2.- TIPOS DE RESISTENCIA
3.1. Sistemas continuos (Métodos naturales)
Imagine scientists reading the first lines of your introduction. They have identified your title as containing something of interest. They may have ordered or downloaded your paper. It is now on their desk or on their computer screen. They have just read your abstract and understand your contribution, but not in detail. Writers often
believe that after reading the title and abstract, readers should have a clear picture of their contribution. However, this is not the case. A key ingredient is lacking in the dry, disembodied abstract: the context or background. Therefore, the first duty of the writer is to briefly establish the context.
Here is an example taken from life sciences.
Name entity recognition (NER), an information extraction task, automatically identifies named entities and classifies them into predefined classes. NER has been successfully applied to newswires [references]. Today, researchers are adapting NER systems to extract biomedical named entities — protein, gene, or virus [more references] — for applications such as automatic build of biomedical databases. Their success is limited.
After reading this paragraph, the reader expects the writer to explain why success is limited, and to bring an answer to the main question “What adaptations to NER will enable biomedical named entities to be extracted more successfully?”
What is the main question of your paper, the question to which your contribution or the title of your paper is the answer? If you cannot phrase your contribution in question form, then you are not ready to write your paper because you do not yet have a clear idea of your contribution. To help you determine the main question, practise on the following familiar titles:
“Nonlinear finite element simulation to elucidate the efficacy of slit arteriotomy for end-to-side arterial anastomosis in micro- surgery”a
aReprinted from Gu H, Chua A, Tan BK, and Hung KC,“Nonlinear finite element simulation to elucidate the efficacy of slit arteriotomy for end-to-side arterial anastomosis in microsurgery”, J Biomech 39: 435–443, 2006 (with permission from Elsevier).
Main question: Wh yd oesslit arte riot omy wor ks ow ell?
“Energy-efficient data gathering in large wireless sensor net- works”b Main question: Ho wcan as ensorno deb ec hosent ofor ward datain alarge networ ks othat total energy consumpt ionfor thedata gather ing isminim um?
Read your title and abstract. Write the main question they answer. Is this question clearly stated in your introduction? If there is more than one question, you may have a paper with multiple contributions, and possibly a paper that could be divided into multiple papers. Alternatively, you may not yet clearly understand your contribution.
Now that you know the main question, include it in your intro- duction as soon as you can. It helps reviewers and readers understand the problem in a clear, attention-grabbing, and succinct way. It even helps you to remain focused. Naturally, the main question triggers many others.
bLu KZ, Huang LS, Wan YY, and Xu HL, “Energy-efficient data gathering in large wireless sensor networks”, Second International Conference on Embedded Software and Systems (ICESS’05), Xi’an, China, pp. 327–337, 2005.
The questionable cake One afternoon, Vladimir Toldoff received a call from his wife Ruslana as he was finishing an experiment in the lab.“I am coming with one cake, two plates, and assorted cutlery”, she announced. He answered, “What? Wait! First, what is the occasion? And why now? Can’t it wait until tonight? And by the way, what cake is it, and why do you want to cut it in the lab? You know that crumbs are not welcomed here.”
The rapid fire of questions did not faze Ruslana. She knew her Vladimir. A full-fledged scientist. She paused and rephrased his questions succinctly. “All right, let me see. You would like to know why a cake, why eat it now, why its mouth-watering taste should make you shout ‘Darling, come right away’, and why I should slice it in the lab instead of at home. Am I right?” Vladimir, quite impressed with her matter-of-fact answer, started to laugh. “That’s right”, he responded. Ruslana then uttered three words that had him shout for joy: “My Medovik cake.”
Similar questions are asked by the reader of a scientific article as shown hereunder (ignore the initials and domain terms, and concen- trate instead on the story thread).
1. Why now? In this case, because previous studies produced con- flicting results.
“We were curious to see whether we could resolve the dis- crepancy between these gene profiling studies by using our current understanding of the gene differences between GCB
and ABC DLBCL.”c
cWright G, Tan B, Rosenwald A, Hurt E, Wiestner A, and Staudt LM, “A gene expression-based method to diagnose clinically distinct subgroups of diffuse large B cell lymphoma”, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 100(17): 9991–9996, 2003. © 2003 National Academy of Sciences, USA.
2. Why this? In this case, because it was challenging.
“As was pointed out (3), it is a challenging task to compare the results of these profiling studies because they used different microarray platforms that were only partially overlapping in gene composition. Notably, the Affymetrix arrays lacked many of the genes on the lymphochip
microarrays….”d
3. Why this way? In this case, because it worked with different platforms.
“For this reason, we developed a classification method that focuses on those genes that discriminate the GCB and ABC DLBCL subgroups with highest significance.”e
4. Why should the reader care? In this case, because it predicted survival.
“Our method does not merely assign a tumor to a DLBCL subgroup but also estimates the probability that the tumor belongs to the subgroup. We demonstrate that this method is capable of classifying a tumor irrespective of which exper- imental platform is used to measure gene expression. The GCB and ABC DLBCL subgroups defined by using this predictor have significantly different survival rates after chemotherapy.”f
Readers rely on you to answer these fundamental questions. The reviewer has another set of questions. Even though they overlap with the scientific reader’s questions, they differ in some ways. 1. Is the problem good and is solving it useful?
2. Is the solution new, clear, and effective compared to others?
dIbid. eIbid. fIbid.
3. Is the solution the best one for this problem?
4. How does this paper help the readers of the journal?
Therefore, you should have both reader and reviewer in mind when you write your introduction. It is up to you to convince them that the problem is real, and that your solution is original and useful.