1,721,041 research outputs found
SOME PERINATAL ENDOCRINE AND MORPHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF CANINE SPECIES
Full text linkDespite the huge literature about dog medicine, the perinatal period of growth and development and possible perturbations of the health of fetuses and newborns are still scarcely investigated, but with a recent, increasing scientific interest. The present thesis was therefore aimed to investigate some perinatal aspects of canine perinatology. Firstly, the study focused on the presence of some growth and metabolic factors and protective substances in dog fetal fluids at term of normal pregnancy. About growth and metabolic factors, the first study showed that insulin-like growth factors I (IGF-I) were higher in amniotic (AM) than allantoic (AL) fluid and the effect of breed size, even if opposite, on both IGF-I and non-esterified fatty acids (NEFA) was evidenced. The findings suggested that AM IGF-I could be used as an indicator of growth potential in canine species, whereas AM NEFA could work as a marker of fat mobilization for an energy request. The second study on fetal fluids, aimed to assess AM and AL IgG and lysozyme concentrations, documented higher IgG levels in AM than AL fluid, as a consequence of a supposed direct fetal IgG production, whereas no significant differences were found in lysozyme values between the two fluids. Maternal parity was demonstrated to affect IgG concentrations. A second area of study was the assessment of newborns hair and nails usefulness as the newest non invasive matrices for a long-term retrospective investigation of the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal axis activation, by cortisol (C) concentrations analysis. The study evidenced that C was detectable in both matrices, with significant higher values in premature puppies compared to term-born dead puppies or puppies dead within the first 30 days of age. Furthermore, because of the newborn puppy high susceptibility to bacterial infection, often followed by death, the fourth study investigated the bacterial involvement in canine neonatal mortality, demonstrating that bacterial infections, above all by E. coli, alone or in association with other bacteria, represent an important cause of neonatal losses. In addition, the study highlighted the importance of the antimicrobial susceptibility test in case of suspected neonatal bacterial infection for a more targeted therapy of surviving litter-mates and for a better management of further gestations in bitch with previous neonatal mortality. The last study was designed to investigate some aspects of skeletal development during the neonatal period in the attempt to provide further knowledge about the first month of skeletal growth in puppies, but also aimed to assess the possible use of some radiographic, morphometric, and anatomic parameters for the age estimation in newborn dogs. The study proved that the neonatal growth occurs gradually as the age progresses, and simultaneously in the body, limbs, and skull. The radiographic evaluation of the ossification centers appearance resulted a useful tool to estimate the neonatal age in puppies, even if during the first 14 days of age significant skeletal changes were not observed. In this respect, the radiographic and anatomic measures of the hindlimb long bones and skull length seem to provide better guarantees; specifically, the neurocranium width as well as tibial and femoral lengths resulted the most correlated measurements with the age. Thus, in the future radiographic and/or anatomical morphometry of limbs and skull could become the best tool for neonatal age estimation
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
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