130,707 research outputs found
The integration of local chromatic motion signals is sensitive to contrast polarity
No full textPeer reviewe
Streptococcus thermophilus : to survive, or not to survive the gastrointestinal tract, that is the question!
No full textThe probiotic market is increasing world-wide as well as the number of products marketed as probiotics. Among the latter, many products contain Streptococcus thermophilus strains at several dosages. However, the scientific evidence that should support the probiotic status of those S. thermophilus strains is often contradictory. This review analyses the scientific literature aimed to assess the ability of S. thermophilus strains to survive the human gastrointestinal tract by discussing the scientific validity of the methods applied for the bacterial recovery and identification from stool samples. This review highlights that in most of the intervention studies reviewed, the identification of S. thermophilus strains from stools was not carried out with the necessary taxonomic accuracy to avoid their misidentification with Streptococcus salivarius, a common human commensal and a species phylogenetically close to S. thermophilus. Moreover, this review highlights how critical the accurate taxonomic identification of S. thermophilus in metagenomics-based studies can be
MeSH term explosion and author rank improve expert recommendations
No full textInformation overload is an often-cited phenomenon that reduces the productivity, efficiency and efficacy of scientists. One challenge for scientists is to find appropriate collaborators in their research. The literature describes various solutions to the problem of expertise location, but most current approaches do not appear to be very suitable for expert recommendations in biomedical research. In this study, we present the development and initial evaluation of a vector space model-based algorithm to calculate researcher similarity using four inputs: 1) MeSH terms of publications; 2) MeSH terms and author rank; 3) exploded MeSH terms; and 4) exploded MeSH terms and author rank. We developed and evaluated the algorithm using a data set of 17,525 authors and their 22,542 papers. On average, our algorithms correctly predicted 2.5 of the top 5/10 coauthors of individual scientists. Exploded MeSH and author rank outperformed all other algorithms in accuracy, followed closely by MeSH and author rank. Our results show that the accuracy of MeSH term-based matching can be enhanced with other metadata such as author rank
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
"Closing the R&D Gap, Evaluating the Sources of R&D Spending"
No full textBoth spending and tax policies have been implemented in the United States with the goal of stimulating private sector research and development (R&D). Karier questions whether current R&D policy, especially the research and experimentation tax credit, can contribute to closing the gap between nondefense expenditures on R&D in the United States and such expenditures in other countries, such as Japan and Germany. He also explores possible changes to our current R&D policy to make it more effective.
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
Scholarly Communication and Publishing Lunch and Learn Talk #11: The ULS Open Access Author Fee Fund
No full textAt the May 2014 talk, you will learn about the ULS Open Access Author Fee Fund--what it is, why we do it, how it works, and how the program is going so far
Symmetry perception for patterns defined by colour and luminance
No full textAcknowledgments: We would like to thank Ms Sanni Ahonen, Mr Alexander Donald, Mr Tomohawk McGinn, Ms Clara Mutschler, Ms Lilja-Maaria Kurppa and Ms Sophia Thompson for assistance with data collection. MB was supported in part by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/K000187/1). JM was supported by a grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/H019731/1).Peer reviewe
Visual symmetry in objects and gap
No full textIt is known that perceptual organization modulates the\ud
salience of visual symmetry. Reflectional symmetry is\ud
more quickly detected when it is a property of a single\ud
object than when it is formed by a gap between two\ud
objects. Translational symmetry shows the reverse\ud
effect, being more quickly detected when it is a gap\ud
between objects. We investigated the neural correlates\ud
of this interaction. Electroencephalographic data was\ud
recorded from 40 participants who were presented with\ud
reflected and translated contours in one- or two-object\ud
displays. Half of the participants discriminated regularity,\ud
half distinguished number of objects. An event-related\ud
potential known as the Sustained Posterior Negativity\ud
(SPN) distinguished between reflection and translation.\ud
A similar ERP distinguished between one and two object\ud
presentations, but these waves summed with the SPN,\ud
rather than altering it. All stimuli produced\ud
desynchronization of 8?13 Hz alpha oscillations over the\ud
bilateral parietal cortex. In the Discriminate Regularity\ud
group, this effect was right lateralized. The SPN and\ud
alpha desynchronization index different stages of visual\ud
symmetry discrimination. However, neither component\ud
displayed the Regularity · Objecthood interaction that\ud
is observed in speeded discrimination tasks, suggesting\ud
that integration of visual regularity with objectness is\ud
not inevitable. Instead, both attributes may be\ud
processed in parallel and independently
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