1,720,956 research outputs found
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
Reconstructing AMR plasmids: New methods to track the dissemination of mobile genetic elements in ICUs
No full textAntimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a pressing global concern, posing a significant threat to human health worldwide. Each year, the incidence of infections caused by resistant bacteria continues to rise, imposing a significant challenge for healthcare professionals.
Genes that confer resistance to antimicrobials are frequently encoded by plasmids, extra-chromosomal mobile genetic elements that can be horizontally disseminated across bacteria by diverse mechanisms. Multiple studies suggest that plasmids are essential drivers of the spread of resistance within diverse ecological niches. Consequently, accurate plasmid identification and tracking are necessary to better understand the mechanisms that drive AMR dissemination.
The development of next-generation sequencing (NGS) platforms has allowed the high-throughput study of bacterial genomes with an unprecedented level of accuracy. Nevertheless, due to the frequent occurrence of large repeated elements, bacterial genomes are often fragmented in hundreds of smaller DNA sequences (contigs) of unclear origin (plasmid or chromosome). Consequently, determining the exact sequence of plasmids is challenging.
This study presents a novel two-step computational method for accurately reconstructing AMR-plasmids from bacterial NGS data. In the first step, contigs are classified as chromosomes or plasmids using an ensemble of binary classification tools called "plasmidEC." In the second step, plasmid-derived contigs are binned into individual plasmids using "gplas", a tool that leverages sequencing coverage and assembly graph connectivity. We proved that this method outperforms other existing plasmid-reconstruction tools, when tested in more than 70 different bacterial species. Furthermore, employing plasmidEC and gplas, we traced the dissemination of a tobramycin-resistance-carrying element among diverse Escherichia coli isolates sourced from patients admitted to intensive care units
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
Decontamination Strategies in European Intensive Care Units
No full textPatients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) are at risk for acquisition of healthcare associated infections. These infections are often anticipated by overgrowth of potentially pathogenic micro-organisms (PPMO). Several decontamination strategies aim to prevent overgrowth of these PPMO in the respiratory tract, gastro-intestinal tract or both. These include selective decontamination using antibiotics (SDD and SOD) and chlorhexidine mouthwash (CHX). This thesis aims to determine the effects of different decontamination strategies on patient outcomes and the occurrence of antibiotic resistant bacteria in European Intensive Care Units (ICU) with low and higher prevalence of antibiotic resistance. Several research questions have been answered for ICUs with low levels of antibiotic resistance, using data from high-quality registries (“MARS-cohort”, “NICE-registry”) and in an individual participant data meta-analysis (IPD-MA) of randomized studies. The main study underlying this thesis is a new cluster randomized trial performed in 13 European ICUs with higher levels of antibiotic resistance (the “R-GNOSIS ICU study”). That overgrowth of PPMO indeed plays a role in the development of ICU-acquired infections was confirmed in this thesis, where gastro-intestinal overgrowth with Gram-negative bacteria was associated with the acquisition of infections, blood stream infections and overgrowth in the respiratory tract with the same class of micro-organisms, in a cohort study with more than 2000 patients. The beneficial effects of SDD and SOD on patient survival and the acquisition of blood stream infections in Dutch ICUs were already known prior to this thesis. In this thesis, an IPD-MA of more than 17,000 ICU-admissions resulted in the finding that both surgical and medical ICU patients – which are two distinct groups with regard to disease severity and prognosis – both benefit from these treatments, with SDD being more effective than SOD at reducing in-hospital mortality. On the contrary, the R-GNOSIS ICU study, in which >8500 patients participated, did not demonstrate any beneficial effect of SDD, SOD or CHX on the occurrence of ICU-acquired blood stream infections in countries with higher prevalence of antibiotic resistance. Despite two temporary outbreaks with antibiotic resistant bacteria during the use of SOD, on average no single strategy lead to an increase in the unit-wide prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria. SDD, and to a lesser extent SOD, were more effective than CHX or standard care at eradicating overgrowth with certain antibiotic resistant bacteria in patients that carried these micro-organisms from the initial stay in the ICU. Finally, one methodological study was conducted, to investigate how to correct for confounding by disease severity in multicenter ICU studies, when different centers use different measures to quantify disease severity. This simulation study lead to many different results. First and foremost, ignoring differences in disease severity measures in the statistical analysis may lead to large relative bias. Several statistical approaches are possible to reduce this bias, and the performance of these methods highly depends on the type and availability of different measures across centers
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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