1,721,050 research outputs found
Pericardial agenesis: a case report of a rare congenital heart disease
Background Pericardial agenesis is a rare congenital heart disease characterized by a variable clinical presentation. Case summary A 32-year-old man was sent by an occupational health physician to our health care centre because of pathological electrocardiogram (ECG). On transthoracic echocardiogram, we had some difficulty to obtain a good quality of four-chamber apical view that was shifted upper and laterally towards the left anterior axillary line. Nonetheless, an abnormal diastolic expansion of the apex of the left ventricle (LV) that had an otherwise normal systolic function was detected. A chest X-ray confirmed the leftward shift of the heart, with the elongation of the left border of cardiac silhouette and cardiac MRI, finally revealed the absence of left-sided pericardium associated with a leftward dislocation of the heart and a dysmorphism of the LV apex that appeared rounded and curved. The non-invasive work-up was completed with 48 h long Holter ECG that was unremarkable. The exercise test was also negative for both inducible myocardial ischaemia and arrhythmias. Patient was scheduled for loop-recorder implantation, and a 6-month clinical follow-up was advised. Discussion Pericardial agenesis is a rare congenital heart disease associated with an increased risk of cardiac arrhythmias and type A aortic dissection, however its clinical course could be also completely unremarkable. The diagnosis is challenging, and cardiac MRI remains the gold standard imaging modality. In complete left-sided and asymptomatic forms, no treatment is needed. Prognosis is not well established due to both the rarity of disease and extreme variability of clinical presentation
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
Comparison of sequentially measured Aloka echo-tracking one-point pulse wave velocity with SphygmoCor carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity.
Objectives: Recently, echo-tracking-derived measures of arterial stiffness have been introduced in clinical practice for the
assessment of one-point pulse wave velocity. The purpose of this study was to find a relation between carotid–femoral pulse
wave velocity and one-point carotid pulse wave velocity, and to find a value of one-point carotid pulse wave velocity that
predicts carotid–femoral pulse wave velocity higher than 12 m/s.
Methods: A total of 160 consecutive subjects (112 male/48 female, mean age = 51.5 ± 14.1 years; 96 healthy, 44 hypertensives,
13 with aortic valve disease, and 7 with left ventricular dysfunction) were studied. Carotid–femoral pulse wave velocity was
measured with the SphygmoCor system and one-point carotid pulse wave velocity with high-definition echo-tracking system
(ProSound Alpha10; Aloka, Tokyo, Japan).
Results: Both carotid–femoral pulse wave velocity and one-point carotid pulse wave velocity correlated significantly with
each other (r = 0.539, p < 0.001) and with age (one-point carotid pulse wave velocity r = 0.618, carotid–femoral pulse wave
velocity r = 0.617, p < 0.0001 for both). Median value of carotid–femoral pulse wave velocity (7.2 m/s, 95% confidence interval
= 6.2–8.9) was systematically higher than that of one-point carotid pulse wave velocity (5.8 m/s, 95% confidence interval =
5–6.6). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.85, identifying the cutoff for one-point pulse wave
velocity of 6.65 m/s as the best predictor of carotid–femoral pulse wave velocity more than 12 m/s (sensitivity = 0.818,
specificity = 0.819).
Conclusions: One-point carotid pulse wave velocity correlates with carotid–femoral pulse wave velocity, and the cutoff of
6.65 m/s was the best predictor of carotid–femoral pulse wave velocity over 12 m/s
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
Can apical ballooning cardiomyopathy and anterior STEMI be differentiated based on β1 and β2-adrenergic receptors polymorphisms?
Catecholamine excess along with an exaggerated sympathetic stimulation appears to play a major role in the pathophysiological mechanism of tako-tsubo cardiomyopathy (TTC), which mimics acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). The aim of the present study was to investigate differences in the distribution of allelic variants of β1- and β2-adrenoceptors between TTC and anterior STEMI patients compared to normal subjects
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
We have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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