1,721,134 research outputs found
Influence of diabetes during pregnancy on human milk composition
Full text linkHuman milk (HM) is a unique nourishment believed to contain biological factors contributing to both short and long-term benefits. Considering that a mother’s own milk is often considered the first choice for nutrition of neonates, an aspect of increased interest is the possible effect of diabetes on the mammary gland and therefore on breast milk composition. This article aims to review the published literature on this topic, and to offer additional insights on the role of this disease on the composition of HM. This review was performed by searching the MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINHAL and Cochrane Library databases. A total of 50 articles were selected, focused specifically on one of the two types of diabetes: gestational diabetes mellitus (21 studies) and insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (8 studies). Overall, the findings from the literature suggest that diabetes can alter the composition of HM. Nevertheless, the studies in this field are scarce, and the related protocols present some limitations, e.g., evaluating the variability of just a few specific milk biochemical markers in association with this syndrome
The Ca 2+ -binding S100B protein: An important diagnostic and prognostic neurobiomarker in pediatric laboratory medicine
No full textIn recent decades a significant scientific effort has focused on projects regarding the use of neurobiomarkers in perinatal medicine with a view to understanding the mechanisms that interfere with physiological patterns of brain development and lead to ominous effects in several human diseases. Numerous potential neurobiomarkers have been proposed for use in monitoring high-risk fetuses and newborns, including markers of oxidative stress, neuroproteins, and vasoactive agents. Nonetheless, the use of these markers in clinical practice remains a matter of debate. Recently, the calcium-binding S100B protein has been proposed as being an ideal neurobiomarker, thanks to its simple availability and easy reproducibility, to the possibility of detecting it noninvasively in biological fluids with good reproducibility, and to the possibility of a longitudinal evaluation in relation to reference curves. The present chapter contains an overview of the most significant studies on the assessment of S100B in different biological fluids as a trophic factor and/or marker of brain damage in high-risk fetuses and newborns
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
Activin A in brain injury
No full textActivin A is a growth factor composed of two beta A subunits belonging to the transforming growth factor beta (TGF-beta) superfamily of dimeric proteins. The biological activity of activin A is mediated by two different types of receptors, the type I (ARI and ARIB) and the type 11 receptors (ARII and ARIIB), and by two activin-binding proteins, follistatin and follistatin-related gene. These factors bind to activin A and thereby inhibit its biological effects.
Activin A, its receptors, and binding proteins are widely distributed throughout the brain. Studies employing models of acute brain injury strongly implicate enhanced activin A expression as a common response to acute neuronal damage of various origins. Hypoxic/ischemic injury, mechanical irritation, and chemical damage of brain evoke a strong upregulation of activin A. Subsequent experimental studies have shown that activin A has a beneficial role to neuronal recovery and that, by activating different pathways, activin A has robust neuroprotective activities.
Because activin A induction occurs early after brain injury, its measurement may provide a potential biochemical index of the presence, location, and extent of brain injury. This approach may also facilitate the diagnosis of subdinical lesions at stages when monitoring procedures are unable to detect brain lesion and furthermore establish a prognosis
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
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