15,511 research outputs found
Thumb-bangers : exploring the cultural bond between video games and heavy metal
« Heavy Metal Generations » is the fourth volume in the series of papers drawn from the 2012 Music, Metal and Politics international conference (http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/product/heavy-metal-generations/).Heavy metal and video games share an almost simultaneous birth, with Black Sabbath’s debut album in 1970 and Nolan Bushnell’s Computer Space in 1971. From Judas Priest’s ‘Freewheel Burning’ music video in 1984 to Tim Schafer’s Brütal Legend in 2009, the exchanges between these two subcultures have been both reciprocal and exponential. This chapter will present a historical survey of the bond between video games and heavy metal cultures through its highest-profile examples. There are two underlying reasons for this symbiosis: 1) the historical development and popular dissemination of the video game came at an opportune time, first with the video game arcades in the 1970s and early 1980s, and then with the Nintendo Entertainment System, whose technical sound-channel limitations happened to fall in line with the typical structures of heavy metal; 2) heavy metal and video games, along with their creators and consumers, have faced similar sociocultural paths and challenges, notably through the policies set in place by the PMRC and the ESRB, and a flurry of lawsuits and attacks, especially from United States congressmen, that resulted in an overlapping of their respective spaces outside dominant culture. These reasons explain the natural bond between these cultural practices, and the more recent developments like Last Chance to Reason’s Level 2 let us foresee a future where new hybrid creations could emerge
Ammonia : this is not the end but rather the end of the beginning
Hepatic encephalopathy (HE) represents a wide spectrum of neurological or neuropsychological symptoms caused by liver disease and/or portosystemic shunts. The major role of hyperammonemia in association with systemic inflammation and oxidative stress in the pathogenesis of HE has progressively emerged. However, the cascading downstream effects caused by these pathogenic factors remain unresolved. The underlying abnormalities which are thought to cause HE include modification of glutamatergic and GABAergic neurotransmission, mitochondrial dysfunction, energy impairment, lactate dyshomeostasis, increased blood-brain barrier permeability, brain edema/astrocyte swelling, as well as accumulation of toxic compounds (manganese, bile acids, indols)
On the relationship between interdisciplinarity and scientific impact
This paper analyzes the effect of interdisciplinarity on the scientific
impact of individual papers. Using all the papers published in Web of Science
in 2000, we define the degree of interdisciplinarity of a given paper as the
percentage of its cited references made to journals of other disciplines. We
show that, although for all disciplines combined there is no clear correlation
between the level of interdisciplinarity of papers and their citation rates,
there are nonetheless some disciplines in which a higher level of
interdisciplinarity is related to a higher citation rates. For other
disciplines, citations decline as interdisciplinarity grows. One characteristic
is visible in all disciplines: highly disciplinary and highly interdisciplinary
papers have a low scientific impact. This suggests that there might be an
optimum of interdisciplinarity beyond which the research is too dispersed to
find its niche and under which it is too mainstream to have high impact.
Finally, the relationship between interdisciplinarity and scientific impact is
highly determined by the citation characteristics of the disciplines involved:
papers citing citation intensive disciplines are more likely to be cited by
those disciplines and, hence, obtain higher citation scores than papers citing
non citation intensive disciplines.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. Forthcoming in JASIS
On the shoulders of students? The contribution of PhD students to the advancement of knowledge
Using the participation in peer reviewed publications of all doctoral
students in Quebec over the 2000-2007 period this paper provides the first
large scale analysis of their research effort. It shows that PhD students
contribute to about a third of the publication output of the province, with
doctoral students in the natural and medical sciences being present in a higher
proportion of papers published than their colleagues of the social sciences and
humanities. Collaboration is an important component of this socialization:
disciplines in which student collaboration is higher are also those in which
doctoral students are the most involved in peer-reviewed publications. In terms
of scientific impact, papers co-signed by doctorate students obtain
significantly lower citation rates than other Quebec papers, except in natural
sciences and engineering. Finally, this paper shows that involving doctoral
students in publications is positively linked with degree completion and
ulterior career in research.Comment: 41 pages, 7 figures, forthcoming in Scientometric
Increasing compliance with wearing a medical device in children with autism
Health professionals often recommend the use of medical devices to assess the health, monitor
the well-being, or improve the quality of life of their patients. Children with autism may present
challenges in these situations as their sensory peculiarities may increase refusals to wear such
devices. To address this issue, we systematically replicated prior research by examining the
effects of differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) to increase compliance with
wearing a heart rate monitor in 2 children with autism. The intervention increased compliance to
100% for both participants when an edible reinforcer was delivered every 90 s. The results
indicate that DRO does not require the implementation of extinction to increase compliance with
wearing a medical device. More research is needed to examine whether the reinforcement
schedule can be further thinned
Mathematical models and hepatology; oil and vinegar?
