The Law of Exponential Growth: Evidence, Implications and Forecasts

published or submitted for publicatio

A Bibliometric Analysis Of Terminological And Conceptual Change In Sociology And Economics: With Application To The Design Of Dynamic Thesaural Systems (volumes I And Ii)

Thesauri have been used in the library and information science field to provide a standard descriptor Language for indexers or searchers to use in an information storage and retrieval system. One difficulty has been the maintenance and updating of thesauri considering that terms used to describe concepts in books and papers change over time and vary between users. This study investigated a mechanism by which thesauri can be updated and maintained using citation, co-citation analysis and citation context analysis. It has been demonstrated that citation analysis reflects concepts in a specialty, and reflects term use in a specialty, following the work of Henry Small. This technique of citation context analysis may be used to trace term change in a specialty over time and variation among researchers--the basic pieces of information needed in thesaurus development.;Data bases in sociology and economics were developed using the Social Sciences Citation Indexes, 1966-67, 1973-74 and 1980-81. Twenty-six highly cited and co-cited papers common to these three time periods were then used. Seventy-eight terminology lists were developed from the citation contexts of other papers citing these papers. Two experts in each discipline were asked to group and comment on the lists. The descriptor language produced was compared with a standard descriptor language, i.e., the Library of Congress Subject Headings.;Overall, the experts were able to correctly group and identify these terminology lists and thus were able to identify variation between specialty area terminology. The experts judged a high level of the terms appropriate, i.e., 93.7 percent in economics and 98.7 percent in sociology. The experts were not able to identify any change over time. The comparison with the Library of Congress Subject Headings showed an adequate level of compatibility.;Thus, citation contexts may be a most useful method for developing indexing and thesaural terms descriptive of specialty areas in sociology and economics. Suggestions are given to automate these procedures

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Effect of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor and angiotensin receptor blocker initiation on organ support-free days in patients hospitalized with COVID-19

IMPORTANCE Overactivation of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) may contribute to poor clinical outcomes in patients with COVID-19. Objective To determine whether angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) initiation improves outcomes in patients hospitalized for COVID-19. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS In an ongoing, adaptive platform randomized clinical trial, 721 critically ill and 58 non–critically ill hospitalized adults were randomized to receive an RAS inhibitor or control between March 16, 2021, and February 25, 2022, at 69 sites in 7 countries (final follow-up on June 1, 2022). INTERVENTIONS Patients were randomized to receive open-label initiation of an ACE inhibitor (n = 257), ARB (n = 248), ARB in combination with DMX-200 (a chemokine receptor-2 inhibitor; n = 10), or no RAS inhibitor (control; n = 264) for up to 10 days. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The primary outcome was organ support–free days, a composite of hospital survival and days alive without cardiovascular or respiratory organ support through 21 days. The primary analysis was a bayesian cumulative logistic model. Odds ratios (ORs) greater than 1 represent improved outcomes. RESULTS On February 25, 2022, enrollment was discontinued due to safety concerns. Among 679 critically ill patients with available primary outcome data, the median age was 56 years and 239 participants (35.2%) were women. Median (IQR) organ support–free days among critically ill patients was 10 (–1 to 16) in the ACE inhibitor group (n = 231), 8 (–1 to 17) in the ARB group (n = 217), and 12 (0 to 17) in the control group (n = 231) (median adjusted odds ratios of 0.77 [95% bayesian credible interval, 0.58-1.06] for improvement for ACE inhibitor and 0.76 [95% credible interval, 0.56-1.05] for ARB compared with control). The posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitors and ARBs worsened organ support–free days compared with control were 94.9% and 95.4%, respectively. Hospital survival occurred in 166 of 231 critically ill participants (71.9%) in the ACE inhibitor group, 152 of 217 (70.0%) in the ARB group, and 182 of 231 (78.8%) in the control group (posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitor and ARB worsened hospital survival compared with control were 95.3% and 98.1%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this trial, among critically ill adults with COVID-19, initiation of an ACE inhibitor or ARB did not improve, and likely worsened, clinical outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT0273570