1,720,983 research outputs found
Hydrogel-based commercial products for biomedical applications: A review
Full text linkHydrogels are hydrophilic polymer networks, able to absorb large amount of water, increasing their volume and showing a plethora of different material behaviors. Since their first practical application, dating from sixties of last century, they have been employed in several fields of biomedical sciences. After more than half a century of industrial uses, nowadays a lot of hydrogels are currently on the market for different purposes, and offering a wide spectra of features. In this review, even if it is virtually impossible to list all the commercial products based on hydrogels for biomedical applications, an extensive analysis of those materials that have reached the market has been carried out. The hydrogel-based materials used for drug delivery, wound dressing, tissue engineering, the building of contact lens, and hygiene products are enlisted and briefly described. A detailed snapshot of the set of these products that have reached the commercial maturity has been then obtained and presented. For each class of application, the basics of requirements are described, and then the materials are listed and classified on the basis of their chemical nature. For each product the commercial name, the producer, the chemical nature and the main characteristics are reported
Energy and environmental assessment of plastic granule production from recycled greenhouse covering films in a circular economy perspective
Full text linkPlastic films can be considered as a high-value auxiliary material in agriculture with multiple important uses to fulfil, including covering films in greenhouse cultivation system. Such application enables several benefits and, therefore, it is going through an important upsurge, especially in regions where protected crop cultivation is highly widespread. However, the increased demand for these covering films arouses concerns for their post-use treatment with regard to both the consumption of Non-Renewable Primary Energy (NRPE) resources and the emission of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs). Therefore, environmental analysis is needed to find and follow cleaner paths for the management and treatment of this kind of Agricultural Plastic Waste (APW), especially in the light of the gap currently existing in the specialised literature. In this context, this paper reports upon findings from a combined Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of single environmental issues (i.e., energy and water consumption, and GHG emissions) applied to a Sicilian firm, representative of APW collection and recycling to obtain Low-Density Polyethylene (LDPE) granules. The results showed that electricity consumption for the whole recycling process is the most NRPE resource demanding and the most GHG emitting input item. Moreover, the washing phase of disused covering films is the highest water demanding within the recycling process. Potential improvements could be achieved by shifting from fossil energy source to renewable one. The installation of a wind power plant would lead to around 56% and 85% reduction in NRPE resource exploitation and GHG emission, respectively. Finally, despite the huge consumption of water and NRPE resources and the resulting GHG emissions, the production of recycled-LDPE granules is far more sustainable than the virgin counterpart
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Full text link“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
Mathematical modeling of simultaneous drug release and in-vivo absorption
No full textThe attention of this review is focussed on the mathematical modeling of the simultaneous processes of drug release and absorption/distribution/metabolism/elimination (ADME processes) following different administration routes. Among all of them, for their clinical importance, the oral, transdermal and local delivery are considered. The bases of the presented mathematical models are shown after the discussion of the most relevant phenomena characterising the particular administration route considered. Then,
model performances are compared to experimental evidences in order to evaluate their reliability and soundness. The most important conclusion of this review is that despite the complexity of the problem involved.
in the description of the fate of the drugs after their administration, the scientific community is close to
the solution as witnessed by the various interesting and promising approaches here presented about the
oral, transdermal and local administration routes
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe 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
Full text linkWe 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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