All research papers must start with researching your subject and finding legitimate sources. But what is the easiest and quickest way to get all that information? Here are just a couple of many underused resources that are available to all students.

UC-eLinks

UC Davis has a large store of electronic resources accessible online or in print for students to check out. Anyone can use this resource, but only UC faculty, students or staff have access to the UC-licensed e-journals and other full text resources. All of these resources are available automatically when on campus, or through the Library VPN when off campus.

Using UC-eLinks
In order to use this resource, simply link to a local campus or UC systemwide catalog holdings and go to cdlib.org/services/d2d/ucelinks/ to see if it has a certain item either in print or electronic format at any UC campus. The item or items will be delivered directly to you if you use your campus document delivery service, or you will be notified when the item arrives at the library. If it is electronic it will come directly to your computer. If you need help you can use Ask a Librarian. This allows you to contact a librarian in person, via telephone, email or even on an online chat.

UC Davis Harvest Catalog

This is an online source of the UC Davis library. To use, simply choose the category you want to search for. The three most useful categories for research are listed below.

Course Reserves
In Course Reserves you can search by title, instructor or course name and find books the library has in stock for you to use. This is the best place to look for course textbooks or books that are related to the class. These tend to be hard copies since most are textbooks.

Journals and Serials
In this category you can narrow your search with your field choice and find sources on any number of subjects you want. The catalog will provide many options based on what keywords you search for, so mix up what you search for each time to get multiple sources. These are a mix of online and hardcopy sources.

Electronic Journals
Searching in this category you can narrow your search by author, title, keywords or a number of other fields. Since all of these are stored electronically, this is easy access for a late-night paper. If it is electronic you will see an online link with volume and date ranges. Follow the link provided to locate it and then you can use the PDF version to print.

The UC system truly has an amazing catalog of research material.  All of it is available with just a few clicks.

KELLY MITCHELL can be reached at science@theaggie.org.

As winter approaches, it seems as though many people’s relationship statuses are changing to “single.” Winter is the most popular season to break-up, peaking right before the holidays. While most couples chalk it up to having mutual differences, one reason for the disenchantment may be more scientific than once thought.

UCLA researchers have found a correlation with female mate perception and ovulation, meaning that during a woman’s most fertile period, she is more likely to be distant from her more acquiescent and stable partner, and temporarily prefer a “dominant” male.

Joseph Gonzales, a doctoral student at UC Davis, explained that the “good genes” fertile women look for in males are aspects such as a V-shape body, height, angular features and facial symmetry. These characteristics are universal indicators of masculinity and originate from testosterone levels. If a male has softer features and perhaps a more docile disposition, he will be perceived as less attractive by women when they are fertile.

“[These] types of ovulatory effects are quite fascinating and have been shown to affect both preferences and behavior of men and women,” said Ryan Schacht, a human behavioral ecologist at UC Davis. “Women at or near ovulation have been shown to dress more provocatively, be more proceptive (seeking partners), prefer more masculine males and be more likely to cheat.”

According to Schacht, men vary their behavior near fertile women as well. Men tend to give bigger tips to dancers at gentlemen’s clubs when the dancers are ovulating, and men also exhibit much more protective behavior when their partners are ovulating.

Martie Haselton, a professor of psychology and communication studies at UCLA and senior author of the study, conducted studies with 41 undergraduate females in long-term heterosexual relationships. Using questionnaires, researchers asked participants to rate their mates at two different points of their ovulatory cycle: high fertility and low fertility. The questions were focused on their mates’ perceived sexual attractiveness, stability and suitability.

Though the initial findings did not display any significant changes, an exercise in which the participants were asked to rate the closeness of their relationship revealed compelling results. With women who are mated to less attractive men, their closeness level dropped one point on a seven point scale from their least fertile to their most fertile period. In women with attractive mates, on the other hand, closeness level ratings were observed to rise by one point from their least fertile period to their most fertile period.

“A lot of research has shown that women’s preferences change over the course of the cycle, but this is the first time that these changes have been shown to have implications for relationship functioning,” said Christina Larson, the study’s lead author and a doctoral candidate in social psychology at UCLA, in the initial press release.

A separate study conducted to check for any anomalies solidified the research. Most scientists in this area and related fields agree that the effects of ovulation on mate selection are reminiscent of early human behavior.

