V. Revision of the final draft

Here some general recommendations you are advised to follow while writing and revising your scientific article:

• Use normal English language including articles.
• Stay focused on the research topic of the paper.
• Use paragraphs to separate each important point (except for the abstract).
• Present your points in logical order.
• Use present tense to report well accepted facts - for example, 'the grass is green'.
• Use past tense to describe specific results - for example, 'When weed killer was applied, the grass was brown'.
• Avoid informal wording, don't use jargon or slang terms.

Use a spell checker as a final touch to your editing. They catch not only spelling errors but also typos. If a spell checker flags a word as wrong when you are sure it isn't (this happens with names and technical words), then add that word to your "personal dictionary" so the computer recognizes it next time. Keep in mind, though, that the computer won't tell you that you've mistyped form for from, principle for principal or perfect for prefect.

You can do your own style checking by making the most of the simple Search function. For instance, if you know you have overused or misused a certain word or phrase, let the Search call up each instance and then you can look at it in context. This can even work with types of words: try searching ion[space] or ment[space] to notice how many abstract words you have been using. Even looking at each use of and[space], but, or which can show up some habits of sentence structuring.

Writing an Abstract

Having made your article perfect you may write an Abstract. Remember that the title and abstract of your article permit your potential readers to get a quick overview of your study and to decide if they wish to read the article itself. Titles and abstracts are also indexed and compiled in reference works and computerized databases. For this reason they should accurately reflect the content of the article and include key words that will ensure their retrieval from a database. You should compose the title and abstract after you have completed the article and have a firm view of its structure and content. So revise the title of the article and check the key words.

The abstract briefly (in 150-350 words) conveys the essential information of your article, including its purpose, the results and conclusion.

Example1

ABSTRACT. Play is essential to development as it contributes to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth. Play also offers an ideal opportunity for parents to engage fully with their children. Despite the benefits derived from play for both children and parents, time for free play has been markedly reduced for some children. This report addresses a variety of factors that have reduced play, including a hurried lifestyle, changes in family structure, and increased attention to academics and enrichment activities at the expense of recess or free child-centered play. This report offers guidelines on how pediatricians can advocate for children by helping families, school systems, and communities consider how best to ensure play is protected as they seek the balance in children’s lives to create the optimal developmental milieu.

(Source: Kenneth R. Ginsburg. The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds. American Academy of Pediatrics Report, October 9, 2006).

Example 2

Characteristics of syngas from the pyrolysis and gasification of food waste has been investigated. Characteristic differences in syngas properties and overall yields from pyrolysis and gasification were determined at two distinct high temperatures of 800 and 900C. Pyrolysis and gasification behavior were evaluated in terms of syngas flow rate, hydrogen flow rate, output power, total syngas yield, total hydrogen yield, total energy yield, and apparent thermal efficiency. Gasification was more beneficial than pyrolysis based on investigated criteria, but longer time was needed to finish the gasification process. Longer time of gasification is attributed to slow reactions between the residual char and gasifying agent. Consequently, the char gasification kinetics was investigated. Inorganic constituents of food char were found to have a catalytic effect. Char reactivity increased with increased degree of conversion. In the conversion range from 0.1 to 0.9 the increase in reactivity was accompanied by an increase in pre-exponential factor, which suggested an increase in gasifying agent adsorption rate to char surface. However, in the conversion range from 0.93 to 0.98 the increase in reactivity was accompanied by a decrease in activation energy. A compensation effect was observed in this range of conversion of 0.93–0.98.

(Source: I.I. Ahmed, A.K. Gupta. Pyrolysis and gasification of food waste: Syngas characteristics and char gasification kinetics. Applied Energy 87 (2010) 101–108).

Read the following abstract. It is more detailed than the examples presented above. Look through the articles of the third part of the textbook and define what article it corresponds to. Write the abstract to one of the articles you’ve read.

Background

In-silico virtual patients and trials offer significant advantages in cost, time and safety for designing effective tight glycemic control (TGC) protocols. However, no such method has fully validated the independence of virtual patients (or resulting clinical trial predictions) from the data used to create them. This study uses matched cohorts from a TGC clinical trial to validate virtual patients and in-silico virtual trial models and methods.

