1,720,954 research outputs found
Hepatocellular Carcinoma and CAR-T Cell Therapy in Appalachia and Beyond
Get PDFHepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a leading cause of cancer-related mortality without effective treatment. The Appalachian region is identified as a likely high-risk area. Surgical resection is the current leading treatment despite drawbacks such as recurrence and decreased post-op quality of life. While CAR-T cell therapy has shown promising results in hematological malignancy, employing it for solid tumors like HCC is now a growing field of interest. Ballad Health HCC data sets (n=40) were analyzed to compare characteristics of HCC patients in Appalachia against the general U.S. Key variables included age, gender, prevalence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), and tumor characteristics. Literature research was performed to understand CAR T-cell therapy and clinical trials status to assess future development of CAR T-cell therapy for treating HCC. The Appalachian HCC population demonstrated a significantly higher mean age (69.6 years vs. 65 years; p = 0.0017) compared to the general U.S. HCC population. There was no significant difference in male predominance (86.1% vs. 75%; p = 0.1757) between the two groups. NAFLD prevalence was substantially higher in the Appalachian cohort (66.7% vs. 30%; p \u3c 0.0001). AFLD prevalence did not differ significantly between the two populations (19.4% vs. 15%; p = 0.4806). Literature review identified c-MET, PD-1, Glypican-3, EpCAM, and alpha-fetoprotein as the major CAR T-cell targets of interest in clinical development for treating HCC. Multiple Phase I-II clinical trials are ongoing, with mixed clinical results identified. Our lab developed c-Met-targeted CAR T-cells derived from Appalachian HCC patients showing efficacy in inhibiting MET-positive HCC cells. Our results suggest statistical significance in Appalachian prevalence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), a likely risk factor, with factors such as dietary habits and health literacy possibly at play. While CAR T-Cell therapy in HCC has shown promising results in animal models, clinical efficacy requires further evaluation
Improving Access to Ophthalmic Care for Medicaid Patients in Tennessee
Get PDFPrior AAO data has determined that 93.8% of Tennesseans live as close or closer to an ophthalmologist than to their nearest Walmart. This study intends to analyze access to care for patients in Tennessee’s Medicaid program (TennCare). TennCare comprises four different health plans administered by three different Managed Care Organizations (MCOs): UnitedHealthcare Community Plan, Wellpoint (formerly Amerigroup), BlueCare, and TennCare Select, the latter two being administered by Blue Cross Blue Shield. In the vulnerable population receiving TennCare coverage, there are concerns about care across various specialties. This project aims to quantify ophthalmologist access for TennCare patients. Tennessee ophthalmology practices were sampled with an AAO-maintained practice register with additional practices searched via Google Maps. Practices were contacted by phone using a standardized script, marked as a TennCare provider if they accepted any of the four TennCare health plans, then plotted by their primary location’s county. Each Tennessean county population was plotted using 2023-estimated U.S. Census Bureau population data (range: 5,128-910,042). 47 active ophthalmology practices were identified using the AAO data with an additional 32 active practices identified via Google Maps. Of these 79 practices, 68 (86%) practices accepted at least one form of TennCare. Of Tennessee’s 95 counties, 19 were home to the primary location of at least one (range: 1-13) TennCare ophthalmology practice. While 64.75% of Tennesseans live in a county with a TennCare practice, when including contiguous counties, the proportion becomes 94.20%. Limitations to this study can be addressed in follow-up investigations, where future directions include recording numbers and subspecialty of individual ophthalmologists and documenting satellite locations. Stratifying practices by accepted health plans and comparing to health plans held by Tennesseans in unique counties could help quantify the number of per capita TennCare providers in different state regions and better determine access to care
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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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