1,720,973 research outputs found
Modification of attention parameters in children with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome after adenotonsillectomy
No full textAIM: This study was aimed to evaluate the effects of sleep apnea on attention parameters in children and the potential reversibility after adenotonsillectomy.
METHODS: Twenty-eight children aged between 4 and 9 years with chronic adenoid and tonsils hypertrophy and a diagnosis of severe sleep apnoea were prospectively enrolled in the study. They were submitted to the “modified bells test” for the assessment of attention. The administration of the test requires the child seeking to tick the bells on a sheet in the shortest time possible, providing a score of accuracy, and a speed. The results are expressed in terms of percentiles compared to the average of the peers of equal months of age.
RESULTS: The modified bells test evidenced in all children attention values lower than the normal for both areas assessed (speed: median 15th percentile; accuracy: median 12th percentile). The correlation between high levels of AHI and attention deficit was statistically significant, concerning both the rapidity (P=-0.524, P=0.01) and the accuracy (P=-0.583, P=0.01). At 3-month follow-up, the bells test values were significantly better reaching the 40th percentile for the parameter “speed” and the 42nd with respect to the “accuracy” (P<0.01).
CONCLUSION: The child suffering from sleep apnea shows a severe attention deficit with regard both to the parameters of speed and to those of accuracy. This deficit, however, can be easily restored with surgical therapy with almost immediate attainment of normal levels
Modification of growth, immunologic and feeding parameters in children with OSAS after adenotonsillectomy
Full text linkObstructive sleep apnoea syndrome can cause growth delay in children. Adeno-tonsillectomy can resolve the syndrome in most cases. The aim of our study is to examine modifications in clinical and laboratory growth and immunological parameters and food intake changes in OSAS children after surgery. Twenty-eight children with severe OSAS associated with adeno-tonsillar hypertrophy were submitted to paediatric evaluation to calculate auxologic parameters (weight, height, BMI and standard deviation scores), a blood draw to evaluate growth (GH; IGF-1) and immunological parameters (IgG; IgA; IgM) and a dietitian evaluation to calculate caloric intake before and after 3 months following adeno-tonsillectomy. Mean height and weight values in the study group were slightly inferior to same-age children mean according to the percentile values. After surgery, both height and BMI increased significantly at 3-months follow-up: mean height increased 2.93 cm (p = 0.0001); BMI values greatly increased by 0.72 kg/m2 (p = 0.009). Standard deviation scores increased significantly for height (p = 0.03), weight (p = 0.001) and BMI (p = 0.001). These values significantly increased, despite almost unchanged caloric intake between the pre- and post-surgery period (90 ± 24 vs 91 ± 27 kcal/kg/day; p > 0.05). In all children, age-related GH values were normal and did not show any significant increase, while IGF-1 values significantly increased during the study period (p = 0.01). Regarding immunological parameters, only IgA levels decreased after surgery and maintained a value that was higher than normal (> 70 mg/dL). In conclusion, children affected by adenotonsillar hypertrophy and OSAS do not show significant growth delay, but they do experience a slowdown in growth rate. After adeno-tonsillectomy, the speed of growth soon increases, as weight and growth increase notwithstanding an unchanged food intake. Moreover, surgery does not cause reduction in the efficiency of the immune system
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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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