1,720,956 research outputs found
Predictive factors of persisting illicit drug use in hospitalized heroin addicts
No full textThe efficacy of methadone treatment in reducing the rate of positive urinalyses for opiates has been repeatedly assessed in outpatient intravenous heroin users (IHUs), but not in IHUs hospitalized for coexisting diseases. The aim of the present study, performed on 83 IHUs, was to assess the rate of drug-free urinalyses for addictive drugs over a 13-day period of hospitalization. The rate of drug-free urinalyses was then related to the intensity of withdrawal symptoms, the level of dependence (as measured by the severity of dependence scale (SDS)) and of heroin craving (as measured by a visual analogical scale, (VAS)), assessed on admission and on days 4, 7, 10, and 13. All but nine patients received methadone upon hospitalization. The results show that positive urinalyses for morphine and/or cocaine dropped over the period of observation from 67 to 7%. On admission, patients who persisted in the illicit use of heroin did not differ significantly from the rest in terms of abstinence scores or daily methadone dose, but scored higher at the SDS and yielded urinalyses which all tested positive for morphine and/or cocaine. In conclusion, in the hospital setting low methadone doses (32.5 mg per die on average) induce a drug-free condition in the majority of patients and high SDS scores associated with positive urinalysis for morphine and/or cocaine are predictive of persistent drug abuse during hospitalization
COMBINED COUNSELING AND BUPROPION THERAPY FOR SMOKING CESSATION: IDENTIFICATION OF OUTCOME PREDICTORS.
No full textBecause some smoking-induced pathologies improve upon discontinuation, strategies have been developed to help smokers quit. The aim of this study was to measure the rate of smokers still abstinent one year after one cycle of a six-week group counseling given alone or in combination with a seven-week period of daily administration of bupropion. We also evaluated the predictor validity of nicotine dependence intensity at enrollment, administering both the Fageström Tolerance Questionnaire (FTQ) and the Severity of Dependence Scale (SDS). Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), to measure the intensity of “smoke craving,” was also administered. Two hundred twenty-nine subjects trying to quit smoking were enrolled. Bupropion therapy was accepted by 110 subjects, but only 50 completed the 7-week cycle of therapy. Abstinence rates at one year were 68.0 and 56.6%, respectively, in the group that used bupropion for the scheduled 7 weeks and in the group that discontinued bupropion, and 35.3% in the group with counseling therapy alone. SDS (but not FTQ) scores at enrollment, VAS values for craving at the end of the program, and bupropion therapy were the variables selected by Linear Discriminant Analysis to assign subjects to the Smoker or Non-smoker group, with a global correctness of 70.9%. In conclusion, the efficacy of bupropion largely depends upon its interaction with psychological factors, such as the level of nicotine dependence, craving for nicotine, and the subject's commitment to quit smoking. Drug Dev. Res. 67:271–279, 2006. © 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc
The use of self-organised map, an artificial neural network for classification of drug addicts
No full textArtificial Neural Network assessment of substitutive pharmacological treatments in hospitalized intravenous drug users
No full textArtificial neural networks (ANNs) provide better solutions than linear discriminant analysis (LDA) to problems of classification and estimation involving a large number of non-homogeneous (categorical and metric) variables. In this study, we compared the ability of traditional LDA and a feed-forward back-propagation (FF-BP) ANN with self-momentum to predict pharmacological treatments received by intravenous drug users (IDUs) hospitalised for coexisting medical illness. When medical staff considered detoxification appropriate they usually suggested methadone (MET) and (or) benzodiazepines (BDZ). Given four different treatment options (MET, BDZ, MET+BDZ, no treatment) as dependent variables and 38 independent variables, the FF-BP ANN provided the best prediction of the consultant's decision (overall accuracy: 62.7%). It achieved the highest level of predictive accuracy for the BDZ option (90.5%), the lowest for no treatment (29.6), often misclassifying no treatment as BDZ. The LDA yielded a lower mean accuracy (50.3%). When the untreated group was excluded, ANN improved its absolute recognition rate by only 1.2% and the BDZ group remained the best predicted. In contrast, LDA improved its absolute recognition rate from 50.3 to 58.9%, maximum 65.7% for the BDZ group. In conclusion, the FF-BP ANN was more accurate than the statistical model (discriminant analysis) in predicting the pharmacological treatment of IDUs
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
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