1,721,079 research outputs found
Prevention of SARS-CoV-2 infection during the COVID-19 pandemic
No full textThe emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in December 2019 led to the COVID-19 pandemic, causing the biggest global health crisis of a generation. The most effective means of reducing morbidity and mortality from infection is to prevent transmission of the virus. There are a variety of methods which can prevent or reduce the risk of transmission, each with specific strengths and limitations.This thesis examines a number of different non-pharmaceutical and pharmaceutical interventions which can be deployed to prevent the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Each chapter represents a different part of my research conducted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic across these themes. This includes a literature review which was conducted in real time during the early stages of the pandemic to inform clinicians, policy makers and the public on the evidence surrounding COVID-19 in children, performed with the support of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. This revealed the important and counter-intuitive finding that children played a lesser role in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 than had been anticipated on the basis of other respiratory viruses.This work informed my role on the National Institute for Health Research working group on the Transmission of COVID-19 in Schools (ToCS). The ToCS working group developed a protocol for studying the silent transmission of COVID-19 in these settings, which could serve as an “off the shelf” option for deploying a study in the event of a future pandemic.Given the emergency in protecting healthcare workers and the initial shortage of effective personal protective equipment, the Personal Respirator Southampton (PeRSo) was developed and deployed at the University Hospital Southampton. Evaluation of its deployment found it to be the preferred personal protective equipment by healthcare workers due to it feeling safer, being more comfortable and more easy to use than standard airborne precautions.Whilst non-pharmaceutical interventions are most readily deployed in the event of a disease outbreak, they often come with large social and economic costs. Pharmaceutical interventions, and vaccines in particular are the definitive management of large infectious disease outbreaks. Highly effective vaccines were produced for COVID-19, but due to waning immunity and theemergence of variants of concern with immune escape, booster vaccinations were required. The COV-BOOST randomised controlled trial of booster vaccines for COVID-19 found that several heterologous booster vaccines were safe and immunogenic, and that fourth doses were equally safe and well tolerated.Given the emergence of variants of concern and the prospect of future pandemics occurring due to Sarbecoviruses, the development of a vaccine which can cover across a broad range of the Sarbecovirus family would provide more robust protection against SARS-CoV-2 as well as providing protection against future outbreaks. The phase 1, first in human study of pEVAC-PS which contains digitally synthesised antigens to create broad immunity against Sarbecoviruses, was found to be safe and well tolerated at the first three doses trialled. Further study will be needed to determine safety at the highest dose, and to determine immunogenicity.These findings provide important lessons for future pandemics. Rapid evidence gathering and synthesis programmes specific to children should be ready to be deployed. Networks and working groups to coordinate emergency research necessary for children and research with educational environments should be established. Healthcare systems should consider investing in personal respirators for staff, as they can provide stocks which are robust to demand shock. They also provide the highest level of protection, best user experience and are most environmentally and economically efficient. Future vaccine development programmes for disease outbreaks should plan for the needs for booster doses at the outset, and protocols which are ready to be deployed in an emergency should be prepared. Finally, vaccine development needs to be proactive in determining the highest risk groups of pathogens, such as Sarbecoviruses, and trialling vaccines which stimulate more broad protection
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
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