1,720,955 research outputs found
Rat locomotor spinal circuits in vitro are activated by electrical stimulation with noisy waveforms sampled from human gait
Get PDFNoisy waveforms, sampled from an episode of fictive locomotion (FL) and delivered to a dorsal root (DR), are a novel electrical stimulating protocol demonstrated as the most effective for generating the locomotor rhythm in the rat isolated spinal cord. The present study explored if stimulating protocols constructed by sampling real human locomotion could be equally efficient to activate these locomotor networks in vitro. This approach may extend the range of usable stimulation protocols and provide a wide palette of noisy waveforms for this purpose. To this end, recorded electromyogram (EMG) from leg muscles of walking adult volunteers provided a protocol named ReaListim (Real Locomotion-induced stimulation) that applied to a single DR successfully activated FL. The smoothed kinematic profile of the same gait failed to do so like nonphasic noisy patterns derived from standing and isometric contraction. Power spectrum analysis showed distinctive low-frequency domains in ReaListim, along with the high-frequency background noise. The current study indicates that limb EMG signals (recorded during human locomotion) applied to DR of the rat spinal cord are more effective than EMG traces taken during standing or isometric contraction of the same muscles to activate locomotor networks. Finally, EMGs recorded during various human motor tasks demonstrated that noisy waves of the same periodicity as ReaListim, could efficiently activate the in vitro central pattern generator (CPG), regardless of the motor task from which they had been sampled. These data outline new strategies to optimize functional stimulation of spinal networks after injury
A mobile app for home-based exercise in spinal cord injured persons: Proposal and pilot study
Get PDFBackground and Objective: To preserve cardiovascular health in persons with spinal cord injury (SCI), it is important to promote physical activity programs adapted to them. Home-based exercise programs allow patients to perform clinician-prescribed physical activity without going to a hospital. However, they make it difficult for the clinician to guide and monitor the patient. To face this issue, this paper proposes a novel smartphone-based mobile application (Fisiofriend), and evaluates its feasibility with a pilot study in a real clinical intervention. Methods: Fourteen SCI male subjects were involved in a 6-weeks home-based intervention, based on upper limbs exercises: 7 subjects (APP group) used Fisiofriend, and 7 subjects used traditional pictorial instructions on paper (PAPER group). At the beginning (t1) and end (t2) of the study period, we measured: (i) biceps and triceps brachii strength and endurance parameters with an isokinetic dynamometer (Biodex System 4), (ii) O2 maximal consumption with a crank ergometer stress test (VO2000, Medgraphics). Moreover, we collected subjective data about subjects’ perception of the support (app or paper) in the home-based program. Results: Physiological results were encouraging for both groups. Questionnaire data suggests a possible advantage of the app in terms of pleasantness, engagement and perception of positive effects. Practical clinical experience with the subjects and their informal reports highlighted which features of the app could be of particular benefit in real interventions, as we discuss in the paper. Conclusions: The study showed the feasibility of using a mobile app in home-based exercise programs involving SCI patients. We discuss implications of introducing such kind of apps into clinical practice
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Get PDFWe 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
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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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