1,720,954 research outputs found
Organ donation: blessing or burden, gift of life or sacrifice?
No full textThe ‘gift of life’ is a popular discourse associated with pro-donation and transplant activists, its use seemingly directed at heightening public awareness about the perceived benefits of organ donation. However such rhetoric does not reflect the depth and complexity of families’ decision-making process. A decision to facilitate the removal of organs from the deceased body, through post mortem surgical intervention, may be better represented as a ‘sacrifice’; a discourse that acknowledges the difficulties encountered by bereaved families in their decision-making about organ donation. To gain insights into the relevance of ‘gift of life’ or ‘sacrifice’ as discourses that inform families’ decision making about donation data from four studies carried out between 1996-2006 were interrogated for evidence of families’ literal, symbolic or metaphorical representations of ‘gift of life’ or ‘sacrifice’ in describing their experiences of donation. This presentation examines the relative value of these two discourses and whether they further our understanding of families’ motivation and decision-making about organ donation. Issues that may provide insights that could potentially contribute to enhancing families’ satisfaction with their decisions, improving support to families and increasing the incidence of donation. Findings indicated that whilst some families were motivated by the idea of the ‘gift of life’ others were de-motivated by deepseated concerns related to the sacrificial element of this gift giving. These concerns were revealed in explicit or metaphorical examples related to cutting, and mutilation, relevant to the cultic notion of sacrifice; examples which evidenced the nature of the hard-wrought decision-making by families. We propose that the discourse of ‘sacrifice’ and the manner in which it impinges on families’ decision-making may help to explain the high refusal rates in populations that appear generally aware of the benefits of organ transplantation
Why relatives refuse organ donation
No full textOrgan donation refusal rates in the UK are of concern (40% rising to 70% in non-white groups). This presentation will discuss a study, commissioned by UK Transplant, which explored the end of life decision-making and hospital experiences of bereaved adults with whom organ and tissue donation was discussed and who declined donation. Twenty-six relatives of 23 deceased individuals, who chose not to donate their deceased relative’s organs for transplant operations, were recruited via three staged media campaigns in large urban areas of the UK, and from four NHS Hospital Trust intensive care units. Data were collected in 2005 via single face to face or telephone interviews. A decision to decline donation did not necessarily depend on views held by the family, or the deceased, in life, except if the deceased had stated they did not wish to be an organ donor. Therefore positive views held by the family, and the wish of the deceased to be a donor did not guarantee that donation would take place. This finding suggests that donation decisions depend, in part, on a number of factors converging. Factors such as: the family’s view about protecting the body and keeping it intact; the timing and manner of the donation discussion; a lack of information about the donation process; a desire not to prolong the perceived suffering of the deceased; a need to be with the dying and to witness the observable ending of life represented by cessation of the heartbeat. As protecting the body was the most frequently recurring theme underpinning a decision not to donate, this theme will be discussed in relation to its potential impact on the transplant programme
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
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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