1.  a.  On the leading British Cancer Charity website, Macmillan Cancer Support, they state that "there's   some evidence to show that being active at the recommended levels and maintaining a healthy weight can reduce the risk of some cancers progressing or coming  back".

     b.  A leading British cancer charity sponsored a study called, Move More, which compiled the findings of sixty studies that measured the effects of exercise on cancer patients. In this study they found that "some patients should view light exercise almost as a form of treatment itself, the report noted that two and a half hours of exercise a week could lower a breast cancer patient's risk of dying or cancer recurrence by 40 percent".

2.  a..The associate director for applied research at the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Rachel Ballard-Barbash, in a recent study which concluded that regular physical activity "decreases the risk of cancer-related mortality and of all cause mortaliy. This research is also supported by the Nurses Health Society that found that "women who walked briskly at least 3-5 hours per week were 50  percent lower risk of death from the disease".

b. When speaking about research that has been concerning how phyiscal activity effected those diagnosed with cancer, Dr. Ballard-Barbash, associate director for applied research at the National Cancer Institute, suggested that the majority of research had to do with woman breast cancer survivors because "there's a lot of research money in that feild" which means that there has been more focus on that area of research. Though, there a very large study in the Netherlands was done recently that involved colorectal cancer survivors. In that study, Laurien M. Buffart, a professor at the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, reported that "fatigue and the fear of tiredness may be a barrier to physical activity for some people". Yet on the other hand, "exercise energizes people who are undergoing or have completed cancer treatment".

Chapter 6--Managing Information and Taking Notes

Chapter 6 is full of helpful suggestions as how to be organized and keep track of all of the research that we will be doing. Having an organizational plan for managing all of the information that we find, coupled with taking notes will help us to sort out the sources that will be the most useful to us by causing us to keep an account of what we have gleaned from each source and how that information helps us to answer our chosen research questions.

This can be accomplished by having a strategy for saving our print and digital information. A few of the suggestions are to keep our print information in a filling system that makes sense to us be it in a notebook or three ring binder, stacks of related sources with post-it notes or in a filing cabinet. Once an organizational scheme is chosen, it is important to stick with it as having your information organized in numerous ways will cause confusion and you might overlook something valuable. As we gather information we should be sure to note the publication information of each source, record the date you found the information and a brief note regarding your impressions and how we will use the source. Storing our digital information in a single folder will help to keep our information organized. We may also want to consider saving your files to a hard drive, flash drive or even a smartphone in order to allow us more flexibility in when and where we work on the our projects. 

Note taking will allow us to keep track of and have easy access to to information, ideas and arguments. Taking notes as we read our sources allows us a deeper understanding of the material that we have read and helps us to track our impressions. Systematic and careful note taking and writing summaries of the material will also help to safeguard against accidental plagiarism by a) quoting the author precisely or b) using our own words to sum up the ideas that were being put forth and our own impressions about them. 

Lastly, a working and an annotated bibliography will also help us to keep track of our sources and how we intend to use them and why.

Chapter 3--Developing Your Research Question and Proposal

In Chapter 3 we learned how to develop our research questions and proposals. Writing a clear and concise research question will not only guide our research, but it will provide the infrastructure for forming our position in our papers by serving as our guide. The majority of research questions will begin with the a question word such as, what, why, when, where, who or how. Yet, some will ask whether or not something is possible will begin with would or could. When a paper is analyzing whether or not a “particular action, policy procedure or decision” is appropriate, your question will begin with the word should.

There are four steps to take when selecting your research question. The first is to Reflect on your writing situation. Once you have surveyed your topic and decided on what aspect you would like to write about, ask yourself if based on what you have already learned, has your understanding of the your writing situation changed? Next, determined what it is that you would like to learn next. Lastly, how has your preliminary understanding of your topic and issue influenced your research? Step two is to  generate potential research questions. These questions will be generated based on things like, what information is available about an issue, and the history, assumptions, goals, outcomes and policies surrounding an issues. These types of questions will help you to define and evaluate an issue. As well as compare and contrast and analyze an issue. The example of how this can be done on page 44 was interesting and helpful, but also a bit overwhelming. In step three, you will begin crafting questions that reflect your writing situation. This is done by reviewing the questions that were generated by the previous steps and choosing those that particularly interest you, then begin to write these questions using the previously stated question words. Once you have generated a list of potential questions, step four is to select and refine your question by evaluating which one is the most likely to help you fulfill your purpose while holding your readers interests and providing the best possible evidence. 

