1,720,979 research outputs found
Application of mitochondrial DNA technologies in wildlife investigations - species identification
Forensic science laboratories are increasingly requested to investigate crimes involving wildlife and to examine nonhuman biological tissue. The illegal trade in endangered species has led to a need to use methods, accepted by the forensic community and acceptable to a court of law, that will identify species that are present from seized samples and to determine whether the ownership of the samples contravenes any legislation. The use of genetic loci on the mitochondrial genome has become standard with the cytochrome b gene being the best described and utilized of the mitochondrial genes. The amplification of part or all of the gene and comparison to stored DNA sequences held on DNA databases such as EMBL (by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory) or GenBank (by the National Institutes of Health) can lead to the identification of the species. Examination of single nucleotide polymorphisms is possible in the case of highly degraded samples. The testing methods available have led to the successful prosecution of traders in endangered or protected specie
The UK national DNA database
In March this year it was announced that for the first time in the UK the police will have the right to retain indefinitely the DNA profiles from all people from whom DNA is collected, whether the person is charged with a crime or not. This extends the collection and maintenance of genetic information from the guilty to the innocent
Role of molecular diagnostics in forensic science
Since the first use of DNA to identify the perpetrator of a murder in 1985, forensic science has witnessed dramatic changes in the field of human identification. The technology has altered by adopting novel methods developed originally for use in the field of medical genetics. Currently, millions of samples from blood, semen, hair and tissues are analyzed to determine the origin of the samples. The processes used at present rely on the separation of polymorphic DNA fragments by electrophoresis. Although rapid, this process represents a bottleneck in the automation of the process. Recent advances in chip-based techniques offer a rapid and highly automated solution, provided that the necessary DNA polymorphisms can be examined in this way. This review examines the immediate future of human identification and considers possible routes for future developments
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
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
“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
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
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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
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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