1,720,953 research outputs found
Coffee consumption and liver health
No full textBeneficial associations between coffee drinking and a range of liver outcomes have been consistently reported in observational research, yet no randomised controlled trial has been conducted to investigate whether drinking more coffee might reduce the risk of progression of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD). NAFLD is an umbrella term for a pathological pathway that includes steatosis, steatohepatitis, fibrosis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma, where no other aetiology is identified such as alcohol or viral hepatitis. NAFLD is an important public health issue with a general population prevalence of approximately 25% that has risen in parallel with that of obesity, and as such represents a significant burden to individuals and health systems. NAFLD has few treatment options and current best advice is to lose weight through healthy diet and exercise. If coffee was shown to have benefit in reducing the risk of NAFLD progression it would be a valuable addition to the current management of the condition.The methodological approach of a randomised controlled study could be shaped by addressing a number of current knowledge gaps. Firstly, could increasing coffee intake cause additional non-liver harm in people. To address this issue an umbrella review, or review of reviews, was conducted to draw together the vast amount of existing research between coffee intake and multiple health outcomes. Reassuringly, outside of pregnancy, drinking coffee was more frequently associated with benefit than harm. For important generic outcomes such as all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality, and incident cardiovascular disease, maximum relative risk reduction was associated with intakes of 3-5 cups a day. Some harmful associations, such as between coffee drinking and lung cancer, were nullified by adequate adjustment for smoking, known to be an important confounder. Liver outcomes consistently had the largest magnitude of beneficial associations with coffee drinking. Secondly, in observational research, ascertainment of coffee intake is usually measured in cups a day. This is a heterogeneous measure because of different preparation methods, cup sizes, coffee beans, and roast types, resulting in the risk of misclassification. To overcome this limitation the next stage of the research aimed to create a coffee unit measure, similar in concept to alcohol units, that took preparation method and cup size into account. The unit measure, where 1 coffee unit was equivalent to a 227mL cup of instant coffee, was then applied to a representative UK population using data from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey, and the proportion of misclassified intake, when not accounting for preparation type and cup size was derived. Overall, approximately 1 in 4 participants had misclassified intake, largely under or over estimated by one cup a day. This effect of 25% misclassification of coffee intake in existing research is of uncertain significance, but would generally be non-differential, and therefore more likely to dilute risk estimates of both benefit and harm. The coffee unit measure could be applied to a future experimental study to better quantify coffee intake or allow increases in consumption across preferred preparation types.Coffee preparation preferences were explored as part of the final element of the research, which was a mixed-methods study designed to explore patterns of coffee consumption in a secondary care population of people with NAFLD, their views about drinking more coffee, and acceptability of a randomised controlled trial in which drinking more coffee was the intervention. The mixed method study included an initial qualitative phase of 17 semi-structured interviews that were used to inform the final design of a questionnaire to explore the same phenomenon in a stratified sample of 393 people with NAFLD recruited from three NHS secondary care sites. In the survey, which was stratified across three liver stiffness groups (<7 KPa, 7-13 KPa, and >13 KPa), 78% of respondents were current coffee drinkers, and 22% non-coffee drinkers. Median coffee consumption was 2 cups a day (interquartile range 1 to 3 cups). The proportion of coffee drinkers reduced as liver stiffness increased but not the median daily cup intake. Nearly half of non-coffee drinkers thought they would be able to start drinking it, and 85% of those drinking <4 cups a day thought they would be able to drink an additional 2 cups a day. These proportions reduced to 38% and 66% respectively when considering those who also expressed an interest, albeit hypothetically, in becoming involved in a randomised controlled trial. In this group of participants, acceptable options for increasing coffee intake included 71% for drinking their own coffee at their own expense, 32% being supplied instant coffee, 27% being given a monetary allowance towards the extra coffee, and 15% being supplied ground coffee. Other aspects of a future experimental study including randomisation, and blood and imaging tests were generally considered acceptable. Importantly this data suggests that recruiting people with NAFLD into a future experimental study would be possible from an NHS secondary care setting. Arguably, now is the time for such a study, in the context of the huge burden of NAFLD, the lack of effective treatments, and the potential coffee has to offer benefi
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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
Author Under Sail The Imagination of Jack London, 1893-1902
No full textIn Author Under Sail, Jay Williams offers the first complete literary biography of Jack London as a professional writer engaged in the labor of writing. It examines the authorial imagination in London's work, the use of imagination in both his fiction and nonfiction, and the ways he defined imagination in the creative process in his business dealings with his publishers, editors, and agents. In this first volume of a two-volume biography, Williams traverses the years 1893 to 1902, from London's "Story of a Typhoon" to The People of the Abyss. The Jack London who emerges in the pages of Author Under Sail is a writer whose partnership with publishers, most notably his productive alliance with George Brett of Macmillan, was one of the most formative in American literary history. London pioneered many author models during the heyday of realism and naturalism, blurring the boundaries of these popular genres by focusing on absorption and theatricality and the representation of the seen and unseen. London created an impassioned, sincere, and extremely personal realism unlike that of other American writers of the time. Author Under Sail is a literary tour de force that reveals the full range of London as writer, creative citizen, and entrepreneur at the same time it sheds light on the maverick side of machine-age literature.Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Spirit Truth -- 2. From Absorption to Theatricality and Back Again -- 3. "I Will Build a New Present" -- 4. Sons as Authors -- 5. Fathers as Publishers -- 6. The Daughter as Author -- 7. Lovers as Authors -- 8. At Sea with the Family -- 9. Yellow News, Yellow Stories -- 10. The Return Home -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About Jay WilliamsIn Author Under Sail, Jay Williams offers the first complete literary biography of Jack London as a professional writer engaged in the labor of writing. It examines the authorial imagination in London's work, the use of imagination in both his fiction and nonfiction, and the ways he defined imagination in the creative process in his business dealings with his publishers, editors, and agents. In this first volume of a two-volume biography, Williams traverses the years 1893 to 1902, from London's "Story of a Typhoon" to The People of the Abyss. The Jack London who emerges in the pages of Author Under Sail is a writer whose partnership with publishers, most notably his productive alliance with George Brett of Macmillan, was one of the most formative in American literary history. London pioneered many author models during the heyday of realism and naturalism, blurring the boundaries of these popular genres by focusing on absorption and theatricality and the representation of the seen and unseen. London created an impassioned, sincere, and extremely personal realism unlike that of other American writers of the time. Author Under Sail is a literary tour de force that reveals the full range of London as writer, creative citizen, and entrepreneur at the same time it sheds light on the maverick side of machine-age literature.Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, YYYY. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries
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