1,721,008 research outputs found
The stress of aging
No full textAlthough the evolutionary theories of aging are quite well established, our knowledge about how we age isstill very limited. The abundance and heterogeneity of available mechanistic theories of aging implicitly suggestthat this phenomenon is overly complex and unlikely to be explained by a single pathway. Moreover, although aging remains a unique process, it is characterized by heterogeneous manifestations, not only determininginter-individual variations, but even intra-individual diversities. Such heterogeneity renders the innernature of the aging process of difficult evaluation in older persons due to the potential biases introduced bymultiple age-related social, biological, and clinical factors (and responsible for the evidence-based issue ingeriatrics). Moving from the difficulties in translating anti-aging preclinical interventions into clinical trials, an alternative approach is illustrated. We encourage moving to a holistic evaluation of aging by adopting specificand consequent modifications in the design and conduction of clinical research. Such approach is today commonlyapplied in the clinical setting where the complexity of older patients often requires multidimensional interventionsto adequately target the geriatric syndromes. Consistently, interventions targeting the aging processmay result ineffective if too focused on a single underlying causalmechanism and/or failing to capture the complexityof the phenomenon. In this context, frailty (a geriatric syndrome characterized by age-related declinesoccurring acrossmultiple physiologic systems) may indeed represent a clinically relevant threshold throughoutthe continuum of the aging process and a promising benchmark to test multidomain interventions againstage-related conditions
Cancer-Related Anemia and Frailty in Older Persons
No full textAnemia, defined by the World Health Organization as a hemoglobin concentration lower than 13 g/dL in men and 12 g/dL in women, is particularly prevalent at advanced age. Nevertheless, it is not a condition simply explained by the normal aging process. Anemia represents a potentially reversible condition associated with numerous adverse health-related events, including hospitalization, disability, and mortality in older persons. Low haemoglobin concentrations are particularly common among patients with cancer due to direct (e.g., micro- and macroscopic blood losses) and indirect causes (e.g., increased production of pro-inflammatory cytokines with consequent reduction of erythropoietin release and erythropoiesis). The impaired oxygen-carrying capacity caused by the presence of anemia may play a major role in multiple clinical manifestations of cancer, such as dyspnea, fatigue, exhaustion, dizziness and/or headache. In the present review, we discuss the importance of low hemoglobin concentrations and anemia as important determinants of the frailty syndrome, a condition commonly present among cancer patients. Treatment of cancer-related anemia may improve quality of life and health-related outcomes (including disability and mortality) in older patients with oncological conditions
The frailty phenotype and the frailty index : different instruments for different purposes
No full textThe integration of frailty measures in clinical practice is crucial for the development of interventions against disabling conditions in older persons. The frailty phenotype (proposed and validated by Fried and colleagues in the Cardiovascular Health Study) and the Frailty Index (proposed and validated by Rockwood and colleagues in the Canadian Study of Health and Aging) represent the most known operational definitions of frailty in older persons. Unfortunately, they are often wrongly considered as alternatives and/or substitutables. These two instruments are indeed very different and should rather be considered as complementary. In the present paper, we discuss about the designs and rationals of the two instruments, proposing the correct ways for having them implemented in the clinical setting
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
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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