1,720,957 research outputs found
Pitting corrosion of surgical instruments in disinfectant environments
No full textThe reusable surgical instruments are subject by law to treatments of disinfection and decontamination. Corrosion, although minimal, during these treatments is inacceptable and therefore it is necessary to pay great attention to the choice of materials with which the tools are built and in the composition of disinfecting agents. The main constituents of detergents for disinfecting and decontamination of surgical instruments are quaternary ammonium salts, and organic acids such as peracetic acid. The reusable surgical instruments are manufactured, according to the standard specification DIN EN ISO 7153-1, with stainless steels 304,316 and 420. However the chloride ions present in disinfecting solutions can produce pitting corrosion on stainless steel surgical instruments. This study is a collaboration between the Department of Industrial Engineering of the University of Padua and a company in Padua that produce detergents and disinfectants bactericidal and virucidal. The main goal of the work is to determine the corrosive action of various formulations of detergent and to seek an appropriate inhibitor, compatible with the disinfectant, which is effective in increasing the resistance to pitting corrosion. Two different formulations called F1 and F2 were after compared. The first, called F1, contain chlorides and an various amounts of an inhibitor, while in the second, called F2 the chlorides have been replaced with the amines and no inhibitors were added. The results show that the presence of the inhibitor cause an increase in the resistance to pitting corrosion but also that the best choice is to replace the chloride ions with amines. Corrosion resistance was evaluated with potentiodynamic polarization tests, immersion tests and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) tests
A framework for the optimal design of a minimum set of clinical trials to characterize von Willebrand disease
No full textTowards the optimal design of a minimal set of clinical tests for the identification and characterization of von Willebrand disease
No full text
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
A framework for the optimal design of a minimum set of clinical trials to characterize von Willebrand disease
Full text linkBackground and Objective: Von Willebrand disease (VWD) is one of the most severe inherited bleeding disorder in humans, and it is associated with a qualitative and/or quantitative deficiency of von Willebrand factor, a multimeric glycoprotein fundamental in the coagulation process. At present, the diagnosis of VWD is extremely challenging and mostly based on clinical experience. Kinetic models have been recently proposed and applied to help in the diagnosis and characterization of VWD, but the complexity of these models is such that they requires long and stressful clinical tests, such as the desmopressin response test (DDAVP), to achieve a satisfactory estimation of the individual haemostatic parameters. The goal of this paper is to design a minimal set of clinical tests for the identification of akinetic model to decrease the required time and effort for the characterization and diagnosis of VWD. Methods: A model proposed in the literature is used as a building block to develop a new model, where response surface methodologies have been applied to determine a set of explicit correlations linkingkinetic model parameters to basal clinical trials data. Model-based design of experiments techniques are then used to devise optimally informative tests for model validation which are shorter and easier to implement. Results: Results show an excellent agreement between the original model for VWD and the new proposed model on representing healthy and VWD subjects. The application of experimental design techniques for model validation shows the possibility to drastically reduce the duration of DDAVP tests from 24 h–3 h by exploiting complementary information from basal clinical tests. Conclusions: Basal clinical tests can be used alongside a time-reduced DDAVP test to validate pharmacokinetic models for a quantitative characterisation of subjects affected by VWD and for a quicker and easier diagnosis of the disease
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
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