1,720,958 research outputs found
Inhibition of intestinal inflammation and fibrosis by Scutellaria Baicalensis georgi and Boswellia serrata in human epithelial cells and fibroblasts
No full textObjective and rationale: Inflammatory bowel disease, including Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, manifests with chronic intestinal inflammation and frequent sequential fibrosis. Current pharmacological therapies may show harmful side effects and are not useful for prevention or resolution of fibrosis. Thus, the use of alternative therapies is emerging as a novel useful approach. Previous results suggest that Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi (SBG) and Boswellia serrata (BS) display anti-inflammatory properties. The aim of this study was to investigate in intestinal epithelial cells and fibroblasts the anti-inflammatory and anti-fibrotic potential of SBG and BS, alone or in combination. Methods: Human colorectal adenocarcinoma cells (HT29), human intestinal epithelial cells (HIEC6) and human colon fibroblasts (CCD-18Co) were used. Cells were pretreated with SBG and BS and then exposed to pro-inflammatory and pro-fibrotic cytokines. Results: SBG and BS extracts significantly decreased pro-inflammatory cytokine expression and improved epithelial restitution in HT29 and HIEC6 cells. Besides, fibrotic marker expression, including SNAIL, ACTA2, ZNF281, was strongly reduced. Colon myofibroblasts treated with SBG and BS showed a significant decrease of fibrotic markers as well. Conclusions: SBG and BS extracts significantly reduce inflammation and impair fibrosis in intestinal epithelial cells and colon myofibroblasts. No cooperative effect is observed
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Full text link“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
Full text linkWe 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
Full text linkWe 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
Characterization of patient-derived intestinal organoids for modelling fibrosis in Inflammatory bowel disease
Full text linkBackground and aims: Intestinal fibrosis is a common complication of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), namely Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), but the precise mechanism by which it occurs is incompletely understood hampering the development of effective therapeutic strategies. Here, we aimed at inducing and characterizing an inflammation-mediated fibrosis in patient-derived organoids (PDOs) issued from crypts isolated from colonic mucosal biopsies of IBD pediatric patients and age matched-control subjects (CTRLs). Methods: Inflammatory-driven fibrosis was induced by exposing CTRL-, CD- and UC-PDOs to the pro-inflammatory cytokine TNF-α for one day, followed by a co-treatment with TNF-α and TGF-β1 for three days. Fibrotic response was proven by analyzing inflammatory and fibrotic markers by RT-qPCR and immunofluorescence. Transcriptomic changes were assessed by RNA-sequencing. Results: Co-treatment with TNF-α and TGF-β1 caused in CTRL- and IBD-PDOs morphological changes towards a mesenchymal-like phenotype and up-regulation of inflammatory, mesenchymal, and fibrotic markers. Transcriptomic profiling highlighted that in all intestinal PDOs, regardless of the disease, the co-exposure to TNF-α and TGF-β1 regulated EMT genes and specifically increased genes involved in positive regulation of cell migration. Finally, we demonstrated that CD-PDOs display a specific response to fibrosis compared to both CTRL- and UC-PDOs, mainly characterized by upregulation of nuclear factors controlling transcription. Conclusions: This study demonstrates that intestinal PDOs may develop an inflammatory-derived fibrosis thus representing a promising tool to study fibrogenesis in IBD. Fibrotic PDOs show increased expression of EMT genes. In particular, fibrotic CD-PDOs display a specific gene expression signature compared to UC and CTRL-PDOs
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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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