1,720,961 research outputs found
Differences in wrist movements during a clinical hand function test
No full textA large normative data set of upper limb movements has been collected using passive reflective markers placed on the forearm, wrist, hand and fingers. Movements were captured by a Vicon motion analysis system whilst undertaking a clinical hand function assessment, the Southampton Hand Assessment Procedure. Light and heavyweight versions of objects were tested and initial results have shown interesting variations that correspond with physiological and functional approaches to movement
'I wear them every day, 365 days a year': children's perspectives on orthoses
No full textObjective: The aim of this small, mainly qualitative, study was to discover what a group of children with cerebral palsy (CP) think of their orthoses and the effect they have on their walking. The study complemented a biomechanical assessment of the children walking with, and without, their orthoses.Method: Fourteen children were recruited from physiotherapy departments located in a residential school and two child development centres. The children were aged between 5 and 16 years, and had a diagnosis of CP. Between them, the children wore a variety of orthoses and used a variety of walking aids, although the Kaye walker was the most frequently used. The children’s views and experiences were gathered by semi-structured interview. During the biomechanical assessment the children were also asked to rate four aspects of their walking – speed, ease, steadiness, and level of tiredness – by means of pictorial scales. The audiotaped interview data were transcribed and subjected to content analysis. The ratings from the scales were compared using the Wilcoxon signed ranks test.Results: Most children wore their orthoses for the majority of the time, found them comfortable, and some reported definite benefits to wearing them. Even when children did not identify specific benefits they seemed to accept wearing the orthoses. Children’s ratings of their walking with and without orthoses identified no clear preference. The difference in ratings was not statistically significant apart from level of tiredness which was significantly in favour of walking without orthoses (z=–1.983, p=0.047). There was a lack of consistency between the children’s ratings and the results from the biomechanical assessments, which were also inconclusive. However, one child, for whom definite improvements were seen in velocity and energy costs when wearing orthoses, consistently rated her own performance as better with orthoses.Conclusions: The children’s experiences of wearing orthoses were mainly positive or neutral. The children did not consistently identify a preference for walking with or without orthoses.This may have been due to their age, their expectations, or the fact that the findings of the biomechanical assessments were not consistent either. The experience of carrying out this study indicates that children are able to express their views about, and experiences of, a therapeutic intervention.Acknowledgements: The children who took part in the study and their families; the physiotherapists who helped with recruitment, and the charity HOPE, for funding
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
Is hand-held dynamometry useful for the measurement of quadriceps strength in older people? A comparison with gold standard Biodex dynamometry
No full textBackground: The lower limb muscle strength is an important determinant of physical function in older people. However, measurement in clinical and epidemiological settings has been limited because of the requirement for large-scale equipment. A protocol using a novel, versatile hand-held dynamometer (HHD) has been developed to measure the quadriceps strength in a supine position. Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the validity of this new methodology for measuring the lower limb muscle strength compared to the gold standard Biodex dynamometer. Methods: The supine quadriceps strength was measured twice with each of the Biodex and the HHD in 20 men and women, aged 61-81 years, on their non-dominant leg. The agreement between the peak torques obtained by Biodex and HHD was analyzed. Results: The mean peak Biodex and HHD results were 83.4 ± (SD) 28.0 Nm and 68.9 ± 19.6 Nm, respectively. The HHD undermeasured the quadriceps strength by an average of 14.5 Nm (95% CI 8.5, 20.6) compared to the Biodex, and this effect was most marked in the strongest participants. Nevertheless, there was a good correlation between the measures (r = 0.91, p < 0.0001). Classification of individuals into tertiles of muscle strength showed good agreement between the two methods (Κ = 0.69, p < 0.0001). Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the HHD using a supine positioning offers a feasible, inexpensive, and portable test of quadriceps muscle strength for use in healthy older people. It underestimates the absolute quadriceps strength compared to the Biodex particularly in stronger people, but is a useful tool for ranking muscle strength of older people in epidemiological studies. It may also be of value for quick and objective assessment of physical function in the clinical setting
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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