1,721,020 research outputs found
THE ADHESION MOLECULE L1: A NOVEL PLAYER IN OVARIAN CANCER VASCULATURE
Full text linkOvarian cancer represents an outstanding clinical challenge because of its high mortality rate, mainly due to tumor relapse and chemoresistance. The identification of novel targets and strategies for the treatment of OC is clearly an unmet need in clinical oncology. In this context, drugs that interfere with tumor neovascularization have shown promising results in recent clinical trials. However, the beneficial effect of anti-angiogenic therapies is often modest and transient: in OC patients, for example, it has been observed only a limited increase in progression-free survival.
Thus, the definition of novel druggable targets within the tumor vasculature will have profound implications, particularly for those tumor types, such as OC, that respond poorly to conventional anti-cancer treatments.
L1 is a transmembrane glycoprotein belonging to the immunoglobulin superfamily that was initially characterized as an adhesion molecule playing a key role in the development of nervous system. However, several studies have demonstrated its involvement in several types of human cancer, including ovarian carcinoma. In this context, L1 expression is generally associated with poor diagnosis, an aggressive behavior and advanced tumor stage. Moreover, L1 induces a motile and invasive phenotype, supporting metastatic spread, and promotes chemoresistance.
Our laboratory has obtained compelling evidence that L1 is aberrantly expressed in tumor vasculature and exerts an unexpected, pleiotropic function in endothelial cells.
Based on these findings and on the pivotal role of angiogenesis in ovarian cancer, in this work I have investigate the functional role of L1 within the OC-associated vasculature. My results revealed that L1 is particularly abundant in OC vasculature as compared to normal vessels. Moreover,, vascular L1 was found to be a causal player in OC progression, possibly due to an endothelial cell-autonomous effect on OC vascularization, concomitant to a positive regulation of ovarian cancer stem cell function.
This research, besides giving insights into novel pathways involved in pathological angiogenesis, provides the rationale for exploring the clinical relevance of L1 expression and function in OC vessels and in their crosstalk with tumor cells, possibly opening new avenues for the development of innovative targeted therapies for OC malignancy
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
Fault Tolerance Overhead in Network-on-Chip Flow Control Schemes
No full textFlow control mechanisms in Network-on-Chip (NoC) architectures are critical for fast packet propagation across the network and for low idling of network resources. Buffer management and allocation are fundamental tasks of each flow control scheme. Buffered flow control is the focus of this work. We consider alternative schemes (STALL/GO, T-Error, ACK/NACK) for buffer and channel bandwidth allocation in presence of pipelined switch-to-switch links. These protocols provide varying degrees of fault tolerance support, resulting in different area and power tradeoffs. Our analysis is aimed at determining the overhead of such support when running in error-free environments, which are the typical operating mode. Implementation in the xpipes NoC architecture and functional simulation by means of a virtual platform allowed us to capture application perceived performance, thus providing guidelines for NoC designers
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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