Methods

Data from a 211 patient subset of the Glucontrol trial in Liege, Belgium. Glucontrol-A (N = 142) targeted 4.4-6.1 mmol/L and Glucontrol-B (N = 69) targeted 7.8-10.0 mmol/L. Cohorts were matched by APACHE II score, initial BG, age, weight, BMI and sex (p > 0.25). Virtual patients are created by fitting a clinically validated model to clinical data, yielding time varying insulin sensitivity profiles (SI(t)) that drives in-silico patients.

Model fit and intra-patient (forward) prediction errors are used to validate individual in-silico virtual patients. Self-validation (tests A protocol on Group-A virtual patients; and B protocol on B virtual patients) and cross-validation (tests A protocol on Group-B virtual patients; and B protocol on A virtual patients) are used in comparison to clinical data to assess ability to predict clinical trial results.

Results

Model fit errors were small (<0.25%) for all patients, indicating model fitness. Median forward prediction errors were: 4.3, 2.8 and 3.5% for Group-A, Group-B and Overall (A+B), indicating individual virtual patients were accurate representations of real patients. SI and its variability were similar between cohorts indicating they were metabolically similar.

Self and cross validation results were within 1-10% of the clinical data for both Group-A and Group-B. Self-validation indicated clinically insignificant errors due to model and/or clinical compliance. Cross-validation clearly showed that virtual patients enabled by identified patient-specific SI(t) profiles can accurately predict the performance of independent and different TGC protocols.

Conclusions

This study fully validates these virtual patients and in silico virtual trial methods, and clearly shows they can accurately simulate, in advance, the clinical results of a TGC protocol, enabling rapid in silico protocol design and optimization. These outcomes provide the first rigorous validation of a virtual in-silico patient and virtual trials methodology.

Acknowledgments

This section is not an obligatory one. This is where you can thank your co-workers or sponsors for their support. You can thank those who either helped with the experiments, or made other important contributions, such as discussing the protocol, commenting on the manuscript.

Example 1

Acknowledgement

This project was supported by the Research Fund of Ege University (07GEE001). We would also like to acknowledge all participants involved in the Delphi survey.

(Source: Melih Soner Celiktas, Gunnur Kocar. Hydrogen is not an utopia for Turkey. International Journal of hydrogen energy 35 (2010) 9–18)

Example 2

Acknowledgements

A support from the EC Project SHERHPA – Sustainable Heat and Energy Research for Heat Pump Applications FP6 Horizontal Research Activities Involving SMEs Collective Research Project 500229-2 H has been gratefully acknowledged.

(Source: Martin Pavlas, Petr Stehlík, Jaroslav Oral, Jirí Klemešc, Jin-Kuk Kim, Barry Firth. Heat integrated heat pumping for biomass gasification processing Applied Thermal Engineering 30 (2010) 30–35).

Example 3

Authors thank Elizabeth Allen, Carole Girard, Annie Guichard, and Sara Ladd for data collection assistance and to Sally Osberg, Tom Nielsen, Jenni Martin, Koen Liem, and Cheryl Blumenfeld at the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose.

(Source: Kevin Crowley et al. Shared Scientific Thinking in Everyday Parent - Child Activity. 2001. http://upclose.lrdc.pitt.edu/publications/pdfs/shared_science.pdf)

are usually on the top”

Main point: “being too big can be a disadvantage”

Example 4

Financial support provided by:

Aaron LE COMPTE: New Zealand Tertiary Education Commission and NZ Foundation for Research Science and Technology Post-Doctoral Fellowship Grant

Jessica LIN: NZ Foundation for Research Science and Technology Post-Doctoral Fellowship Grant

Sophie PENNING: FNRS (Fonds Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique) Research Fellow Katherine MOORHEAD: University of Liege Post-Doctoral Fellowship Grant

(Source: Chase J.G. et al. Validation of a model-based virtual trials method for tight glycemic control in intensive care. BioMedical Engineering OnLine 2010, 9:84, http://www.biomedical-engineering-online.com)

Summary:

Though height may connote slowness to some people, in the business world, it is almost universally associated with success. For example, taller men are more likely to be hired and to have greater salaries. Further, those in top positions within a company are more likely to work on the top floors of office buildings (Locker, 2003).