1,720,964 research outputs found
Amputee Patient: Evaluation Measures, Scales, and the Clinical Approach Taking Charge of the Lower Limb Amputee Patient: Evaluation Measures, Scales, and the Clinical Approach
No full textIs autotopoagnosia real? EC says yes. A case study
No full textWe report a case of pure autotopagnosia (AT) following a left subcortical vascular accident. The absence of any language disorder, general mental deterioration or other cognitive impairments in this patient allowed an in-depth study of AT. Several tests of body representation and object and animal representation, as well as tests assessing semantic skills were administered to verify current interpretations of AT. Results showed a clear-cut dissociation between defective performances in body representation tests and normal performances on tests involving other kinds of stimuli. The patient's performances were particularly defective on tests relying on visuo-spatial body representation. but her semantic and linguistic knowledge seemed to he spared. This dissociation between different aspects of body representation supports Sirigu et al.'s hypothesis that multiple, partially independent systems are involved in body knowledge. In agreement with this hypothesis, in the present patient AT seems be due to a deficit in a system that processes the structural properties and relative position of single body parts. The present results, reporting the first observation Of a subject not affected by any cognitive impairment other than AT, strongly support the existence of a system specifically devoted to body representation. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science 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
Determinants of sit-to-stand capability in the motor impaired elderly
No full textAmong the healthy elderly, sit-to-stand (STS) movement largely depends on: (a) trunk bending momentum, (b) centre of gravity (CG) position before the body rises and (c) lower limb extensor muscle strength. Because determining whether (c) improvement would affect STS capability in the motor impaired elderly (MIE) has been recommended, we studied the relative importance of (a), (b) and (c) in determining a successful fast STS movement comparing the healthy elderly with MIE with orthopaedic disorders studied before and after a rehabilitation program. Force platform was used to measure body's posture and kinematics during a STS test and therefore to assess (a), (b) and maximum vertical velocity (VVpeak), assumed as outcome measurement. Knee extensor maximal isometric voluntary contraction normalized by body mass (nMVC) was an indicator of (c). A multiple regression model was built to predict VVpeak from the three determinants of STS movement. In both groups, the model significantly determined VVpeak, with (a) and (c) being significant predictors of VVpeak and (a) being the major predictor. Rehabilitation was effective in improving nMVC. This process resulted in a change of the relative importance of (a) and (c), strength becoming the major predictor of VVpeak. In conclusion the present study demonstrates that a rehabilitative intervention aimed at increasing strength is effective in improving STS capability in MIE. © 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
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
Influence of high motor unit synchronization levels on non-linear and spectral variables of the surface EMG
No full textThe aim of this study was to investigate the influence of high degrees of motor unit synchronization on surface EMG variables extracted by linear and non-linear analysis techniques. For this purpose, spectral and recurrent quantification analysis (RQA) were applied to both simulated and experimental EMG signals. Synthetic surface EMG signals were generated with a model of volume conductor comprising muscle, fat, and skin tissues. The synchronization was quantified by the percent of discharges of each motor unit synchronized with discharges of other motor units. The simulated signals presented degrees of synchronization in the range 0-80% (10% increments) and three mean values of motor unit conduction velocity distribution (3, 4 and 5 m/s). Experimental signals were collected from the first dorsal interosseous muscle of five patients with Parkinson disease during 10 s of rest and 10 s of isometric voluntary contraction at 50% of the maximal force. Mean power spectral frequency (MNF) and percent of determinism (%DET) of the surface EMG were computed from the simulated and experimental signals. In the simulated signals, %DET was linearly related to the level of synchronization in the entire range considered while MNF was sensitive to changes in synchronization in a smaller range (0-20%), outside which it levelled off. The experimental results indicated that %DET was significantly higher in the resting condition (with presence of tremor; mean S.E., 85.4 +/- 0.8%) than during the voluntary contraction (which partly suppressed tremor; 60.0 +/- 2.3%; P < 0.01). On the contrary, MNF did not depend on the condition (114.3 +/- 1.5 Hz and 118.0 +/- 0.8 Hz for the resting and voluntary contraction, respectively), confirming the simulation results. Overall, these results indicated that linear and non-linear analyses of the surface EMG may have different sensitivities to the underlying physiological mechanisms in specific conditions, thus their joint use provides a more complete view of the muscle status than spectral analysis only. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
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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