1,721,014 research outputs found
Plasma Homocysteine and Cardiovascular Organ Damage in a Population with a High Prevalence of Risk Factors
Full text linkIt is unclear whether plasma homocysteine (Hcy) has a direct noxious impact on cardiovascular (CV) system or whether its association with cardiovascular events (CVE) is mediated by established risk factors. To explore the role of Hcy in CV impairment, the study evaluated cross-sectional relationships between plasma Hcy and indices of CV organ damage together with the associations of these indices with the history of CVE
Continuous Simultaneous Recording of Brachial Artery Distension and Wall Shear Rate: a New Boost for Flow-Mediated Vasodilation
Full text linkVascular ultrasound has been extensively applied in the clinical setting to noninvasively assess endothelial function by means of the so-called brachial artery flow mediated dilation (FMD). Despite the usefulness in large-scale epidemiological studies, this approach has revealed some pitfalls for assessing vascular physiology and health in individual subjects. Mainly, a reliable FMD examination should be based on the simultaneous and reliable measurement of both the stimulus, i.e. the wall shear rate (WSR), and the response, i.e. the diameter change. However, multiple technical, practical, and methodological challenges must be faced to meet this goal. In this work, we present the technical developments needed to implement a system to enable extensive and reliable clinical ultrasound FMD examination. It integrates both a hardware, i.e. an upgraded version of the ultrasound advanced open platform (ULA-OP), and a software part, i.e. a signal processing and data analysis platform. The system was applied for a two-center pilot clinical study on 35 young and healthy volunteers. Therefore, we present here the results of a statistical analysis on magnitude, time-course and kinetic parameters of WSR and diameter trends that allowed us to accurately explore the vasodilatory response to the dynamic wall shear rate changes. Our observations demonstrate that a direct and accurate estimation of WSR stimulus by multigate spectral Doppler allows understanding brachial artery vasodilatory response to reactive hyperemia. Drawing inferences on WSR stimulus from the diameter response along with an inaccurate estimation of WSR may cause further uncertainties for the accurate interpretation of the FMD response
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
Circulating soluble IL-6 receptor associates with plaque inflammation but not with atherosclerosis severity and cardiovascular risk
Full text linkBackground: The residual cardiovascular risk in subjects receiving guideline-recommended therapy is related to persistent vascular inflammation and IL-6 represents a target for its treatment. IL-6 binds to receptors on leukocytes and hepatocytes and/or by forming complexes with soluble IL-6 receptors (sIL-6R) binding to gp130 which is present on all cells. Here we aimed to estimate the associations of these two pathways with risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD).Methods: IL-6 and sIL-6R were analyzed using the proximity extension assay. Baseline plasma samples were obtained from participants in the prospective Malmö Diet and Cancer (MDC) study (n = 4661), the SUMMIT VIP study (n = 1438) and the Carotid Plaque Imaging Project (CPIP, n = 285). Incident clinical events were obtained through national registers. Plaques removed at surgery were analyzed by immunohistochemistry and biochemical methods.Results: During 23.1 ± 7.0 years follow-up, 575 subjects in the MDC cohort suffered a first myocardial infarction. Subjects in the highest tertile of IL-6 had an increased risk compared to the lowest tertile (HR and 95% CI 2.60 [2.08-3.25]). High plasma IL-6 was also associated with more atherosclerosis, increased arterial stiffness, and impaired endothelial function in SUMMIT VIP, but IL-6 was only weakly associated with plaque inflammation in CPIP. sIL-6R showed no independent association with risk of myocardial infarction, atherosclerosis severity or vascular function, but was associated with plaque inflammation.Conclusions: Our findings show that sIL-6R is a poor marker of CVD risk and associated vascular changes. However, the observation that sIL-6R reflects plaque inflammation highlights the complexity of the role of IL-6 in CVD.</p
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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