1,721,003 research outputs found
Putting the exposome into practice: an analysis of the promises, methods and outcomes of the European Human Exposome Network
No full textObjectives
Contemporary research on the exposome, i.e. the sum of all the exposures an individual encounters throughout life and that may influence human health, bears the promise of an integrative and policy-relevant research on the effect of environment on health. Critical analyses of the first generation of exposome projects have voiced concerns over their actual breadth of inclusion of environmental factors and a related risk of molecularization of public health issues. The emergence of the European Human Exposome Network (EHEN) provides an opportunity to better situate the ambitions and priorities of the exposome approach on the basis of new and ongoing research.
Methods
We assess the promises, methods, and limitations of the EHEN, as a case study of the second generation of exposome research. A critical textual analysis of profile articles from each of the projects involved in EHEN, published in Environmental Epidemiology, was carried out to derive common priorities, innovations, methodological and conceptual choices across EHEN and to discuss it.
Results
EHEN consolidates its integrative outlook by reinforcing the volume and variety of data, its data analysis infrastructure and by diversifying its strategies to deliver actionable knowledge. Yet data-driven limitations severely restrict the geographical and political scope of this knowledge to health issues primarily related to urban setups, which may aggravate some socio-spatial inequalities in health in Europe.
Conclusions
The second generation of exposome research doubles down on the initial ambition of an integrative study of the environmental effects of health to fuel better public health interventions. This intensification is, however, accompanied by significant epistemological challenges and doesn’t help to overcome severe restrictions in the geographical and political scope of this knowledge. We thus advocate for increased reflexivity over the limitations of this conceptually and methodologically integrative approach to public and environmental health
The Turn Towards ‘The Biosocial’ in Epigenetics: Ontological, Epistemic and Socio-Political Considerations
No full textThis chapter critically scrutinises the relevance of ‘biosocial’ ideas in relation to epigenetics. Its purpose is to distinguish and characterise the concept’s ontological, epistemic and socio-political dimensions, as well as to identify the challenges and gaps that keep the qualifier ‘biosocial’ away from the methods, facts and policy translations of epigenetic research. The chapter's objective is neither to systematise the concept in a specific definition nor to assess the homogeneity of its uses in the literature. Drawing from the current debate on this matter in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and the practices of epigenetic scientists, its goal is to highlight the nuances, gaps and practical changes that could favour interdisciplinary engagements with ‘the biosocial’. The chapter sets out to contribute to the debate on the incommensurability between epigenetic studies of social-biological transitions in health and the conception of our health as entangled, hybrid and biosocial in STS. The turn towards ‘the biosocial’ in epigenetics presents practitioners, much like social and humanistic critics, with the necessity to go beyond such questions of incommensurability and to give way to a stance privileging a focus on socio-political change in interdisciplinary biosocial experimentations
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe 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
No full text“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
Place of integrative approaches in the study of spatial dimension of health outcomes
No full textInternational audienceAs the concept of exposome is nowadays emphasized for its integrative virtues, this holistic vision of pathogenesis was already shared by some illustrious and ancient figures of medicine. The question is not so much whether this holistic and integrative vision of the exposome represents a real novelty in the field of environmental health studies, but rather to determine the extent to which this concept and the techniques associated with it are really contributing to the set up of a more integrative and holistic knowledge of the environmental determinants of health. In this chapter, we propose to go back over the epistemological and methodological paths in the study of spatial dimension of health. With regards to these historical and scientific contexts, the exposome seems to extend a holistic and integrative scientific dynamic that already exists, for various reasons, in the field of spatial analyses in health. The development of exposomic studies represents a significant opportunity for better integration of environmental measures into health studies with high level of precision, thanks to molecular data. But the exhaustive measure of environmental factors potentially contributing to health status and inequalities is still limited by technical and financial constraints which questions the representativeness of the studies and their ability to address all public health issues, usually reported by studies in epidemiology and health geography. This should lead us to qualify not the scientific interest of the exposome but its claim to provide objective knowledge to support policies addressing public health issues, such as socio-spatial inequalities in health
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
No full textWe 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
Territories towards rare cancers. Creation of a territorial quality typology for the study of geographical inequalities of cancers
No full textLa progression des inégalités géographiques face aux cancers souligne notre difficulté à comprendre comment elles se construisent et agir efficacement sur ce processus médical géographiquement différencié, reflétant la diverse qualité des territoires à protéger leurs habitants des risques de santé. Comprendre la construction de ces inégalités implique donc de reconstituer le processus médical aboutissant à ces inégalités, tout en montrant l’impact de la qualité territoriale sur l’issue de ce processus médical.Les cohortes de patients atteints de cancers rares (cancers de l’adolescent et adulte jeune - sarcomes) en Rhône-Alpes, développées par l’équipe EMS du Centre Léon Bérard, permettent justement de reconstituer ce processus médical, depuis la phase de diagnostic jusqu’au suivi post-thérapeutique. Un indicateur de qualité territoriale (IndiQuaTerr), regroupant 15 variables géographiques, caractérise la qualité de l’environnement physique, social et médical des IRIS (échelle infra-communale) de Rhône-Alpes. L’analyse multi-variée de l’IndiQuaTerr établit une typologie de six types de territoires (Quartiers métropolitains, Quartiers populaires, Pôles urbains, Zones résidentielles, Espaces Périurbains, Espaces ruraux). Cette typologie permet d’observer l’importance des inégalités géographiques pour les adolescents et jeunes adultes, avec notamment un taux de rechute significativement plus élevé pour les patients des espaces ruraux. Elle montre aussi la construction complexe de ces inégalités dans le cas des sarcomes, en identifiant, pour chaque type de territoire, les facteurs à l’origine de ces inégalités.Ces analyses montrent les possibilités d’une méthodologie interdisciplinaire, observant l’évolution médicale des patients en fonction de leur contexte de vie, afin de comprendre précisément la construction des inégalités géographiques face aux cancers. Cette précision pourrait améliorer l’efficacité des politiques publiques, en ciblant directement les facteurs et les mécanismes responsables de ces inégalités.The progression of geographical inequalities of cancers underlines our difficulty to understand the way they build up and to act efficiently on this medical process geographically differentiated which reflects the diverse territory quality to protect their inhabitants from health risks. Understanding the construction of these inequalities involves reconstructing the medical process leading to these inequalities, while showing the impact of territorial quality on this medical process.Cohorts of patients with rare cancers (adolescent and young adult cancers – sarcomas) in the Rhône-Alpes region, developed by the EMS Team in the Centre Léon Bérard precisely reconstruct this medical process, from diagnosis to follow-up aftercare. A territorial quality index (IndiQuaTerr), gathering 15 geographical variables, characterizes the quality of the physical, social and medical environment of the Rhône-Alpes IRIS.The multivariate analysis of IndiQuaTerr establishes six types of territories (metropolitan area, popular area, urban hub, residential area, periurban spaces, rural spaces). This typology highlights the importance of geographical inequalities for adolescents and young adults, especially with a significant higher rate of progression for patients from rural spaces. It shows as well the complex construction of these inequalities, in the case of sarcomas, in identifying, for each territory type, factors leading to these inequalities.These analysis show the ability of this interdisciplinary methodology, relating the patients’ medical evolution according to their life context, in order to understand precisely the construction of geographical inequalities of cancers. This precision could improve the efficiency of public policies, in targeting directly factors and mechanisms responsible for these inequalities
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
No full textWe 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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