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Doubled mortality rate during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy: quantifying what is not captured by surveillance
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Doubled mortality rate during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy: quantifying what is not captured by surveillance
No full textObjectives: It is important to quantify the true burden of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in different countries, to enable informed decisions about imposing and relaxing control measures. COVID-19 surveillance data fails in this respect, as it is influenced by different definitions, control policies and capacities. This article aims to quantify excess mortality and estimate the distribution between COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 causes of death. Study design: Observational study and mathematical modelling. Methods: Publicly available data from multiple institutional sources were used and an in-depth analysis was carried out of deaths from all causes between 2015 and 2020 in Italy at the national, regional and local level. Excess mortality over time and space was first explored, followed by an assessment of how this related to COVID-19 surveillance and, ultimately, assuming a fixed male:female ratio, a model was developed and applied to estimate the proportions of COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 excess mortality in 2020. Results: In Italy, the mortality rate doubled in March and April 2020 compared with data from 2015 to 2019 (+109%, when considering municipalites with >10.000 inhabitants), with excess mortality reaching >600% in large municipalities in northern areas. Notified COVID-19 deaths accounted for only 43.5% (regional range: 43–62%) of excess mortality. It is estimated that more than two-thirds of excess deaths that were not captured by surveillance are non-COVID-19 deaths, which could be a result of the excess burden on the health systems, in addition to reduced demand and supply of other non-COVID healthcare services. Conclusions: The impact of COVID-19 during the early stages of the pandemic is much larger than official figures have reported. Monitoring excess mortality helps to capture the full effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, which differs between regions in Italy and which might have resulted in significant indirect effects on the well-being of the population. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has also resulted in significant indirect effects on the well-being of the population
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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