1,720,971 research outputs found

    Potential of creatine or phosphocreatine supplementation in cerebrovascular disease and in ischemic heart disease.

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    Creatine is of paramount importance for maintaining and managing cellular ATP stores in both physiological and pathological states. Besides these “ergogenic” actions, it has a number of additional “pleiotropic” effects, e.g., antioxidant activity, neurotransmitter-like behavior, prevention of opening of mitochondrial permeability pore and others. Creatine supplementation has been proposed for a number of conditions, including neurodegenerative diseases. However, it is likely that creatine’s largest therapeutic potential is in those diseases caused by energy shortage or by increased energy demand; for example, ischemic stroke and other cerebrovascular diseases. Surprisingly, despite a large preclinical body of evidence, little or no clinical research has been carried out in these fields. However, recent work showed that high-dose creatine supplementation causes an 8–9 % increase in cerebral creatine content, and that this is capable of improving, in humans, neuropsychological performances that are hampered by hypoxia. In addition, animal work suggests that creatine supplementation may be protective in stroke by increasing not only the neuronal but also the endothelial creatine content. Creatine should be administered before brain ischemia occurs, and thus should be given for prevention purposes to patients at high risk of stroke. In myocardial ischemia, phosphocreatine has been used clinically with positive results, e.g., showing prevention of arrhythmia and improvement in cardiac parameters. Nevertheless, large clinical trials are needed to confirm these results in the context of modern reperfusion interventions. So far, the most compelling evidence for creatine and/or phosphocreatine use in cardiology is as an addition to cardioplegic solutions, where positive effects have been repeatedly reported

    Role of Arterial Hypertension and Hypertension-Mediated Organ Damage in Cardiotoxicity of Anticancer Therapies

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    Purpose of the review: Arterial hypertension (AH) is the most common cardiovascular (CV) risk factor in the community and in oncologic patients. It also represents the most important CV condition predisposing to anticancer treatment-related cardiotoxicity. This risk is heightened in the presence of cardiac AH-mediated organ damage (HMOD). Influence of AH and HMOD on the development of cardiotoxicity will be reviewed, with a focus on specific scenarios and implications for management of oncologic patients. Recent findings: Not adequately controlled AH before or during anticancer treatments and/or development of AH during or after completion of such therapies have detrimental effects on the clinical course of oncologic patients, particularly if HMOD is present. As overlooking CV health can jeopardize the success of anticancer treatments, the goal for clinicians caring for the oncologic patient should include the treatment of AH and HMOD

    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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