1,721,026 research outputs found
Identification of stem cell markers lgr5, lgr6 and sox9 in canine hair follicle and epidermal tumours
No full textEvidence is accumulating that tumours are driven by cancer stem cells. We investigated the expression of three putative stem cell (SC) markers, Lgr5, Sox9, at both protein and mRNA level, and Lgr6 mRNA, in 43 canine hair follicles (HF) and 18 cutaneous epidermal tumors in order to examine the possible contribution of HF SCs in their development and progression. Fisher's exact test was applied to evaluate the significance of the gene and protein expression levels of the investigated molecules and their correlation with histopathological parameters and malignancy. Lgr5 immunolabelling was not detected in any of the tumours analyzed, despite positive staining in the surrounding HFs. The expression of Lgr6 and Lgr5 mRNA was observed in the majority of the cases. Sox9 was expressed in several tumours at both the protein and the mRNA levels. Sox9 positive cells were mainly present among the basaloid neoplastic cells of infundibular keratinizing acanthoma and of squamous cell carcinoma, and in some cases of basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and trichoblastoma. A statistically significant correlation was observed between lack of Sox9 protein expression and histologically assessed malignancy (P=0.0448). The presence of Sox9 positive cells in both epidermal and HF tumours suggests their involvement in the development of these tumours. Our results suggest that Sox9 might represent a marker of HF differentiation and its expression in BCCs might indicate a differentiation of these tumors along the line of the outer root sheath. A significant correlation was observed between absent/low Lgr5 mRNA levels and histologically assessed malignancy (P=0.0001), suggesting a possible transient function of the molecule in the development of the investigated tumors. The highest Lgr6 gene expression level was observed in the trichoblastoma cases, indicating a possible role of the molecule in the development of this type of tumour
Quantitative analysis of tryptase- and chymase-containing mast cells in eosinophilic conditions of cats
No full textThe presence and density of tryptase-positive/chymase-positive mast cells (MCs) (MCTC), chymase-positive/tryptase-negative MCs (MCC), and tryptase-positive/chymase-negative MCs (MCT) in lesional skin from cats with eosinophilic conditions were investigated. Skin biopsy specimens from eight cats with eosinophilic plaque (three cats), eosinophilic granuloma (two cats), and eosinophilic dermatitis (three cats) were studied. Toluidine blue staining and a double-enzyme-immunohistochemical staining technique were performed to determine MC density and MC subtypes, respectively. MC density varied from 170.3 to 503 cells/mm(2) (mean value of 314.9 cells/mm(2)). In the superficial dermis, 5.9% of the MC belonged to the MCT, 12.8% to the MCC, and 81.2% to the MCTC subtype. In the deep dermis, 12.8% belonged to the MCT, 12.8% to the MCC, and 73.8% to the MCTC subtype. It is the first time that MCC have been identified. The double-labeling procedure proved to be a reliable tool for identifying simultaneously the presence of MC subtypes in feline skin
Quantitative enzyme-immunohistochemical analysis of tryptase and chymase containing mast cell in eosinophilic conditions of cats
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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
Ensemble Latent Space Roadmap for Improved Robustness in Visual Action Planning
No full textPlanning in learned latent spaces helps to decrease the dimensionality of raw observations. In this work, we propose to leverage the ensemble paradigm to enhance the robustness of latent planning systems. We rely on our Latent Space Roadmap (LSR) framework, which builds a graph in a learned structured latent space to perform planning. Given multiple LSR framework instances, that differ either on their latent spaces or on the parameters for constructing the graph, we use the action information as well as the embedded nodes of the produced plans to define similarity measures. These are then utilized to select the most promising plans. We validate the performance of our Ensemble LSR (ENS-LSR) on simulated box stacking and grape harvesting tasks as well as on a real-world robotic T-shirt folding experiment
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