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    The role of seminal plasma in the regulation of inflammation and inflammatory pathways in the cervix: potential for cervical cancer progression and HIV transmission in South African women

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    Includes bibliographical references.Cervical cancer is a chronic inflammatory disease of multifactorial etiology accounting for an annual estimated 266,000 deaths worldwide and usually present in sexually active women. In sub-Saharan Africa, cervical cancer is the most common cancer among women and the leading cause of cancer related deaths in this region. The obvious association of HIV infection and cervical cancer has long been established. High incidence and prevalence rate of HIV infection has been recorded in many areas with high incidence of cervical cancer suggesting that cervical cancer and premalignant cervical lesions may increase transmission and acquisition of HIV infection. Seminal plasma (SP) has been shown to initiate inflammatory response within the female genital tract. Exposure of neoplastic cervical epithelial cells to SP has been shown to promote the growth of cancer cells in vitro and tumors in vivo by activating several proinflammatory pathways. In addition to the regulation of tumor growth, SP-mediated inflammatory responses within the female genital tract have been suggested to contribute to the transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). The initial aim of this study was to determine the role of SP in the regulation of proinflammatory pathways in neoplastic cervical epithelial cells. TaqMan 96-well array revealed that SP regulates the activation of eicosanoid, toll-like receptor-NFκB, kallikrien-bradykininbradykinin receptor, cytokine, and chemokine signaling pathways to mediate the expression of inflammatory mediators in cervical cancer cells. These data highlight the potential of SP to exacerbate inflammatory processes within the local cervical cancer microenvironment creating conditions favorable for cervical tumor progression

    Transition from College to Professional Workplace: Lived Experiences of Mid-Level Emergency Care Graduates Working in a Provincial Department of Health in South Africa

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    This study aimed to obtain empirical data on the lived experiences of emergency care technicians (ECT) during their transition into the emergency medical service work environment. This qualitative (phenomenological) study used focus group discussions with 26 ECT graduates to obtain verbal statements describing their lived experiences when transiting from college to pre-hospital workplace environments. The three dominant emerging themes were workplace readiness and reception, professional confidence, and resistance in the workplace. The experiences reported regarding workplace readiness and reception were largely negative. The majority of the participants shared that the EMS station they were deployed to had not been ready to receive and optimally utilise their skills. In addition, participants stated that their integration into the workplace had been unpleasant, as they experienced a great deal of exclusion and resistance from colleagues. Furthermore, participants described how peer support, positive feedback from patients and co-workers, and the new skills and knowledge acquired during training enhanced their professional confidence. These findings suggest that more needs to be done by stakeholders in emergency care education and practice in South Africa to ensure that the transition of graduate paramedics to the workplace environment is a positive and less stressful experience. The recommendations made in this article could be beneficial in achieving this

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The 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

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    “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

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    We 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

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    We 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

    Author Index

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    koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist

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    We 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
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