Taking the research of biomathematics as an example, this paper systematically introduces the basic methods and steps to enter the field of biomathematics, from searching professional books, collecting relevant literature reviews and scientific papers, to intensive reading of scientific papers, mastering research methods and skills, and then extensive reading of scientific papers to understand the latest research trends. ?
Scientific research field; Biological mathematics; Research methods?
Whether you are a graduate student or a researcher who wants to change fields, if you want to do scientific research in a certain field, you must understand and be familiar with the field, find classic books or documents, and settle down to read, summarize, discover, discuss and innovate. Taking the research of biomathematics as an example, this paper introduces how I studied and entered the field of biomathematics to carry out academic research. ?
1. Review information and read literature?
There are many ways to understand a scientific research field. Take biomathematics as an example. If you want to know what biomathematics is, how to get started as soon as possible, what preparations are needed, and what aspects still have a lot of research space, you can start from the following two aspects. ?
1. 1 Are there consulting teachers and researchers who have conducted in-depth research?
Biomathematics is a big research field. According to the mathematical methods used in the research, biomathematics can be divided into biostatistics, bioinformatics, biosystem theory, cybernetics and biological equations. Although there are many branches, we just need to choose the direction we are interested in. My research started under the guidance of my tutor, whose research direction is biological cybernetics and biological equations. Master the research contents and data of population dynamics, infectious disease dynamics, neural network dynamics and so on. Under the recommendation of my tutor, I read mathematical ecological model and research method [1], mathematical modeling and research of infectious disease dynamics [2] and artificial neural network theory, model, algorithm and application. Then I went to the teachers who had studied in depth to learn more about their research foundation, research degree and some feelings when doing this direction, and finally chose population dynamics to study. ?
1.2 Looking for books and literature review?
Another way to understand a research field can start with reading professional books. For the first time, I know a research direction, mainly looking for introductory professional books, with simple theoretical application and comprehensive introduction, and it is best to have professional development direction and cutting-edge research. The most direct way to find professional books is to let researchers familiar with this field recommend them, and on the other hand, they can also be obtained from the internet or references in the review literature. Reading literature review is also an effective way to understand a research field. An excellent review document will systematically introduce the whole development trend of a scientific research field from its formation to the present. After reading it, you will have an overall understanding of this field. As far as my research is concerned, the book Mathematical Ecological Model and Research Methods has a great influence on me. This book systematically introduces the research progress and research methods of mathematical ecological models, from the direction, to the basic models and research methods of single-species and two-species ecosystems, to the complex ecosystem models and research methods, and finally to the recently popular research models. After reading it, I feel that I have a deeper understanding of the research model and method of population dynamics, and I can easily read and understand it thoroughly by reading professional literature. ?
2. Intensive reading of scientific research papers?
After the first stage of efforts, I have an overall understanding of a certain scientific research field I want to enter. At this time, it is necessary to read scientific papers intensively. The intensive reading stage can be completed through the following three steps. (1) paper selection. The following two principles can be followed when choosing scientific research papers: First, choose foreign literature. From the beginning, we should read foreign articles, understand their organizational structure, writing points, writing skills and technical terms, and have the ability to further understand their language polishing skills, which is of great help to the writing of future papers. Second, select documents vertically before horizontally. When you choose a paper to read according to the magazine's professional recognition or the author's popularity, you are not in a hurry to read it, but first browse its abstract, introduction and references to see where this article has made a breakthrough and which article's content or skill has improved, and then find out this article, so as to follow the clues and find out a series of articles in chronological order, starting from the earliest one, and then reading it step by step, you will find out how to improve and study such problems. Then read horizontally to understand various solutions, combinations, applications and extensions of similar problems. (2) reading newspapers. When you start intensive reading of scientific research papers, the first few still need some efforts. First of all, read the abstract to understand what this article studies, what methods it uses, and what characteristics and highlights it has compared with previous articles. Secondly, read the introduction carefully to understand how far this kind of article has been studied and the purpose of the author's study of this article. Thirdly, read the main part of the article carefully, try to understand every question, and make clear the basic knowledge, methods and skills, key issues and main conclusions of this article. After reading the main part, you should be able to completely repeat the content of the paper from four aspects: problems, methods, conditions and conclusions. (3) Summary of the paper. After reading a series of papers, you will definitely have a progressive understanding of these articles. Starting from the first article, you will find that the hierarchy of the paper is very obvious by comparing these articles from four aspects: problem-method-condition-conclusion. If the problem is pushed forward step by step, from what angle, it will come out. This is very important for us to find a problem to write in the future and how to complete the research on the problem. ?
