EHS: Fundamentals of Toxicology Spring 2021 Paper assessment: There is a single writing assignment that is required in this course for graduate students. The assignment consists of choosing a topic in the recent toxicological literature (e.g. toxicology of a single environmental agent in a specific target organ, pharmacokinetics of a specific toxic agent, aspects of a common step in a pathological/toxicological mechanistic pathway, etc.) and finding at least two recent (preferentially within the previous 5 years) primary references that address this topic. The papers should be related to a single toxicological issue. In the past, many students have chosen epidemiological papers as opposed to toxicological papers, and this is not the goal in this course. Explain the toxicological issue or issues that have been addressed and the experiments that have been performed in the papers. Explain how the two papers are related, how they differ, and what further issues or experiments need to be performed based on the results from the two studies. It is optimal if you can get two papers that come up with conflicting results. If you can find such papers, then explain what might be the reason for the different outcomes. Two consecutive papers from the same laboratory are not good. The primary literature refers to papers that present original data as opposed to review papers. However, it may be useful to read and refer to articles other than the two primary articles, including review articles. Generally, if one (or both) of the papers is in a high profile journal (a journal with a high impact factor), then that tends to enhance the quality of the written submission. If you would like to know what journals are considered high impact factor or you would like to get some preliminary feedback, then you should email the instructor. The length of the assignment should be equal to or less than 3 single-spaced pages. The goal of this assignment is to have the student carefully review/analyze some papers in the primary toxicological literature and to understand how experiments are designed and performed in this area of science. Thus, please restrict the topic to one within the area of "toxicology" (which is a broad topic and therefore should not be so limiting)

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