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Background: The partograph has been endorsed by World Health Organization (WHO) since 1994 which presents an algorithm for assessing maternal and foetal conditions and labor progression. Monitoring labour with a partograph can reduce adverse pregnancy outcomes such as prolonged labor, emergency C-sections, birth asphyxia and stillbirths. However, partograph use is still very low, particularly in low and middle income countries (LMICs). In Bangladesh the reported partograph user rate varies from 1.4% to 33.0%. Recently, an electronic version of the partograph, with the provision of online data entry and user aid for emergency clinical support, has been tested successfully in different settings. With this proven evidence, we conducted and operations research to test the feasibility and effectiveness of implementing an e-partograph, for the first time, in 2 public hospitals in Bangladesh Methods: We followed a prospective crossover design. Two secondary level referral hospitals, Jessore and Kushtia District Hospital (DH) were the study sites. All pregnant women who delivered in the study hospitals were the study participants. All nurse-midwives working in the labor ward of study hospitals were trained on appropriate use of both types of partograph along with standard labour management guidelines. Collected quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS 23 statistical software. Discrete variables were expressed as percentages and presented as frequency distribution and cross tabulations. Chi square tests were employed to test the association between exposure and outcome variables. Potential confounding factors were adjusted using multivariate binary logistic regression methods. Ethical approval was obtained from the institutional review board of the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b). Findings: In total 2918 deliveries were conducted at Jessore DH and 2312 at Kushtia DH during one-year study period. Of them, 1012 (506 in each facility) deliveries were monitored using partograph (paper or electronic). The trends of facility based C-section rates was downwards in both the hospitals; 43% to 37% in Jessore and from 36% to 25% in Kushtia Hospital. There was a significant reduction of prolonged labour with e-partograph use. In Kushtia DH, the prolonged labour rate was 42% during phase 1 with the paper version which came down to 29% during phase-2 with the e-partograph use. The similar result was observed in Jessore DH where the prolonged labour rate reduced to 7% with paper partograph from the reported 30% prolonged labour with e-partograph. The e-partograph user rate was higher than the paper partograph during both phases (phase 1: 3.31, CI: 2.04–5.38, p < .001 and in phase 2: 15.20 CI: 6.36–36.33, p < .001) after adjusting for maternal age, parity, gestational age, religion, mother’s education, husband’s education, and fetal sex Conclusion: The partograph user rate has significantly improved with the e- partograph and was associated with an overall reduction in cesarean births. Use of the e-partograph was also associated with reduced rates of prolonged labour. This study has added to the growing body of evidence on the positive impact of e-partograph use. We recommend implementing e-partograph intervention at scale in both public and private hospitals in Bangladesh. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present work was focused to design a cheap, rapid, portable and easy to use filter paper based assay for the qualitative and quantitate analysis of acetone. Sodium alginate gel was loaded with the acetone specific optical signal probe, and subsequently coated onto filter paper surface to design portable colorimetric assays for acetone monitoring. The color of the paper sensor strip was observed to change from dark yellow to light yellowish in the presence of varying concentrations of acetone. Three different color analyzing models including RGB, HSV, and LAB were employed to probe the output optical signal, and their performance was compared in terms of better interpretation of the generated signal. The LAB model was found to provide better analytical figures of merit with a linear response for the acetone concentration ranging from 2.5 to 1500 ppm, and a limit of detection of 0.5 ppm. Furthermore, the specificity of the designed filter paper based sensor was demonstrated against different common interfering compounds. The results demonstrated the potential of our proposed filter paper based sensor as a novel tool for the analysis of acetone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many complex physical systems exhibit a rich variety of discrete behavioural modes. Often, the system complexity limits the applicability of standard modelling tools. Hence, understanding the underlying physics of different behaviours and distinguishing between them is challenging. Although traditional machine learning techniques could predict and classify behaviour well, typically they do not provide any meaningful insight into the underlying physics of the system. In this paper we present a novel method for extracting physically meaningful clusters of discrete behaviour from limited experimental observations. This method obtains a set of physically plausible functions that both facilitate behavioural clustering and aid in system understanding. We demonstrate the approach on the V-shaped falling paper system, a new falling paper type system that exhibits four distinct behavioural modes depending on a few morphological parameters. Using just 49 experimental observations, the method discovered a set of candidate functions that distinguish behaviours with an error of 2.04%, while also aiding insight into the physical phenomena driving each behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do highly productive researchers have significantly higher probability to produce top cited papers? Or do high productive researchers mainly produce a sea of irrelevant papers—in other words do we find a diminishing marginal result from productivity? The answer on these questions is important, as it may help to answer the question of whether the increased competition and increased use of indicators for research evaluation and accountability focus has perverse effects or not. We use a Swedish author disambiguated dataset consisting of 48.000 researchers and their WoS-publications during the period of 2008–2011 with citations until 2014 to investigate the relation between productivity and production of highly cited papers. As the analysis shows, quantity does make a difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poor research reporting is a major contributing factor to low study reproducibility, financial and animal waste. The ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines