Evaluation of Rhetorical Situations

Derferman, "Simple Magnifying Glass Icon" 01/07/08 via Wikipedia Commons, Public Domain 

It is hard to find incredibly and openly opinionated debates about neuroscience. Most articles just focus on research and facts, since science is so inherently factual. But because of my focus on sex differences, there is more controversy to this subject, as there is an obvious cultural conception of the difference between men and women to begin with. While searching for opinionated articles on sex differences in the brain, I came across 3 that were interesting.

1. Equal=/= The Same: Sex Differences in the Human Brain

Author: The author of this article is Dr. Larry Cahill, a neuroscientist and professor at UC Irvine. According to his short biography on Dana.org, Cahill has been featured on PBS, CNN, the NY Times, and more. Based on his credentials and history in the field, he seems like a credible author on the subject, especially since he has an academic focus on sex differences in the emotional brain.

Audience: The audience appears to be those with a background in neuroscience. This is due to the fact that the article is featured in a website that focuses on academic neuroscientific topics, which the general public would probably not find to be an everyday source to read. Also, Cahill uses a tone with great implication that he is talking amongst colleagues, and he doesn't "water down" the material he presents.

Context: This article was published in early 2014. On its own, this date doesn't have much to add to the context of the piece, but as the article itself mentions, the subject of sex differences was reopened recently before this article in 2013 due to a problem the FDA had with genders and certain drugs administered. It is also important to note the cultural norm of believing men and women are naturally different, which adds to the predisposition of this piece.

2. Sex Differences in the Brain: The Not So Inconvenient Truth

Author: The author of this article is Margaret McCarthy et al. McCarthy and her colleagues are all scientists/in the medical field at different universities across the United States. It is hard to find much information on McCarthy, but by searching her name it is easy to find other published studies by her in the field of Pharmacology and Neuroscience, so there is a level of credibility just based on her amount of published academic work.

Audience: The audience of this piece, just like the last, seems to be specific to the neuroscience field. Again, the article is not posted on a popular entertainment source, it is posted to the online journal of neuroscience, so it's going to be mostly neuroscientists/students reading this article. Also, there is very academic and scientific language employed.

Context: As with the article from dana.org, this article goes off of the general stereotype of females and males being naturally different. This article was published in 2012, sort of as a response to a similar article published in 2011 by the National Institute of Mental Health. This context helps the reader understand exactly what past research this article often alludes to.

3. Are Boys' Brains Different From Girls' Brains? Yes and No

Author: The author of this article is Will Saletan. He apparently writes many scientific and political articles for The Slate, the site this article was published to, but he does not have much more credentials on the topic of neuroscience, or science in general, than that, which makes his article seem sort of weak. Upon finding his twitter it's clear that he enjoys talking about controversial subjects and also has a daughter, both of which could have influenced his article.

Audience: The audience for this article is much more broad. I would go so far as to say the audience is the general public, since the slate is open to the general public and is more of an entertainment source than an academic one.

Context: The context of gender biases is still important for this piece, and possibly more important here than for scholarly pieces, as those are more factual and less opinionated at times. This article ws published in late 2011, and doesn't mention any other specific relevant context.

Developing a Research Question

One of the great things about the field of Neuroscience is that people are constantly arguing and debating about subjects that pertain to the field. Who doesn't want to know what goes on inside a person's head? Diving into the mystery of the human brain is challenging and controversial, but also incredibly intriguing.

IIT Manojit, "Question Mark" 2010 via Wikipedia Commons,  Public Domain

A current, but not necessarily new, topic of mystery in Neuroscience is the question of sex differences in the brain. An article on The Scientist sums up much of the current knowledge of the subject nicely.
The main research questions at hand are:

Is there a notable and unchangeable difference between the male and female brains?

Is the difference in brain structures and functions seen between females and males due to predisposition/biology or is it learned?

Does a difference in brain structures between females and males make stereotypes of the sexes any more factual?

Reflection on Project 1

Project 1: Final Draft

This is my final draft for Project 1, my finished QRG. It has been an interesting assignment, nothing I've ever done before, and while it took a great amount of work and effort, I feel that in the end, the polished piece is something to be proud of, and that greatly helped me understand QRGs, as well as Neuroscience (my major). Without further ado, here is my Neuroscience QRG.

