Article Analysis

Recently, I did some research on my interested professor who teaches in the department
of Nutrition and Food Science. With the depth of the investigation, I read several journal articles
written by the professor, Margaret Slavin. In her most fascinating article, it reported a new
method of extracting three substances in a more effective way in A single extraction and HPLC
procedure for simultaneous analysis of phytosterols, tocopherols, and lutein in soybeans (Slavin
& Yu, 2012). The type of this article is research study with plentiful experiments. The followings
are my analysis and views on the article.
The objects of this article were the methods, a single extraction procedure and high
performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis (Slavin & Yu, 2012). Because we could see
in her article, researchers wanted to combine these two methods to see the results whether they
could enhance the experiments efficiency. The exigence of this research was the existing
methods of quantification of these elements had some different kinds of drawbacks (Abidi, 2001;
Lagarda, Garcia-Llatas, & Farre, 2006) and there was limited literature on one kind of method,
RP-HPLC, which separates several components from soy phytosterols (Slavin & Yu, 2012). As
we see in the article, there was not a perfect method to complete the experiment for the further
analysis. Thus, researchers aspired to find a better way to solve the coming problems. The
purpose of this article was to explore an efficient alternative to individually quantify the
components in soy in one procedure of extraction (Slavin & Yu, 2012). For authors, aiming to
analyze the results of the experiments was their motivation to develop the research. Moreover,
the relevance of this paper could be that there was a new starting-point needed more
experimentation on which - interactions play a role in separation (Slavin & Yu, 2012). The
following researchers could continue the experiments in a more specific orientation of this field.

In the introduction part, authors established a research territory in quantification of food

phytochemicals by the first sentence (Slavin & Yu, 2012):
The quantification of food phytochemicals is integral to understanding the
complex relationship between diet composition and disease prevention, and is
particularly interesting in soy due to the variety of health-beneficial compounds
known to exist in the legume. (p.2789)
Authors stated the definition of the quantification of food phytochemicals as the basis
knowledge of this field.
For move 2, authors constructed a niche in this field by the following sentences (Slavin &
Yu, 2012):
Valid RP-HPLC separation methods for soy phytosterols are limited in the
literature. Several methods have been reported for their separation, but problems
continue to plague sterol HPLC analysis. (p.2789)
They noticed the restricted method impeding further analysis on their topic. Therefore, it
was a stimulation for them to explore a new method corresponding with their experiments.
Slavin and Yu (2012) occupied the niche, The current work therefore reports for the first
time the simultaneous extraction and LC separation of the major carotenoid, tocopherols and
phytosterols in soy (p.2790). They came up with a new method to measure the content of these
three components and did a research to prove that it is of value for their further analysis.
In general, the article used the IMRD structure including introduction, methods, results
and discussion. Teacheing me that it is the basic structure of articles writing in my field. It could
express the entire stuff through the simple style but completely. However, to be more specific, it
also contained some other parts, such as metarials, conclusions and acknowledgements, which

enriched the article and played necessary roles for the research. Firstly, authors not only write the
methods applying to the experiments, but also paied a great attention to the metarials of exsiting
methods. This part was really important for me even for readers, since with the exsiting
knowledge, we could learn that how much we have already done and what holes still existed in
this field. Besides literature reviews, there were some subpoints under methods and resutls and
they corresponded with each other as well. It gave me more ideas when I do my own paper. It
probably cannot present a thesis or a method completely in only one supporting idea. We are
likely to use subpoints to extent our supporting aspects. What is more meticulous, noticing that
making them match with each other is likely to promote your writing-level of the article. At last,
authors continued to express conclutions about the article and acknowledgements of one
department and two boards. In their conclusion, they acknowledged some limitations which
placed minor, meanwhile drew a intergrated conclusion for the research. From my perspective, I
know that I can use the exactly same structure with IMRD in my field when I do my research
paper. What is more, I also can add some indispensible parts like metarials and conclusions
which are helpful for my readers to understand my paper easily. Interestingly, I could also utilize
some processes, tables and graphs to demostrate what I find and provide more visible results for
my readers.

Bibliography
Abidi, S. L. (2001). Chromatographic analysis of plant sterols in foods and vegetable oils.
Journal of Chromatography A, 173201.
Lagarda, M. J., Garcia-Llatas, G., & Farre, R. (2006). Analysis of phytosterols in foods. Journal
of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis, 14861496.

Slavin, M., & Yu, L. (2012). A single extraction and HPLC procedure for simultaneous analysis
of phytosterols, tocopherols and lutein in soybeans. Food Chemistry, 2789-2795.