Version 3 Sept 2011 (EDM)

Brief instructions for weekly paper summary write-ups (‘synopses’)

Please read the papers assigned for the week and prepare the following typed document for each one. These documents SHOULD NOT exceed a page. (They should be emailed the night before class)

Please put the name of the paper at the top of each document. Please name the document as follows: First_author_name-your_name_ENAS880synopsis.doc so I can keep track of them.

Lets try to include in all synopses: Summary, Talking points (bullet list, less than one page)
a Question for the discussion, and the (possible) Relevance to your work or to a disease of interest - on each paper.

Summary: what did they (try to/)do?  (3 sentences max)

• State the main goal of the paper

Either

• State the main finding of an application paper

or

• State the main utility of a methods/modeling paper.

For all papers (can be one word bullet points)

• Identify the experimental paradigm (the various choices will become clear as the semester goes on)
• Identify disease or condition that is mentioned in the paper
• Identify drugs that are mentioned in the paper. Was there more than one drug?
• Identify imaging target(s) that are mentioned in the paper.
• Identify the phenomenon that is being imaged/modeled.

Talking points:  (for example…)

• The main method used was…
• The method (as opposed to others) was used because…
• A key innovation of the paper was…
• The work in this paper could be extendable to … or not applicable to other studies because…

Question: (try the following formats)

• What does ………… mean?

or even better…

· "I understand that they did …… to determine….. but I don't understand why they did …………?"

or

· Your own style question for us to address…

Relevance: This method could be used in my research to test…….

or

This method or this experiment would be of interest to me if it were applied to ……….