1,720,982 research outputs found

    Stroke symptoms and the decision to call for an ambulance: turn on people's minds!

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    We read with great interest the article by Mosley et al1 on factors related to calling an ambulance for stroke patients. The authors reported that “stroke” was referred as the problem (unprompted) by 50% of callers, whereas fewer than half of the calls were made within 1 hour from symptom onset. We agree with the authors on the necessity of interventions to more strongly link stroke recognition to immediate action to increase the number of stroke patients eligible for acute treatment. With the aim of evaluating the impact of a community intervention on stroke perception among people, we have administered a structured questionnaire to all participants in 2 distinct stroke initiatives, in which people were given a free screening for cerebrovascular risk assessment. These initiatives, which included clinical and instrumental (carotid and vertebral ultrasound scanning) examinations, took place in Pisa in May and September 2006, and were potentially addressed to all inhabitants of the city (85 000 people). Before the screening, all participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire composed of multi-option questions about stroke definition, incidence, symptoms, consequences, and behavior in case of stroke. In the months between the 2 initiatives, a widespread stroke information campaign (specific posters, leaflets an booklets dispensed in drugstores and in offices of General Practitioners, in addition to those given at the end of the screening during the first stoke initiative in May 2006; articles published in local newspapers; announcements and Neurologist interviews shown by local television) was implemented. The characteristics of the participants to these 2 initiatives (before and after stroke information campaign) and the answers given to the questionnaires are shown in the Table. Despite the older age and a comparable educational level, the participants in the second stroke initiative showed an overall better knowledge about stroke than the participants to the previous one. Our data show that information campaigns addressed to the community represent a powerful tool to enhance people knowledge about stroke. In particular, in accordance with a previous study,2 we think that providing continuous, full, and at the same time concise information about stroke (explaining all the items of our questionnaire, for instance) is an educationally correct method to link stroke recognition to rapid call for ambulance and acute treatment implementation

    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
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