1,721,005 research outputs found
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
The 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
“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
We 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
We 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
Brain Responses to Sugar: Implications for Alcohol Use Disorder and Obesity
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)Obesity and alcohol use may together account for 640,000 adult deaths each year in the United States. In both cases, overconsumption drives untoward effects. Alcohol use and obesity also both relate to sweet liking, as sugar consumption is consistently linked to weight gain and intense sweet liking has been linked to an inherited risk for alcohol use disorder (AUD). However, the neural underpinnings of these associations are largely unknown. Thus, we used sugar-sweetened water administration during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to probe these relationships in two studies. In the first, we tested the relationship between a known AUD risk factor, subjective response to alcohol, and the brain response to both sucrose and monetary reward in 140 young adults. We found a significant positive correlation between the enjoyable component of subjective responses to a standardized intravenous alcohol exposure and activation to high-concentration sucrose (but not monetary reward) in the right dorsal anterior insula and the supplementary motor area, supporting a role for these regions in AUD risk. In the second study, we investigated the neural mechanisms of sweet liking decreases following bariatric surgery, the most effective obesity treatment. Here, we evaluated the change in brain activation to sucrose in 24 women before (BMI 47.0 + 6.9 kg/m2) and 21 women after (BMI 37.6 + 6.5 kg/m2) bariatric surgery and compared the pre- and post-surgical activation patterns to those of 21 normal to overweight (BMI 23.5 + 2.5 kg/m2) control participants. Brain activation did not differ between controls and surgery participants at either time point. However, activation to sucrose in reward, but not sensory, regions decreased significantly after surgery, consistent with reduced drive to consume sweet foods. Together, these studies highlight the utility of quantifying brain responses to sweet taste as a method to understand the mechanisms underlying overconsumptive behavior
Using brain connectomics to detect functional connectivity differences in Alzheimer's disease
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)Prodromal Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has recently been identified as a disease state where pathophysiological changes may progress despite the absence of significant clinical symptoms. Yet, the specific processes of neural dysfunction occurring during this preclinical phase remain unclear. Resting state fMRI (RS-fMRI) in combination with brain connectomic measurements may be able to provide ways to measure subtle connectivity changes in different neurological disease states. For instance, RS-fMRI scans allow us to determine functionally connected yet spatially distinct brain regions that can then be separated into resting-state networks (RSNs). More recently, the exploration of RSNs in disease states have proved promising since they have been reliably altered when compared to a control population. By using brain connectomic approaches to assess functional connectivity we can evaluate the human connectome from a different and more global perspective to help us better understand and detect prodromal neurodegenerative disease states
Investigating the Role of Lysine Methylation in Neuronal Differentiation
IUINeuronal differentiation is a critical process during brain development, and aberration in neuronal differentiation has emerged as a major point of convergence for neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs). Thus, there is a critical need to understand the molecular mechanisms that regulate neuronal cell differentiation. The reversible post-translational modification lysine methylation has reported regulatory roles in neuronal differentiation. While histone lysine methylation is well-studied, insights into the role of non-histone lysine methylation in differentiation remain limited, partly due to the lack of high-throughput profiling in neuronal models. The enzymes that mediate lysine methylation – lysine methyltransferases (KMTs) and demethylases (KDMs) – are critical for brain development. Over a third of KMTs/KDMs have been associated with NDDs, and haploinsufficiency of a number of these enzymes, including the lysine methyltransferase ASH1L, results in aberrations in neuronal differentiation. The overall objective of this work was to gain mechanistic insight into the regulation of neuronal differentiation by lysine methylation of histone and non-histone proteins. Toward this end, we employed a quantitative proteomics approach (tandem mass tag LC-MS/MS) to profile global changes in lysine methylation across differentiation of human neural progenitor cells into post-mitotic, dopaminergic-like neurons using the Lund human mesencephalic (LUHMES) cell model. We quantified hundreds of lysine methylation events on a range of diverse non-histone proteins of biological and clinical interest. To our knowledge, this is the first report of global profiling of lysine methylation across neuronal differentiation by quantitative mass spectrometry. We also sought to determine the contribution of the lysine methyltransferase activity of the NDD-associated enzyme ASH1L toward regulation of LUHMES differentiation. We found that treatment with AS-99, a small molecule inhibitor against ASH1L KMT activity, resulted in deficiencies in neurite length and branching, supporting a critical role for ASH1L KMT activity in LUHMES differentiation regulation. Using biochemical approaches, we confirmed histone H3K36 as a lysine methylation substrate of ASH1L in vitro, and we elucidated the substrate selectivity of ASH1L. Future work will determine the impact of ASH1L-mediated substrate methylation toward regulation of LUHMES differentiation. Taken together, this work supports a critical role for lysine methylation in the regulation of neuronal differentiation
Transcriptomic Profiling in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer's Disease Using Neuroimaging Endophenotypes
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a devastating neurodegenerative disease affecting more than 6 million Americans and 50 million people worldwide currently. It is an irreversible neurodegenerative disease which causes decline in memory, cognition, personality, and other functions which eventually lead to death due to complete brain failure.
Recently there has been a lot of research that has focused on enabling early intervention and disease prevention in AD which could have a significant impact on this disease, be crucial for life management, assessment of risk for future generations, and assistance in end-of-life preparation. For a late-life complex multifactorial disease, such as AD, where both genetic and environmental factors are involved, integrating multiple layers of genetic, imaging, and other biomarker data is a critical step for therapeutic discovery and building predictive risk assessment tools.
The multifactorial nature of AD suggests that multiple therapeutic targets need to be identified and tested together. Hence, we need a systems-level approach to build biomarker profiles which can be used for drug discovery and screening/risk assessment. The research presented in this dissertation focuses on utilizing a systems level approach to identify promising imaging genetics biomarkers that provide insight into dysregulated biological pathways in AD pathogenesis and identify critical mRNA measures that can be investigated further within the scope of novel therapeutics, as well as input variables in predictive models for AD risk, screening, and diagnosis. The overall research goal was the development of systems level, imaging genetics biomarker signatures to serve as tools for risk analysis and therapeutic discovery in AD. The specific outcomes of the analyses were characterization of patterns in gene expression at systems level using neuroimaging endophenotypes, and identification of specific driver genes and genotypic variants, which can inform predictive modeling for diagnosis, risk, and pathogenic profiling in AD
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