1,721,146 research outputs found
How one circuit court judge can stop a higher court from establishing a legal precedent
No full textNot all legal cases establish a legal precedent – federal circuit court appeal opinions often go unpublished and thus only apply to the dispute in question. In new research, Morgan L.W. Hazelton, Rachael K. Hinkle, and Jee Seon Jeon find that the decision whether or not to publish such opinions can have an influence on whether a judge issues a dissent from the majority. If the circuit court is substantially different ideologically from a higher court, judges can pre-emptively silence a dissenting opinion by deciding that it will not be published, thus negating the chance that their decision will be reviewed by a higher court
Mussel-inspired modification of dextran for protein-resistant coatings of titanium oxide
No full textSurface modification of inorganic materials to prevent non-specific protein adsorption is critically important for developing a biocompatible materials' platform for medical implantation, diagnostics, and therapeutics. Here we report mussel-inspired chemical modification of dextran for anti-fouling coatings of metal oxide. Catechols are conjugated to dextran via a carbamate ester linkage, producing catechol-grafted dextran with a grafting density of 7.3 mol.%. Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is coated with the catechol-grafted dextran, and the anti-fouling effect of dextran coatings is examined by using the adsorption of human serum albumin. The mussel-inspired dextran coatings show excellent resistance to non-specific protein adsorption: the adsorption equilibrium constant (K) is 0.69 Lg(-1) for dextran-coated TiO2 while that for pristine TiO2 surface is 3.53 Lg(-1). This study suggests that catechol-grafted dextran is a promising material for effective anti-fouling coatings of implantable inorganic materials. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
Radio-opaque theranostic nanoemulsions with synergistic anti-cancer activity of paclitaxel and Bcl-2 siRNA
No full textThe integration of therapeutic and imaging functions in a nanoscale structure is gaining increasing attention to monitor drug and gene delivery in a non-invasive real-time manner. Here we introduce radio-opaque nanoemulsions incorporating paclitaxel and Bcl-2 small interfering RNA (siRNA) for synergistic anti-cancer theranostics. Water-insoluble paclitaxel is readily dissolved in iodinated poppy seed oil (Lipiodol) and emulsified in an aqueous solution using a mixture of PEGylated phospholipids, cholesterols, and linear polyethylenimine grafted with cholesterols. The prepared cationic nanoemulsions were electrostatically complexed with Bcl-2 siRNA for the co-delivery of paclitaxel and siRNA, inducing a dramatically higher level of apoptosis and cytotoxic activity in breast adenocarcinoma compared to individual treatments. The feasibility of the nanoemulsions for bio-imaging applications is preliminarily investigated using micro-computed tomography with a mouse model. This study suggests that the Lipiodol nanoemulsions can be used as a multifunctional nanocarrier platform for the co-delivery of anticancer drugs and siRNA with bio-imaging functionality to efficiently increase the modality of anti-cancer theranostics
Intracellular delivery of paclitaxel using oil-free, shell cross-linked HSA - Multi-armed PEG nanocapsules
No full textVarious approaches to increase the solubility of water-insoluble anti-cancer drugs in aqueous formulations have been undertaken with the aim of treating solid tumors through intravenous drug administration. Nanoscale drug carriers are particularly attractive for cancer therapy because of their passive targeting effect to enhance the therapeutic efficacy of drugs. Here we introduce an oil-free, shell crosslinked nanocapsule as an efficient intracellular delivery system for paclitaxel. The nanocapsules are prepared by emulsifying amine-reactive six-arm-branched polyethylene glycol (PEG) in dichloromethane into aqueous solution of human serum albumin (HSA), followed by cross-linking at the organic/aqueous interface. Paclitaxel is successfully incorporated into the HSA/PEG nanocapsules having a spherical shape with an average diameter of about 280 nm. In several types of cells, the surface modification of nanocapsules with a cell-penetrating peptide, Hph1, greatly facilitates cellular uptake and apoptosis-inducing effects of paclitaxel. Furthermore, the targeted anti-tumor activities of the paclitaxel-loaded nanocapsules in a mouse tumor model suggest that the shell cross-linked nanocapsules are very promising oil-free nanoscale delivery vehicles for water-insoluble anti-cancer agents. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
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
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