were developed to improve reporting quality and many journals support these guidelines. The influence of this support is unknown. We hypothesized that papers published in journals supporting the ARRIVE guidelines would show improved reporting compared with those in non-supporting journals. In a retrospective, observational cohort study, papers from 5 ARRIVE supporting (SUPP) and 2 non-supporting (nonSUPP) journals, published before (2009) and 5 years after (2015) the ARRIVE guidelines, were selected. Adherence to the ARRIVE checklist of 20 items was independently evaluated by two reviewers and items assessed as fully, partially or not reported. Mean percentages of items reported were compared between journal types and years with an unequal variance t-test. Individual items and sub-items were compared with a chi-square test. From an initial cohort of 956, 236 papers were included: 120 from 2009 (SUPP; n = 52, nonSUPP; n = 68), 116 from 2015 (SUPP; n = 61, nonSUPP; n = 55). The percentage of fully reported items was similar between journal types in 2009 (SUPP: 55.3 ± 11.5% [SD]; nonSUPP: 51.8 ± 9.0%; p = 0.07, 95% CI of mean difference -0.3–7.3%) and 2015 (SUPP: 60.5 ± 11.2%; nonSUPP; 60.2 ± 10.0%; p = 0.89, 95%CI -3.6–4.2%). The small increase in fully reported items between years was similar for both journal types (p = 0.09, 95% CI -0.5–4.3%). No paper fully reported 100% of items on the ARRIVE checklist and measures associated with bias were poorly reported. These results suggest that journal support for the ARRIVE guidelines has not resulted in a meaningful improvement in reporting quality, contributing to ongoing waste in animal research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before organizing mixed-mode data collection for the self-administered questionnaire of the Belgian Health Interview Survey, measurement effects between the paper-and-pencil and the web-based questionnaire were evaluated. A two-period cross-over study was organized with a sample of 149 employees of two Belgian research institutes (age range 22–62 years, 72% female). Measurement agreement was assessed for a diverse range of health indicators related to general health, mental and psychosocial health, health behaviors and prevention with kappa coefficients and intraclass correlation (ICC). The quality of the data collected by both modes was evaluated by quantifying the missing, ‘don’t know’ and inconsistent values and data entry mistakes. Good to very good agreement was found for all categorical indicators with kappa coefficients superior to 0.60, except for two mental and psychosocial health indicators namely the presence of a sleeping disorder and of a depressive disorder (kappa≥0.50). For the continuous indicators high to acceptable agreement was observed with ICC superior to 0.70. Inconsistent answers and data-entry mistakes were only occurring in the paper-and-pencil mode. There were no less missing values in the web-based mode compared to the paper-and-pencil mode. The study supports the idea that web-based modes provide, in general, equal responses to paper-and-pencil modes. However, health indicators based upon factual and objective items tend to have higher measurement agreement than indicators requiring an assessment of personal subjective feelings. A web-based mode greatly facilitates the data-entry process and guides the completing of a questionnaire. However, item non-response was not positively affected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need to complete multiple tasks concurrently is a common occurrence both daily life and in occupational activities, which can often include simultaneous cognitive and physical demands. As one example, there is increasing availability of head-worn display technologies that can be employed when a user is mobile (e.g., while walking). This new method of information presentation may, however, introduce risks of adverse outcomes such as a decrement to gait performance. The goal of this study was thus to quantify the effects of a head-worn display (i.e., smart glasses) on motor variability during gait and to compare these effects with those of other common information displays (i.e., smartphone and paper-based system). Twenty participants completed four walking conditions, as a single task and in three dual-task conditions (three information displays). In the dual-task conditions, the information display was used to present several cognitive tasks. Three different measures were used to quantify variability in gait parameters for each walking condition (using the cycle-to-cycle standard deviation, sample entropy, and the “goal-equivalent manifold” approach). Our results indicated that participants used less adaptable gait strategies in dual-task walking using the paper-based system and smartphone conditions compared with single-task walking. Gait performance, however, was less affected during dual-task walking with the smart glasses. We conclude that the risk of an adverse gait event (e.g., a fall) in head-down walking conditions (i.e., the paper-based system and smartphone conditions) were higher than in single-task walking, and that head-worn displays might help reduce the risk of such events during dual-task gait conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Data collection using paper-based questionnaires can be time consuming and return errors affect data accuracy, completeness, and information quality in health surveys. We compared smartphone and paper-based data collection systems in the Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease (BOLD) study in rural Sudan. Methods: This exploratory pilot study was designed to run in parallel with the cross-sectional household survey. The Open Data Kit was used to programme questionnaires in Arabic into smartphones. We included 100 study participants (83% women; median age = 41.5 ± 16.4 years) from the BOLD study from 3 rural villages in East-Gezira and Kamleen localities of Gezira state, Sudan. Questionnaire data were collected using smartphone and paper-based technologies simultaneously. We used Kappa statistics and inter-rater class coefficient to test agreement between the two methods. Results: Symptoms reported included cough (24%), phlegm (15%), wheezing (17%), and shortness of breath (18%). One in five were or had been cigarette smokers. The two data collection methods varied between perfect to slight agreement across the 204 variables evaluated (Kappa varied between 1.00 and 0.02 and inter-rater coefficient between 1.00 and -0.12). Errors were most commonly seen with paper questionnaires (83% of errors seen) vs smartphones (17% of errors seen) administered questionnaires with questions with complex skip-patterns being a major source of errors in paper questionnaires. Automated checks and validations