1,721,680 research outputs found
Management of graft-versus-host disease in paediatric bone marrow transplant recipients
No full textWe discuss clinical strategies for the prophylaxis and treatment of both acute and chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) with particular attention to children. Grades II to IV acute GVHD occur in 10 to 50% of patients given an allogeneic transplantation of haemopoietic stem cells (HSCT) from a genotypically HLA-identical donor. A significantly higher incidence and severity of the disease is reported in patients receiving transplants from partially matched family donors or unrelated volunteers. Younger individuals or patients receiving HSCT from younger donors develop GVHD less frequently than do older recipients. Severe acute GVHD is characterised by a significant decrease in survival probability, even though the graft-versus-leukaemia activity associated with both acute and chronic GVHD may reduce the risk of leukaemia relapse. Prophylaxis of acute GVHD usually consists of in vivo post-grafting immunosuppression with cyclosporin alone or in combination with methotrexate; methotrexate alone can be considered in leukaemia patients with a high risk of relapse. In recent years, tacrolimus is increasingly being used instead of cyclosporin, alone or in combination with methotrexate. In vitro T cell depletion in paediatric patients is usually reserved for those with transplants from partially matched family donors or unrelated volunteers. The treatment of patients with grades II to IV acute GVHD should be immediate and aggressive, as the quality and duration of the response directly correlates with survival. The overall response rate to treatment is often unsatisfactory, ranging from 40 to 50% of cases. First-line treatment usually consists of corticosteroids. In patients not responding to corticosteroids, antilymphocyte globulin and monoclonal antibodies directed towards lymphocytes and/or cytokines produced during GVHD are employed, but with variable success. Patients experiencing acute GVHD are also prone to develop chronic GVHD. whose classical treatment is based on the use of cyclosporin and corticosteroids. More recently, encouraging results in the treatment of patients with chronic GVHD have been reported with the use of extracorporeal photochemotherapy. Other drugs, such as ursodeoxycholic acid, etretinate and clofazimine, are under evaluation
Transplantation of peripheral blood stem cells mobilized by haematopoietic growth factors in childhood.
No full textPeripheral blood stem cells (PBSC), mobilised by means of haematopoietic growth factors (HGF) with or without chemotherapy, are being used routinely for autologous rescue after high-dose chemo-radiotherapy in paediatric patients with lymphoma and selected solid tumours because of the ease of collection and the accelerated kinetics of neutrophil and platelet engraftment as compared with bone marrow cells. Recent reports indicated that HGF-mobilised PBSC can also be employed in childhood as an alternative to bone marrow allograft when the donor is an adult or with the aim of reversing graft failure in patients who were previously given a marrow allograft. Notwithstanding this wide use of PBSC, several biological and clinical questions of crucial relevance are still unsolved. In this article, we will analyse: (1) the optimal timing for PBSC collection after cytokine-based mobilising regimens; (2) the variables affecting the yield of peripheral blood progenitors; (3) the minimum threshold and the optimal number of PBSC that should be infused for autologous and allogeneic transplant, respectively; (4) the biological mechanisms underlying mobilisation of haematopoietic stem cells into circulation; (5) the incidence of graft-versus-host disease and the biological characteristics of donor lymphocytes in patients given allogeneic transplant of PBSC; and (6) the most relevant peculiarities in the kinetics of immune recovery of patients given allogeneic transplant of PBSC, as compared to bone marrow transplant recipients
Cross-Linked Polymers as Scaffolds for the Low-Temperature Preparation of Nanostructured Metal Oxides
No full textThe current state of the art of the use of cross-linked organic polymers, both insoluble (resins or gels) and soluble (micro- and nanogels), as aids for the low-temperature preparation of stable metal oxide nanoparticles or nanostructured metal oxides is reviewed herein. Synthetic strategies for inorganic oxide nanomaterials of this kind can greatly benefit from the use of cross-linked polymers, which may act as scaffolds/exotemplates during inorganic nanoparticle synthesis, or as stabilizers following post-synthetic modification of the nanoparticles. Furthermore, the peculiar properties of the organic cross-linked polymers add to those of the inorganic oxide nanoparticles, producing materials with combined properties. The potential applications of such highly promising composite nanomaterials will be also briefly sketched
Versatile plug flow catalytic cell for in situ transmission/fluorescence x-ray absorption fine structure measurements
No full text
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
Stabilisation of monometallic nanoparticles by polyamide 6
No full textMonometallic metal nanoparticles (Pd, Pt, Ag and Ru) stabilised by polyamide 6 (PA6) have been prepared via a polyol process sustained by microwave irradiation. PA6 proved to be a good stabiliser, being spherical particles with little dimensional dispersion identified by transmission electron microscopy. Due to the inclusion of the metals in small amount (up to 3% w/w) into the macromolecular lattice, the polymer underwent changes in thermal behaviour, which, however, do not impair the possibility to process the material. The observed changes in differential scanning calorimetry curves indicated that metal containing PA6 materials are less crystalline and ordered than pure PA6. This was confirmed by diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform analysis, which indicated that the introduction of the metal nanoparticles lowered the conformational order of the polymer matrix and partly disrupted the hydrogen bond network of the polyamide
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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