Research!!

Hey!
So last week I found many journal articles about the AbioCor Replacement Heart; these journal articles talked about a variety of aspects of the heart including how it functions, what its main components are, and how successful this heart is in the human body. I found these sources using Penn library resources; it was actually very helpful to be able to read journal articles without paying for them since Penn already purchased them for students to use. I especially found it helpful that I could still google (I used google scholar) and still know that my sources are reliable; I knew what sources were reliable because the link "Penn Text" would appear next to any search result that was reliable. Even with this feature, I still had to be careful when choosing sources; for example, I did not want to solely have information provided by the manufacturer of the heart. Also, when finding sources, I made it a point to check if that article cited any sources and where they came from; not only does this help show that the article is reliable, it is also helpful to follow those sources. By following those sources, I can see exactly how the author of the journal article was interpreting the information.

Some sources of information for my research paper came from the following places:
- The AbioMed website (manufacturer website)
- ASAIO Journal
- Scientific American
- Texas Heart Institute Journal
- The Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing

Since I am researching a biomedical device, the minimum number of sources that I need for the research paper are five journal articles and one article from the manufacturer. This is simply the minimum; it is always better to have a lot of information. I can also use magazines as sources, but they do not count as one of my journal articles obviously.

The hardest part of writing a research paper, in my opinion, is making sense of all the information gathered; I find it difficult to make sense of all the statistics and different opinions about a topic that are available. In order for me to write a good research paper, I need to organize my sources and glean what is the most important idea or message from each one.

The hardest part of this assignment, in my opinion, is making the machine diagram for my device. My device has multiple parts, multiple systems, and multiple functions, which makes making my diagram a bit of a challenge for me!

Diagram information is soon to come!