322,924 research outputs found
Metabolic and functional interplay between gut microbiota and fat-soluble vitamins
No full textGut microbiota is a complex ecosystem seen as an extension of human genome. It represents a major metabolic interface of interaction with food components and xenobiotics in the gastrointestinal (GI) environment. In this context, the advent of modern bacterial genome sequencing technology has enabled the identification of dietary nutrients as key determinants of gut microbial ecosystem able to modulate the host-microbiome symbiotic relationship and its effects on human health. This article provides a literature review on functional and molecular interactions between a specific group of lipids and essential nutrients, e.g., fat-soluble vitamins (FSVs), and the gut microbiota. A two-way relationship appears to emerge from the available literature with important effects on human metabolism, nutrition, GI physiology and immune function. First, FSV directly or indirectly modify the microbial composition involving for example immune system-mediated and/or metabolic mechanisms of bacterial growth or inhibition. Second, the gut microbiota influences at different levels the synthesis, metabolism and transport of FSV including their bioactive metabolites that are either introduced with the diet or released in the gut via entero-hepatic circulation. A better understanding of these interactions, and of their impact on intestinal and metabolic homeostasis, will be pivotal to design new and more efficient strategies of disease prevention and therapy, and personalized nutrition
Diffusive author(s), cohesive author: Analysis of S/N (1994)
No full textThis study indicates the ways in which various aspects of the author(s) are brought forth in Dumb type’s performance art, the S/N production. Previous research has suggested a non-hierarchical organization of Dumb type and the absence of a “privileged author” in Dumb type’s collaborative work, S/N. However, the results that I have investigated from member’s interviews on the creative process of S/N along with my analysis of the recorded images of S/N, indicate a different aspect of the author(s). First, S/N was created through, so to speak, the collective ideas of the members of Dumb type. Further, S/N has at least nine quotations from previous performances, installations, and printed writings, besides the work-in-progress technique. Explicating one of the “author functions” as given by Michel Foucault, each text has plural subjects of the author. However, it has been revealed from members’ interviews that Teiji Furuhashi had a decision-making role in selecting the members’ ideas within the performance. Since then, S/N has had plural subjects of creation; however, Furuhashi is one of the subjects of creation along with the “privileged author.” S/N has plural authors (diffusive authors) yet at the same time, it has a “privileged author,” Teiji Furuhashi (cohesive author)
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe 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
Influence of monomer structure on the propagation kinetics of acrylate and methacrylate homopolymerizations studied via PLP-SEC in fluid CO2
No full textPropagation kinetics of free-radical homopolymerizations of methyl acrylate, dodecyl acrylate, butyl methacrylate, dodecyl methacrylate, glycidyl methacrylate, cyclohexyl methacrylate, and isobornyl methacrylate in solutions containing 40 wt.-% CO2 were studied applying the PLP-SEC technique. The obtained apparent propagation rate coefficients, k(p,app), are by up to 40% below the associated bulk k(p) values. This reduction is assigned to a lowering of local monomer concentration, c(M,loc), at the site of the free-radical chain end rather than to a decrease of the actual propagation rate coefficient. With the alkyl (meth)acrylates, intersegmental interactions between polar groups of the same polymer molecule are responsible for deviations of c(M,loc) from the analytical overall monomer concentration, c(M,a). Increasing size of the flexible alkyl ester group reduces the differences between c(M,loc) and C-M,C-a due to shielding effects. Methacrylates with cyclic ester groups do not follow this trend. In case of isobornyl methacrylate, which polymerizes to a rigid material with large side groups, relative size of monomer and CO2 matters and reduces c(M,loc) significantly below C-M,C-a
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
No full textWe 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
Metabolomics Applied to Exhaled Breath Condensate in Childhood Asthma
No full textThe discrimination of healthy and asthmatic cases can be solved using linear- and partial least squares discrimninant analysis of clinical and metabonomics (NMR) data. 25 asthmatic children and 11 healthy children were enrolled in the study. For each child the EBC NMR spectrum and three clinical variables were determined. Although the number of cases did not allow of applying external validation or cross validation the present data makes the following conclusions possible: Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) using best subset selection has found that the best distinction between asthmatic and healthy children is obtained from a four variable model including FEV1 and chemical shifts at 2.02, 1.82, 1.74 in the NMR spectrum. Taken together the 4 variables discriminate asthmatic from healthy children with a success rate of up to 97%. This result points out how the best characterization of asthmatic subjects comes from the combined knowledge of lung function and ongoing inflammatory pattern. Being in the 1.8-2.3 range within the NMR spectrum, the peaks included in the best model are likely related to the presence of acetylated products in asthmatic airways. Our finding of acetylated products in asthmatic children open the way toward further studies aiming at the identification of these products, among which HMGB1 could have a roleJRC.I.1 - Chemical Assessment and Testin
Classification of gilthead sea bream (Sparus aurata) from 1H-NMR lipid profiling combined with Principal Component and Linear Discriminant Analysis
No full textThe combination of 1H NMR fingerprinting of lipids from gilthead sea bream (Sparus aurata) with nonsupervised and supervised multivariate analysis was applied to differentiate wild and farmed fish and to classify farmed specimen according to their areas of production belonging to the Mediterranean basin. Principal component analysis (PCA) applied on processed 1H NMR profiles made a clear distinction between wild and farmed samples. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) allowed classification of samples according to the geographic origin, as well as for the wild and farmed status using both PCA scores and NMR data as variables. Variable selection for LDA was achieved with forward selection (stepwise) with a predefined 5% error level. The methods allowed the classification of 100% of the samples according to their wild and farmed status and 85–97% to geographic origin. Probabilistic neural network (PNN) analyses provided complementary means for the successful discrimination among classes investigated
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No full textCan archives of audiovisual TV interviews be used to make authors more visible to students, and thereby reduce the learning gap between native and non-native language speakers in college classes? We examined students in a college course who learned about one scholar's ideas through watching an audiovisual TV interview (i.e., visible author format) and about another scholar's ideas through reading a formal text description (i.e., invisible author format). For the invisible author, native language speakers scored significantly higher than the non-native language speakers on a corresponding exam question (i.e., a cognitive measure), generated more words on the exam question (i.e., a motivational measure), and mentioned the author's name more often in answering the exam question (i.e., an affective measure). For the visible author, the groups did not differ on any of these measures. These findings provide evidence for the idea that making the author visible through audiovisual TV interviews can eliminate the learning gap between native and non-native language speakers. 3 Universities around the world serve students who are non-native speakers of th
The vanishing author in computer-generated works: a critical analysis of recent Australian case law
No full textAbstract
The use of software is ubiquitous in the creation of many copyright works, yet the requirement in copyright law that every work have a human author who engages in independent intellectual effort means that its use may prevent copyright subsistence. Several recent Australian cases have refocused attention on authorship as an essential criterion of copyright subsistence, and these cases suggest that much computer-produced output may be authorless and thus lack copyright protection. This article, the first in a two-part series, analyses how each case deals with the question of authorship of computer-produced works and why the use of software diminishes copyright protection for a significant number of computer-generated works. The article critiques the application of conventional notions of human authorship developed in the pre-computer age to modern productions and suggests alternative approaches to authorship that satisfy both the major objectives of copyright policy and the need to adapt to the computer age. The article argues that, without a broader judicial approach to authorship of computer-generated works, Parliament must remedy the lacuna in protection for these ‘authorless’ works. Possible solutions for reform are suggested. In a forthcoming article, the author comprehensively examines those reform proposals
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