1,721,091 research outputs found

    Primary Cultures of Astrocytes from Fetal Bovine Brain

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    We describe here a method to obtain primary cell cultures from the cerebral cortex and the hypothalamus of bovine fetuses. We report how tissue origin, developmental stages, and culture medium conditions influence cell differentiation and the prevalence of glial cells vs. neurons. We compare explants from early, middle, and late stages of development and two different fetal calf serum concentrations (1 and 10%) to identify the best conditions to obtain and grow viable astrocytes in culture. In addition, we describe how to cryopreserve and obtain viable cortical astrocytes from frozen fetal bovine brain samples

    Language as an Identification Resource in Secondary English Teacher Preparation: An Analysis of Discourses

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    Teaching, Learning, and Diversity Language as an Identification Resource in Secondary English Teacher Preparation: An Analysis of Discourses Frank Blake Tenore Dissertation under the direction of Professors Kevin M. Leander and H. Richard Milner, IV The topic of the research presented here was teacher educators’ and teacher candidates’ talk as an identification resource in the coursework of an undergraduate and Master’s level secondary English teacher preparation program. Two research questions framed this study: What identity constructions of English teacher are available in the discourses of secondary English teacher preparation? How are the discourses and available identifications transformed through language use in course meetings? Participants in the study were two English teacher educators, twenty teacher candidates enrolled in two secondary English methods courses at a mid-sized, private, urban university, and five teacher candidates who agreed to participate in interviews and one focus group. Qualitative methods for data collection and analysis were used including semi-structured interviews, classroom observations with video- and audio-recording, constant comparative analysis, and discourse analysis. Findings were that participants’ talk was connected to prominent Discourses in the fields of English education and teacher education. Talk in the courses created specific identification opportunities for teacher candidates. Teacher candidates accepted, rejected, and transformed the available identifications through specific language use and genres of talk. Findings from this study have implications for structures and practices in teacher education and contribute to theory building of how teacher candidates become teachers who identify, or not, with particular conceptions of English teacher. Approved_________________________________________ Date__________ Kevin M. Leander, Ph.D. Approved_________________________________________ Date__________ H. Richard Milner, IV, Ph.D

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The 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

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    “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

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    We 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

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    We 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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