. Do a search in Academic Search Complete with your search words and Boolean operators. Tell me exactly what words and Boolean operators you used.

o   Alzheimer’s (TI Title) AND gingivitis (TI Title) OR “periodontal disease” (SU Subject Terms) AND Alzheimer’s (SU Subject Terms)

-          d. Use at least two of the database limiters and tell me what they were. (These can be any of the options under “Search Options” in the lower part of the search page, or under “Refine Results” on the left side of the results page.)

o   2015-2018

o   Academic Journals

-          This produced 9 results, all of which appear to apply to the topic perfectly

Part Three:

I had a difficult time with using the Boolean operators in ASC.  I tried a number of combinations to limit the results but kept coming up with very large numbers as well as not finding the results as set in the operators.  For example, I was using ‘Alzheimer’s’ with (TI Title) but results were showing titles without Alzheimer’s in the title.  It took some moving around and realized that the results depend on the arrangement of the operators.  Now that I know how setting up the operators in a specific order can affect the outcome of the results, I can alter and adjust further searches.

UNIV 300 Week 5 Assignment

Gingivialis > periodontal disease> added the following subject terms:

DE "PERIODONTAL disease" OR DE "AGGRESSIVE periodontitis" OR DE "GINGIVITIS" OR DE "PERIODONTAL pockets" AND NEURO*

-          What part of this lesson did you find useful?

o   I did not know about the * when using Boolean searches.  This is very helpful as sometimes you don’t want to search for an exact word but using a simplified version that opens the search results will be helpful.  I have already used it on this week’s exercises and Discussion questions.  I also haven’t used the parentheses in the past and found that they are helpful, especially when I have some terms that are an OR plus the AND (in cases where I need that modifier).

-          How do you intend to use these skills for future searches?

o   For this week’s assignment, I actually started poking around with my research terms so that I could produce clearer search results.  Until now, I had to sift through results that are very broad.  I look forward to producing different results and how this method can help with my research.  As mentioned above, I really liked the use of the * and parentheses. 

-          Do you have any questions about Boolean searching or subject terms?

 Not at this time.

UNIV 300 – Week 4 Assignment

o The name of the resource you chose and the specific book within that collection that you used. (If you used the Oxford Reference Collection, what book or encyclopedia within the collection did you use to find your information? If you used Britannica, what was the heading/title of the entry you used?)

-          Oxford Reference Collection

o   A Dictionary of Biomedicine

o   A Dictionary of Psychology

o What new idea or information did you find about the topic?

               I learned a few things about the individual subtopics/subjects within my topic (correlation between periodontal bacteria and Alzheimer’s Disease):

-          Porphyromonas gingivalis collagenase: An “unusual peptidase” (enzymes that break down peptides into amino acids), associated with periodontal lesions (associated with bacterial infection).

-          Fimbrillin: The protein that forms bacterial pili (fimbriae).  Fimbriae have been most extensively studied in P. gingivalis, the bacterium responsible for periodontal disease.  Fimbriae are required for attachment (through integrins) and invasion of the gingival mucosa.

-          Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) – I did not know there are different types of AD: Familial Alzheimer's disease-1 (AD1) is caused by mutation in the gene encoding the amyloid precursor protein (APP). AD2 is associated with the apolipoprotein E4 allele (ApoE4), AD3 is caused by mutation in the presenilin-1 gene (PSEN1) and AD4 by mutation in the PSEN2 gene.

o What are some subtopics you read about in your search?

-          P. gingivialis is among a short list of pathogens that are currently causing the greatest antibiotic resistance problems.

-          As I included above, I found the topic of Fimbrillin in my search and had to include that.

o What potential research questions came up while you were reading? (It’s okay if these are still vague or broad).

-          How does the bacteria affect the brain?  What is significant about that bacterial infection that differs from other bacterial infections?

o List words that might be used for future searches. Be sure to include and label at least one DISTINCTIVE term, one BROAD term, one NARROW term and one RELATED term, as discussed in Week Three. These should be single words or short phrases that indicate a single concept.

-          Periodontal infection – broad

-          Gingipains – distinctive – (I looked this up using the Oxford Collection, however, it did not produce any results)

-          Antibiotic resistance in P. gingivialis – related

-          Tau proteins – narrow – (I also looked this up using the Oxford Collection, however, it was very technical and way over my head)

• In a short paragraph, briefly compare this article with the Wikipedia article you looked at last week. 

Last week, I looked up P. gingivialis on Wikipedia and compared it to this week’s search.  Certainly, Wikipedia has much more information as it includes other associated subtopics.  Interestingly, this week I found a term that was included in the Wiki article (fimbriae) which was located under the topic of fimbrillin.  Wiki did not include the information about fimbrillin, but this search produced a curiosity which led me to connect the two.