1,720,984 research outputs found
A comparison of excess deaths by UK country and region during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic
No full textWe compare the impact of the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic on risk of age-standardized mortality by sex, UK country, and English region. Each wave is defined as lasting 26 weeks and are consecutive beginning in 2020 week 11. The expected rate is estimated from 2015 to 2019 mean and the projected mortality trend from the same period are used to estimate excess mortality. By both measures, excess mortality was highest and lowest in regions of England, London and the South-West, respectively. Excess mortality was consistently higher for males than females
Ethnic differences in COVID-19 mortality during the first two waves of the coronavirus pandemic: A nationwide cohort study of 29 million adults in England
Get PDFBackground:
Ethnic minorities have experienced disproportionate COVID-19 mortality rates in the UK and many other countries. We compared the differences in the risk of COVID-19 related death between ethnic groups in the first and second waves the of COVID-19 pandemic in England. We also investigated whether the factors explaining differences in COVID-19 death between ethnic groups changed between the two waves.
Methods:
Using data from the Office for National Statistics Public Health Data Asset on individuals aged 30-100 years living in private households, we conducted an observational cohort study to examine differences in the risk of death involving COVID-19 between ethnic groups in the first wave (from 24th January 2020 until 31st August 2020) and second wave (from 1st September to 28th December 2020). We estimated age-standardised mortality rates (ASMR) in the two waves stratified by ethnic groups and sex. We also estimated hazard ratios (HRs) for ethnic-minority groups compared with the White British population, adjusted for geographical factors, socio-demographic characteristics, and pre-pandemic health conditions.
Results:
The study population included over 28.9 million individuals aged 30-100 years living in private households. In the first wave, all ethnic minority groups had a higher risk of COVID-19 related death compared to the White British population. In the second wave, the risk of COVID-19 death remained elevated for people from Pakistani (ASMR: 339.9 [95% CI: 303.7 – 376.2] and 166.8 [141.7 – 191.9] deaths per 100,000 population in men and women) and Bangladeshi (318.7 [247.4 – 390.1] and 127.1 [91.1 – 171.3] in men and women)background but not for people from Black ethnic groups. Adjustment for geographical factors explained a large proportion of the differences in COVID-19 mortality in the first wave but not in the second wave. Despite an attenuation of the elevated risk of COVID-19 mortality after adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics and health status, the risk was substantially higher in people from Bangladeshi and Pakistani background in both the first and the second waves.
Conclusion:
Between the first and second waves of the pandemic, the reduction in the difference in COVID-19 mortality between people from Black ethnic background and people from the White British group shows that ethnic inequalities in COVID-19 mortality can be addressed. The continued higher rate of mortality in people from Bangladeshi and Pakistani background is alarming and requires focused public health campaign and policy changes
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Estimating the effectiveness of first dose of COVID-19 vaccine against mortality in England:a quasi-experimental study
Get PDFEstimating real-world vaccine effectiveness is vital to assess the COVID-19 vaccination programme and to inform the ongoing policy response. However, estimating vaccine effectiveness using observational data is inherently challenging because of the non-randomised design and potential for unmeasured confounding. We used a Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) to estimate vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 mortality in England using. the fact that people aged 80 or over were prioritised for the vaccine roll-out. The prioritisation led to a large discrepancy in vaccination rates in people 80–84 compared to those 75–79 at the beginning of the vaccination campaign. We found a corresponding difference in COVID-19 mortality, but not in non-COVID-19 mortality, suggesting that our approach appropriately addresses the issue of unmeasured confounding factors. Our results suggest that the first vaccine dose reduced the risk of COVID-19 death by 52.6% (95% Cl 26.6–84.2) in those aged 80, supporting existing evidence that a first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine has a strong protective effect against COVID-19 mortality in older adults. The RDD estimate of vaccine effectiveness is only slightly lower to previously published studies using different methods, suggesting that these estimates are unlikely to be substantially affected by unmeasured confounding factors.<br/
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Get PDFWe 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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