in smartphone-administered questionnaires avoided skip-pattern related errors. Incomplete and inconsistent records were more likely seen on paper questionnaires. Conclusion: Compared to paper-based data collection, smartphone technology worked well for data collection in the study, which was conducted in a challenging rural environment in Sudan. This approach provided timely, quality data with fewer errors and inconsistencies compared to paper-based data collection. We recommend this method for future BOLD studies and other population-based studies in similar settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University scientific research ability is an important indicator to express the strength of universities. In this paper, the evaluation of university scientific research ability is investigated based on the output of sci-tech papers. Four university alliances from North America, UK, Australia, and China, are selected as the case study of the university scientific research evaluation. Data coming from Thomson Reuters InCites are collected to support the evaluation. The work has contributed new framework to the issue of university scientific research ability evaluation. At first, we have established a hierarchical structure to show the factors that impact the evaluation of university scientific research ability. Then, a new MCDM method called D-AHP model is used to implement the evaluation and ranking of different university alliances, in which a data-driven approach is proposed to automatically generate the D numbers preference relations. Next, a sensitivity analysis has been given to show the impact of weights of factors and sub-factors on the evaluation result. At last, the results obtained by using different methods are compared and discussed to verify the effectiveness and reasonability of this study, and some suggestions are given to promote China’s scientific research ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last few decades, the institutionalisation of quantitative research evaluations has created incentives for scholars to publish as many papers as possible. This paper assesses the effects of such incentives on individual researchers’ scientific impact, by analysing the relationship between their number of articles and their proportion of highly cited papers. In other words, does the share of an author’s top 1% most cited papers increase, remain stable, or decrease as his/her total number of papers increase? Using a large dataset of disambiguated researchers (N = 28,078,476) over the 1980–2013 period, this paper shows that, on average, the higher the number of papers a researcher publishes, the higher the proportion of these papers are amongst the most cited. This relationship is stronger for older cohorts of researchers, while decreasing returns to scale are observed for recent cohorts. On the whole, these results suggest that for established researchers, the strategy of publishing as many papers as possible did not yield lower shares of highly cited publications, but such a pattern is not always observed for younger scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: To evaluate the relative efficiencies of five Internet-based digital and three paper-based scientific surveys and to estimate the costs for different-sized cohorts. Methods: Invitations to participate in a survey were distributed via e-mail to employees of two university hospitals (E1 and E2) and to members of a medical association (E3), as a link placed in a special text on the municipal homepage regularly read by the administrative employees of two cities (H1 and H2), and paper-based to workers at an automobile enterprise (P1) and college (P2) and senior (P3) students. The main parameters analyzed included the numbers of invited and actual participants, and the time and cost to complete the survey. Statistical analysis was descriptive, except for the Kruskal-Wallis-H-test, which was used to compare the three recruitment methods. Cost efficiencies were compared and extrapolated to different-sized cohorts. Results: The ratios of completely answered questionnaires to distributed questionnaires were between 81.5% (E1) and 97.4% (P2). Between 6.4% (P1) and 57.0% (P2) of the invited participants completely answered the questionnaires. The costs per completely answered questionnaire were $0.57–$1.41 (E1–3), $1.70 and $0.80 for H1 and H2, respectively, and $3.36–$4.21 (P1–3). Based on our results, electronic surveys with 10, 20, 30, or 42 questions would be estimated to be most cost (and time) efficient if more than 101.6–225.9 (128.2–391.7), 139.8–229.2 (93.8–193.6), 165.8–230.6 (68.7–115.7), or 188.2–231.5 (44.4–72.7) participants were required, respectively. Conclusions: The study efficiency depended on the technical modalities of the survey methods and engagement of the participants. Depending on our study design, our results suggest that in similar projects that will certainly have more than two to three hundred required participants, the most efficient way of conducting a questionnaire-based survey is likely via the Internet with a digital questionnaire, specifically via a centralized e-mail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Despite malaria, malnutrition and anaemia being major public-health challenges in Cameroon, very little has been reported on the interaction between these interconnected health determinants. This study therefore sought to investigate the relationship between malaria, anaemia, nutritional and socio-economic status amongst under—ten children living in six localities within two health districts in the North Region of Cameroon. Methods: Accordingly, a cross- sectional survey was conducted during the peak malaria season in November 2014, in Pitoa and Mayo-Oulo Health Districts. Three hundred and sixty eight children aged 6months—10 years were enrolled. Structured questionnaires were used to assess socio-economic status. Anthropometric indices were taken using standard methods and nutritional status assessed by calculating Height for Age (HA), Weight for Age (WA) and Weight for Height (WH) z-scores to determine stunting, underweight and wasting respectively. Finger-prick blood samples were used to prepare thin and thick blood smears for microscopy. Whole blood was collected to determine the PCV and blood spots on filter paper were used to extract plasmodium DNA for speciation by PCR. Results: Overall prevalence rates of malaria, malnutrition and anaemia were 32.9%, 54.1% and 20.6% respectively. Stunting, underweight and wasting were detected in 56.9%, 63.5% and 34.8% of the children respectively. There was a significant association between malaria and malnutrition [OR = 1.89, (95% CI: 1.12–3.19); (p = 0.017)]. Malnutrition was also strongly associated with malaria status [OR = 2.07, (95% CI: 