1,720,989 research outputs found
Use of budesonide in severe asthmatics aged 1-3 years
No full textThe treatment of severe asthmatics aged 1-3 years with budesonide administered via Nebuhaler and Laerdal facemask was assessed in a six month, double blind, placebo controlled study. Patients were randomised to budesonide (n=20) or placebo (n=20) treatment. Daily symptom scores were recorded by parents and clinic visits occurred every six weeks. Cough scores improved significantly with budesonide: nocturnal and daytime cough scores (0-2) fell by a mean (SEM) of 0 4 (0.2) and 0-5 (0.2); while with placebo the nocturnal score increased by 0.1 (0.2) and daytime score was unchanged at 0.0 (0 2). AUl other data showed improvements for active over placebo treatment. Thirteen children in each group completed six months' treatment. Parents of 25 of these found the delivery system convenient and easy to use. While blinded to treatment it was assessed to be beneficial in nine of 13 receiving budesonide and four of 13 receiving placebo. The Nebuhaler and facemask is an acceptable delivery system for long term asthma treatment. Symptoms are significantly reduced when it is used to give 400-800 ,μg budesonide/day to children aged 1-3 years who cannot use other delivery systems.</p
Evaluation of Structured Light Plethysmography for lung function monitoring in pediatric respiratory disorders
Get PDFCurrent Lung function assessments in children can be clinically challenging and even inapplicable in preschool children, this is due to the test requirements of cooperation and understanding. Hence, there is a need for new techniques that can overcome these limitations. Structured Light Plethysmography (SLP) is a new non-invasive technique to measure tidal breathing by capturing the movement of the thoraco-abdominal wall. This technique requires minimal subject cooperation as it does not require the subject to perform any breathing manoeuvres but to sit still and breathe normally. The usefulness of SLP in adults has been shown in previous studies, specifically in detecting abnormal breathing patterns in adults diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). SLP is arguably a more suitable method for young children and infants. Therefore, the main aim of this study was to determine the reliability of SLP for lung function monitoring in paediatric population. The first part of this project aimed to investigate the use of SLP in assessing tidal breathing parameters in: (1) school-age children (7-16 years) with stable Asthma, (2) younger children (2-12 years) recovering from acute asthma/wheeze and (3) infants recovering from acute viral bronchiolitis (0-1 year). Whereas, the second part aimed to assess the robustness of the parameter estimation algorithm against interferences that might be introduced to the SLP signal during data acquisition.The results obtained from the studies conducted in this work illustrated the feasibility of SLP procedure in obtaining a reliable assessment of lung function in children aged 0 to 17 years. This is true for children presenting with normal lung function and lung function affected by stable asthma, acute asthma/wheeze and acute viral bronchiolitis. The method proved sensitive enough to detect differences in clinically important measures in healthy, asthmatic and recovering populations. This suggests that the potential use of SLP in monitoring asthma and bronchiolitisworth further investigation. However, more refinements in data analysis techniques are required. The robustness of the algorithm to possible interferences also needs to be further investigated before being introduced clinically
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
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
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