Notes on conference abstracts, 25 Octoer 2011

1. Successful conference abstracts
(Swales and Feak 2000: 39)
High-rated Abstracts Low-rated Abstracts
Topics of current interest to Topics of lesser interest
experienced members of the
community
A problem clearly defined No clear problem defined
Problem addressed in a Problem, if defined, received
novel way less interesting treatment
Current and cutting-edge Terminology standard
terminology used
Explicit & implicit references Fewer citations & allusions
to scholarly literature used

2. Is your idea interesting enough?
Answer the questions: Is what I have to say…
new enough,
interesting enough,
or important enough to present
at a conference?
Who does it concern?

3. Abstracts presented should contain concise
statements of:
Background: the study objectives, the
hypothesis to be tested, or a description of the
problem
Methods: method (s) used or approach taken
Results: specific results in summarized form
(with appropriate statistical analysis)
Conclusions: description of the main outcome
of the study

4. Can I distill the exact topic into a title?
Your title should be simple and descriptive
Include the idea, the work and the context in the title
You don’t need to give away your lessons learned or
recommendations in the title, but you might hint that you’re
going to give them in the presentation
The title is your mini-advertisement
The title needs to help the reviewers categorize your presentation
and may eventually help conference delegates find your session

5. Examples of titles, good and bad
• Not so good:
“Making efforts to increase home based care in rural
community.”
– Key message in this abstract: In a community in rural
Zimbabwe, volunteers in a home-based care program
couldn’t keep up with demand.

6. Examples of titles, good and bad
• Good:
“Monitoring and evaluating clowning and street
theatre-based HIV/AIDS education in Rural
Guatemala: guidelines for impact and process
evaluations.”
– Key message in this abstract: In an HIV prevention program in
rural Guatemala, a monitoring and evaluation system was
analyzed for a street theatre program. The abstracts tells us
that conclusions will be given about a) how effective the
program was in increasing HIV knowledge, and b) how to
properly set up an evaluation of this sort of program.

7. Clear: In Mexico, researchers face great
difficulty in gaining access to a sample size
of IDUs large enough for a comparative
behaviour analysis study. Laws forcing
IDUs to be clandestine and mistrustful
have thwarted several outreach efforts.
(36 words)

8. Using High Intensity Focused Ultrasound to Disrupt the Blood Brain Barrier &
Enhance Drug Delivery to the Brain
Despite advancement in the treatment of many cancers, therapies for brain tumors have
gone without significant change over the past few decades. One major impediment to
treating brain tumors is the blood brain barrier (BBB), which is comprised of tightly aligned
endothelial cells lining the walls of blood vessels in the brain. In the central nervous system
(CNS) the BBB plays a protective role, restricting the movement of molecules into the brain.
As a result, many therapeutic compounds known to be successful in vitro are prohibited from
entering the CNS in vivo. We have found that application of high intensity focused ultrasound
(HIFU) to the brain causes disruption to the tight junctions between endothelial cells of the
BBB. This technique opens the BBB in a selective, yet reversible manner without causing
tissue damage. This capability allows a method for drug delivery to the CNS to destroy both
malignant brain tumors and isolated residual tumor cells involved in tumor recurrence after
surgical resection. In order for HIFU-induced BBB disruption to be clinically useful, HIFU
treatment must be shown to provide a means for safe and effective drug delivery to the CNS.
It is currently unclear how the HIFU-treated regions of the brain evolve overtime and what, if
any, long-term negative effects are associated with this brief BBB opening. Preliminary work
suggests that it is possible to disrupt the BBB without causing tissue damage. My current
work aims to replicate these findings by identifying a protocol that reversibly opens the BBB
acutely in such a way as to maximize flux into the treatment site, while minimizing damage to
the surrounding tissue. This protocol will be used to assay any long-term HIFU effects to the
treatment site. Successful completion of this work will mark an important step towards the
implementation of HIFU therapy into clinical practice to treat neurological disorders.

9. "Their War": The Perspective of the South Vietnamese Military in Their Own Words
Despite the vast research by Americans on the Vietnam War, little is known about the
perspective of South Vietnamese military, officially called the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces
(RVNAF). The overall image that emerges from the literature is negative: lazy, corrupt,
unpatriotic, apathetic soldiers with poor fighting spirits. This study recovers some of the South
Vietnamese military perspective for an American audience through qualititative interviews with
40 RVNAF veterans now living in San José, Sacramento, and Seattle, home to three of the top
five largest Vietnamese American communities in the nation. An analysis of these interviews
yields the veterans' own explanations that complicate and sometimes even challenge three
widely held assumptions about the South Vietnamese military: 1) the RVNAF was rife with
corruption at the top ranks, hurting the morale of the lower ranks; 2) racial relations between
the South Vietnamese military and the Americans were tense and hostile; and 3) the RVNAF was
apathetic in defending South Vietnam from communism. The stories add nuance to our
understanding of who the South Vietnamese were in the Vietnam War. This study is part of a
growing body of research on non-American perspectives of the war. In using a largely untapped
source of Vietnamese history - oral histories with Vietnamese immigrants - this project will
contribute to future research with a similar perspective.

10. "Quantifying the Mechanics of a Laryngoscopy"
Laryngoscopy is a medical procedure that provides a secure airway by passing a breathing tube
through the mouth and into the lungs of a patient. The ability to successfully perform
laryngoscopy is highly dependent on operator skill; experienced physicians have failure rates of
0.1% or less, while less experienced paramedics may have failure rates of 10-33%, which can
lead to death or brain injury. Accordingly, there is a need for improved training methods, and
virtual reality technology holds promise for this application. The immediate objective of this
research project is to measure the mechanics of laryngoscopy, so that an advanced training
mannequin can be developed. This summer an instrumented laryngoscope has been developed
which uses a 6-axis force/torque sensor and a magnetic position/orientation sensor to quantify
the interactions between the laryngoscope and the patient. Experienced physicians as well as
residents in training have used this device on an existing mannequin, and the force and motion
trajectories have been visualized in 3D. One objective is to use comparisons between expert and
novice users to identify the critical skill components necessary for patients, to identify the
mechanical properties of the human anatomy that effect laryngoscopy, and thus enable the
development of a realistic training simulator. In the future an advanced training mannequin will
be developed whose physical properties will be based on our sensor measurements, and where
virtual reality tools will be used to provide training feedback for novice users.