1,720,961 research outputs found
Frequency analysis of phonocardiograms for recognition of degenerative phenomena in heart bioprostheses
No full textIt is well known that biological heart valve substitutes are subjected to slower degeneration
compared with metallic ones. Nevertheless degenerative phenomena, related to
calcification, thrombus and fibrotic pannus deposition, are sometimes very fast and
techniques for regularly monitoring patients with valve implants are needed. The acoustic
analysis of heart sound produced by a bioprosthetic heart valve seems to be the most useful
mean for recognising the degeneration when a valve is still functioning well and looks
almost normal to echocardiography. In fact, the mechanical properties of a valve, namely
stiffness, determine its vibrational behaviour and, consequently, influence its distinctive
closing sound.
In this work, a method for acoustic analysis of artificial valves sounds has been developed,
which requires a phonocardiographic microphone, an acoustic tape recorder and an FFT
board installed in a computer. With the FFT analyser it is possible to calculate the
frequency spectrum of prosthesis sounds; this spectrum tends to change as tissue
degeneration progresses.
A series of 18 patients, 11 carriers of aortic bioprosthesis, 6 carriers of mitral bioprosthesis
an 1 carrier of both mitral and aortic bioprostheses, has been observed during first five years
after the implant: a first corroboration of introduced model and technique has been given
Radiograph-based femur morphing method
No full textMany applications in orthopaedic surgery require the creation of personalised design models that can serve as the basis for navigation in computer aided surgery systems or be used to create a personalised model to perform structural analysis during pre-operative planning or post-operative follow-up. The paper introduces a method for developing a three-dimensional (3D) patient-specific model of a femur bone from an antero-posterior radiograph. A generic femur was employed and was altered on the basis of bone boundaries visible on radiographs. Morphological errors were evaluated against 3D models obtained from computed tomography (CT) scans. When only the antero-posterior radiograph was used, the average radius estimation error was 4.8 mm, the average percentage area estimation error was 14\%, and the average percentage estimation error for inertial moments was 15\%. If both the medial-lateral and the anterior-posterior radiographs were used, these errors were 2.0 mm, 5\% and 7\%, respectively. The procedure described can be profitably employed whenever CT scans are not available, such as during a retrospective analysis, or when CT scans cannot be justified because of X-ray exposure and cost considerations
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
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
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