1,721,039 research outputs found

    Bladder cancer risk in painters: A review of the epidemiological evidence, 1989-2004

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    Epidemiological studies on the potential association between painting and the risk of bladder cancer published after the Monograph of the International Agency for Research on Cancer N. 47 of 1989 have been systematically reviewed. These included four cohort studies on the incidence of bladder cancer among painters, with a pooled relative risk (RR) of 1.10 (95% confidence interval, CI, 1.03-1.18), based on 893 cases observed. The corresponding summary RR from four cohort studies on mortality was 1.23 (95% CI 1.11-1.37), based on 370 deaths. The pooled RR from 14 case-control studies and a pooled-analysis of other 11 case-control studies was 1.35 (95% CI 1.19-1.53), based on 465 cases exposed. Overall, the RR from all epidemiological studies was 1.17 (95% 1.11-1.27). Thus, recent epidemiological evidence indicates a moderate excess risk for bladder cancer in painters. Some studies, however, suggested that any such risk would have been greater for exposures in the distant past. Open issues for interpretation include residual confounding by social class and tobacco smoking, and understanding the time-risk relation. In particular, the potential residual risk related to exposure over the last two to three decades remains to be defined. (copyright) Springer 2005

    The Italian decree 195/2006 on the protection of workers against risks arising from noise

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    The Italian decree 195/2006 incorporates the European Directive 2003/10/CE on the minimum health and safety requirements regarding the exposure of workers to the risks arising from physical agents (noise). It is rather different to previous decree 277/1991, particularly as regard of the new exposure limit value and the elimination of annex VI and VII. We discus here only two aspects that we consider relevant and quite critical: 1) the calculation of the exposure limit values as noise equivalent level: it is a method that underestimates the potential damage of impulsive noise, so the risk evaluation remains quite inaccurate. 2) to take account of the attenuation provided by the individual hearing protectors worn by the worker in determining the worker's effective exposure when applying the exposure limit values: this must not apply to the obligations of employer to control the risk at source avoiding or reducing exposure to the minimum. Furthermore the attenuation power of individual hearing protectors is difficult to measure because his variability during the time and among different subjects. Then we evaluate and discus the new duties of Occupational Physician in this matter. The daily exposure limit values and action values are in fact in part modified as well as the methodology for organize the programs of prevention, health surveillance, information and formation of workers. As support for his activity we proposed the guidelines that The Italian Society of Occupational Health and Industrial Hygiene (SIMLII) has published in 2003, which provides recommendations for the health surveillance for the prevention of noise induced hearing loss at the workplace

    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

    Mortality from lymphohematopoietic neoplasms and other causes in a cohort of laminated plastic workers exposed to formaldehyde

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    Purpose A possible relationship between exposure to formaldehyde and leukemia-particularly myeloid leukemia-as well as of lymphoid neoplasms has been debated and is still controversial. We thus examined the issue using data from a cohort of workers of a laminated plastic factory sited in Piedmont, northern Italy. Methods The study cohort included 2,750 subjects (2,227 men and 523 women) who worked in the factory between 1947 and 2011, for at least 180 days. Follow-up ended in May 2011, for a total of 70,933 person-years of observation. We computed standardized mortality ratios (SMR) and 95 % confidence intervals (CI) using national and (whenever available) Piedmont Region death rates. Results Overall, there were 417 deaths versus 493.4 expected ones (SMR = 84.5, 95 % CI 76.6-93.0). The SMRs were 79.8 (95 % CI 67.5-93.6) for total cancer mortality, 148.5 (95 % CI 68.0-282.2) for oral cavity and pharynx (three deaths were registered, but not confirmed, as nasopharyngeal cancer), 48.3 (95 % CI 13.1-123.7) for pancreas, 66.1 (95 % CI 13.6-193.0) for larynx, and 96.7 (95 % CI 72.0-127.2) for lung cancer. The SMR of all lymphohematopoietic malignancies was 68.6 (95 % CI 31.4-130.3; nine observed deaths). This tended to increase with duration of exposure and to decrease with period at first exposure, always remaining below 100. There were four deaths from lymphoma (SMR = 74.1, 95 % CI 20.1-189.6) and five deaths from leukemia (SMR = 92.4, 95 % CI 29.9-215.3). Conclusions We found no meaningful excess mortality from any lymphohematopoietic nor other neoplasms, except possibly for nasopharyngeal cancer. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

    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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