Freedman, Terry, "Paperless Office" 02/26/13 via Flickr, Creative Commons License

Identifying Basic Grammar Patterns

While writing, especially under a deadline, it is hard to assess your own grammar and sentence structuring/patterns. Most people, while revising, try to focus on big-picture changes and content, rather than the quality of their writing. In this activity I attempted to use what "Rules for Writers: Seventh Edition" had to say about grammar patterns to assess a paragraph in my QRG.

PDPics, "Grammar" 2014 via Pixabay, CC0 Public Domain

I definitely discovered that I don't pay much attention to sentence structures in my writing. Complex, compound, simple? Those are the last pieces of my writing that I think of focusing on. I learned that this may hinder my writing, and that it would be beneficial to look over my sentence patterns, types, and purposes, in order to get a better variety in my writing and its structure.

Paragraph Analysis

In my paragraph analysis for my QRG I focused on the key points to writing and revising paragraphs as described in chapter 4 of Rules for Writers. These points included focusing and developing a main point, and combining coherent and organized points with smooth transitions. This process helped me to understand what my paragraphs were missing and which ones definitely needed revision.

MyNameIsHarry "Revision" 05/14/08 via Flickr, permission granted by author

Overall I learned that my rough draft was just that, rough. My paragraphs all had a main point, but they did not all elaborate well on the point or develop the point in a clear, coherent, and organized manner. All of my evidence could be better explained, especially my quotes, which need to have more context. Overall, I need more substance in each of my paragraphs, and most of that substance needs to include explanation. I also need to work on my transitioning between thoughts and ideas that don't correlate directly.

Reflection on Project 1 Draft

This post will be a reflection on the revisions made to my QRG and how the peer review process helped my writing. Without the comments by my peers I would have missed many key ideas for my revision. For my peer revisions, I made comments on the QRGs of both Sam and Ann.

dotmatchbox (at Flickr), "A Kid Drawing or Writing" 2/25/11 via Wikipedia Commons, Creative Commons License

Audience:

• I am trying to reach a very broad and general audience with my QRG, so anyone could possibly understand the current mind control controversy. However, I think I might be appealing more to people with a vague knowledge of neuroscience. For now, classmates are reading my QRG, so I'm hoping my QRG appeals to them.
• The values and expectations of my classmates are higher than my actual audience, since they know how a QRG should and should not be structured, and so they know better if I am effectively getting my point across to them. According to some comments on my QRG, I sometimes use words that my audience might not understand.
• I assume that my audience knows the basics about the human brain (neurons, etc.), but I need to provide information on how the testing was done and how it could possibly lead to mind control.
• For my audience I was going for a generally colloquial language, but I had to add a few words in that are academic and scientific, so that maybe made my QRG seem inconsistent.
• I think I am using a casual tone that suggests it is slightly outlandish to believe in some of the mind control conspiracies that are out there, but I try to remain overall neutral. I think I am consistent in this.

Context:

• I don't feel like I completely meet the formatting or content requirements of this assignment, but I'm not entirely sure why not. For content, after reading through the comments on my QRG I think I definitely could have added more statistics, evidence, and context behind quotes.
• I think I do reflect my own voice while also implementing things I learned in class in my QRG. I at least did not know how to format as I did in my piece before this class, so that is reflected in my QRG, and my tone is a little dramatic which I think represents my voice in the guide.
• I haven't really addressed any grammatical issues in my piece, but I am hoping they are minimal.

Overall, this revision process has really helped me understand my own writing better, what I do well and what I struggle with. The peer reviews made the process even more understandable.

Clarity, Part 1

After reading the Clarity chapters of Rules for Writers, I discovered a few key parts of my writing that need work, especially in my draft of the QRG. I struggle greatly with shifts, transitions, and variety in my sentence structure and word choice, so those are the points I chose to focus on.

