Tracing data journeys through medical case reports: Conceptualizing case reports not as 'anecdotes' but productive epistemic constructs, or why zebras can be useful

Medical case reports provide an important example of data journeying: they are used to collect data and make them available for re-use to others in the field including clinicians, biomedical researchers, and health policymakers. In this paper, I explore how data journey in case reports, with particular focus on the earliest stages of the process, namely from creation and publication of case reports to the initial re-uses of them and data within them. I investigate key themes relating to case reporting and re-use, including factors which seem to smooth the path along which the data captured by a case report journey via broader citation patterns and detailed qualitative analysis of highly re-used case reports. This analysis reveals some of the key factors associated with the case reports whose data have greater amounts of journeying including publication in a general medical journal; that the data have broader implications and evidential value for topical or even urgent issues for instance in public health; and use in the case report of multiple research methods or concepts from diverse subfields. These findings along with standardization of case reporting are shown to have epistemological implications, particularly for how we understand the journeying of data.Rachel A. Anken

Symptoms of the naturalisation of the Turkey oak (Quercus cerris L.) in Polish forests

The Turkey oak (Quercus cerris L.), the natural range of which embraces southern Europe and Asia Minor, belongs to trees rarely introduced into Polish forests. Tree stands where it appears, established before the Second World War, can be found in some 20 localities, mostly in the western part of the country. Because this species is capable of a natural renewal in a woodland environment, a research was made to find in what conditions and how far it undergoes spontaneous naturalisation. Three study sites were chosen in the forests of central Wielkopolska. An inventory was made of mature stands of the Turkey oak and its generative renewal. Plant communities in which the young generation of Q. cerris usually appears were characterised. It was found that self-sown seedlings of this species grew at a distance of up to 2,500 m from parent trees. The highest number and the greatest density of specimens of the secondary generation of the Turkey oak were found at ‘Racot’, which is a 100-hectare, mid-field woodland island where mesotrophic habitats predominate and where about 50% of the area is occupied by communities with manmade pine tree stands. At all sites, Q. cerris penetrates primarily this type of deformed phytocoenoses, developing mostly on former farmland. It has become a permanent component of the underbrush and undergrowth in them, and in some places, it also makes up the tree layer. It was observed that in the study area, it penetrated the woodland environment much more effectively than Quercus rubra, considered an invasive species. The expansion of the Turkey oak in several of the examined localities can be regarded as a basic manifestation of its naturalisation in places where there are phytocoenoses with pine stands in broad-leaf forest habitats in the neighbourhood of parent trees

Porous graphitic materials obtained from carbonization of organic xerogels doped with transition metal salts

Porous carbons with a well developed graphitic phase were obtained via the pyrolysis of FeCl3-, NiCl2-, and CoCl2-doped organic xerogels. Doping was realized through salt solubilization in a water/methanol solution of resorcinol and furfural. Carbon xerogels with tailored particles, porous morphology and various degrees of graphitization were obtained depending of the water/methanol ratio and the salt content and type in the starting solution of substrates.When obtained via pyrolysis, carbon xerogels retain the overall open-celled structure exhibiting depleted microporosity and a well-developed mesoporic region that expands into macropores. The removal of metal leads to carbon xerogels with specific surface areas between 170 and 585 m2/g and pore volume up to 0·76 cm3/g. The possibility of enhancing the porosity of xerogels via templating with colloidal silica was also investigated. It was assumed that from the three investigated salts, FeCl3 makes the best choice for graphitization catalyst precursor to obtain uniformly graphitized mesoporous carbon xerogels. The obtained carbon samples were characterized by means of SEM, TEM, X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, N2 physisorption and thermogravimetric analysis. © Indian Academy of Sciences.113141sciescopu