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    Pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes -role of defects in insulin secretion and insulin sensitivity

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    Type 2 diabetes is characterised by defects in insulin sensitivity, insulin secretion and increased endogenous glucose production. The relative contribution of each of these defects remains controversial. In order to characterise the metabolic defects in various stages of glucose tolerance, the insulin sensitivity and insulin secretion was measured in a large population based study in Finland and Sweden (Btonia study) The first aim was to evaluate surrogate markers of insulin sensitivity and insulin secretion in subjects with varying degree of glucose tolerance. The insulinogenic index provides a good surrogate estimate of the early insulin response to iv glucose. In contrast, the HOMA IR and indices from OGTT do not describe insulin sensitivity in the same way as glucose uptake measured during a clamp. The latter measures also suffer from the problem that insulin sensitivity is dependent upon the amount of insulin secreted. The second aim was therefore to validate a method for independent estimates of insulin sensitivity and insulin secretion during the same test; the so called Botnia clamp. The test fulfilled the expectations and provides a useful tool for metabolic studies. The results also underscore the importance of adjusting insulin secretion for insulin sensitivity. A third aim was to characterise the metabolic defects leading to type 2 diabetes. Our cross sectional data show that defects in muscle, liver, and islets occur in parallel and correlate with an increase in abdominal obesity and circulating FFA concentrations. They thus support the hypothesis that peripheral and hepatic insulin resistance as well as β-cell dysfunction in type 2 diabetes could be caused by similar defects. They further demonstrate that these defects are influenced by variations in the calpain 10 gene. A fourth aim was to compare insulin secretion and insulin sensitivity in the prediabetic and diabetic state between subtypes of diabetes. We could demonstrate that carriers of MODY mutations are able to maintain normal glucose tolerance by up regulating insulin sensitivity. The last aim was to evaluate the impact of a family history of common type 2 diabetes and the particular phenotype of the proband on anthropometric and metabolic variables in normoglycemic first degree relatives. The data underscore the importance to consider age at onset when selecting patients for genetic studies as the metabolic phenotype of the probands is shared by relatives of probands with early but not of late-onset diabetes. They further emphasize the value of stratifying for a phenotype characterised by abdominal obesity as this also shows a high degree of familiality. Taken together the results demonstrate a linear decrease in peripheral (muscle) glucose uptake, hepatic insulin sensitivity and β cell function which precede onset of type 2 diabetes, and strongly correlate with an increase in abdominal obesity. They though emphasize the importance to consider changes in one variable when describing the change in the other

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The 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

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    “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

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    We 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

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    We 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

    Author Index

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    koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist

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    We 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

    Can we prevent diabetes with a single pill?

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