November 18th, 2009 by Mary Wood
Videos, slides, posters, interactive software, models, and mannequins are all teaching tools used in veterinary medicine education. Vascular access training models and resuscitation models are two life-sized examples of products commonly integrated into the DVM curriculum. A few UK veterinary colleges have recently added the new large-animal palpation-training device, the Haptic Cow.
Haptic Cow, Wired Science, 11/6/09
The Haptic Cow simulator makes it possible for the students to palpate virtual objects, while via the computer monitor, the instructor can see what the student is doing and also help direct the movements.
Additional information on the simulator is available from the inventor, Dr Sarah Baillie. Use the unique and very helpful NORINA database to search for other teaching models, slides, posters, software, simulators, models, and mannequins.
Tags: Animal Welfare, databases, Veterinary Medicine
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November 13th, 2009 by Mary Wood
Searching for the intersection of two very different subjects, the crossover where the topics meet, requires looking for the information in a variety of sources. The subject of animal alternatives is truly multi-disciplinary and requires multiple sources to answer a range of questions. A research topic may demand, for example, searching in: the PubMed database for the most recent and authoritative literature published in human medical research and education; the CAB database for the latest veterinary and animal science related articles; PsycInfo in order to consider potential stresses related to the study; and, depending on the question be asked, cancer-specific resources like NCI, mouse-specific resources like JAX, or a teaching alternatives database like NORINA. Essentially, the source, or the database, is determined by the question being asked.
The relationship between animals and humans is complex; the ethics of animal use in research is widely discussed, opinion and belief influenced by any number of factors, including culture and religion.
Searching for “religion AND animal experimentation” in PubMed will look for that topic in the medical literature; other possibilities include “ethics AND animal experimentation” and “vaccine AND religion”. Adding or using more specific search terms will narrow the results.
CAB indexes international agricultural research publications; searching for “animal welfare AND religion” and “animals AND religion AND ethics” will identify articles on this topic in journals not indexed in the human clinical database PubMed.
The Religious Studies subject guide lists many possible databases, resources that index research in different publications and from an entirely different perspective. For example, searching for “animal experimentation” in ATLA Religion database, or “vaccination OR vaccine” identify focused sets of relevant citations. In Philosopher’s Index, using “ethics” and “experimentation” and “animal” as search terms retrieves a select list of citations.
Other databases may be relevant (like PsycInfo, “animals” and “religion”), depending on the question. As always, please do not hesitate to come to the libraries or to contact a librarian for reference help.
Mary Wood, mwwood@ucdavis.edu
Tags: animal alternatives, animal experimentation, databases, pubmed, research, searching
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October 28th, 2009 by Mary Wood
Working on a website for a presentation to VMD400B acted as a reminder of how too few of us in veterinary medicine and animal science make use of valuable and effective databases beyond PubMed. The following chart compares six potentially useful databases on just a few points, but emphasizes the wealth of information to be found in CAB and BIOSIS. There are more than just these six databases to consider: list of Health Sciences databases; lists of databases by subject.
Many databases are proprietary, made available to UC Davis affiliates by UC Davis Library subscription. Free resources that will remain available even after graduation include Agricola and GoogleScholar. (Clicking on the graph will link to a larger image).
About the image:
The original graph was edited using the Picnik editor that is embedded into the free Flickr photo hosting site.
Tags: databases, searching, Veterinary Medicine
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October 19th, 2009 by Mary Wood
PubMed provides references to journal articles in the life sciences, with a concentration on biomedicine. While human clinical medicine remains the primary focus, PubMed does index a limited number of veterinary medicine and animal science journals.
One of several PubMed “Special Queries” is Veterinary Medicine / Animal Health. It retrieves citations to journal literature, combining subject search terms, title words, and veterinary and animal health journal titles. Essentially, it applies a search filter over any search terms you use, limiting the results to veterinary related resources.
PubMed Search and Veterinary Information Resources
The PubMed Search and Veterinary Information Resources page provides links to additional resources and organizations.
Enter PubMed from the Health Sciences Libraries page to ensure access to all of the full-text journals subscribed to by the library. To apply the Veterinary Medicine / Animal Health filter to a search, enter PubMed from the HSL site and type “veterinary[sb]” into the search query; that set can then be combined with any other search term.
Tags: databases, search strategies, Veterinary Medicine
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September 23rd, 2009 by Mary Wood
The congress, held in August in Rome, was given the motto “Calling on Science” in order to emphasize that scientific progress today goes hand in hand with progress towards the reduction, refinement and replacement of experimental animals (the 3Rs).
The program was developed around specific day themes:
Day 1: Innovative technologies, concepts, and approaches
Day 2: Areas of animal use
Day 3: Progress in life science domains
2009 7th World Congress on Alternatives
Of particular interest was the Databases Progress Report session on Day 1. The overview was given by Mary Wood, who was invited to speak on the “Wealth and diversity of the 3Rs online”.
The program [pdf 10mb] and abstracts are available online.
Tags: Animal Welfare, databases, literature review, searching
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