130,647 research outputs found
Physiology of the Calcium-Parathyroid Hormone-Vitamin D Axis
No full textClassic endocrine feedback loops ensure the regulation of blood calcium. Calcium in the extracellular fluid (ECF) binds and activates the calcium sensing receptor (CaSR) on the parathyroid cells, leading to an increase in intracellular calcium. This in turn leads to a reduced parathyroid hormone (PTH) release. Hypocalcemia leads to the opposite sequence of events, namely, lowered intracellular calcium and increased PTH production and secretion. PTH rapidly increases renal calcium reabsorption and, over hours to days, enhances osteoclastic bone resorption and liberates both calcium and phosphate from the skeleton. PTH also increases fibroblast growth factor 23 (FGF23) release from mature osteoblasts and osteocytes. PTH stimulates the renal conversion of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) to 1,25(OH)2D, likely over several hours, which in turn will augment intestinal calcium absorption. Prolonged hypocalcemia and exposure to elevated PTH may also result in 1,25(OH)2D-mediated calcium and phosphorus release from bone. These effects restore the ECF calcium to normal and inhibit further production of PTH and 1,25(OH)2D. Additionally, FGF23 can be released from bone by 1,25(OH)2D and can in turn reduce 1,25(OH)2D concentrations. FGF23 has also been reported to decrease PTH production. When ECF calcium is in the hypercalcemic range, PTH secretion is reduced and renal 1,25(OH)2D production is decreased. In addition, the elevated calcium per se stimulates the renal CaSR, thus inducing calciuria. Therefore, suppression of PTH release and 1,25(OH)2D synthesis and stimulation of the renal CaSR lead to reduced renal calcium reabsorption, decreased skeletal calcium release, and decreased intestinal calcium absorption, resulting in the normalization of the elevated ECF calcium
Vitamin D and muscle performance in athletes
No full textVitamin D supplementation has recently gained considerable attention in the sports community as a potential nutritional treatment to enhance athletic performance. Interest in vitamin D supplementation for athletes stems in part from intriguing preclinical studies of vitamin D actions on key muscle biological pathways and from data on muscle performance enhancements in older non-athletic adults. Multiple observational studies in young athletes report a direct association between vitamin D status and muscle strength, power, and recovery from musculoskeletal injury. Yet, clinical trials examining the musculoskeletal responses to supplementation with vitamin D in athletes are limited and report mixed results due in part to small sample size and differences in study design, population, and vitamin D dose. Based on meta-analyses in non-athletic populations, future clinical trials to determine the impact on athletic performance should be conducted in large samples of athletes with undisputed vitamin D deficiency at baseline
Mechanisms of vitamin D₃ metabolite repression of IgE-dependent mast cell activation
No full textAbstract not available.Kwok-Ho Yip, Natasha Kolesnikoff, Chunping Yu, Nicholas Hauschild, Houng Taing, Lisa Biggs, David Goltzman, Philip A. Gregory, Paul H. Anderson, Michael S. Samuel, Stephen J. Galli, Angel F. Lopez, and Michele A. Grimbaldesto
MeSH term explosion and author rank improve expert recommendations
No full textInformation overload is an often-cited phenomenon that reduces the productivity, efficiency and efficacy of scientists. One challenge for scientists is to find appropriate collaborators in their research. The literature describes various solutions to the problem of expertise location, but most current approaches do not appear to be very suitable for expert recommendations in biomedical research. In this study, we present the development and initial evaluation of a vector space model-based algorithm to calculate researcher similarity using four inputs: 1) MeSH terms of publications; 2) MeSH terms and author rank; 3) exploded MeSH terms; and 4) exploded MeSH terms and author rank. We developed and evaluated the algorithm using a data set of 17,525 authors and their 22,542 papers. On average, our algorithms correctly predicted 2.5 of the top 5/10 coauthors of individual scientists. Exploded MeSH and author rank outperformed all other algorithms in accuracy, followed closely by MeSH and author rank. Our results show that the accuracy of MeSH term-based matching can be enhanced with other metadata such as author rank
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
"Closing the R&D Gap, Evaluating the Sources of R&D Spending"
No full textBoth spending and tax policies have been implemented in the United States with the goal of stimulating private sector research and development (R&D). Karier questions whether current R&D policy, especially the research and experimentation tax credit, can contribute to closing the gap between nondefense expenditures on R&D in the United States and such expenditures in other countries, such as Japan and Germany. He also explores possible changes to our current R&D policy to make it more effective.
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
Scholarly Communication and Publishing Lunch and Learn Talk #11: The ULS Open Access Author Fee Fund
No full textAt the May 2014 talk, you will learn about the ULS Open Access Author Fee Fund--what it is, why we do it, how it works, and how the program is going so far
Vitamin D in food—Compounds, stability, sources
No full textWhat is vitamin D and how do we get it through our diet? The chemical active forms of vitamin D are primarily vitamin D3 and 25-hydroxyvitamin D3, while vitamin D2 and 25-hydroxyvitamin D2 are less common in our food. To understand vitamin D in food, we initially bring you through the chemistry of vitamin D, from provitamin in the skin of our husbandry to vitamin D in our food, or from culturing food under artificial light. The ability to quantify the content in our food is the foundation to understand how the vitamin D content in food depends on e.g., breeding, feeding, season, and processing. As we most often process our food, we look at the retention and the chemical changes of vitamin D during food processing, and finally, we will discuss the collection of data in food databasesand the use of those.<p/
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