201 research outputs found
Next-generation metrics: responsible metrics and evaluation for open science
This is the final report of the European Commission's Expert Group on Altmetrics, which undertook its work over the course of 2016. The report outlines a framework for next-generation metrics in the context of the EC's Open Science agenda and includes a series of recommendations for how responsible metrics can be built into the design and evaluation of the EU's Ninth Framework Programme (FP9)
A Markov chain model for changes in users’ assessment of search results
Previous research shows that users tend to change their assessment of search results over time. This is a first study that investigates the factors and reasons for these changes, and describes a stochastic model of user behaviour that may explain these changes. In particular, we hypothesise that most of the changes are local, i.e. between results with similar or close relevance to the query, and thus belong to the same ”coarse” relevance category. According to the theory of coarse beliefs and categorical thinking, humans tend to divide the range of values under consideration into coarse categories, and are thus able to distinguish only between cross-category values but not within them. To test this hypothesis we conducted five experiments with about 120 subjects divided into 3 groups. Each student in every group was asked to rank and assign relevance scores to the same set of search results over two or three rounds, with a period of three to nine weeks between each round. The subjects of the last three-round experiment were then exposed to the differences in their judgements and were asked to explain them. We make use of a Markov chain model to measure change in users’ judgments between the different rounds. The Markov chain demonstrates that the changes converge, and that a majority of the changes are local to a neighbouring relevance category. We found that most of the subjects were satisfied with their changes, and did not perceive them as mistakes but rather as a legitimate phenomenon, since they believe that time has influenced their relevance assessment. Both our quantitative analysis and user comments support the hypothesis of the existence of coarse relevance categories resulting from categorical thinking in the context of user evaluation of search results
Harnessing Soluble NK Cell Killer Receptors for the Generation of Novel Cancer Immune Therapy
The natural cytotoxic receptors (NCRs) are a unique set of activating proteins expressed mainly on the surface of natural killer (NK) cells. The NCRs, which include three members; NKp46, NKp44 and NKp30, are critically involved in NK cytotoxicity against different targets, including a wide range of tumor cells derived from various origins. Even though the tumor ligands of the NCRs have not been identified yet, the selective manner by which these receptors target tumor cells may provide an excellent basis for the development of novel anti-tumor therapies. To test the potential use of the NCRs as anti-tumor agents, we generated soluble NCR-Ig fusion proteins in which the constant region of human IgG1 was fused to the extracellular portion of the receptor. We demonstrate, using two different human prostate cancer cell lines, that treatment with NKp30-Ig, dramatically inhibits tumor growth in vivo. Activated macrophages were shown to mediate an ADCC response against the NKp30-Ig coated prostate cell lines. Finally, the Ig fusion proteins were also demonstrated to discriminate between benign prostate hyperplasia and prostate cancer. This may provide a novel diagnostic modality in the difficult task of differentiating between these highly common pathological conditions
Reconstruction of Network Evolutionary History from Extant Network Topology and Duplication History
Genome-wide protein-protein interaction (PPI) data are readily available
thanks to recent breakthroughs in biotechnology. However, PPI networks of
extant organisms are only snapshots of the network evolution. How to infer the
whole evolution history becomes a challenging problem in computational biology.
In this paper, we present a likelihood-based approach to inferring network
evolution history from the topology of PPI networks and the duplication
relationship among the paralogs. Simulations show that our approach outperforms
the existing ones in terms of the accuracy of reconstruction. Moreover, the
growth parameters of several real PPI networks estimated by our method are more
consistent with the ones predicted in literature.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, submitted to ISBRA 201
Correlações entre a contagem de citações de pesquisadores brasileiros, usando o Web of Science, Scopus e Scholar
Network Archaeology: Uncovering Ancient Networks from Present-day Interactions
Often questions arise about old or extinct networks. What proteins interacted
in a long-extinct ancestor species of yeast? Who were the central players in
the Last.fm social network 3 years ago? Our ability to answer such questions
has been limited by the unavailability of past versions of networks. To
overcome these limitations, we propose several algorithms for reconstructing a
network's history of growth given only the network as it exists today and a
generative model by which the network is believed to have evolved. Our
likelihood-based method finds a probable previous state of the network by
reversing the forward growth model. This approach retains node identities so
that the history of individual nodes can be tracked. We apply these algorithms
to uncover older, non-extant biological and social networks believed to have
grown via several models, including duplication-mutation with complementarity,
forest fire, and preferential attachment. Through experiments on both synthetic
and real-world data, we find that our algorithms can estimate node arrival
times, identify anchor nodes from which new nodes copy links, and can reveal
significant features of networks that have long since disappeared.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figure
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On the instability of long-run money demand and the welfare cost of inflation in the U.S.
We evaluate the policy implications of measuring the welfare cost of inflation accounting for instabilities in the long-run money demand for the U.S. over the period 1900-2013. We extend the analysis and reassess the results reported in Lucas (2000) and Ireland (2009), also considering the recent theoretical contributions of Lucas and Nicolini (2015) and Berentsen et al. (2015). Breaks in the long-run money demand give rise to regime-dependent welfare cost estimates. We find that the welfare cost is about 0.1% of annual income over 1976-2013, as compared to 0.8% over 1945-1975. Overall, these values are substantially lower than those reported in the literature
Where There Is No Health Research: What Can Be Done to Fill the Global Gaps in Health Research?
As part of a cluster of articles leading up to the 2012 World Health Report and critically reflecting on the theme of “no health without research," Martin McKee and colleagues examine the question of what to do to build capacity in the many countries around the world where health research is virtually non-existent
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