1,720,971 research outputs found
Gaucher Disease: a Hyper-Hippo Syndrome?
No full textThe Gaucher Disease (GD) is a lysosomal disorder associated with mutations in the GBA1 gene, encoding the acidic β-glucocerebrosidase. GD is characterized by a wide spectrum of phenotypic manifestations, the most severe of which involve the nervous system, with massive neuronal loss and microglial proliferation. Different symptoms are also observed in individuals bearing identical GBA1 mutations, suggesting that additional players are involved in the disease.
Our hypothesis is that hyper-activation of the Hippo pathway, recently found involved in some neurodegenerative syndromes, may contribute to the dramatic outcome of the neuronopathic GD. We thus started an expression analysis of upstream and downstream Hippo pathway components in Drosophila GBA1-deficient larval and adult organs.
While some Hippo downstream targets resulted down-regulated in GBA1-deficient tissues, both in terms of transcript and protein content, Fat, an atypical cadherin upstream of the kinase complex involved in the regulation of glial and synapse development, was found up-regulated. In the light of this latter result, we are currently performing behavioural assays in flies where GBA1 expression has been silenced in glial or neuronal cells, to find out possible cross-effects. Preliminary data will be presented about the implication of the Hippo pathway in the pathogenesis of the neuronopathic GD
Growth and Tracheogenesis are Separable Traits in Drosophila Cancers
No full textDrosophila clonal cancer models provide an excellent contribution to the study of the molecular basis of tumourigenesis. A number of human cancer hallmarks are indeed functionally conserved; among them, overgrowth and vessel remodelling are particularly relevant to primary mass formation and cell dissemination throughout the organism.
We have previously identified MYC as a Hippo downstream target in Drosophila and demonstrated that cells with defects in polarity genes require MYC expression to overwhelm wild-type neighbours and develop into malignant masses. Recent data from our lab also showed that neo-tracheogenesis does occur in Drosophila cancers, and it is either functionally or molecularly analogous to mammalian tumour neo-angiogenesis.
Here I extended on previous work showing that, in Drosophila epithelial tumours, mass expansion and tracheogenesis are separable traits, dependent on MYC and FOS activity respectively. These two transcription factors are found at the intersection of the Hippo, JNK and Ras/MAPK signalling cascades, which are recognised as central actors in cancer progression
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Get PDFWe 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
No full textWe 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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