Trounce, "BIC Ballpoint Pen" 03/26/08 via Wikipedia Commons, Creative Commons License

Appropriate Language:

• Sometimes, less actually is more. According to Rules for Writers, one should avoid using unnecessarily wordy sentences or words that the general public may not know or understand. It also suggests avoiding slang, but that was more obvious to me, unlike the idea of not using jargon. It seems like the more complex and wordy you make a sentence, the more academic it is, but that does not mean it is always very effective.

Shifts

• The shifts chapter focuses on maintaining the same point of view, verb tense, and mood/tone as not to confuse your reader. While none of this really stood out to me or surprised me, it is something I need to work on in my writing. It helped teach me to watch out for shifts throughout my writing and edit them as needed.

Variety

• Between sentence structures, openings, and words in a sentence, a struggle with variety. I already was aware that I use summarizing words like "in general", "generally", and "overall" a lot, especially as openings, but I had not even looked out how much or well I vary the length and structure of my sentences, so that was something I learned in this chapter.

Wordy Sentences

• I usually am not very redundant in my sentences or words, as this chapter suggests looking at, but I do usually add a lot of unnecessary parts to my sentences. Ideas mentioned like cutting out extra phrases and clauses, as well as simplifying the structure to many of my sentences would benefit my writing greatly and make it seem better put together. I learned that this can also help with my struggle with variety, as I can condense some sentences and leave others, varying my sentence structure.

Reflection: After revising my own draft and the drafts of Sam and Ann, I learned how to apply some of these tips on clarity. I am not the only one that struggles with these problems, which is a real relief. I noticed, for instance, in Sam's QRG, when he said "Overall, Uber is a great business that had a fantastic idea. This has paid off greatly as the company is valued at 50 billion dollars as stated before." he needed to work on his variety, as well as wordy sentences. There was not much variety to the sentence length or structure, so the sentences seemed bland and robotic. Also, the addition of "as stated before" was not needed and made the sentences flow less effectively. On the other hand, Ann provided an example of great shifts/transitioning with her sentence "Twitter users quickly joined the argument and helped spread the controversy using the hashtag ‘#oscarssowhite.’" that starts off a new paragraph adding onto the previous one regarding Al Sharpton's thoughts. This shift seems seamless and introduces a new topic while connecting back, which is what I need to work on.

Thoughts on Drafting

While reading through the Student's Guide's advice on drafting, I felt that, overall, there were many helpful tips that could aid me in the creation and editing process of my QRG. However, since the book does not focus on QRGs in this section, there were also many extraneous tips that I felt would not really be useful for this project.

OpenClipartVectors, "Reader" 2014 via pixabay, CC0 license

1.  Of the topics presented in the reading, what I found helpful were the tips on PIE structure, introductions, and (vaguely) conclusions.

The PIE formatting offers the idea of writing body paragraphs by expressing a point, followed by an illustration of the point, and then an explanation that ties it all together. I found this helpful since the paragraphs in QRGs are meant to be short, concise, and simple, so having a  clear format to get your point across in each paragraph makes it easier to avoid rambling in paragraphs.

I also felt that it was helpful to get a more clear understanding of introductions from the reading. For instance, one key point that the book suggests is grabbing the readers attention with an introduction. I feel that this is especially important for QRGs, because you want the QRG to be easily understood by just about anyone, and you want the readers to use your guide to gather all of the information they want on the topic. In order to do this, however, you need to attract the reader in the first place, and get them to keep reading on, which is what an introduction does.

Conclusions seemed far less relevant or helpful for the purpose of a QRG than introductions, but there were still some good points made by the book. Of the helpful points was using the conclusion as a way to both "look forward" and "circle back", to introduce one last thought to the readers mind. After all, what readers will remember the most will most likely be the first and last thing they read.

2. The book was not entirely helpful for our purposes in the structuring of a QRG, however. I found the book irrelevant in its information about thesis statements and much of what was mentioned about conclusions.

QRGs do need a lead in their introduction. Something to tie the reader in, to get their attention. But the book explains that thesis statements are meant to frame and shape your piece. Because you as a writer are not explicitly taking a stance on the subject, but rather just providing information, there is too much chaotic and conflicting information to completely sum up the guide in one or two sentences.

