1,720,969 research outputs found
Exhaled nitric oxide: Not associated with asthma, symptoms, or spirometry in children with sickle cell anemia
BACKGROUND:The significance of fractional exhaled nitric oxide (Feno) levels in children with sickle cell anemia (SCA) is unclear, but increased levels can be associated with features of asthma and thus increased morbidity.OBJECTIVES:We sought to determine factors associated with Feno and whether Feno levels are associated with increased rates of acute chest syndrome (ACS) and pain.METHODS:All participants had SCA, were part of the prospective observational Sleep and Asthma Cohort study, and had the following assessments: Feno levels, spirometry, blood samples analyzed for hemoglobin, white blood cell counts, eosinophil counts and total serum IgE levels, questionnaires about child medical and family history, and review of medical records.RESULTS:The analytic sample included 131 children with SCA (median age, 11.2 years; age range, 6-18 years) followed for a mean of 16.2 years, including a mean of 5.1 years after baseline Feno data measurements. In multivariable analyses higher Feno levels were associated with ln(IgE) levels (P < .001) and the highest quartile of peripheral eosinophil counts (P = .03) but not wheezing symptoms, baseline spirometric indices, or response to bronchodilator. Multivariable analyses identified that the incident rate of ACS was associated with ln(Feno) levels (P = .03), as well as male sex (P = .025), wheezing causing shortness of breath (P = .002), and ACS at less than 4 years of age (P < .001). Feno levels were not associated with future pain episodes.CONCLUSIONS:Steady-state Feno levels were not associated with an asthma diagnosis, wheezing symptoms, lung function measures, or prior sickle cell morbidity but were associated with markers of atopy and increased risk of future ACS events
Pattern of lung function is not associated with prior or future morbidity in children with sickle cell anemia
Rationale: Patient factors associated with development of abnormal lung function in children with sickle cell anemia (SCA) have not been fully characterized.Objectives: To characterize lung function abnormalities among children with SCA and to determine whether these steady-state lung function results were associated with morbidity before or after testing among children with SCA.Methods: This study was part of the prospective National Institutes of Health–funded Sleep and Asthma Cohort Study. Children with HbSS or Hb S?o (SCA) were enrolled without regard for sickle cell–related comorbidities or diagnosis of asthma. Lung function was measured by spirometry and plethysmography on the same day, when free of acute disease. Standardized asthma symptom questionnaires and review of the medical records were also performed.Measurements and Main Results: A total of 149 children aged 6 to 19 years completed lung function testing, of whom 139 participants had retrospective morbidity data from birth to the test date, and 136 participants were followed prospectively for a median of 4.3 years from the test date. At baseline, percentages with normal, obstructive, restrictive, nonspecific, and mixed lung function patterns were 70, 16, 7, 6, and 1, respectively. Neither retrospective rates of pain nor acute chest syndrome was associated with lung function patterns. Furthermore, baseline lung function pattern was not predictive of future pain or acute chest syndrome episodes.Conclusions: The majority of children with SCA have lung function that is within the normal range. Abnormal lung function patterns were not associated with prior vasoocclusive pain or acute chest syndrome episodes, and baseline lung function patterns did not predict future vasoocclusive pain or chest syndrome episodes
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
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
“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
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
Absence of longitudinal decline in lung volume in children with sickle cell anemia: Sac multi-center prospective cohort
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
We 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
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