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    Antithyroid peroxidase autoantibodies in thyroid diseases

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    Thyroid microsomal antibodies (anti-M Ab) have been recently proven to be directed to thyroid peroxidase (TPO). Methods to detect anti-TPO antibodies (anti-TPO Ab) employing purified antigen have been developed, but the available information on the clinical usefulness of this technique is still limited to small patient series. In the present investigation anti-TPO Ab were assayed by a newly developed monoclonal antibody-assisted RIA in a large number (n = 715) of subjects, including 119 normal controls and 596 patients with different autoimmune or nonautoimmune thyroid disease: Anti-TPO Ab were detected in 10 of 119 (8.4%; range, 11-210 U/mL) normal controls, 134 of 181 (74%; range, 11-74.000 U/mL) patients with Graves' disease, all but 1 of 144 (99.3%; range, 11-90.000 U/mL) with Hashimoto's thyroiditis (n - 98) or idiopathic myxedema (n = 46), 20 of 180 (11.1%; range, 11-6.700 U/mL) with miscellaneous nonautoimmune thyroid diseases, 16 of 83 (19.2%; range, 11-6.600 U/mL) patients with differentiated thyroid carcinoma, and in none of 8 patients with subacute thyroiditis. The highest anti-TPO Ab concentrations were found in untreated hypothyroid Hashimoto's thyroiditis, but no simple relationship between anti-TPO Ab levels and thyroid function was observed. Anti-TPO Ab significantly decreased in patients with Graves' disease after treatment with methimazole and in those with hypothyroid Hashimoto's thyroiditis or idiopathic myxedema during L-T4 administration. A highly significant positive correlation (r = 0.979; P less than 0.001) was found between anti-M Ab titers by passive hemagglutination (PH; available in 650 sera) and the corresponding average anti-TPO Ab by RIA; discrepant results were almost exclusively limited to sera with negative or low (1:100-1:400) anti-M Ab titers. Analysis of these discrepant data indicated higher autoimmune disease specificity and sensitivity of anti-TPO Ab RIA tests compared to anti-M Ab by PH. Absorption studies showed that interference of anti-Tg Ab was responsible for anti-M Ab-positive tests in occasional anti-TPO Ab-negative/anti-M Ab-positive sera from autoimmune thyroid disease patients. Anti-TPO Ab determination by RIA was unaffected by circulating thyroglobulin concentrations up to more than 10,000 ng/mL. In conclusion, anti-TPO Ab assay by monoclonal antibody-assisted RIA appears to be more sensitive and specific for thyroid autoimmune diseases than anti-M Ab determination by PH. Since the assay is easy to perform and employs only tracer amounts of purified antigen, these characteristics should allow its rapid diffusion to the clinical routine

    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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