1,720,984 research outputs found
Blood pressure variability in normotensive perimenopausal women: non-dipping status, maximum blood pressure and arterial stiffness
Full text linkBackground: Postmenopausal women are more likely to have uncontrolled hypertension and are at higher risk of cardiovascular disease compared with age-matched men. Blood pressure variability is emerging as a predictor of adverse cardiovascular outcomes and may be implicated in the relationship between menopause and worsened vascular health in women. We conducted an observational study, BRAVE (Blood pRessure And Vascular hEalth around menopause) to study this relationship.
Method: Normotensive perimenopausal women were recruited. Blood pressure variability was measured through 24-h blood pressure monitoring. Vascular health was assessed through arterial stiffness (carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity), carotid intima-media thickness and endothelial function (reactive hyperemic index). Multivariate models were performed to identify factors associated with blood pressure variability and arterial stiffness in perimenopausal women.
Results: Forty-nine healthy women (mean age 52.9 ± 4.0, 63% postmenopausal) were recruited. There was a high prevalence (40%) of night non-dipping, a measure of an abnormal pattern of blood pressure variability. Aside from night dipping, other measures of blood pressure variability were similar between premenopausal and postmenopausal women. In the multivariate analysis, body mass index was the only factor associated independently with different measures of blood pressure variability, including the maximum overnight blood pressure (ß = 1.95, p < 0.01). The latter was also significantly associated with arterial stiffness (ß = 0.035, p = 0.048). Finally, poor sleep was independently associated with an increase in arterial stiffness.
Conclusions: Abnormal blood pressure variability, particularly night non-dipping, is common in normotensive perimenopausal women. Maximum overnight blood pressure is independently associated with arterial stiffness and may identify women at higher cardiovascular risk
High-density lipoprotein cholesterol efflux capacity and cardiovascular risk in autoimmune and non-autoimmune diseases
Full text linkFunctional assessment of cholesterol efflux capacity (CEC) to high-density lipoprotein (HDL) is an emerging tool for evaluating morbidity and mortality associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD). By promoting macrophage reverse cholesterol transport (RCT), HDL-mediated CEC is believed to play an important role in atherosclerotic lesion progression in the vessel wall. Furthermore, recent evidence indicates that the typical inverse associations between various forms of CEC and CV events may be strongly modulated by environmental systemic factors and traditional CV risk factors, in addition to autoimmune diseases. These factors influence the complex and dynamic composition of HDL particles, which in turn positively or negatively affect HDL-CEC. Herein, we review recent findings connecting HDL-CEC to traditional CV risk factors and cardiometabolic conditions (non-autoimmune diseases) as well as autoimmune diseases, with a specific focus on how these factors may influence the associations between HDL-CEC and CVD risk
3D imaging mass spectrometry of lipids in atherosclerotic plaques: Open-source methods for reconstruction and analysis
No full textD matrix assisted laser desorption/Ionization imaging mass spectrometry (MALDI IMS) is a growing branch of IMS still requiring developments in methodology and technology to make the technique routinely accessible. Many challenges are simply a matter of producing 3D reconstructions and interpreting them in a timely fashion. In this aim and using analysis of lipids from atherosclerotic plaques from a human carotid and mouse aortic sinuses, we describe 3D reconstruction methods using open-source software that provides high quality visualization and rapid interpretation through multivariate segmentation of the 3D IMS data. Multiple datasets were generated for each sample and we provide insight into simple means to correlate the separate datasets
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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