This is similarly why I find conclusions irrelevant for QRGs. It is simply too difficult to some up all of the different views presented in a conclusion, and besides this, the guide is already a type of summary in a way. The QRG is already concise and to the point, so there shouldn't be much need for a conclusion, or at least not in the essay-type way that the book describes conclusions.

Reflection: After reading Annelise and Mark's Thoughts on Drafting posts, I still feel basically the same about my own thoughts on drafting QRGs. In general, we all agree that thesis statements are less relevant for QRGs than other writing genres. However, there were (at least) 3 things that I discovered from this exercise and my peers that need to be revised in my own QRG.

1. I need a more "framing" introduction. As the reading and others have mentioned, introductions are supposed to introduce your topic. I feel that, while mine does introduce the topic, it possibly adds too much extraneous and unimportant information, that possibly makes the QRG harder to get into reading.

2. I need a conclusion. I sort of purposefully left a conclusion out of my piece, because I felt that there was no need for one, as my QRG ended on a pretty summarized note, and I feel like the QRG is too short to really need a conclusion. However, after looking back over others thoughts, I understand now how a conclusion can be helpful for readers.

3. I need better organization. My paragraphs are sort of scattered and do not all follow PIE format, or any format for that matter. Because of this my QRG sounds a little choppy and doesn't flow as well as it could, so I plan on fixing this.

Draft of Quick Reference Guide

Here is my QRG, I would appreciate it if you guys could focus on whether I have enough evidence, hyperlinking, and white space. I feel like my QRG is really short and doesn't really explain much about my controversy, so if you could give me feedback on this/how to solve this, that would be wonderful. Also, in general, anything I missed off of the rubric that could bump me up to the B or A requirements being met.

Practicing Quoting

pink: context
yellow: brackets to edit the quote
blue: credibility of quote's speaker
green: signal phrases

QRGs: the Genre

In this blog post, I will be diving into the conventions of a QRG, or Quick Reference Guide. Hopefully, this will help me, as well as any readers of this post, understand the purpose, conventions, and style of a QRG.

Genome Icon Artists, "Gnome-computer"  1/12/08 via wikipedia, GNU General Public License 

1. The conventions that all of these QRGs have in common are subtitles phrased as questions, hyperlinks included, many cited and related images, simple and concise paragraphs, a large amount of white space, and both sides of the argument are well introduced.

2. For QRGs, design and formatting are crucial. In most/all of the QRGs, there is a large amount of white space surrounding and throughout the paragraphs, and to the sides of the paragraphs, there are pictures, and at times even sidebars that offer summaries or additional information to the topic.

3. The purpose of the QRGs seems to be to inform the readers of a debate, and possibly even persuade the readers to take a side, by offering the readers information and arguments for both of the sides. However, the QRG itself doesn't seem to take a side in particular.

4. The intended audience for these QRGs seems to be the general public in all cases, especially since the QRGs are so simplistically stated, formed, and presented, making them easy for anyone to understand. However, an audience how has a key interest in the topic the QRG surrounds is more ideal, as the QRG goes in depth about things that may only peak the interest of some.

5. Images in QRGs seem to be scattered throughout and contain related images, pictured data, graphs, and more. The images offer more information to the topic, through the picture and through the captions which seem to add additional information to what the image presents.

Reflection: I learned from my classmates Lauren, Jessi, and Tyler a great deal of information on how to write QRGs that I had missed on my own. While we were all in a general consensus on the conventions of QRGs (probably because we talked about them in class), we did not all agree on the purpose or audience of the QRG. The others really helped me to fully understand that QRGs are intended to inform more than persuade, although they can persuade, and that the intended audience is the general public, although it might benefit the audience to know a little background on the topic.

Cluster of My Controversy

Annotated Bibliography in "Journal of Neuroscience" Style

This annotated bibliography includes all of the sources I used for my research and blog posts, excluding pictures which were already cited. It includes entirely websites, and is cited in its own style based off of "The Journal of Neuroscience". The style was found through this website which also contains examples of the citation style.