Taking the study of population dynamics as an example, the first paper I read was a classic article by my tutor [4]. First of all, I read the abstract, knowing that this article is studying a single-species non-autonomous diffusion population model with time delay, and I have a preliminary understanding of the biggest highlight of this article-the coexistence and extinction of all patch populations in the diffusion population system. By reading the introduction, I know which authors and articles are studying the population dynamic system, which problems these articles have generally studied and what are the most concerned issues. Then, after reading the abstract and introduction, we have mastered some research situations about single-species or multi-species diffusion systems with time delay or impulsive effects. After reading the main part of the article, I mastered the author's analytical skills, inequality skills and Lyapunov function construction skills, repeatedly mastered the conditions and conclusions of the theorem, and realized the biological significance of the conditions. Read the abstract of the article to further understand the contribution of the article and the biological problems solved. Based on this article, the recent research situation of general single-species system, general multi-species system, time-delay system, impulsive system and population system with both impulsive and time-delay effects is understood. The longitudinal axis diverges, and various processing methods and skills of similar systems are understood. In this stage of intensive reading, I made every point clear and made a summary and comparison, which gave me a deep understanding of my chosen research direction. ?
3. Extensive reading of scientific papers?
In order to find a reasonable problem that has not been thoroughly studied, it is far from enough to read more than a dozen scientific papers intensively. Next is the stage of extensive reading of scientific papers. Firstly, several keywords in the research field are selected to search for scientific research papers in recent three years in foreign language database or google Academic. According to keyword classification, download 10-20 articles for each category. For each kind of literature, because the skills and analysis methods in many articles are similar, it is necessary to focus on the abstracts to understand the research contents and conclusions; Secondly, read the introduction to understand the differences and improvements between it and other articles; Look at the theorem and conclusion of the main part again and realize the problem it solves; Finally, look at the summary and discussion, and see if there is any value for further study on this issue. If you come across an article that discusses a problem in this field that you have never seen before, read it intensively, because it is another valuable article that needs us to read and summarize in depth. After reading these articles to be widely read, we will have a clear understanding of the problems that most scholars have studied in this direction, to what extent these problems have been studied, what problems remain to be solved and which are hard bones. Taking the study of population dynamics as an example, I searched for one or more keywords such as diffusion, impulsiveness, predation, competition, persistence, periodic solution and stability during extensive reading. I mainly divide the articles into three categories: diffusion system, impulse system and diffusion impulse storage system. Then I read each category and summarized it, and learned that the diffusion system basically studied single species, two species and multiple species, with or without time delay. The breakthrough point that can be further studied is only the improvement of the method and better conclusion. For the pulse system, the linear form is mainly studied, and the nonlinear form of pulse is not involved much. For the system with pulse diffusion, the degree theory is mainly used to study, and the obtained conditions are also very strong, so there is still a lot of room for work in methods and skills. After reading all the literature and understanding these, I can accurately find the problem to be studied and find a more reasonable solution. ?
4. Summary
Combined with my own scientific research experience, this paper systematically introduces the things to be done and the methods to be done in each step, taking the research of biomathematics as an example. Taking the study of biological mathematics as an example, it is inevitable to encounter differences in arts, science and engineering, but the overall idea is clear and definite. I hope this paper can provide some practical suggestions for graduate students and researchers in the field of transformation. ?
References:?
[1] Chen, Song Xinyu, Lu Zhengyi, Mathematical Ecological Model and Research Methods, Sichuan Science and Technology Press, 2003. ?
[2] Ma Zhien, mathematical modeling and research of infectious disease dynamics, Science Press, 2004. ?
Luo Xiaoshu, Theory, Model, Algorithm and Application of Artificial Neural Network, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2005. ?
Zhang Zhide, Teng, Lu Zhiyong, Influence of Diffusion on a Single-species Non-autonomous Diffusion Model with Time Delay, Acta Biomedical, (2001) 42,439-454.
About the author:?
Liu Zijian, male, 1982, graduated from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, and is currently a lecturer at the School of Science of Chongqing Jiaotong University. His main research interests are impulsive differential equations and biomathematics. ?
Cai, female, 1979, graduated from Xinjiang University and is currently a lecturer at Xinjiang Radio and TV University. Her main research direction is biological mathematics.