1,720,977 research outputs found
Interactions of GFAP with ceftriaxone and phenytoin: SRCD and molecular docking and dynamic simulation
No full textAbstractBackgroundGFAP is the major intermediate filament protein in mature astrocytes. Its increased expression and aggregation was firstly associated to Alexander's disease, and successively in different neurological diseases including scrapie, Alzheimer's and Creutzfeld–Jacob diseases. Recently, ceftriaxone a multi-potent β-lactam antibiotic able to overcome the blood–brain barrier, successfully eliminated the cellular toxic effects of misfolded mutated GFAP, similarly to phenytoin sodium, in a cellular model of Alexander's disease and inhibited α-synuclein aggregation protecting PC12 cells from the exposure to 6-hydroxydopamine.MethodsIn this study, synchrotron radiation circular dichroism spectroscopy has been used to obtain structural information about the GFAP-ceftriaxone (phenytoin) interactions, while computational methods allowed the identification of the relevant putative binding site of either ceftriaxone or phenytoin on the dimer structure of GFAP, permitting to rationalize the spectroscopic experimental results.ResultsWe found that GFAP exhibited enhanced stability upon the addition of two equivalents of each ligands with ceftriaxone imparting a more spontaneous interactions and a more ordered complex system than phenytoin.ConclusionsSRCD data and MD models indicate a stronger protective effect of ceftriaxone in neurological disorders characterized by an increased production and polymerization of GFAP.General significanceThis result, in addition to our previous works in which we documented that ceftriaxone interacts with α-synuclein inhibiting its pathological aggregation and that a cyclical treatment with this molecule in a patient with adult-onset Alexander's disease halted, and partly reversed, the progression of neurodegeneration, suggests the possibility of a chaperone-like effect of ceftriaxone on protein involved in specific neurodegenerative diseases
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
Sensing marine biomolecules: smell, taste, and the evolutionary transition from aquatic to terrestrial life
No full textThe usual definition of smell and taste as distance and contact forms of chemoreception, respectively, has resulted in the belief that, during the shift from aquatic to terrestrial life, odorant receptors (ORs) were selected mainly to recognize airborne hydrophobic ligands, instead of the hydrophilic molecules involved in marine remote-sensing. This post-adaptive evolutionary scenario, however, neglects the fact that marine organisms 1) produce and detect a wide range of small hydrophobic and volatile molecules, especially terpenoids, and 2) contain genes coding for ORs that are able to bind those compounds. These apparent anomalies can be resolved by adopting an alternative, pre-adaptive scenario. Before becoming airborne on land, small molecules, almost insoluble in water, already played a key role in aquatic communication, but acting in “contact” forms of olfaction that did not require major molecular innovations to become effective at a distance in air. Rather, when air was “invaded” by volatile marine terpenoids, an expansion of the spatial range of olfaction was an incidental consequence rather than an adaptation
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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