Borrud G., (7/31/15) Mouse Mind Control for a Good Cause. Available at: http://www.dw.com/en/mouse-mind-control-for-a-good-cause/a-18619622 [09/5/15]
I used this source as a general article for my research on my Neuroscience controversy. It mainly mentions the controversy of whether it is a good or bad thing to be able to control one's mind. This will be a key article to the actual debate in my controversy.

Akst J., (05/04/15) Mouse Mind Control. Available at: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/42878/title/Mouse-Mind-Control/ [09/05/15]
I used this source as a general article as well. It related to my neuroscience controversy in its very detailed and factual description of the research and controversy at hand. I will use this for information as well as a view on the controversy.

Brownlee C. (4/9/05) Remote Control Minds. Available at: http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy1.library.arizona.edu/stable/4016290?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=mind&searchText=control&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dmind%2Bcontrol%26amp%3Bprq%3Dmice%2Bethics%26amp%3Bgroup%3Dnone%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bso%3Drel%26amp%3Bhp%3D25%26amp%3Bacc%3Don&seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents [09/05/15]
I used this source as an academic article for my Neuroscience controversy. It didn't completely relate, but mentioned mind control done on fruitflies and the controversy of that, which is similar to mice. I imagine that, in the future, I will use this source as more solid information on the research itself.

Febo M. (7/30/15) A new day for an old emotion... Available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ejn.13014/full [09/05/15]
I used this source for an academic article also. This one was less related than my first article used, but its main purpose was to mention a study done on mice that inflicted pain and fear on the animals. I felt it was related due to its poor treatment on animals, which is an ethical controversy related to mine. I will use this as part of the ethical controversy within my actual controversy.

Author Unknown (Al Jazeera News). (12/09/14) Animals on trial. Available at: http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201412091504-0024416 [09/05/15]
This source was used by me as one of my less academic, social media sources from Storify. The source outside of Storify was an Al Jazeera News article about the ethic and moral problems with research done on animals. Again, this article can be used as part of the ethical controversy within my controversy.

Author Unknown (Jour2722). (07/31/13) Animal Mind Control: The Future is Now! Available at: https://storify.com/H_Bain/humanity-pushes-one-step-further-to-animal-dominat [09/05/15]
This was yet another social media source found on Storify. The original article comes from a personal (and possibly academic) blog from user Jour2722, and it explains a study done similar to the one in my controversy, mind control on animals. It had a very uniquely positive view on the topic, which contrasts my other social media source, so I could use this source as a different perspective.

Scott G. (04/15/13) Mind Control is Becoming Reality. Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gini-graham-scott/mind-controlled-devices_b_3062689.html [09/12/15]
This source was found through searching the Huffington Post for "mind control". The article itself pertains to my topic in its information insight to its readers on what is going on in the field of neuroscience and mind control. The article, while mostly neutral, takes a few small stances on the topic, which I will probably use from this article, along with the context it gives on other mind control projects.

Cook G. (01/08/15) Sebastian Seung's Quest to Map the Human Brain. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/magazine/sebastian-seungs-quest-to-map-the-human-brain.html?_r=0 [09/12/15]
This source from New York Times was also found simply through searching "Neuroscience Mind Control". While the article is more broad and doesn't specifically relate to my controversy, it does give key insight into Sebastian Seung, who is one of the key people in my controversy. I will probably use this source as information about people in my controversy.

Begich N. (06/20/11) Excellent Mind Control Documentary. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1_XUdQo2AU [09/12/15]
This source is a video that exhibits information on the the topic of mind control. However, the video itself is old, and does not give too much insight into my specific controversy. What I am mostly interested in using this source for is the comments section, as many people have very heated discussions on my controversy there.

Bittel J. (6/26/13) Controlling the Minds of Cockroaches Using Microsoft's Xbox Kinect. Available at: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/06/26/cockroaches_controlled_using_microsoft_s_xbox_kinect_video.html [09/12/15]
The article at hand was found on Slate, through searching "Mind Control". Essentially, this article explains a similar "research" to the one in my controversy that was done using cockroaches and the Xbox Kinect. I find that this article will be useful in its relaxed, colloquial style, giving an insight of how the average person might feel about the topic.

