My Two Research Articles

"Unleashing the Power of Canines: How They Improve Mental Health"

Kivlen, Christine A, Allison Quevillon, and Dani Pasquarelli. “Should Dogs Have a Seat in the Classroom? The Effects of Canine Assisted Education on College Student Mental Health.” The open journal of occupational therapy 10.1 (2022): 1–14. Web.

Between demanding school days, work, and other demanding life activities, college students are faced with copious amounts of anxiety and stress in their daily lives. This article explores the positive mental health strives associated with dog therapy in the classroom. I found this informational article on the UCSB Library database. I simply searched "canines and mental health", and after searching for several minutes I came across this article by Christine A. Kivlen. The author describes how many times, students find themselves with high levels of anxiety before a midterm or an exam. The research proves that being accompanied by these canines, indefinitely improves their test scores, and lowered the mental strain many students feel on a daily basis. Their studies also proved that there was little to no impact on the distraction some animals might cause. This article provided so many valuable insights into all the positive impacts of having canines present in students' academic careers. It also went into depth on just how exactly they can be implemented into our daily lives. I think this article can be useful for non-scientist readers, as it was easy to read and corresponded with many of our daily lives and habits. It also gave insightful thoughts on how exactly these processes could work. I think I could definitely write a sci-comm story on this article, and I would make 'college students' the protagonist, as I can relate to many of these valid points. I also think it would be fairly easy for me to understand the research and expirenmental aspects of it all, as I live in a stressful and anxiety-filled environment.

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Cancer Research with Canines

Katsnelson, A. Companion canines hold clues for cancer research. Lab Anim 50, 83–85 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41684-021-00741-y

In the article, "Companion canines hold clues for cancer research", by Alla Katsnelson, researchers test a drug called toceranib on dogs with tumors to see if they can delay the progression of its growth. Their finding proved their methods to be true and they conducted several more tests on animals with the same conditions. I found this article with a simple Google search of "canine sci comm research articles". It took me a couple of hours to find this specific article, but overall I really enjoyed learning about this topic, so I chose it for my final two. This article is really interesting and unique because it goes into depth on how valuable animals can be. This work contributes to a greater understanding of the effectiveness of implementing companion dogs as animal models for cancer research. Scientists can conclude that animals can and will make great improvements and advancements to the cure for cancer in humans. I think this article can be useful for my own research, but it might be a little difficult to write my own sci-comm article, just because there is a lot of information and steps in these processes. If I were to go with this article, I would make one of the many researchers the protagonist as they conducted and provided a lot of the data used in this article.