Mathematical models are increasingly being used in medicine to study physiological, pathophysiological and therapeutic pathways [1–3]. In hepatology, mathematical abstractions have been beneficial to predict the viral load of hepatitis C following treatment [4], outcome after acetaminophen overdose [5], or to quantify porto-systemic shunting and inter-organ ammonia metabolism at different stages of cirrhosis [6]. However, in many medical fields (including hepatology), there is much resistance to include theoretical models in their traditional tool set and furthermore a lack of confidence in the generated theoretical results
Ammonia toxicity: from head to toe?
Ammonia is diffused and transported across all plasma membranes. This entails that hyperammonemia leads to an increase in ammonia in all organs and tissues. It is known that the toxic ramifications of ammonia primarily touch the brain and cause neurological impairment. However, the deleterious effects of ammonia are not specific to the brain, as the direct effect of increased ammonia (change in pH, membrane potential, metabolism) can occur in any type of cell. Therefore, in the setting of chronic liver disease where multi-organ dysfunction is common, the role of ammonia, only as neurotoxin, is challenged. This review provides insights and evidence that increased ammonia can disturb many organ and cell types and hence lead to dysfunction
Tweeting biomedicine: an analysis of tweets and citations in the biomedical literature
Data collected by social media platforms have recently been introduced as a
new source for indicators to help measure the impact of scholarly research in
ways that are complementary to traditional citation-based indicators. Data
generated from social media activities related to scholarly content can be used
to reflect broad types of impact. This paper aims to provide systematic
evidence regarding how often Twitter is used to diffuse journal articles in the
biomedical and life sciences. The analysis is based on a set of 1.4 million
documents covered by both PubMed and Web of Science (WoS) and published between
2010 and 2012. The number of tweets containing links to these documents was
analyzed to evaluate the degree to which certain journals, disciplines, and
specialties were represented on Twitter. It is shown that, with less than 10%
of PubMed articles mentioned on Twitter, its uptake is low in general. The
relationship between tweets and WoS citations was examined for each document at
the level of journals and specialties. The results show that tweeting behavior
varies between journals and specialties and correlations between tweets and
citations are low, implying that impact metrics based on tweets are different
from those based on citations. A framework utilizing the coverage of articles
and the correlation between Twitter mentions and citations is proposed to
facilitate the evaluation of novel social-media based metrics and to shed light
on the question in how far the number of tweets is a valid metric to measure
research impact.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures, 5 table
Astrophysicists on Twitter: An in-depth analysis of tweeting and scientific publication behavior
This paper analyzes the tweeting behavior of 37 astrophysicists on Twitter
and compares their tweeting behavior with their publication behavior and
citation impact to show whether they tweet research-related topics or not.
Astrophysicists on Twitter are selected to compare their tweets with their
publications from Web of Science. Different user groups are identified based on
tweeting and publication frequency. A moderate negative correlation (p=-0.390*)
is found between the number of publications and tweets per day, while retweet
and citation rates do not correlate. The similarity between tweets and
abstracts is very low (cos=0.081). User groups show different tweeting behavior
such as retweeting and including hashtags, usernames and URLs. The study is
limited in terms of the small set of astrophysicists. Results are not
necessarily representative of the entire astrophysicist community on Twitter
and they most certainly do not apply to scientists in general. Future research
should apply the methods to a larger set of researchers and other scientific
disciplines. To a certain extent, this study helps to understand how
researchers use Twitter. The results hint at the fact that impact on Twitter
can neither be equated with nor replace traditional research impact metrics.
However, tweets and other so-called altmetrics might be able to reflect other
impact of scientists such as public outreach and science communication. To the
best of our knowledge, this is the first in-depth study comparing researchers'
tweeting activity and behavior with scientific publication output in terms of
quantity, content and impact.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, 7 table
Machine learning to analyze single-case data : a proof of concept
Visual analysis is the most commonly used method for interpreting data from singlecase designs, but levels of interrater agreement remain a concern. Although structured
aids to visual analysis such as the dual-criteria (DC) method may increase interrater
agreement, the accuracy of the analyses may still benefit from improvements. Thus, the
purpose of our study was to (a) examine correspondence between visual analysis and
models derived from different machine learning algorithms, and (b) compare the
accuracy, Type I error rate and power of each of our models with those produced by
the DC method. We trained our models on a previously published dataset and then
conducted analyses on both nonsimulated and simulated graphs. All our models
derived from machine learning algorithms matched the interpretation of the visual
analysts more frequently than the DC method. Furthermore, the machine learning
algorithms outperformed the DC method on accuracy, Type I error rate, and power.
Our results support the somewhat unorthodox proposition that behavior analysts may
use machine learning algorithms to supplement their visual analysis of single-case data,
but more research is needed to examine the potential benefits and drawbacks of such an
approach
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