1.22–3.53); (p = 0.007)]. The prevalence rates of mild, moderate and severe anaemia were 8.1%, 9.2% and 3.3% respectively. Both malaria status and anaemia correlated with development index [OR = 0.75, (95% CI: 0.58–0.99); (p = 0.042)] and [OR = 1.45, (95% CI: 1.05–2.00); (p = 0.023)] respectively. Conclusion: Our findings show a synergistic relationship between malaria and malnutrition. Effective collaboration between malaria control and nutrition intervention programmes is essential for proper case management and improved socio-economic status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some scholars add authors to their research papers or grant proposals even when those individuals contribute nothing to the research effort. Some journal editors coerce authors to add citations that are not pertinent to their work and some authors pad their reference lists with superfluous citations. How prevalent are these types of manipulation, why do scholars stoop to such practices, and who among us is most susceptible to such ethical lapses? This study builds a framework around how intense competition for limited journal space and research funding can encourage manipulation and then uses that framework to develop hypotheses about who manipulates and why they do so. We test those hypotheses using data from over 12,000 responses to a series of surveys sent to more than 110,000 scholars from eighteen different disciplines spread across science, engineering, social science, business, and health care. We find widespread misattribution in publications and in research proposals with significant variation by academic rank, discipline, sex, publication history, co-authors, etc. Even though the majority of scholars disapprove of such tactics, many feel pressured to make such additions while others suggest that it is just the way the game is played. The findings suggest that certain changes in the review process might help to stem this ethical decline, but progress could be slow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Basic color terms used in Mandarin Chinese have been controversial since first discussed by Berlin and Kay in 1969. Previous studies showed much inconsistency on what should be considered as basic color terms in Mandarin Chinese. In the present study, we investigated categories of color rather than merely the color terms used by Taiwanese native Mandarin speakers. Using samples conforming to the Berlin and Kay survey, various colors were chosen from a collection of Natural Color System (NCS) colored papers and mounted on a piece of neutral gray card. The card was then mounted on a touch-screen, under D65 illumination. Thirty-two single-character color related Mandarin terms were selected from a Chinese character database according to frequency of use. Participants were required to select the color sample that matched the term by pressing a virtual button on the touch screen. The results show that certain terms can be directly correlated to basic color terms in English, comparable with the results of Berlin and Kay’s original study and those that followed. However, some terms, such as Mo (墨 ink), Tie (鐵 iron), and Cai (菜vegetable), show a wide spread of term maps and inconsistent use among subjects. Principle component analysis (PCA) procedures were used to analysis the commodity of data among subjects. The findings suggest that the basic color categories among Mandarin Chinese speakers are similar to those found in the World Color Survey (WCS), but are represented by wide-spread and inconsistent color terms among speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Impairments in social cognition have been described in several psychiatric and neurological disorders. Given the importance of the relationship between social cognition and functioning and quality of life in these disorders, there is a growing interest in social cognition remediation interventions. The aim of this study was to carry out a systematic mapping review to describe the state of the art in social cognition training and remediation interventions. Methods: Publications from 2006 to 2016 on social cognition interventions were reviewed in four databases: Scopus, PsycINFO, PubMed and Embase. From the initial result set of 3229 publications, a final total of 241 publications were selected. Results: The study revealed an increasing interest in social cognition remediation interventions, especially in the fields of psychiatry and psychology, with a gradual growth in the number of publications. These were frequently published in high impact factor journals and underpinned by robust scientific evidence. Most studies were conducted on schizophrenia, followed by autism spectrum disorders. Theory of mind and emotional processing were the focus of most interventions, whilst a limited number of studies addressed attributional bias and social perception. Targeted interventions in social cognition were the most frequent practice in the selected papers, followed by non-specific treatment interventions and broad-based interventions. Conclusions: Research in social cognition remediation interventions is growing. Further studies are needed on attributional bias and social perception remediation programs, while the comparative efficacy of different interventions also remains unclear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The challenge of detecting research topics in a specific research field has attracted attention from researchers in the bibliometrics community. In this study, to solve two problems of clustering papers, i.e., the influence of different distributions of citation links and involved textual features on similarity computation, the authors propose a hybrid self-optimized clustering model to detect research topics by extending the hybrid clustering model to identify “core documents”. First, the Amsler network, consisting of bibliographic coupling and co-citation links, is created to calculate the citation-based similarity based on the cosine angle of papers. Second, the cosine similarity is also used to compute the text-based similarity, which consists of the textual statistical and topological features. Then, the cosine angle of the linear combination of citation- and text-based similarity is considered as the hybrid similarity. Finally, the Louvain method is applied to cluster papers, and the terms based on term frequency are used to label clusters. To test the performance of the proposed model, a dataset related to the data envelopment analysis field is used for comparison and analysis of clustering results. Based on the benchmark built, different clustering methods with different citation links or textual features are compared according to evaluation measures. The results show that the proposed model can obtain reasonable and effective clustering