1,721,186 research outputs found
Cardiac dysfunction and circulating cardiac markers during sepsis
No full textAmong several alterations affecting the cardiovascular system during severe sepsis or septic shock, myocardial depression has been pointed out with increasing attention over the last 30 years as a frequent and often misdiagnosed clinical condition. As expected, patients with cardiac dysfunction during sepsis have a worse prognosis than those without. In the present review, we will first discuss the etiology, pathophysiology, monitoring and clinical manifestations of cardiac dysfunction in patients with severe sepsis or septic shock. Thereafter, we will briefly present the evidence on the role of circulating biomarkers of cardiac function in the management of sepsis. Circulating cardiac biomarkers are becoming increasingly popular in cardiovascular diseases, as they are a simple and cost-effective tool for triage, diagnosis and prognosis. Their importance during sepsis is related to the development of complications due to an aging population with frequent co-morbidities and a scarce functional reserve. We will focus on two specific markers of cardiac origin: troponins, which reveal cardiac myocytes injury, and natriuretic peptides, as indicators of cardiac chambers wall stress and fluid homeostasis. The bulk of evidences accumulated so far on cardiac markers support their role as prognostic indicators, with marginal improvement in terms of accuracy, as compared to widely employed clinical scores. Their potential to satisfy unmet needs in the daily care of septic patients is more appealing, in particular for monitoring the cardiovascular system during support therapy
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
Synthesis and behaviour of ester derivatives of 4-isobutylphenyl-2-propionic acid (ibuprofen) with end-hydroxylated poly(N-vinylpirrolidinone) and poly(N-acryloyl morpholine) oligomers
No full textFour derivatives of 4-isobutylphenyl-2-propionic acid (Ibuprofen), in
which the drug was bound by ester linkages to poly(ethylene glycols) (PEG 2000-I),
monomethoxy poly(ethylene glycols) (PEG 1900-I), poly(N-vinyl pyrrolidinone) (PVPI)
and poly(N-acryloyl morpholine) (PACM-I), all having approximatively the same
number average molecular weight (M̄(n) ~ 2000), were prepared and tested for their
pharmacokinetic properties after oral administration. It was found that the two
end-hydroxylated amphiphilic oligomers of polyvinylic structure, PACM and PVP,
whose physico-chemical properties are comparable to those of PEGs especially as
regards solvent affinity, have in principle a similar potential as promoieties for
preparing oligomeric prodrugs
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
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