1,720,959 research outputs found
Method development for flow-cytometric analysis of primary human airway epithelia infected with non-typeable Haemophilus influenzae
No full textIntroduction: non-typeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) is a pathobiont which persists in the airways of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cystic fibrosis and primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD). NTHi airway colonisation is associated with chronic inflammation leading to bronchiectasis and disease exacerbation. It is not known if NTHi invades a specific subset of airway epithelial cells or if this differs by respiratory disease type.Aim: develop a flow-cytometric method to identify major subsets of airway epithelial cells infected with NTHi.Methods: primary human nasal (n=3) and bronchial (n=4) epithelial cells were air-liquid interface cultured for 4 weeks. Cultures were infected with a fluorescein-labelled NTHi PCD clinical isolate for 1-h and then treated with gentamicin (200 µg/mL for 1-h) to remove surface-attached bacteria. Fluorescein-labelled antibodies were used to identify cellular subsets by flow cytometry: Tubulin Tracker™ (ciliated), CD49f (basal), CD66c (secretory). Infected samples were compared to uninfected to confirm NTHi internalisation.Results: secretory cells were the most abundant subset followed by ciliated then basal. Internalised NTHi (mean % infected per subtype) were detected within bronchial secretory (0.3%), ciliated (0.2%) and basal (0.2%) and nasal secretory (3.5%), ciliated (2.3%) and basal (2.7%), suggesting infection rate is higher in the upper airway compared to lower.Conclusions: flow cytometry is a sensitive tool for detecting and quantifying NTHi internalisation in cultured airway epithelial cell subsets. This method could provide a readout analysing the therapeutic effects of drug treatments
Rapid diagnosis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis meningitis by enumeration of cerebrospinal fluid antigen-specific T-cells
No full textSETTING: Hospital in-patients with suspected tuberculous meningitis (TBM), predominantly in India.OBJECTIVE: To determine whether interferon-gamma (IFN-?) secreting Mycobacterium tuberculosis antigen-specific T-cells are present in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of patients with TBM and to evaluate the feasibility of CSF enzyme-linked immunospot (ELISpot) for the diagnosis of active TBM.DESIGN: Prospective blinded hospital-based study.RESULTS: The overnight ELISpot assay detected M. tuberculosis antigen-specific IFN-? secreting T-cells in CSF from nine of 10 prospectively recruited patients with TBM, and zero of seven control patients with meningitis of other aetiology. This corresponds to a diagnostic sensitivity of 90% (95%CI 56-100) and specificity of 100% (95%CI 59-100).CONCLUSION: This pilot study demonstrates proof-of-principle for a new T-cell-based diagnostic test for TBM which is rapid, sensitive and specific
Multidimensional phenotypes of asthma
No full textIntroduction and Objectives Asthma is a complex disease involving many cell types including CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, eosinophils, basophils and mast cells, and their soluble mediators. Poor understanding of disease heterogeneity and mechanisms underlying distinct clinico-pathological endotypes limits progress. <br/
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
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