results, and the research topics of data envelopment analysis field are also analyzed based on the proposed model. As different features are considered in the proposed model compared with previous hybrid clustering models, the proposed clustering model can provide inspiration for further studies on topic identification by other researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Articles from open access and local journals are important resources for research in Korea and the usage trends of these articles are important indicators for the assessment of the current research practice. We analyzed an institutional collection of published papers from 1998 to 2014 authored by researchers from Seoul National University, and their references from papers published between 1998 and 2011. The published papers were collected from Web of Science or Scopus and were analyzed according to the proportion of articles from open access journals. Their cited references from published papers in Web of Science were analyzed according to the proportion of local (South Korean) or open access journals. The proportion of open access papers was relatively stable until 2006 (2.5 ~ 5.2% in Web of Science and 2.7 ~ 4.2% in Scopus), but then increased to 15.9% (Web of Science) or 18.5% (Scopus) in 2014. We analyzed 2,750,485 cited references from 52,295 published papers. We found that the overall proportion of cited articles from local journals was 1.8% and that for open access journals was 3.0%. Citations of open access articles have increased since 2006 to 4.1% in 2011, although the increase in open access article citations was less than for open access publications. The proportion of citations from local journals was even lower. We think that the publishing / citing mismatch is a term to describe this difference, which is an issue at Seoul National University, where the number of published papers at open access or local journals is increasing but the number of citations is not. The cause of this discrepancy is multi-factorial but the governmental / institutional policies, social / cultural issues and authors' citing behaviors will explain the mismatch. However, additional measures are also necessary, such as the development of an institutional citation database and improved search capabilities with respect to local and open access documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, we have observed an intensification of science, technology and innovation activities in Brazil. The increase in production of scientific papers indexed in international databases, however, has not been accompanied by an equivalent increase in the impact of publications. This paper presents a methodology for analyzing production and the impact of certain research areas in Brazil related to two aspects: the origin of the journals (national or foreign) and international collaboration. These two variables were selected for being of particular importance in understanding the context of scientific production and communication in countries with emerging economies. The sample consisted of papers written by Brazilian researchers in 19 subfields of knowledge published from 2002 to 2011, totaling 85,082 papers. To calculate the impact, we adopted a normalized indicator called the relative subfield citedness (Rw) using a window of 5 years to obtain measurements evaluated in 2 different years: 2007 and 2012. The data on papers and citations were collected from the Web of Science database. From the results, we note that most of the subfields have presented, from one quinquennium to another, improved performance in the world production rankings. Regarding publication in national and foreign journals, we observed a trend in the distribution maintenance of production of the subfields based on the origin of the journal. Specifically, for impact, we identified a lower Rw pattern for Brazilian papers when they were published in national journals in all subfields. When Brazilian products are published in foreign journals, we observed a higher impact for those papers, even surpassing the average global impact in some subfields. For international collaboration, we analyzed the percentage of participation of foreign researchers and the connection between collaboration and the impact of papers, especially emphasizing the distinction of hyperauthorship papers in terms of production and impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although racism has been posited as driver of racial/ethnic inequities in healthcare, the relationship between racism and health service use and experience has yet to be systematically reviewed or meta-analysed. This paper presents a systematic review and meta-analysis of quantitative empirical studies that report associations between self-reported racism and various measures of healthcare service utilisation. Data were reviewed and extracted from 83 papers reporting 70 studies. Studies included 250,850 participants and were conducted predominately in the U.S. The meta-analysis included 59 papers reporting 52 studies, which were analysed using random effects models and mean weighted effect sizes. Racism was associated with more negative patient experiences of health services (HSU-E) (OR = 0.351 (95% CI [0.236,0.521], k = 19), including lower levels of healthcare-related trust, satisfaction, and communication. Racism was not associated with health service use (HSU-U) as an outcome group, and was not associated with most individual HSU-U outcomes, including having had examinations, health service visits and admissions to health professionals and services. Racism was associated with health service use outcomes such as delaying/not getting healthcare, and lack of adherence to treatment uptake, although these effects may be influenced by a small sample of studies, and publication bias, respectively. Limitations to the literature reviewed in terms of study designs, sampling methods and measurements are discussed along with suggested future directions in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enthusiasm for using Twitter as a source of data in the social sciences extends to measuring the impact of research with Twitter data being a key component in the new altmetrics approach. In this paper, we examine tweets containing links to research articles in the field of dentistry to assess the extent to which tweeting about scientific papers signifies engagement with, attention to, or consumption of scientific literature. The main goal is to better comprehend the role Twitter plays in scholarly communication and the potential value of tweet counts as traces of broader engagement with scientific literature. In particular, the pattern of tweeting to the top ten most tweeted scientific dental articles and of tweeting by accounts is examined. The ideal that tweeting