1,720,973 research outputs found
Environmental Impact on Immune System
No full textEnvironmental influences, either social or physical, can affect any aspect of human health, from disease onset (accumulating in their effects throughout life span) to disease progression and survival. There is evidence suggesting that behavior, nutrients, and pollutants are environmental factors altering the immune-metabolism response and affecting the relationship between the commensal microbiota and its human host, contributing to the increasing incidence of allergic and autoimmune diseases. This chapter focuses on presenting the key research findings describing the regulation of immune response and the crosstalk between the environment and the immune and the metabolic systems. We highlight human epidemiological data and animal studies that suggest that endocrine-disrupting chemicals’ (EDCs’) exposure can affect immune cells by acting on development, cellular, and humoral response. Finally, we examine the impact of nutritional status and microbiota on innate and adaptive immune response
Everything you ever wanted to know about phosphodiesterase 5 inhibitors and the heart (but never dared ask). how do they work
No full textIntroduction: Phosphodiesterase 5 inhibitors (PDE5i) were developed while investigating novel treatments for coronary artery disease, but their andrological side effects shifted their indication toward the management of erectile dysfunction. Although PDE5i are now also indicated for pulmonary arterial hypertension and there are mounting preclinical and clinical evidences about their potentially beneficial cardiac effects, their use remains controversial and the involved mechanisms remain unclear.
Materials and methods: This review aimed to analyze the effects of PDE5i administration in various animal and humans models of cardiovascular diseases.
Results: Animal studies have shown that PDE5i have protective effects in several models of cardiac disease. In humans, some studies showed that PDE5i improves microvascular and endothelial dysfunction and exerts positive effects in different samples of cardiovascular (CV) impairment. In contrast, other studies found no benefit (and no harm) in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. The discrepancies in these findings are likely related to the fact that the mechanisms targeted by PDE5i in human disease are still poorly understood and the target population not yet identified. The mechanisms of actions herein reviewed suggest that hypertrophy, microvascular impairment, and inflammation, should be variably present for PDE5i to work. All these conditions frequently coexist in diabetes. A gender responsiveness has also been recently proposed.
Conclusions: Continuous PDE5 inhibition may exert cardioprotective effects, improving endothelial function and counteracting cardiac remodeling in some but not all conditions. A better patient selection could help to clarify the controversies on PDE5i use for CV disorders
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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