117,606 research outputs found
Beyond the ‘Orff Schulwerk’, toward a new approach to the technology enhanced musical education
No full textMicroscopic and probabilistic approach to thermal steady state based on a dice and coin toy model
No full textPoint shear wave elastography and vibration controlled transient elastography for estimating liver fibrosis in a cohort of liver transplant patients
No full textOBJECTIVE: Liver transplant (LT) patients need regular follow-up both by ultrasonography and elastography. Shear wave elastography is now available in high-end ultrasound systems that, however, may yield different values for any given liver, reflecting technological differences. The aim of this study was to establish whether the point shear wave elastography QElaXto® (QEpSWE), available on Esaote (Genoa, Italy) systems, is comparable to the standard Fibroscan ® (vibration-controlled transient elastography, VCTE) in the real-life setting of liver transplant (LT) patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We prospectively examined with QEpSWE 196 consecutive LT patients referred for VCTE and ultrasound examination. The agreement between QEpSWE and VCTE was assessed with Lin concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) and Bland-Altman analysis. The performance of QEpSWE was assessed with the ROC curves using the VCTE cut-offs of 7 and 12 kPa for F2-F3 and F4, respectively. RESULTS: The two methods showed 100% of successful and reliable liver stiffness measurements (LSM), similar median LSM in the whole group and in the two subgroups F2-F3 and F4 of fibrosis, with a disagreement in categorization of liver fibrosis in only 2% of cases, and never more than 1 stage of fibrosis. Further, they presented the same degree of higher LSMs in clinically unstable LT patients and an excellent overall agreement (CCC=0.91, accuracy=0.95, precision= 0.96), even if agreement was less satisfactory in the range of severe fibrosis. The optimal cutoffs of QEpSWE were 6.7 and 11.6 kPa for F2-F3 and F4, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The values of VCTE and QEp-SWE showed a very high correlation in the staging of liver fibrosis. QEpSWE seems a promising method for staging liver fibrosis in LT patients
PNA-based artificial nucleases as Antisense and Anti-MiRNA Oligonucleotide agents
No full textBecause of its interesting chemical, physical and biological properties, Peptide Nucleic Acid (PNA) has attracted major attention in molecular biology, for diagnostics purposes and development of biosensors. PNAs have become candidates for gene therapeutic drugs in ANTISENSE (AO) strategy with favorable in vivo biochemical properties. Recently, antisense PNA oligonucleotides have been described in anti-miRNA approach (AMO). We propose PNA-based nucleases as AO and AMO agents. We report the design, synthesis and characterization of two kinds of artificial nucleases composed of a PEG-PNA-PEG domain conjugated to HGG·Cu (A) and DETA (B) as well known cleavage sites. Qualitative (MALDI-TOF) and quantitative (HTS) assays were planned to study nuclease activity of constructs A and B on RNA-3'-FAM target sequence. The results have highlighted the best performance of nuclease B and the relevance of the PEG spacer, in particular for conjugate A, in terms of efficiency of the cleavage, suggesting that conjugates A and B also act as potential antisense and anti-miRNA agents
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe 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
Square Dancing with the Stars to Enhance Dynamic Hirschman Linkages?
No full textIn this Presidential Address, the author takes the reader on a reconnaissance of his life and time as a regional scientist. He points out scenery he found scintillating along the way, hoping that some may pick up the banner and chew on a few of the ideas for a while. He suggests a revisit to Albert O. Hirschman’s notion of key sectors and more empirical analysis related to Marcus Berliant’s and Masahisa Fujita’s notion of knowledge creation and transfer.Presidential Address, San Antonio, Texas, March 29, 2014 (53rd Meetings of the Southern Regional Science Association
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
No full textWe 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
Correlation between dynamic knee valgus and quadriceps activation time in female athletes
No full textObjectives: The risk for female athletes suffering an anterior cruciate ligament injury is 3.5 times more than males. The high rate of anterior cruciate ligament injuries in females compared to males appears to be due to worse neuromuscular control strategies. The unbalanced ratio between the medial and lateral quadriceps and the dynamic valgus knee contribute to increasing the risk of the lesion to the anterior cruciate ligament. This study aims to evaluate the correlation between the increased dynamic valgus knee and the reduction of the mediolateral quadriceps ratio in recruitment and timing during a movement that puts the anterior cruciate ligament under stress. Methods: We enrolled sixty athletes (30 males and 30 females): professional dancers, soccer, and volleyball players. To put stress on the anterior cruciate, the athlete falls with one leg from a 32 cm platform. Four surface EMG probes determined the rectus femoris (RF), vastus medialis (VM), semitendinosus (ST), and biceps femoris (BF) activation time. An inertial motion sensor connected to the probes can quantify the preactivation time of the muscles. An open-source video post-production software (Kinovea) defined the angle dynamic valgus knee. Results: female athletes showed a delayed mediolateral quadriceps activation and wider dynamic valgus knee angles compared to males. Pearson's r test (t = 9.8, df = 58, p<0.05) showed a significant correlation of 0.79. Conclusions: These results seem to suggest a linear correlation between late activation of the vastus medialis recorded in women and the dynamic angles of the valgus. These findings confirm the need for training programs that increase neuromuscular control strategies
Letter from unknown writer to Jesse L. Boyce
No full textLetter to Jesse L. Boyce from unknown author (possibly Jack) about the investigation into the powder magazine located in the Grand Canyon. Some personal news is included in the letter such as the writer's marriage to the daughter of C.A. Taylor, former Supervisor of Cochise County
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
No full textWe 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
- …
