1,720,983 research outputs found
Development of Raman-based techniques for enhanced bacterial detection
No full textIdentification of bacterial species and strain currently relies on either lengthy culture-based methods, or complex methods involving lengthy sample preparation or the introduction of exogenous labels. As the identification of bacteria in clinical and homeland security applications is often time-sensitive, the need for methods that maintain high levels of accuracy whilst offering improvements in terms of speed and simplicity of analysis is growing rapidly. Enhanced Raman techniques are becoming increasingly common research tools in the biosciences thanks to their non-destructive, speed of analysis, and label-free nature. The work presented here demonstrates the capabilities of enhanced Raman techniques outside of research. The studies in this thesis explore the identification of bacteria in cases that are more complex than pure isolates on slides, and the performance of SERS-active monolayers in comparison to the ubiquitous nanoparticle colloids that are commonly used in bacterial SERS. Herein, a layer-by-layer SERS-active substrate based on polycarbonate filters are used to capture bioaerosols and provide information about bacterial species and phenotype with analysis times below one minute. A novel method for increasing classification accuracy by combining multiple excitations to achieve a combination of resonant and non-resonant spectral data is also presented within. This method is demonstrated to achieve greater than 99% accuracy for bacterial samples, even in complex molecular environment of an artificial sputum model that is representative of the sputum of the lung of cystic fibrosis patients. Additionally, an easily synthesised self-assembled gold monolayer is presented as a point of comparison to the use of aggregated gold nanoparticles, and found to offer greater classification accuracy. This thesis shows the impressive accuracy attainable by enhanced Raman methods, and offers new tools to help further establish Raman spectroscopy and its enhanced techniques as a powerful analytical technique for both research and detection in complex real-world contexts
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
Raman scattering techniques for defense and security applications
No full textIn this review we discuss the recent advances in the application of Raman scattering and related techniques to the detection of chemical and biological threat agents. One of the main aims of this review is to provide a new perspective on the application of advanced and emerging Raman techniques such as surface-enhanced Raman, spatially-offset Raman, waveguide-enhanced and coherent Raman spectroscopies, respectively, to the detection of threat agents such as explosives, toxins, viruses and bacteria. Combination with multivariate and computational analysis to augment the analytical abilities of Raman techniques as well as hyphenation and integration with various field deployment strategies such as robotic and stand-off detection are discussed. Importantly this interplay between the detection technique, analysis and engineering technology will be essential for developing powerful solutions for field applications in defence and security
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
Trading in power : the politics of 'free' markets in Afghanistan
No full textSarah Lister; Adam PainParallel als Buch-Ausg. erschiene
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
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