Harvard:Biophysics 101/2007/Notebook:Denizkural/2007-4-30

May 1:

Documenting my function:

input variables: 
  - a keyword or an ordered set of keywords (one variable - a string)
  - the name of the FULL url of the feed, or a feed name that comes 'preloaded' (string)
  - a positive integer n, which will be the number of items to be returned

• The keywords will be used, if possible, to search for the relevant articles/posts/results in a given source/feed.
• The integer n is the number of news articles, clinical trials, and such to be returned... it might have an upper limit imposed by the source.
• I will leave the possibility of including new feeds open, thus the script accepts new URLS, but you could just use the pre-existing ones for clinical trials, news, etc.

Until May 3:

Work with Cynthia, Resmi, and Zack to figure out the integration of mesh-terms. Description of algorithm:

• Pick the more specific terms
• Get rid of common words (using a simple library and taking a string array set difference)
• Do a search using the terms, which will return 'condition' (Z's algorithm)
• Use the existing algorithm to get CDC data.

I would like to get together with everyone to actually test this out to see how it works.