1,721,103 research outputs found
The measurement of patellar alignment in patellofemoral pain syndrome: are we confusing assumptions with evidence?
No full textPatellofemoral pain syndrome is one of the most common orthopaedic complaints presenting to physical therapists. Although its etiology is uncertain, the cause is most often considered to be malalignment or lateral tracking of the patella. Consequently, measurement of patellar alignment has come to be accepted as an integral part of the examination of patellofemoral pain syndrome. Various measurement techniques exist, both clinical and radiological, and these have been frequently used in the diagnosis and treatment of the condition. As a corollary, the widespread use of such measurements has also lent weight to the theory that patellar malalignment is one of the primary causes of patellofemorai pain syndrome. However, an analysis of the literature reveals that the vast majority of these measurement procedures lack the appropriate scientific qualities to be considered acceptable measurement tools, including questionable reliability and validity, and an absence of appropriate normative data and a gold standard. This paper assesses the evidence for the usefulness of the most commonly used measures of patellar alignment and concludes that many of the beliefs of the clinical community with regard to the existence and measurement of patellar malalignment in patellofemoral pain syndrome may be based largely on assumptions and not on evidence
A multicenter, single-masked study of medial, neutral, and lateral patellar taping in individuals with patellofemoral pain syndrome
No full textStudy Design: A multicenter, single-masked study of patients with patellofemoral pain syndrome (PFPS) using a repeated-measures design. Objective: To compare 3 different methods of patellar taping for individuals with PFPS.Background: Patellar taping is commonly used as a treatment for PFPS. It is commonly thought that taping works by medially realigning the patella. However, comparisons have been rarely made with other methods of taping which attempt to realign the patella in different directions.Methods and Measures: Seventy-one patients with PFPS (39 men, 32 women; average age ± SD, 34 ± 10 years) from 3 different treatment centers were tested. Each patient performed 4 single step-downs from a standard 8-inch (20.3-cm) platform, initially with the patella untaped and then with the patella taped in a medial, neutral, and lateral direction. Pain was recorded on a standard 11-point numerical pain rating scale. The sequence of taping was randomly allocated and patients were masked to the method used. The methods of taping were compared using repeated-measures generalized linear model analysis.Results: All methods of taping significantly decreased pain when compared to the untaped condition (P<.0001). Neutral- and lateral-glide techniques produced a significantly greater degree of pain relief (P<.0001) than the medial-glide technique. Conclusion: In this study, patellar taping produced an immediate decrease in pain in patients with PFPS, irrespective of how taping was applied. These data raise questions as to the mechanism of action of patellar taping. Furthermore, these results suggest that it is unlikely that taping works by altering patellar position
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
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