Exercise

UCOLL 300 - Unit IV - Article Organization

Some Doubts on the Validity of the Foreground Galactic Contribution Subtraction from Microwave Anisotropies. By Lopez-Corredoira, Martin. Journal of Astrophysics & Astronomy. June/Sep 2007, Vol. 28 Issue 2/3, p101-116. 

Instructions: Click on the article link above to launch a .pdf file of a relatively short (16 pages) Science journal article. Scan through the pages listed below and see if you can answer the questions.
 

Look at page 101

• What does the author say in the abstract about how the article starts?
  Answer
• How long did this journal take to review and accept this article for publication?
  Answer
• Who is the author and what can you tell about him?
  Answer
• What is the next major section of the article focused on according to the author?
  Answer

Scroll through pages 101 to 113

• How has the author organized the article? Is there an outline?
  Answer
  1. Introduction

  2. Some comments on the present status of CMBR foreground analysis

  1. 2.1 Dust foreground removal with templates
     2.2 Dust foreground removal without templates
     2.3 Non-gaussianity

  3. Galactic latitude dependence

  1. 3.1 WMAP data analysis
     3.2 Simulations
     3.3 Latitude dependence on small angular scales

  4. The frequency dependence 
  5. Other contaminants 
  6. Summary and conclusions

Look on page 114

• Read the Acknowledgements section. What does this tell you about the author and article?
  Answer
  The Acknowledgements section reveals that the article's author consulted and worked with several scholars to collect information for this article. This information might help you judge the reliability or point of view of the article. If you were researching this topic, you might want to find out if these people have also published information on the topic.

Consult pages 114 – 116

• What do you see on these pages 114-116? What does the information on these pages represent?
  Answer
  On page 114, you see the beginning of the References section. Sometimes this section is called the Bibliography or Works Cited list. 
  This is the list of resources the author used to document the information he used to write his article. In this example, the titles of the journals are abbreviated.

  [STEVE]
  

• What evidence can you find on these pages that the author has additional research experience?
  Answer
  On page 115, we see the author has cited other works he has published or collaborated on. Presumably, these articles would be on a similar topic.
  L´opez-Corredoira, M. 1999, A&A, 346, 369.
  L´opez-Corredoira, M., Cabrera-Lavers, A., Garz´on, F., Hammersley, P. L. 2002, A&A, 394, 883.
  L´opez-Corredoira, M., Betancort-Rijo, J. 2004, A&A, 416, 1.
• What do you see on page 117?
  Answer
  This is the copyright notice for this specific article. As a researcher, you will need to be aware of how to use information ethically. Citing your sources appropriately, and thereby avoiding plagiarism, is part of that.