1,721,078 research outputs found
Assessment of cellular profile and lung function with repeated bronchoalveolar lavage in individual mice
No full textWalters, Dianne M., Marsha Wills-Karp, and Wayne Mitzner. Assessment of cellular profile and lung function with repeated bronchoalveolar lavage in individual mice. Physiol. Genomics 2: 29–36, 2000.—In this study, we sought to develop procedures that would enable repeated bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) in individual mice on multiple occasions. To achieve this objective, we first developed the procedures that would allow individual mice to survive a whole lung lavage, and then tested whether, on subsequent days, there was an effect of this initial BAL on the cell profile, lung permeability, and baseline respiratory function. Our results demonstrate that the repeated lavage procedure can be readily carried out in individual mice of different strains on multiple occasions. The lavage procedure itself results in immediate increases in respiratory system resistance and concomitant decreases in compliance, but these parameters return to prelavage values by the 2nd or 3rd day postlavage. Lavage also induces variable increases in inflammatory cells depending on the strain used. However, in all three strains examined here (A/J, BALB/c, and C3H/HeJ), inflammatory cell numbers returned to baseline values within 3 days after an initial lavage procedure. The ability to perform repeated BAL in individual mice should prove to be an extremely useful tool in a variety of functional genomic studies in the lung.</jats:p
Effect of lung inflation in vivo on airways with smooth muscle tone or edema
No full text Brown, Robert H., Wayne Mitzner, Yonca Bulut, and Elizabeth M. Wagner. Effect of lung inflation in vivo on airways with smooth muscle tone or edema. J. Appl. Physiol. 82(2): 491–499, 1997.—Fibrous attachments to the airway wall and a subpleural surrounding pressure can create an external load against which airway smooth muscle must contract. A decrease in this load has been proposed as a possible cause of increased airway narrowing in asthmatic individuals. To study the interaction between the airways and the surrounding lung parenchyma, we investigated the effect of lung inflation on relaxed airways, airways contracted with methacholine, and airways made edematous by infusion of bradykinin into the bronchial artery. Measurements were made in anesthetized sheep by using high-resolution computed tomography to visualize changes in individual airways. During methacholine infusion, airway area was decreased but increased minimally with increases in transpulmonary pressure. Bradykinin infusion caused a 50% increase in airway wall area and a small decrease in airway luminal area. In contrast to airways contracted with methacholine, the luminal area after bradykinin increased substantially with increases in transpulmonary pressure, reaching 99% of the relaxed area at total lung capacity. Thus airway edema by itself did not prevent full distension of the airway at lung volumes approaching total lung capacity. Therefore, we speculate that if a deep inspiration fails to relieve airway narrowing in vivo, this must be a manifestation of airway smooth muscle contraction and not airway wall edema. </jats:p
Interaction between airway edema and lung inflation on responsiveness of individual airways in vivo
No full text Brown, Robert H., Wayne Mitzner, and Elizabeth M. Wagner.Interaction between airway edema and lung inflation on responsiveness of individual airways in vivo. J. Appl. Physiol. 83(2): 366–370, 1997.—Inflammatory changes and airway wall thickening are suggested to cause increased airway responsiveness in patients with asthma. In five sheep, the dose-response relationships of individual airways were measured at different lung volumes to methacholine (MCh) before and after wall thickening caused by the inflammatory mediator bradykinin via the bronchial artery. At 4 cmH2O transpulmonary pressure (Ptp), 5 μg/ml MCh constricted the airways to a maximum of 18 ± 3%. At 30 cmH2O Ptp, MCh resulted in less constriction (to 31 ± 5%). Bradykinin increased airway wall area at 4 and 30 cmH2O Ptp (159 ± 6 and 152 ± 4%, respectively; P < 0.0001). At 4 cmH2O Ptp, bradykinin decreased airway luminal area (13 ± 2%; P< 0.01), and the dose-response curve was significantly lower ( P = 0.02). At 30 cmH2O, postbradykinin, the maximal airway narrowing was not significantly different (26 ± 5%; P = 0.76). Bradykinin produced substantial airway wall thickening and slight potentiation of the MCh-induced airway constriction at low lung volume. At high lung volume, bradykinin increased wall thickness but had no effect on the MCh-induced airway constriction. We conclude that inflammatory fluid leakage in the airways cannot be a primary cause of airway hyperresponsiveness. </jats:p
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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