Reflection: I looked over the annotated bibliographies of both Katherine and Rachel. While neither of them were completely the same as my style, Journal of Neuroscience is not a common citation style, so I had to do what I could. Katherine's style is IEEE style, which is not very similar to mine, and Rachel's is CSE which is a scientific style, the closest to mine that I could find. It was interesting to see the differences between these styles and my own. I noticed that they took some creative liberties in their citations, which I don't believe I did. I think I am better off not risking making changes too drastic, but they made their changes effectively.

Ideology in My Controversy

Evaluation of Social Media Sources

Upon searching for social media sources for my controversy, the horizon was completely and totally broadened. Not only was it easy to find posts about my controversy, but the posts were also more stimulating and engaging than the scholarly articles. However, the question arises of whether the sources are credible or not.

lonaug, "Twitter" 04/2015 via pixabay, Creative Commons License

"Animals on Trial"
Credibility- This was posted on Al Jazeera News' stream, so the organization is more credible than just say, a tweet, but it is still a popular news source that thrives on the popularity and media attention of their articles, so they are not credible in a scholarly way.
Location- There are many locations mentioned in this article, not just one, including international locations, so this does not give any more insight to credibility.
Network- There are many followers to this news source, but most are just the general public, which in fact, takes away from the credibility of the source. However there are posts of more credible people posting about the controversy in this article.
Content- Their information does include sources to an extent, so it can be corroborated and confirmed.
Context- Al Jazeera posts about whatever sheared and popular in the news, they don't mention much more about the subject besides this one article.
Age- The article was posted 9 months ago, so it may not be as relevant today.
Reliability- The source seems relatively reliable. For a news source, it is not as bad as Fox News. However I would still take this information with a grain of salt.

"Animal Mind Control- The Future is Now!"
Credibility- This was posted on a personal, public blog. The author's username is Jour2722, but not much else can be found about them, so the source comes off with little credibility or validity.
Location- The author's location is also unknown, so nothing is added or deducted from the information presented by the location. However, again, there is no credibility because of this.
Network- The network is not readily available since this is a blog on wordpress that doesn't appear to get very much traffic. This lack of network also deducts from the validity of the source, since no one else is discussing the article.
Content- The content includes sources, a great deal of relevant information, and is written well as a blog post. This is the most redeeming quality of the article.
Context- This person posts only about such controversies and scientific discoveries, so this might be a blog they use for their studies, which adds to their credibility.
Age- The post was from 2013, so it may not be as relevant today.
Reliability- The source seems very unreliable, but by the actual article, including the sources that were included, I am convinced this is a credible and reliable source.

Evaluation of Scholarly Sources

Scholarly sources are easy to find in the field of Neuroscience, since it is such a scientific and scholarly field to begin with. It was also easy to find scholarly sources mentioning studies done on mice/rats, since that happens so often in my field.  The sources I found were "Remote Control Minds" and "A new day for an old emotion: studying fear learning using awake mouse functional magnetic resonance imaging". I chose these articles because they each related to different parts of my controversy: whether mind control is something that improves or ruins society in the future, and the ethics of working on mice/animals.

Bartlett, Maggie, "A laboratory mouse in which a gene affecting hair growth has been knocked out (left), is shown next to a normal lab mouse." via genome.gov, permission given by author

"Remote Control Minds" has a main purpose, which is to question the future of mind control after a level of mind control was done on fruit flies. The article was published by Christen Brownlee in 2005 in an issue of Science News. Its intended audience is anyone interested in science and scientific discoveries, and it cites sources such as the researchers and other scientists and their views on the subject. I found this source through Jstor, by searching "mind control".

"A new day for an old emotion..." also has a clear purpose, which is not so much to focus on the controversy of working on mice at all, but the controversy of just how far one can push their subjects, since this study introduced fear and pain. It was published by Marcelo Febo, July 30th, 2015, in the European Journal of Neuroscience. The audience is fellow neuroscientists, psychologists, and scientists in other fields. Sources include all those involved in these studies. I found this article through searching Google Scholar for "mice ethics".

