1,724,427 research outputs found
Population Health Metrics Research Consortium gold standard verbal autopsy validation study: design, implementation, and development of analysis datasets
Full text linkBackground: Verbal autopsy methods are critically important for evaluating the leading causes of death in populations without adequate vital registration systems. With a myriad of analytical and data collection approaches, it is essential to create a high quality validation dataset from different populations to evaluate comparative method performance and make recommendations for future verbal autopsy implementation. This study was undertaken to compile a set of strictly defined gold standard deaths for which verbal autopsies were collected to validate the accuracy of different methods of verbal autopsy cause of death assignment.Methods: Data collection was implemented in six sites in four countries: Andhra Pradesh, India; Bohol, Philippines; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Mexico City, Mexico; Pemba Island, Tanzania; and Uttar Pradesh, India. The Population Health Metrics Research Consortium (PHMRC) developed stringent diagnostic criteria including laboratory, pathology, and medical imaging findings to identify gold standard deaths in health facilities as well as an enhanced verbal autopsy instrument based on World Health Organization (WHO) standards. A cause list was constructed based on the WHO Global Burden of Disease estimates of the leading causes of death, potential to identify unique signs and symptoms, and the likely existence of sufficient medical technology to ascertain gold standard cases. Blinded verbal autopsies were collected on all gold standard deaths.Results: Over 12,000 verbal autopsies on deaths with gold standard diagnoses were collected (7,836 adults, 2,075 children, 1,629 neonates, and 1,002 stillbirths). Difficulties in finding sufficient cases to meet gold standard criteria as well as problems with misclassification for certain causes meant that the target list of causes for analysis was reduced to 34 for adults, 21 for children, and 10 for neonates, excluding stillbirths. To ensure strict independence for the validation of methods and assessment of comparative performance, 500 test-train datasets were created from the universe of cases, covering a range of cause-specific compositions.Conclusions: This unique, robust validation dataset will allow scholars to evaluate the performance of different verbal autopsy analytic methods as well as instrument design. This dataset can be used to inform the implementation of verbal autopsies to more reliably ascertain cause of death in national health information systems
Growth of bacterium Leuconostoc mesenteroides LMG 7954 during batch cultivation under different conditions
No full textFiziološki potencijal bakterija mliječne kiseline nedovoljno je istražen i primijenjen u biotehnološkoj industrijskoj proizvodnji različitih proizvoda. Neka najnovija istraživanja ukazuju na robusnost ovih bakterija i njihovu potencijanu primjenu u proizvodnji vrlo vrijednih biokemikalija kao i drugih proizvoda, koji su inače izvanredno prihvaćeni na tržištu. U ovom radu istraživana je mogućnost soja Leuconostoc mesenteroides LMG 7954 da osim glukoze koristi i saharozu kao izvor ugljika i energije. Kreirani su mikroaerofilni i aerobni uvjeti šaržnog uzgoja ovog soja u laboratorijskom mjerilu i praćena je krivulja rasta ove heterofermentativne bakterije mliječne kiseline. Osim toga, preživljavanje L. mesenteroides LMG 7954 okarakterizirano je u reakcijskoj smjesi s visokim koncentracijama glicerola (c = 2,0 mol/L), još jednog potencijalnog izvora ugljika za ovaj soj, i saharoze (c = 0,8 mol/L). U ovoj reakcijskoj smjesi visokog osmotskog tlaka bakterijske stanice iz polovice eksponencijalne faze rasta tretirane su ultrazvukom. Na temelju eksperimentalnih rezultata procijenjeni su trajanje faza rasta i specifična brzina rasta soja L. mesenteroides LMG 7954 pri odabranim uvjetima šaržnog uzgoja, koji predstavljaju izvrsnu polaznu točku za daljnja istraživanja fiziologije ovog soja i njezinu primjenu u održivoj biotehnološkoj proizvodnji proizvoda i usluga visoke dodane vrijednosti.Physiological potential of lactic acid bacteria has been insufficiently investigated and implemented in biotechnological industrial production of different products. Few latest investigations indicate robustness of those bacteria as well as their potential applications in manufacturing of value added biochemicals and other products that are remarkably accepted in a market. In this work a capacity of a strain Leuconostoc mesenteroides LMG 7954 to use sucrose, besides glucose, as a source of carbon and energy was explored. Microaerophilic and aerobic conditions of laboratory scale batch cultivations were created and a growth curve of those heterofermentative lactic acid bacterium was followed. Besides, survival of L. mesenteroides LMG 7954 in a reaction mixture containing high concentration of glycerol (c = 2,0 mol/L), another potential source of a carbon for the strain, and sucrose (c = 0,8 mol/L) was characterized. In this reaction mixture with high osmotic pressure bacterial culture with the cells from the middle of exponential growth phase were treated by ultrasound. Duration of growth phases and specific growth rate of the strain L. mesenteroides LMG 7954 were estimated based on the experimental results obtained under selected conditions of batch cultivations. Obtained values represents excellent starting point for further investigations of physiology of the strain and its implementation in sustainable biotechnological production of different products and high added value utilities
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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