1,721,202 research outputs found
A comparison of neurocognitive decline in older adults in same-sex and opposite-sex relationships
No full textBackground: Individuals from sexual minorities experience health inequalities that have detrimental impacts on their health, especially in the elderly, by exacerbating care needs and symptoms of chronic conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Neurocognitive decline due to AD in the sexual minority population remains under-investigated. However, being in a relationship may mitigate the risk of experiencing cognitive impairment. Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate whether cognitive decline and brain atrophy may differ in people from sexual minorities. Methods: Clinical data for this study were selected from the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center’s Uniform Data Set and structural MRI data collected across 14 Alzheimer’s Disease Centers. Eighty participants including 20 patients with AD and 20 healthy controls (HC) in same-sex relationships were identified and matched to groups of participants (20 AD and 20 HC) in opposite-sex relationships. The effects of diagnosis and relationship were investigated on all measures. Results: No diagnosis-by-relationship interactions were found on any variable. However, post hoc analyses revealed that the opposite-sex group had grey matter atrophy mainly in medio-temporal areas. In the same-sex group, atrophy also extended to pre-frontal and cingulate areas. The severity of neuro-psychiatric symptoms correlated with volume of pre-frontal and insular/temporal areas only in the same-sex group. Conclusion: Neurocognitive decline due to AD may express similarly across individuals, independently of relationship type, thus suggesting a protective role of relational status. However, the same-sex group appeared to be more likely to experience at least one neuropsychiatric symptom and to have atrophy extending to fronto-limbic areas
Minority Stress and Psychosocial Influences on Cognitive Performance in Sexual Minority Older Adults
No full textBackground and Objectives: Sexual minorities experience health inequalities, but little is known about differences in neurocognitive health between heterosexual and sexual minority older adults and potential risk factors. To investigate minority stress, depression, and marital status as risk factors for worse cognitive performance in sexual minority older adults. Research Design and Methods: A total of 336 sexual minorities and 5,561 heterosexual participants aged 50+, noninstitutionalized, and free from neurodegenerative diseases from Wave 6 of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing were included. Cognitive performance (i.e., temporal orientation, episodic memory, and fluid intelligence) of sexual minority and heterosexual older adults was compared using general linear models including age, sex, and education as covariates. The differential impact of minority stress, depressive symptoms, and marital status on cognition in the 2 groups were also tested. Analyses were weighted for sampling probability and differential nonresponse. Results: Sexual minority participants were more likely to report minority stress and to be single but had better episodic memory than heterosexual participants. Depression and being single were associated with worse cognitive performance in both groups. However, minority stress was negatively associated (B = −2.116, p = .016) with fluid intelligence in the sexual minority group only. Discussion and Implications: Better memory in sexual minority participants and a negative effect of risk factors on cognition are in line with previous studies. However, this study provides the first evidence of a potential negative impact of minority stress on cognitive performance in sexual minorities. Further investigations are needed to assess minority stress more in detail and clarify its potential mechanisms of action on cognition in sexual minorities
LA COMUNITÀ FITOPLANCTONICA E LO STATO TROFICO DEL LAGO DI OSCHIRI (SARDEGNA SETTENTRIONALE)
No full text
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
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
- …