Evaluation of General Sources

While browsing for controversies in Neuroscience, I surprisingly found very little from 2014-2015. Scientific fields are generally easy to find controversy in, considering the common questioning of the morality of certain research, such as studying the brains of animals who can not consent to the research being done on them. However, in terms of controversial "events" that occurred within the last year, the Neuroscience field has been relatively quiet, except for the debate on mind control, following the recent scientific breakthrough in being able to control the minds of mice.

Maus, Jens, "PET scan of the human brain" 2010, public domain

"Mouse Mind Control for a Good Cause?":
URL: While the URL ends with .com, DW is known as a generally credible site for updates and news on breakthroughs, which indicates credibility for the source.
Author: The author is Gabriel Borrud, who is an interviewer for DW. Borrud has several other platforms that he can be found on, and the DW Facebook page has a snippet introducing Borrud and his credibility as an author/interviewer.
Last Updated: While the site does not tell you when the article was updated, it does mention the date it was published, which was the recent date of July 31st, 2015. Links on the page lead you to sources for the topic at hand, such as the research paper on the mind control that was published.
Purpose: The purpose of this article seems to be to ask questions about the research, but also to question what controversies may arise from the research. Nothing appears promoted.
Graphics: There is a picture of mice with implants attached to their heads, which adds to the controversy of the morality of the research.
Position: The only position truly taken is that problems will arise from others who disagree with this research and how mind control will affect our future.
Links: Links are found to the sources and on the sidebar regarding other interesting and recent news articles.


"Mouse Mind Control":
URL: This is a .com URL, but it is also "the-scientist", so of course the name of the site gives its own level of credibility.
Author: The Author is Jef Akst, who is hard to find elsewhere but writes other seemingly credible articles for the-scientist.
Last Updated: The article was created May 4th, 2015, but there is no insight into when or if it was edited after that date. However, it is a recent date, so the article does not seem outdated.
Purpose: The purpose seems purely informational. There are more facts than opinions in this article, by far.
Graphics: The only picture is very scientific, showing neuroactivity in the brain. This again emphasizes the lack of position in this article, and shows the information from a solely scientific standpoint.
Position: As stated above, there is no clear position taken on the subject matter or the controversy. The article does seem to focus on the good things that can come from this discovery, however.
Links: There are links to tags, popular/related articles, and promotional ads on this site, which shows that the source wants you to dig further into the subject.

My Discipline

I am currently studying (pre-)Neuroscience and Cognitive Science at the University of Arizona. Essentially, Neuroscience is the study of the brain, its components, and how it works. My personal interests in my discipline fall under the desire to learn about and do research on the human brain, specifically.

"Outer Surface of the Human Brain" 1894-1895 via Wikipedia Commons, public domain

Students in my field of interest learn many different things depending on their specific focus in Neuroscience. For the most part, though, students learn how processes in the brain work, the anatomy of the brain, and what the brain's functions are. Students learn to fully understand how the brain affects the body and how the complexity of the brain can unfold.

Most Neuroscience majors go on to graduate studies to get a Doctorate, or at the very least, a Masters degree. Beyond higher education, people in my area of study usually work in labs doing research on the brain, or apply their knowledge to other fields such as robotics or medicine, creating new technologies.

I was drawn to this field by the mystery of the human brain. Before I had decided I was interested in Neuroscience, science had not interested me at all. Chemistry, Biology, and Physics were boring fields to me for the most part, so when I found Neuroscience, it almost did not seem like a field of science at all to me, despite all that it entails. I think this is because there is so much to learn about the brain, and the information learned is not as cut-and-dry as fields like Physics. I also find neuroscience to be one of the most important of the sciences, since the brain is most of what the existence of life is centered around.

Just a few of the most exciting discoveries in Neuroscience right now come from Van Wedeen, who discovered the brain's "wiring patterns" as a "multi-layered grid in 2012, and Professor Jack Gallant from UC Berkeley, who helped to combine the visual cortex and technology to be able to view the images that people see in their heads in 2011.

The top scholarly journals in Neuroscience include "Neuroimage", published in the U.S. by Academic Press Inc., "Nature Reviews Neuroscience", published in the U.K. by Nature Publishing Group, and "Biology of Mood and Anxiety Disorders", published in the U.K.