1,721,175 research outputs found
Nonshared environmental factors in the aetiology of autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions : a monozygotic co-twin control study.
No full textBACKGROUND: A significant proportion of variation in likelihood of neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs) has been attributed to nonshared environmental (NSE) factors, although it remains unclear which NSE factors pose specific risks for certain NDCs. METHODS: A monozygotic co-twin design was applied in a sample of 224 twins (mean age = 17.70 years, SD = 6.28) controlling for confounders such as genes and shared environment. Generalized estimating equation models were fitted, using perinatal and postnatal indications of NSEs as exposure, operationalized both as separate risk factors and as cumulative risk loads. Categorical and dimensional operationalizations of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), intellectual disability and other NDCs were used as outcomes. RESULTS: Birth weight discordance was associated with dimensional autism and ADHD for the smaller twin, and medication during infancy was associated with dimensional autism. Among postnatal factors scarlet fever during early childhood was associated with lower IQ. Especially autism was associated with a greater cumulative perinatal or postnatal risk load. LIMITATIONS: When exploring the associations between each condition and specific NSEs the risk of being statistically underpowered increases. Hence, we limit the reported findings on specific indicators of NSEs to trait levels and present descriptive data for categorical NDCs. CONCLUSIONS: The findings support previous research by indicating an association between exposure to perinatal and postnatal risks and subsequent NDCs within twin pairs and suggest that autism may be especially linked to accumulative early environmental risks. The findings are potentially important for developmental outcomes prognoses and may inform targeted prevention and early interventions
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
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
Expanding the toolbox for the study of antimicrobial peptides
Get PDFThere is an urgent lack of new antibiotics in the face of an ever-expanding antimicrobial resistance crisis. The fact that fewer new classes of antibiotics are being developed, and resistance soon follows newly available antibiotics, only serves to underline the urgency of the matter. There is a clear need of a paradigm shift with regards to antibiotics, and one such hope is antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). AMPs are an integral part of the innate immune systems of most organisms within the domains of life; since their discovery they have become of significant interest as a new type of antimicrobial agent, due in part to the low capacity of bacteria to develop resistance mechanisms towards them. Despite their potential, and lengthy study so far, establishing the specifics of the mechanism of action of many AMPs remains difficult– particularly of those that target the bacterial cell membrane. This lack of understanding limits the ability to rationally design new AMPs with a view to developing new antimicrobial agents.
The aim of this work was to help identify new potential hit compounds through NMR structure elucidation, and to develop new methods that would give greater insight into the activity of membrane active AMPs. This in turn could help enable the rational design of new AMPs.
WIND-PVPA, a method to quantify permeabilities of water and ions as a means to evaluate the disruptive capabilities of AMPs, was developed. This was demonstrated on a number of AMPs, and it was shown that WIND-PVPA can identify AMPs that have strong, selective, membrane disruptive activities such as the AMP WRWRWR, as well as more modestly disruptive AMPs such as KP-76. The WIND-PVPA was further used with a non-AMP membrane active natural product – lulworthinone – that was characterised over the course of the project. The findings of the study helped classify lulworthinone as a non-disruptive membrane active agent. In addition, microscale thermophoresis (MST) was shown to be a viable method by which the binding and partition coefficients of Trp-rich AMPs can be determined, and it was shown that the derived lipid-bindings of the AMPs correlates well with their bactericidal activity. Both WIND-PVPA and MST have expanded the toolbox available to the study of AMP-lipid interactions and can be used synergistically to give greater insight into the possible mechanism by which AMPs act, by helping to identify interesting cases, such as non-disruptive AMPs with potent activities.
In summary, the methods developed have great potential that can be further refined into robust methods that can greatly assist in the deconvolution of AMP activity and can open up possibilities of the rational design of membrane active AMPs as a new generation of antimicrobial agents.
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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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