about scholarly articles represents curating and informing about state-of-the-art appears not to be realized in practice. We see much presumably human tweeting almost entirely mechanical and devoid of original thought, no evidence of conversation, tweets generated by monomania, duplicate tweeting from many accounts under centralized professional management and tweets generated by bots. Some accounts exemplify the ideal, but they represent less than 10% of tweets. Therefore, any conclusions drawn from twitter data is swamped by the mechanical nature of the bulk of tweeting behavior. In light of these results, we discuss the compatibility of Twitter with the research enterprise as well as some of the financial incentives behind these patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years there has been increased attention to child neurodevelopment in studies on medication safety in pregnancy. Neurodevelopment is a multifactorial outcome that can be assessed by various assessors, using different measures. This has given rise to a debate on the validity of various measures of neurodevelopment. The aim of this review was twofold. Firstly we aimed to give an overview of studies on child neurodevelopment after prenatal exposure to central nervous system acting medications using psychotropics and analgesics as examples, giving special focus on the use and validity of outcome measures. Secondly, we aimed to give guidance on how to conduct and interpret medication safety studies with neurodevelopment outcomes. We conducted a systematic review in the MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, Web of Science, Scopus, and Cochrane databases from inception to April 2019, including controlled studies on prenatal exposure to psychotropics or analgesics and child neurodevelopment, measured with standardised psychometric instruments or by diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorder. The review management tool Covidence was used for data-extraction. Outcomes were grouped as motor skills, cognition, behaviour, emotionality, or “other”. We identified 110 eligible papers (psychotropics, 82 papers, analgesics, 29 papers). A variety of neurodevelopmental outcome measures were used, including 27 different psychometric instruments administered by health care professionals, 15 different instruments completed by parents, and 13 different diagnostic categories. In 23 papers, no comments were made on the validity of the outcome measure. In conclusion, establishing neurodevelopmental safety includes assessing a wide variety of outcomes important for the child’s daily functioning including motor skills, cognition, behaviour, and emotionality, with valid and reliable measures from infancy through to adolescence. Consensus is needed in the scientific community on how neurodevelopment should be assessed in medication safety in pregnancy studies. Review registration number: CRD42018086101 in the PROSPERO database. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does scientific research affect the world around us? Being able to answer this question is of great importance in order to appropriately channel efforts and resources in science. The impact by scientists in academia is currently measured by citation based metrics such as h-index, i-index and citation counts. These academic metrics aim to represent the dissemination of knowledge among scientists rather than the impact of the research on the wider world. In this work we are interested in measuring scientific impact beyond academia, on the economy, society, health and legislation (comprehensive impact). Indeed scientists are asked to demonstrate evidence of such comprehensive impact by authoring case studies in the context of the Research Excellence Framework (REF). We first investigate the extent to which existing citation based metrics can be indicative of comprehensive impact. We have collected all recent REF impact case studies from 2014 and we have linked these to papers in citation networks that we constructed and derived from CiteSeerX, arXiv and PubMed Central using a number of text processing and information retrieval techniques. We have demonstrated that existing citation-based metrics for impact measurement do not correlate well with REF impact results. We also consider metrics of online attention surrounding scientific works, such as those provided by the Altmetric API. We argue that in order to be able to evaluate wider non-academic impact we need to mine information from a much wider set of resources, including social media posts, press releases, news articles and political debates stemming from academic work. We also provide our data as a free and reusable collection for further analysis, including the PubMed citation network and the correspondence between REF case studies, grant applications and the academic literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on three decades of citation data from across scientific fields of science, we study trends in impact factor biased self-citations of scholarly journals, using a purpose-built and easy to use citation based measure. Our measure is given by the ratio between i) the relative share of journal self-citations to papers published in the last two years, and ii) the relative share of journal self-citations to papers published in preceding years. A ratio higher than one suggests that a journal’s impact factor is disproportionally affected (inflated) by self-citations. Using recently reported survey data, we show that there is a relation between high values of our proposed measure and coercive journal self-citation malpractices. We use our measure to perform a large-scale analysis of impact factor biased journal self-citations. Our main empirical result is, that the share of journals for which our measure has a (very) high value has remained stable between the 1980s and the early 2000s, but has since risen strongly in all fields of science. This time span corresponds well with the growing obsession with the impact factor as a journal evaluation measure over the last decade. Taken together, this suggests a trend of increasingly pervasive journal self-citation malpractices, with all due unwanted consequences such as inflated perceived importance of journals and biased journal rankings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In economic analyses of HIV interventions, South Africa is often used as a case in point, due to the availability of good epidemiological and programme data and the global relevance of its epidemic. Few analyses however use locally relevant cost data. We reviewed available cost data as part of the South African HIV Investment Case, a modelling exercise to inform the optimal use of financial resources for the country’s HIV programme. Methods: We systematically reviewed