“The suggestion is that women, over evolutionary time, might have sometimes slept with a masculine male, other than their mate, around the time of ovulation, which would have allowed her to be pregnant with the healthy, masculine male’s child, while staying mated with her own less masculine mate,” said Phillip Shaver, a professor of psychology at UC Davis. “[He] might be a nice, loyal guy [and] would take care of her and the other guy’s child. This allows a woman to have the benefits of one guy’s ‘good genes’ … and the benefits of a loyal partner.”

While this may concern some of the “nice guys” reading this article, rest assured the effects are temporary and psychological, meaning the changes in preference do not necessarily guarantee that a woman will seek other partners.

“People of both sexes are occasionally attracted to people who are not their primary mates, including being attracted to movie stars, singers, etc. whom they will never actually meet, but this doesn’t necessarily disrupt a primary relationship because it isn’t acted on,” Shaver said. “In the same way that we are all attracted to sweet and fatty foods for evolutionary reasons, but do not always indulge our attractions to them, most of us can be momentarily attracted to someone other than our mate without having to climb into bed with that person.”

NICOLE NOGA can be reached at science@theaggie.org.

Much of disease treatment relies on a simple principle: find out what agents in the body are causing a problem and eliminate them. People can employ very broad-sweeping measures to eliminate these problems. A good example of this is the use of antibiotics. For diseases like salmonella and tetanus, the use of the proper antibiotics can quickly and efficiently solve the problem.

However, many diseases are much more problematic and can’t be dealt with in broad strokes. The treatments for these diseases are much more complex and require pinpoint accuracy in targeting afflicted areas. One such disease is cancer.

Cancer, the unregulated growth of the body’s cells, is difficult to treat. The difficulty stems from the fact that the diseased cells are entirely native to the body; the treatments are targeting one’s own cells. The body’s immune system is great at detecting and eliminating foreign substances, but when the troubles are more domestic, it has trouble telling healthy cells from cancerous ones. As a result, the treatment options that kill the cancerous cells have the unfortunate side effect of killing the healthy cells as well. When chemotherapeutic treatments are administered in too high of a concentration, these potentially helpful drugs could end up being lethal.

In a recent publication, professor of hematology and oncology at the UC Davis School of Medicine Chong-Xian Pan developed a way to dramatically improve the efficacy and safety of some cancer treatments.

The improvement comes from changes to the delivery of the chemotherapeutic treatments through usage of nanoparticles called micelles. Micelles are aggregates of soap-like molecules that naturally form droplets when placed into an aqueous environment. The hydrophobic (water-avoiding) side of the micelle is repelled by water and forms the center of the drop. The hydrophobic side is used to form a protective coating around the chemotherapeutic agents meant to be delivered to a specific part of the body.
The way micelles are directed to specific parts of the body is through ligands, signal-triggering molecules that bind to sites on corresponding proteins. These ligands can be artificially constructed to bind to any conceivable protein with complementary sequences of amino acids. Proteins are made up of sequences of amino acids, otherwise known as peptides.

The peptide PLZ4 has been shown to preferentially bind to a structure on the surface of bladder cancer cells. The binding triggers the absorption of the micelle into the target cell. The binding process facilitates the emptying of the contents of the micelle directly into the cancer cell, allowing for much more efficient delivery of chemotherapeutic drugs.

“The micelles … are stable during blood circulation and release the [medication] quickly when triggered by the microenvironment of a tumor,” said Yaunpei Li, a collaborator in the investigation. “Our micelle could prevent premature drug release [into the body].”

According to Kit Lam, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine and a co-author of the article, the problem with freely administered cancer drugs in the bloodstream comes from developed resistance.

Subjects given the high dosage took the longest time for tumors to develop and showed the longest period of tumor control. Moreover, the high-dosage treatment subjects experienced significantly longer life spans than subjects given the same dosage of paclitaxel with the absence of targeted micelles.

The high-dosage treatment with the new delivery method promoted a far greater life expectancy with fewer negative side effects.

“The prognosis for advanced bladder cancer has not changed for three decades. Our findings have the potential to significantly improve outcomes,” Pan said,

ALAN LIN can be reached at science@theaggie.org.