1,720,977 research outputs found
DAMPs from cell death to new life
No full textOur body handles tissue damage by activating the immune system in response to intracellular molecules released by injured tissues [damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs)], in a similar way as it detects molecular motifs conserved in pathogens (pathogen-associated molecular patterns). DAMPs are molecules that have a physiological role inside the cell, but acquire additional functions when they are exposed to the extracellular environment: they alert the body about danger, stimulate an inflammatory response, and finally promote the regeneration process. Beside their passive release by dead cells, some DAMPs can be secreted or exposed by living cells undergoing a life-threatening stress. DAMPs have been linked to inflammation and related disorders: hence, inhibition of DAMP-mediated inflammatory responses is a promising strategy to improve the clinical management of infection- and injury-elicited inflammatory diseases. However, it is important to consider that DAMPs are not only danger signals but also central players in tissue repair. Indeed, some DAMPs have been studied for their role in tissue healing after sterile or infection-associated inflammation. This review is focused on two exemplary DAMPs, HMGB1 and adenosine triphosphate, and their contribution to both inflammation and tissue repair
Syncope as a manifestation of subclavian steal syndrome in an elderly patient with congestive heart faulure
No full textSubclavian steal syndorme is a common cause of syncope, hovewer its association with congestive heart failure is poorly described. A clinical case is reported
L'anemia nel paziente geriatrico: elevata prevalenza di forme da causa multipla e di forme “idiopatiche”
No full textScopo: L’anemia è una condizione frequente nel soggetto anziano. Numerosi studi hanno confermato questo dato sia in soggetti free-living(1) sia in soggetti istituzionalizzati mentre più scarsi sono i dati relativi a pazienti anziani ospedalizzati (2,3). Inoltre nel paziente anziano frequentemente la causa dell’anemia non è identificabile,Alcuni studi epidemiologici, infatti, hanno riportato che in oltre 1/3 dei casi la causa dell’anemia non è identificabile (anemia idiopatica) (1). Scopo di questo studio è stato quindi quello di stimare la prevalenza delle diverse forme di anemia in pazienti anziani ospedalizzati e descriverne le caratteristiche cliniche.
Materiali e metodi: Sono stati esaminati retrospettivamente i dati di 1005 pazienti consecutivamente ricoverati presso la nostra U.O. nel periodo gennaio-agosto 2008; criteri d’inclusione nello studio erano età ≥ 70 anni e un periodo di degenza ≥4 giorni. Abbiamo cosi ottenuto un campione di 573 soggetti con età media di 81 anni. L’anemia è stata definita, in base ai criteri OMS, per valori di emoglobina inferiori a 13 g/dl per gli uomini e inferiori a 12 g/dl per le donne. Come cause di anemia sono state considerate: l’anemia sideropenica, l’anemia post-emorragica, le forme da deficit di vitamina B12 e/o acido folico, l’anemia da insufficienza renale cronica, l’anemia da infiammazione cronica (definita in presenza di bassi livelli di sideremia e livelli normali o aumentati di ferritina), l’anemia da patologie ematologiche (mieloma, sindrome mielodisplastica, beta-talassemia eterozigote) e la forma idiopatica (dopo esclusione di tutte le altre forme).
Risultati: L’età media del campione era 81.6 anni, il 56% del campione era composto da donne. La prevalenza di anemia era del 58.5%, 64% negli uomini e 54% nelle donne. La prevalenza di anemia aumentava all’aumentare dell’età in entrambi i sessi (p <0.01). Per un sottogruppo di 105 pazienti erano disponibili tutti i dati per la diagnosi differenziale delle diverse cause di anemia. In oltre un terzo di questi pazienti (34.3%) erano riscontrabili due o più cause di anemia, un quarto dei pazienti (25.7%) aveva una forma idiopatica, il 15.2% aveva anemia da infiammazione cronica mentre tutte le altre forme avevano una prevalenza inferiore al 10%. Tra i pazienti con anemia da causa multipla l’89% aveva due cause concomitanti mentre il restante 11% aveva tre cause. Tra le forme da causa multipla le associazioni più comuni erano deficit di vit.B12 e/o folati associato ad anemia post-emorragica (22.2%) e anemia da infiammazione cronica associata a deficit di Vit.B12 e/o folati (19.4%). Per quanto riguarda la gravità dell’anemia, i pazienti con anemia da causa multipla avevano una forma grave (3 o più gr. sotto il cut-off diagnostico) nel 58.3% dei casi mentre nei pazienti con forma idiopatica la frequenza era del 18.5%.
Conclusione: Nei pazienti anziani ospedalizzati, l’anemia da causa multipla e l’anemia idiopatica costituiscono il 60% di tutte le forme di anemia. Questi risultati suggeriscono una potenziale inadeguatezza in ambito geriatrico dei comuni algoritmi diagnostici, sottolineando la necessità, per un migliore inquadramento diagnostico e terapeutico, di una ricerca sistematica di tutte le possibili cause
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
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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