publication databases for published cost data covering a large range of HIV interventions and summarised relevant unit costs (cost per person receiving a service) for each. Where no data was found in the literature, we constructed unit costs either based on available information regarding ingredients and relevant public-sector prices, or based on expenditure records. Results: Only 42 (5%) of 1,047 records included in our full-text review reported primary cost data on HIV interventions in South Africa, with 71% of included papers covering ART. Other papers detailed the costs of HCT, MMC, palliative and inpatient care; no papers were found on the costs of PrEP, social and behaviour change communication, and PMTCT. The results informed unit costs for 5 of 11 intervention categories included in the Investment Case, with the remainder costed based on ingredients (35%) and expenditure data (10%). Conclusions: A large number of modelled economic analyses of HIV interventions in South Africa use as inputs the same, often outdated, cost analyses, without reference to additional literature review. More primary cost analyses of non-ART interventions are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaboration among scientists has a major influence on scientific progress. Such collaboration often results from scientific meetings, where scientists gather to present and discuss their research and to meet potential collaborators. However, most scientific meetings have inherent biases, such as the availability of research funding or the selection bias of professional societies that make it difficult to study the effect of the meeting per se on scientific productivity. To evaluate the effects of scientific meetings on collaboration and progress independent of these biases, we conducted a study of the annual symposia held by the International Milk Genomics Consortium (IMGC) over a 12-year period. In our study, we conducted permutation testing to analyze the effectiveness of the IMGC in facilitating collaboration and productivity in a community of milk scientists who were meeting attendees relative to non-attendees. Using the number of co-authorships on published papers as a measure of collaboration, our analysis revealed that scientists who attended the symposium were associated with more collaboration than were scientists who did not attend. Furthermore, we evaluated the scientific progress of consortium attendees by analyzing publication rate and article impact. We found that IMGC attendees, in addition to being more collaborative, were also more productive and influential than were non-attendees who published in the same field. The results of our study suggest that the annual symposium encouraged interactions among disparate scientists and increased research productivity, exemplifying the positive effect of scientific meetings on both collaboration and progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of publishers and funders, including PLOS, have recently adopted policies requiring researchers to share the data underlying their results and publications. Such policies help increase the reproducibility of the published literature, as well as make a larger body of data available for reuse and re-analysis. In this study, we evaluate the extent to which authors have complied with this policy by analyzing Data Availability Statements from 47,593 papers published in PLOS ONE between March 2014 (when the policy went into effect) and May 2016. Our analysis shows that compliance with the policy has increased, with a significant decline over time in papers that did not include a Data Availability Statement. However, only about 20% of statements indicate that data are deposited in a repository, which the PLOS policy states is the preferred method. More commonly, authors state that their data are in the paper itself or in the supplemental information, though it is unclear whether these data meet the level of sharing required in the PLOS policy. These findings suggest that additional review of Data Availability Statements or more stringent policies may be needed to increase data sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged as a promising tool in many domains of therapy and rehabilitation, and has recently attracted the attention of researchers and clinicians working with elderly people with MCI, Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. Here we present a study testing the feasibility of using highly realistic image-based rendered VR with patients with MCI and dementia. We designed an attentional task to train selective and sustained attention, and we tested a VR and a paper version of this task in a single-session within-subjects design. Results showed that participants with MCI and dementia reported to be highly satisfied and interested in the task, and they reported high feelings of security, low discomfort, anxiety and fatigue. In addition, participants reported a preference for the VR condition compared to the paper condition, even if the task was more difficult. Interestingly, apathetic participants showed a preference for the VR condition stronger than that of non-apathetic participants. These findings suggest that VR-based training can be considered as an interesting tool to improve adherence to cognitive training in elderly people with cognitive impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discrete choice experiments (DCEs) are a way to assess priority-setting in health care provision. This approach allows for the evaluation of individuals’ preferences as a means of adding criteria to traditional quality-adjusted life year analysis. The aim of this systematic literature review was to identify attributes for designing a DCE in order to then develop and validate a framework that supports decision-making on health technologies. Our systematic literature review replicated the methods and search terms used by de Bekker-Grob et al. 2012 and Clark et al. 2014. The Medline database was searched for articles dated between 2008 and 2015. The search was limited to studies in English that reflected general preferences and were choice-based, published as full-text articles and related to health technologies. This study included 72 papers, 52% of which focused on DCEs on drug treatments. The average number of attributes used in all included DCE studies was 5.74 (SD 1.98). The most frequently used attributes in these DCEs were improvements in health (78%), side effects (57%) and cost of treatment (53%). Other, less frequently used attributes included waiting time for treatment or duration of treatment (25%), severity of disease (7%) and value for money (4%). The attributes identified might inform future DCE surveys designed to study societal preferences regarding health technologies in order to better inform decisions in