1,720,967 research outputs found
Does Nocturnal Hypoventilation Have a Protective Effect on Cardiovascular Comorbidity in Obesity Hypoventilation Syndrome?
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Latent tuberculosis infection in healthcare workers. Strategies and proposal of specific algorithms
No full textThe diagnosis and treatment of Latent Tuberculosis Infection (LTBI) are priority elements of control programs of Tuberculosis (TB). It is believed that it will not be possible to eradicate TB within 2050 unless the overall population with LTBI is found. Healthcare Workers (HCWs) are an important group of people which has a high risk of becoming infected by LTBI or that is already infected. Despite that, the health surveillance for this issue is not homogeneously articulated on national territory within the three steps of (i) preventive screening, (ii) periodical screening and (iii) investigation of cases of unprotected exposures. The diagnosis of LTBI is made possible by two immunologic tests, a cutaneous test (Tuberculin Skin Test by Mantoux, TST) and a hematic test (Interferon Gamma Release Assay, IGRA), while at the same time excluding the active TB by means of a chest radiography. While TST has been successfully used since one century, the current increasing usage of IGRAs raises the issue of its proper indication as an integrative, alternative or substitutional exam compared to TST. The aim of this work is to design easily accessible specific algorithms which are not included within up to date scientific literature and which could facilitate Italian doctors in handling TB cases in their clinical practice, without substituting available official guidelines. With that aim we have made an analysis of the advantages and limits of TST and IGRAs (with a special focus on issues related to the usage of IGRAs among HCWs) and of the two main diagnostic procedures recommended within the different national and international guidelines. Algorithms have been structured according to a sequential strategy in order to take advantage of the most favourable cost-benefit ratio and to avoid diagnostic and therapeutic errors, thus compensating better than the other strategies to the lack of a gold standard diagnostic test for LTBI. The proposed algorithms could be used within the health surveillance of HCWs. A structured, synergic and timely action among the healthcare manager, the occupational physician and the pulmonologist could lead to a more effective Health Surveillance and to a more accurate diagnosis of LTBI in HCWs, that ultimately would help in the prevention of active TB, thus making more doctors aware of an issue which would otherwise keep being latent... just as the infection!
Pulmonary alveolar microlithiasis: review of the 1022 cases reported worldwide
Get PDFPulmonary alveolar microlithiasis (PAM) is a rare disease characterised by the widespread intra-alveolar accumulation of minute calculi called microliths. It is caused by mutation of the SLC34A2 gene encoding the type IIb sodium phosphate cotransporter in alveolar type II cells. The present study explores the epidemiological, familial, genetic, clinical, diagnostic, radiological and therapeutic aspects with the aim of contributing to a better understanding of this uncommon disease. We searched articles on PAM published up to December 2014 and 544 papers were found, accounting for 1022 cases. PAM is present in all continents and in many nations, in particular in Turkey, China, Japan, India, Italy and the USA. Familiality is frequent. The clinical course is not uniform and the causes of this clinical variability seem to be largely nongenetic. The optimal diagnostic procedure is the association of chest high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) with bronchoalveolar lavage, but a chest radiograph may suffice in families in which a case has already been diagnosed. Moreover, chest radiography and HRCT allow the classification of the evolutionary phase of the disease and its severity. At present lung transplantation is the only effective therapy. However, better knowledge of the gene responsible offers hope for new therapies
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
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