1,720,978 research outputs found
Implications for the serogroup incidence of meningococcal disease after the introduction of the MenC vaccine
No full textMeningococcal disease (MD) continues to have a major public health impact in Scotland and elsewhere. The incidence of confirmed disease has continued to increase at a time of raised public and medical awareness and improvedlaboratory techniques. In Scotland, Neisseria meningitidis serogroup C has been the most common cause of disease over the past few years, accounting for 46% of confirmed cases in 1998, against 43% serogroup B. The serogroup distribution differs slightly to that in England and Wales in that serogroupB has been most common there in past years.Recently, however, the UK commenced the introduction of the MenC vaccination campaign which initially targeted babies aged 2-4 months and teenagers between 15 and 17 years; other age groups will follow when vaccine becomes available.' In the months since the introduction of the vaccine there has been adecrease in the number of group C cases but an overall increase in total cases
Pneumococcal disease and asplenia: the importance of vaccination
No full textPneumococcal disease is an important cause of morbidity and mortality, particularly in certain patient groups including those who have been splenectomised or have no functioning spleen. Recent deaths in two asplenic patients from pneumococcal disease should remind doctors of the importance of vaccination in asplenic individuals. The current guidelines for vaccination in such patients are highlighted and discussed. The need for a national asplenic register is also suggested.</p
Automated non-culture-based sequence typing of meningococci from body fluids
No full textIn recent years, the polymerase chain reaction has been used for the non-culture diagnosis of meningococcal disease, and sequence-based typing takes this further by providing the full characterisation normally only available by culture. In this study, porA gene sequencing was used to perform non-culture-based sequence typing of Neisseria meningitidis strains direct from body fluids. Non-culture porA gene sequencing provided the serosubtype of the infecting organism, and proved to be a useful method as N. meningitidis was not isolated from any of the patients in this study. In conclusion, porA gene sequencing is a very useful tool for the non-culture characterisation of meningococci and provides important information for public health management of cases and contacts.</p
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
Multilocus sequence typing and <i>porA</i> gene sequencing differentiates strains of <i>Neisseria meningitidis</i> during case clusters
No full textNotified cases of meningococcal disease (MD) in Scotland and many other countries within Europe have increased in recent years 1 and are often associated with epidemic strains such as C:2a:P1.5 from the ET-37 complex. 2 A number of caseclusters due to these strains have occurred in schools, universities and other close-contact situations. 3-5 Characterisation of Neisseria meningitidis strains isolatedduring case clusters is important for public health management, and indicates the necessity for molecular techniques to differentiate strains
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
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