Once you have your research question, you are set to write your research proposal. A research proposal is how you will reveal what you have already done to research your question as well as what you will do to complete your project. Included in this is a title page, an introduction that identifies your topic issue, and/or research question, review of literature, an explanation of how you will collect information, a project timeline and a working bibliography.

Though this seems like quite a lot of up front work, I can see how this work would make the final paper stronger and more effective.

Chapter 5 --Evaluating Sources

Chapter 5 discusses how to evaluate sources for use in a research paper. In considering which sources to use in a research paper, one must be ever mindful of the purpose and position of the paper. Keeping your purpose and position in mind while you gather sources and information you will more precisely be able to gather the evidence that you will need to present in an organized manner that helps your audience to see your point of view. You will need to ensure that you have enough evidence to build a strong case, but not so much that your argument gets lost. In other words you want to make sure that what you use is meaningful. Sometimes more is just plain too much.  The evidence offered should also be fair and not obviously twisted to fit your point of view.

Choosing to cite authors who are credible is also of importance. Knowing that they are well informed in their fields of study adds credibility to your argument. As you consider an author, consider how their own biases may be effecting the argument in the source. For example, if you were to look a bit more closely at author you might find that he/she is firmly on a particular side of an issue and in fact the purpose of their paper is to fully support their side of an argument, not to inform you of an issue. This also applies to the publisher as so not want an author or a publisher that is heavily biased in one direction or another as this might weaken your argument. An example of this is if you were doing an environmental piece exploring alternative fuel and the article you read was written  by someone who worked for an oil company; their job depends on oil use  Additionally, it is important to consider the date of a particular piece was published as this might effect the impact of your argument. Lastly, consider the genre, or document type, that you will be using. A professional journal will cite published sources and research making it easier for readers to track down related  sources. Whereas blogs are less likely to have this and more likely to contain lots of opinions that may or not be substantiated. 

Being mindful that your paper is meant to present evidence to your reader as to why you have taken the position that you have, will help guide your choices of sources to include. 

Chapter 4 -- Reading Critically

In chapter four we learned how to read actively and critically, or with attitude as it says in the book. Reading actively means that instead of just reading a text we are getting deeper with it. Our reading should be a three-fold process of first skimming the material so that we are oriented to how it is laid out, reading for meaning and re-reading sections that were not clear. While you are engaging in this process, you should be highlighting or underling sections of importance or relevance, annotating in the margins and taking notes. The importance of a piece to our projects will be informed by the research question that we develop. By remaining mindful of our question, the position that we are taking and the requirements of our assignment, we can more accurately gauge whether or no a piece is useful to our projects. Reading in this manner requires that we are curios and do not take the information at face value rather we should question and dig deeper, being aware of how the source is being presented. I felt that this chapter was a good reminder to really think about our sources and the how they are being presented and for what purposes. Being aware of this will help us to use information that is unbiased.

Chapter 2--Exploring and Focusing

As we begin to explore our topics, it is important to be organized and have a game plan for how we will go about our research. During the first step in our exploration we should make a list of potential people with whom we can discuss our topic, such as people who either know a great deal about our topics, librarians and those who have had involvement that relates to our topics. We should also create a list of potential places or situations where we might be able to observe something about our topics. It will be much more meaningful and organized if we create a list of questions that we begin asking people, ourselves in the situations that we observe and in our initial browsing of sources and develop a way to keep track of our findings.

The next step is to begin identifying sources that are relevant to our research and assessing whether or not they are credible. Lastly, we will begin the process of identifying the issues involved in our topics and find the one that holds our interests and has the greatest potential for being able to fulfill the requirements of our assignment. 

It is nice to have this all spelled out in a step by step fashion as to how to pursue this project. I think that this will be helpful. I find that the biggest challenge that I have is just getting started and identifying a topic. Writing is not something that I get excited about, but I do understand it’s importance and that it is necessary to do well. 

Chapter 1--Getting started

There are several important elements to keep in mind while writing a research paper. The first is choosing to write on a topic that connects you personally to the your topic or writing and your audience. Not only will the project capture your interest, but you will likely be able to write a better paper for a topic that you have some enthusiasm for. It is also important to understand the context of why you are being asked to write the paper in the first place. In this case, we are being asked to write a 3,00 word, persuasive paper. As with any conversation and in particular one that is meant to persuade, you must know who your audience is and the context for which we are writing, which in our case is our instructor and fellow classmates. How we present our papers would be one way if we were presenting them to a very focused audience such as for historians and another for our class which is comprised of many different people. Second, we must choose a topic. Again, our topics should interest us. Finding a topic can be challenging, but by doing exercises such as brainstorming, freewriting, looping and clustering can help us come up with a topic that both interests you and holds appeal for others.