1,720,993 research outputs found
Measurement of human cytomegalovirus-associated DNA polymerase activity in patient urine as a potential diagnostic tool
No full textVirus-associated DNA polymerase activity has recently been proposed for the detection of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) in urine, a method that should allow rapid and quantitative determination of the viral load. In this report, the virus-associated DNA polymerase activity recovered from the urine of a group of patients shedding HCMV was measured using a poly(dA) oligo(dT) 12-18 synthetic template after polyethylene glycol precipitation of the virions. Detection of virus-associated DNA polymerase activity was compared to the classical methods most widely used to diagnose HCMV shedding in urines such as virus culture followed by indirect immunofluorescence and pp65 gene-specific polymerase chain reaction. Although less sensitive than the polymerase chain reaction and cross-reactive with other herpesvirus DNA polymerases, the activity measured in the urine samples was correlated with the number of positive nuclei found in shell vials (r = 0.89). The diagnostic threshold of the assay could be placed between 50 and 100 fluorescent nuclei per shell with a diagnostic sensitivity of 56%. Being simple and quantitative, the measurement of virus-associated DNA polymerase activity could be of value in some clinical conditions where it is necessary to assess viral load in urine. This method is proposed as an alternative to more laborious quantitative assays and to support qualitative polymerase chain reaction
Simultaneous polymerase chain reaction detection and restriction typing for the diagnosis of human genital papillomavirus infection
No full textA polymerase chain reaction method has been developed which allows the simultaneous detection of the majority of clinically relevant HPV types. Degenerate HPV-specific primers direct the one-step amplification of a DNA region spanning E1 and E7 genes. This enables an immediate distinction between the two groups of papillomaviruses, characterized by high or low oncogenic potential, simply from the size of amplified DNA. The PCR product can be subjected to a second round of amplification with internal primers, which are specific for 7 high-risk HPV types, HPV-16, -18, -31, -33, -35, -45 and -58. Precise identification of one-step or two-step amplified DNA is done by endonuclease digestion with one or two enzymes. The detection sensitivity, which has been assessed using cloned HPV genomes and HeLa and CaSki cell lines, varies from a few tens to a few hundreds of viral genome equivalents. The accuracy of the method has been confirmed by examining cervical scrapings of 44 patients
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
Interactive Remote Museum Visits for Older Adults: An Evaluation of Feelings of Presence, Social Closeness, Engagement, and Enjoyment in an Social Visit
Full text linkThis paper explores whether older adults can remotely participate in museum visits with the help of virtual environments. We design and build a system that supports shared museum co-visits between onsite visitors inside the museum and older adults from a care home. We make the experience more engaging by providing a meaningful story, connecting the objects in the museum. The aim of the study is to understand whether older adults are able to use such technology and to study the mediated sense of spatial presence, the experienced social closeness, and the level of participants' engagement and enjoyment in the visit. We discuss the relationship between these aspects and factors leading to a better remote experience for older adults. The results show that older adults enjoy and engage in remote visits, and that there is a positive correlation between enjoyment, engagement and social closeness
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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