1,721,159 research outputs found
Early life stress and blood pressure levels in late adulthood
No full textSevere stress experienced in early life may have long-term consequences on adult physiological functions. We studied the long-term effects of separation on blood pressure levels in non-obese subjects who were separated temporarily in childhood from their parents during World War II (WWII). The original clinical study cohort consists of people born during 1934–1944 in Helsinki, Finland. This substudy includes 1361 non-obese subjects (body mass index <30?kg?m?2). Of these, 192 (14.1%) had been evacuated abroad during WWII. The remaining subjects served as controls. Blood pressure levels and use of blood pressure medication were studied. The separated subjects had significantly higher systolic blood pressure values than the non-separated (148.6+21.5 vs 142.2+19.6?mm?Hg, P<0.0001) in adult life. Those subjects separated in early childhood had markedly higher systolic and diastolic blood pressure values in adult life compared with the non-separated (154.6 vs 142.5?mm?Hg; 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.6–14.7; P<0.005 and 90.8 vs 87.7?mm?Hg; 95% CI 1.0–7.3; P<0.02, respectively). Systolic blood pressure was also higher in the group separated for a duration of <1 year (151.7 vs 142.2?mm?Hg; 95% CI 0.0–12.4; P<0.05) compared with the non-separated. Besides being separated, age at separation and duration of separation also influenced blood pressure levels in adult life. This could be due to early hormonal and metabolic programming, during plastic periods in early life, influencing blood pressure levels in adult life
Late preterm birth and neurocognitive performance in late adulthood: a birth cohort study
No full textOBJECTIVES: We studied if late preterm birth (34 weeks 0 days–36 weeks 6 days of gestation) is associated with performance on the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s Disease Neuropsychological Battery (CERAD-NB) in late adulthood and if maximum attained lifetime education moderated these associations.METHODS: Participants were 919 Finnish men and women born between 1934 and 1944, who participated in the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study. They underwent the CERAD-NB at a mean age of 68.1 years. Data regarding gestational age (late preterm versus term) were extracted from hospital birth records, and educational attainment data were gathered from Statistics Finland.RESULTS: After adjustment for major confounders, those born late preterm scored lower on word list recognition (mean difference: –0.33 SD; P = .03) than those born at term. Among those who had attained a basic or upper secondary education, late preterm birth was associated with lower scores on word list recognition, constructional praxis, constructional praxis recall, clock drawing, Mini–Mental State Examination, and memory total and CERAD total 2 compound scores (mean differences: >0.40 SD; P values <.05), and had a 2.70 times higher risk of mild cognitive impairment (Mini–Mental State Examination score: <26 points) (P = .02). Among those with tertiary levels of education, late preterm birth was not associated with CERAD-NB scores.CONCLUSIONS: Our findings offer new insight into the lifelong consequences of late preterm birth, and they add late preterm birth as a novel risk factor to the list of neurocognitive impairment in late adulthood. Our findings also suggest that attained lifetime education may mitigate aging-related neurocognitive impairment, especially among those born late preterm
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
Infant motor development and cognitive performance in early old age: the Helsinki Birth Cohort study
No full textMotor development and cognitive development in childhood have been found to be fundamentally interrelated, but less is known about the association extending over the life course. The aim of this study was to examine the association between early motor development and cognitive performance in early old age. From men and women belonging to the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study, who were born between 1934 and 1944 and resided in Finland in 1971, 1279 participated in cognitive performance tests (CogState®, version 3.0.5) between 2001 and 2006 at an average age of 64.2 years (SD 3.0). Of these, age at first walking extracted from child welfare clinic records was available for 398 participants. Longer reaction times in cognitive tasks measuring simple reaction time (SRT), choice reaction time (CRT), working memory (WM), divided attention (DA), and associated learning (AL) indicated poorer cognitive performance. Adjustment was made for sex, age at testing, father’s occupational status and own highest attained education, and occupation in adulthood. Average age of learning to walk was 12.2 months (SD 2.1). After adjusting for covariates, earlier attainment of learning to walk was associated with shorter reaction times in cognitive performance tasks (SRT 10.32 % per month, 95 % CI 0.48–21.12, p?=?0.039; CRT 14.17 % per month, 95 % CI 3.75–25.63, p?=?0.007; WM 15.14 % per month, 95 % CI 4.95–26.32, p?=?0.003). People who learned to walk earlier had better cognitive performance in early old age. The earlier attainment of motor skills may track over to early old age and possibly reflect greater cognitive reserve in older age
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