1,720,971 research outputs found
Eosinophilic esophagitis: which role for food and inhalant allergens?
No full textEosinophilic esophagitis is a chronic inflammatory disease of the esophagus, immune/antigens mediated, whose incidence is increasing both in adults and pediatric population. It is clinically characterised by symptoms related to esophageal dysfunction and associated with eosinophil-predominant esophageal inflammation. The role of atopy has been clearly demonstrated both in epidemiological and experimental studies and has important implications for diagnosis and therapy. In fact, many evidences show that food and inhalant allergens represent the most important factors involved in the progress of the disease. Several studies have reported that, in a range between 50 and 80%, patients with eosinophilic esophagitis have a prior history of atopy, and for them, the presence of allergic rhinitis, asthma or atopic dermatitis is frequent. Skin tests are able to identify in most patients the allergens involved, allowing a correct dietary approach in order to achieve the remission of symptoms and the biopsy normalization
Adjustable maintenance dosing with budesonide/formoterol in a single inhaler provides effective asthma symptom control at a lower dose than fixed maintenance dosing
No full textAsthma guidelines suggest a stepwise approach to maintenance pharmacological treatment of persistent asthma until control is attained, and a 3 month review of the fixed maintenance dosing for step-up or step-down adjustment. This 12-week study compared the efficacy and safety of budesonide/formoterol in a single inhaler (Symbicort Turbuhaler 160/4.5 or 80/4.5 microg) given as adjustable maintenance or fixed maintenance dosing. Patients (n = 2358) were randomised to budesonide/formoterol fixed maintenance dosing (two inhalations bid) or adjustable maintenance dosing (two inhalation bid; stepping up to four inhalations bid if asthma worsened for a maximum of 14 days; stepping down to two inhalations once nocte or one inhalation bid if symptoms were controlled) for 12 weeks, following a 4-week run-in period on budesonide/formoterol two inhalations bid. Primary efficacy variables were frequency of asthma exacerbations and changes in patients' asthma symptom severity. Secondary variables were asthma control, safety and health economics. Both adjustable maintenance dosing and fixed maintenance dosing were associated with similar low frequency of exacerbations (5% both groups; ns) and similarly improved lung function, with similarly fewer nocturnal awakenings and less asthma symptoms compared with the mean value of the run-in period. However, patients on adjustable maintenance dosing used 24% fewer study drug compared with fixed maintenance dosing (2.95 versus 3.86 inhalations daily; p < 0.0001) and incurred in a significant (p <0.0001) reduction in total costs (direct+indirect) compared with fixed maintenance dosing. In conclusion, adjustable maintenance dosing with budesonide/formoterol effectively controls asthma at a reduced drug load with lower costs than fixed maintenance dosing
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
- …
