An advancement is a general movement of the field. As newcomers, you will have to tease this out from the literature. I suggest you find a topic of genuine interest first, then look at the news over the last six months and try to find multiple news items on a change to your topic. Below are some places to look for news and industry reports.
The "Industry Reports & Research" topic on the Activity 3 page might also help.
The databases in this section will mostly help you find articles.
Provides a search of scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources, including theses, books, abstracts and articles.
New users must register for a SciFinder-n account.
Chemical information primarily from Chemical Abstracts, CAS registry, and Medline. Excellent search tool for finding chemical information from journals, patents, conference proceedings, and technical reports. Training for SciFinder-n is available from the vendor
A rich collection of citation indexes representing the citation connections between scholarly research articles found in the most globally significant journals, books, and proceedings in the sciences, social sciences and art & humanities.
If you are searching for a specific book, try the catalogs in this list. If you don't find it from one catalog, try the next catalog in the list.
Sometimes it is convenient to search electronic books directly particularly when looking for quick facts or code syntax. Refer to the electronic book sources in this section or the previous section, Databases to Find Aritcles, Books and More. Use the descriptions to find the databases that contain electronic books that are most closely related to your topic. Keep in mind that not all books will be available for download. It depends on the database and the library's subscriptions.
Over 800 essential reference books and databases from the world's leading scientific publishers and professional societies in 18 industrially important subject areas.
Electronic books in computer science, information technology, business, and related fields. Note: Here are Instructions for accessing O'Reilly eBooks
Subject or Course Guides are a great place to go to find out about a subject.
ZipSearch is a good place to start. It searches several of our databases and catalogs simultaneously. Don't use ZipSearch for in-depth research.
Good use – Find one article to review for a class project.Use the databases directly for in-depth research on a topic. If you know exactly what book, DVD, etc. that you want, use the UA Libraries Catalog directly.
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The library's most comprehensive search engine. It includes articles, books, journals, conference proceedings, streaming videos, book reviews, and more. Search over 100 databases simultaneously, including Academic Search Complete, JSTOR, and ScienceDirect. For more information, visit this ZipSearch guide.