1,720,979 research outputs found
A sleep continuity scale in Alzheimer's disease: Validation and relationship with cognitive and functional deterioration
No full textConsidering that disrupted sleep may be detrimental to daytime performance in people with dementia, we set out to construct a questionnaire able to identify sleep patterns potentially associated with clinical and functional disease variables in this population. Two subsets of items indicative of patterns of unstable sleep and of disordered rapid eye movement sleep (REM) were selected. The first included items investigating sleep continuity, with low sleep continuity markers considered indicative of high arousability; the second included items investigating the frequency and quality of dreams and the frequency of clinically identifiable REM sleep behaviour disorder episodes. The questionnaire was administered to 140 outpatients with a diagnosis of mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease. The Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Activities of Daily Living (ADL), Instrumental Activities of Daily Living, Neuropsychiatric Inventory and Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) were administered to quantify cognitive, functional and behavioural impairment. A subscale comprising items investigating sleep discontinuity/fragmentation and showing high internal consistency was constructed and found to correlate significantly with variables considered indexes of cognitive and functional deterioration in AD (MMSE, ADL and CDR). Conversely, it did not prove possible to obtain a subscale of dysfunctional REM phenomena. The use of a rapidly and easily administered sleep scale, like the one we constructed, appears to be suitable for early identification and longitudinal monitoring of sleep disturbances in AD. © 2012 Springer-Verlag
ECRHS Screening Questionnaire Scoring: A Methodological Suggestion For Asthma Assessment
No full textSleep continuity scale in Alzheimer’s disease (SCADS): application in daily clinical practice in an Italian center for dementia
No full textSleep disorders can occur in many neurodegenerative disorders; in a previous paper we constructed a scale investigating sleep discontinuity/fragmentation with the aim to obtain a rapidly and easily administered tool suitable for early identification and longitudinal monitoring of sleep disturbances in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). We introduced this instrument in the daily clinical practice in a center for dementia; here we present the results of our experience. Two hundred and sixteen AD outpatients referred to the Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Unit at the IRCCS C. Mondino National Neurological Institute, Pavia, Italy, in the period October 2012 to March 2014 were administered the scale. The questionnaire global score was correlated with measures of cognitive, functional and behavioral impairment; a significant association was found with Mini-Mental State (p = 0.005), Activities of Daily Living (p = 0.01), Neuropsychiatric Inventory (p = 0.01) and Clinical Dementia Rating (p = 0.0005). The present data indicate that the previously validated questionnaire proves to be a suitable, rapid and easy to use tool in investigating sleep quality in AD in daily clinical practice. An early identification and longitudinal monitoring of sleep disturbances in AD may improve pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions
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
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