1,721,517 research outputs found

    Serum bioactive follicle-stimulating hormone-like activity in human pregnancy is a methodological artefact.

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    Serum from pregnant women has been shown to contain both FSH-like and FSH antagonistic activities when measured by an in vitro bioassay based upon FSH-dependent aromatase activity of immature rat Sertoli cells. In the present study we further tested the hypothesis that the FSH-like bioactivity of pregnancy serum was due to an authentic aromatase stimulator. A potent inhibitor of aromatase which completely blocked the FSH action on Sertoli cells had no effect on the bioactivity of pregnancy serum. Experiments using conversion of tritiated testosterone to estradiol showed that the factor did not stimulate aromatase activity in rat Sertoli cells. After incubation with pregnancy serum, equally high amounts of estradiol were measurable in the medium in both the absence and presence of Sertoli cells. The activity was almost completely lost after charcoal treatment or ether extraction of the serum and was shown to probably be due to the release of endogenous estrogens by the carrier proteins in the incubation medium of the Sertoli cell assay. These data suggest that the FSH-like bioactivity in serum from pregnant women is an artifact due to nonspecific interference(s) in the bioassay

    Stimulatory and inhibitory influences of serum from pregnant women on aromatase activity of immature rat Sertoli cells.

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    Effects of serum from pregnant women on basal and FSH (or cAMP) stimulated aromatase activity of immature rat Sertoli cells in primary culture were studied. Pregnancy serum caused a dose-dependent stimulation of Sertoli cell aromatase activity and the response curves were parallel to those obtained with human FSH. This stimulatory (FSH-like) activity increased progressively during pregnancy, with a sharp drop immediately after delivery. However, the FSH-like bioactivity was not associated with immunoreactive FSH when a specific radioimmunoassay was employed. On the other hand, serum from pregnant women caused a dose-dependent inhibition of FSH and dibutyryl-cAMP-stimulated aromatase activity. These data suggest that human pregnancy serum contains factor(s) which may stimulate basal aromatase activity of Sertoli cells and may inhibit FSH-induced aromatase activity. These factors, most probably of placental origin, may play a role in the regulation of estrogen production during gestation

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The 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

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    “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

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    We 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

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    We 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

    Author Index

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    koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist

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    We 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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