130,513 research outputs found
Breeder nutrition and offspring performance
Vertical integration in poultry industry strongly emphasizes the importance of cost control at all levels. In the usual broiler production operations, the costs involved with the production of the hatching egg or the day old chick are negligible if seen in the perspective of the cost per kg of live bird. From a research point of view, anyway, the greatest attention is usually given to the performance of broiler breeders, and most of the research in the field is focused on the improvement of their relative performance, mainly in terms of saleable chicks produced per hen, while less attention has been given to the quality of the chick and to the improvement of its growth performances, even if these last parameters have an effective impact on the overall economics of the poultry growing business. Most of the data available is quite dated, as can be seen from some recent reviews, and in general little attention is given to the impact of parental nutrition on the subsequent broiler performance. It is in fact more usual to find data about dam nutrition influence on egg fertility and hatchability than on subsequent progeny performance. The objectives of this review were to assess, on the basis of published reports, the effects of selected nutrients and anti-nutrients normally prevailing in commercial broiler breeder feeds - vitamins, micro-minerals, mycotoxins, - trying to pinpoint which could be the positive and the negative effects of both on the subsequent broiler performance, with a particular attention to the impact on immune function and carcass yield
Preface to the special issue in memory of Hermann Flaschka
On the 18th of March, 2021, Hermann Flaschka passed away in Tucson, Arizona. He was a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Arizona, well known for his important contributions in completely integrable systems. He was a fellow of the American Mathematical Society, an awardee of the Norbert Wiener Prize in Applied Mathematics, and one of the founding editors of Physica D. He was held in great esteem by his collaborators and students. This special issue collects a series of articles written by people who were close to Professor Flaschka during his career, to honour his legacy
MeSH term explosion and author rank improve expert recommendations
Information overload is an often-cited phenomenon that reduces the productivity, efficiency and efficacy of scientists. One challenge for scientists is to find appropriate collaborators in their research. The literature describes various solutions to the problem of expertise location, but most current approaches do not appear to be very suitable for expert recommendations in biomedical research. In this study, we present the development and initial evaluation of a vector space model-based algorithm to calculate researcher similarity using four inputs: 1) MeSH terms of publications; 2) MeSH terms and author rank; 3) exploded MeSH terms; and 4) exploded MeSH terms and author rank. We developed and evaluated the algorithm using a data set of 17,525 authors and their 22,542 papers. On average, our algorithms correctly predicted 2.5 of the top 5/10 coauthors of individual scientists. Exploded MeSH and author rank outperformed all other algorithms in accuracy, followed closely by MeSH and author rank. Our results show that the accuracy of MeSH term-based matching can be enhanced with other metadata such as author rank
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
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
"Closing the R&D Gap, Evaluating the Sources of R&D Spending"
Both spending and tax policies have been implemented in the United States with the goal of stimulating private sector research and development (R&D). Karier questions whether current R&D policy, especially the research and experimentation tax credit, can contribute to closing the gap between nondefense expenditures on R&D in the United States and such expenditures in other countries, such as Japan and Germany. He also explores possible changes to our current R&D policy to make it more effective.
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
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
Cholecystectomy in the elderly: clinical outcomes and risk factors
AIM OF THE STUDY: Recent decades have seen a steady increase in the number of elderly patients undergoing cholecystectomy surgery. The objective of this study is to evaluate clinical outcomes in this cohort of patients and to identify any predictive factors correlative with adverse outcomes arising in the postoperative period. METHOD: A retrospective study was conducted regarding patients aged ≥65 years who underwent cholecystectomy surgery. The independent variables considered to be related to the patient were: age, gender, co-morbidities, and severity of cholelithiasis. The clinical variables were type of procedure, length of stay and hospitalization. The outcomes considered were mortality, re-intervention, transfer to intensive care and post-operative complications. RESULTS: 778 patients with an age between 65 and 74 and 508 patients with an age above 75 were reviewed. With the increase of age, patients who underwent cholecystectomy presented greater co-morbidity, more accesses in emergency, more cases of cholecystitis, which led to a higher number of interventions in open surgery. Considering postoperative outcomes: the need for intensive care, postoperative complications and mortality significantly increase in older patients. Negative predictive factors are the presence of co-morbidities, emergency access and cholecystectomy performed in open. CONCLUSIONS: Elderly patients undergoing cholecystectomy are an increased surgical risk group in particular because of the presence of co-morbidities and because of the frequent need to perform an emergency procedure often for complicated lithiasis pathology. This implies a special attention towards these patients, and towards those over 75 considering, when possible, alternative treatments such as percutaneous drainage. KEY WORDS: Cholecystectomy, Elderly, Outcomes, Risk factors
Scholarly Communication and Publishing Lunch and Learn Talk #11: The ULS Open Access Author Fee Fund
At the May 2014 talk, you will learn about the ULS Open Access Author Fee Fund--what it is, why we do it, how it works, and how the program is going so far
ACADEMIC PRODUCTIVITY AFTER COLON AND RECTAL SURGERY FELLOWSHIP
Purpose/Background: Early career publication productivity among academic surgeons after Colon and Rectal Surgery (CRS) Fellowship has not been studied. Hypothesis/Aim: We aimed to describe predictive factors of academic surgeons’ publication productivity using pre-CRS fellowship characteristics. Methods/Interventions: Candidates included those applying for CRS fellowship at Mayo Clinic between 2015 and 2018 and appointed in an academic position post-fellowship. Academic position was defined as Instructor, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, or Professor. It was assessed through a cross-checking of information on public online sources (American College of Surgeons, American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons, university website, and social media). Academic position and publications were blindly assessed by three authors (G.C, S.A., S.B.) in July 2021, any incongruity was further resolved. The number of publications post-fellowship and authorship positions was retrieved from PubMed, with a median follow-up of 2.5 years [range: 1-4 years]. Academics top quartile (Q1) was defined according to a composite productivity outcome of publications/year ratio as first, last and any-position author. Data were compared between Q1 and the less productive quartiles (Q2-4). Pre-fellowship data were retrieved from the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS®) application. Results/Outcome(s): Among 130 defined academic surgeons, first author, last author, and any position publications were less than one publication/year ratio in 80%, 86%, and 47%, respectively. First author publications were one, two, or ≥three publications/year ratio in 16%, 4%, and 2% of the academics, while last author publications in 9%, 3%, and 3%. Overall, the number of publications as any author position was one in 21%, two in 13%, three to five in 11%, and >five publications/year ratio in 10% of the academics. Academics in the top quartile (Q1) more frequently attended a top-20 medical school, top-20 Surgery Residency Program, and completed a Research Fellowship. Prior to fellowship, Q1 academics had more publications as 1st author and had more presentations. Understandably, these individuals frequently received research awards and had earned advanced degrees (Master/PhD) (Table 1). Limitations: Its retrospective nature and follow-up duration limited our study. Conclusions/Discussion: Among early-career academics, half coauthored less than one article/year after CRS fellowship, and more than 80% authored less than one article/year as first or last author. Conversely, academics with the highest publication productivity during their early career demonstrated high pre-fellowship research and publication performances
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