1,720,955 research outputs found
Occurrence of neural tube defects in pregnancy: an excess of cases in a 2773-km2 area in Central Italy
No full textNeural tube defects (NTDs) have a complex and imperfectly understood etiology, in which both genetic and environmental factors might be involved. The aim of the study was to describe an excess of cases of NTDs in a small area in central Italy. Over a 2-wk period in autumn 2002, three diagnoses of anencephaly were made in a 2773-km(2) area. As a consequence of these events, information on known risk factors as well as data on environmental changes, or epidemics of infectious diseases, in 2002-2004, were collected. The NTD rate was estimated for 10,000 births (live and stillborn) in this area. The 95% confidence intervals of rates were estimated assuming Poisson distribution of cases. Six cases of NTD were observed, with an NTD prevalence rate of 18.5 per 10,000 births (95% CI 17.0, 20.12). No evidence of known risk factors was reported. During summer 2002, the local service for environmental surveillance observed that the threshold level of drinking-water bacterial contamination had been exceeded, which probably resulted in an adjustment in the amount of chlorine added. The major difficulty in making hypotheses regarding the causes of birth defects is linking environmental risk factors exposure to fetal outcome. The prompt gathering of data may be essential. Thus, we emphasize the need for the activation of a population-based congenital malformation registry in order to achieve a deeper understanding of these events etiology
Healthcare workers safety: a cohort study using healthcare utilisation databases on vaccination and vaccine timeliness impact against SARS-CoV-2 infection
Get PDFHealthcare Workers (HCWs) are at ongoing risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection, potentially contributing to its transmission. This study assessed full vaccination and vaccination timeliness impact on SARS-CoV-2 infections among HCWs in Italy’s Marche Region, using Healthcare Utilization Databases. We evaluated vaccination coverage and its associated factors. The cohort comprised 21,118 HCWs aged 18–70 from the region’s five Local Health Authorities (LHA), enrolled between February 2020 - May 2021. Factors associated with full vaccination were assessed using multiple logistic regression. The impact of vaccination status, time to vaccination, occupational role, age, gender, and health status on infection risk was analysed with a multiple Cox regression model, adjusting for vaccination coverage velocity, swabbing probability, and monthly intensive care unit admissions rate in each LHA. Of the cohort, 81.2% were fully vaccinated. Factors associated with full vaccination included age, role, LHA, prior infection, and health status. Vaccination reduced infection risk by 77% (95% CI: 70–82). Infection risk was higher among healthcare assistants, nurses/physiotherapists/technicians compared to physicians, among male HCWs, and it decreased as vaccination timeliness increased. Vaccination timeliness is crucial for reducing SARS-CoV-2 infection risk among HCWs, regardless of their characteristics. This underscores the importance of efficiently organizing vaccination administration across different territories and for all HCW categories
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Get PDFWe 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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