health technology assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In order to make informed decisions about how best to support children and young people with disabilities, effective strategies that facilitate active and meaningful participation in school are required. Clinical factors, diagnosis or impairments somewhat helpful in determining what should be provided in interventions. However, clinical factors alone will not offer a clear view of how to support participation. It is helpful then to look at wider psychosocial and environmental factors. The aim of this review was to synthesise evidence of psychosocial and environmental factors associated with school participation of 4–12 year old children with disabilities to inform the development of participation-fostering interventions. Methods: A systematic search and synthesis using realist methods was conducted of published research. Papers had to include consideration of psychosocial and/or environment factors for school participation of children with disabilities. The review was completed in accordance with the Realist and Meta-narrative Evidence Syntheses: Evolving Standards (RAMESES) and Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines. Papers were identified via Boolean search of the electronic databases MEDLINE, CINAHL, PhycINFO and ERIC (January 2006-October 2018). Appraisal focussed on contributions in terms of whether the articles are appropriate for the review (relevance) and research quality (rigour). Data were analyzed using content and thematic analysis methods using a realist framework. A narrative synthesis of results was reported. Results and implications: We identified 1828 papers in the initial search. Seventy two papers were included in the final synthesis. Synthesis of findings led to three overarching mechanisms representing psychosocial factors for children (1) identity (2) competence and (3) experience of mind and body. Environmental aspects (context) compromised five interrelated areas: (1) structures and organization, (2) peers, (3) adults, (4) space and (5) objects. Our synthesis provides insights on how professionals may organize efforts to improve children’s participation. Consideration of these findings will help to proactively deal with suboptimal participation outcomes. Development of theoretically determined assessments and interventions for management of school participation are now required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality circles or peer review groups, and similar structured small groups of 6–12 health care professionals meet regularly across Europe to reflect on and improve their standard practice. There is debate over their effectiveness in primary health care, especially over their potential to change practitioners’ behaviour. Despite their popularity, we could not identify broad surveys of the literature on quality circles in a primary care context. Our scoping review was intended to identify possible definitions of quality circles, their origins, and reported effectiveness in primary health care, and to identify gaps in our knowledge. We searched appropriate databases and included any relevant paper on quality circles published until December 2017. We then compared information we found in the articles to that we found in books and on websites. Our search returned 7824 citations, from which we identified 82 background papers and 58 papers about quality circles. We found that they originated in manufacturing industry and that many countries adopted them for primary health care to continuously improve medical education, professional development, and quality of care. Quality circles are not standardized and their techniques are complex. We identified 19 papers that described individual studies, one paper that summarized 3 studies, and 1 systematic review that suggested that quality circles can effectively change behaviour, though effect sizes varied, depending on topic and context. Studies also suggested participation may affirm self-esteem and increase professional confidence. Because reports of the effect of quality circles on behaviour are variable, we recommend theory-driven research approaches to analyse and improve the effectiveness of this complex intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land use change (LUC) is a main cause of global environmental change, and is an important activity to be studied. Our research aims to examine the current state of evidence on the link between LUC and human health in the Amazon region. We conducted a scoping review of literature in two research databases, resulting in 14 papers for analysis. Our analysis demonstrated a lack of clear definitions for LUC, a wide variety of negative health effects from LUC, the lack of qualitative articles, a lack of studies exploring the potential positive health effects of LUC, and the predominance of studies coming from the Brazilian Amazon. Our study validated the prevailing idea that LUC can lead to negative health consequences, if not managed properly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a formulation for selecting the stage ratios and number of stages in a multistage transmission with a given desired total transmission ratio in a manner that maximizes efficiency, maximizes acceleration, or minimizes the mass of the transmission. The formulation is used to highlight several implications for gear train design, including the fact that minimizing rotational inertia and mass are competing objectives with respect to optimal selection of stage ratios, and that both rotational inertia and mass can often be minimized by increasing the total number of stages beyond a minimum realizable number. Additionally, a multistage transmission will generally provide maximum acceleration when the stage ratios increase monotonically from the motor to the load. The transmission will have minimum mass when the stage ratios decrease monotonically. The transmission will also provide maximum efficiency when the corresponding stages employ constant stage ratios. This paper aims to use this optimization formulation to elucidate tradeoffs between various common objectives in gear train design (efficiency, acceleration, and mass). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a bibliometric, citation network-based method for assessing the social validation of novel research, and applies this method to the development of high-throughput toxicology research at the US Environmental Protection Agency. Social validation refers to the acceptance of novel research methods by a relevant scientific community; it is formally independent of the technical validation of methods, and is frequently studied in history, philosophy, and social studies of science using qualitative methods. The quantitative methods introduced here find that high-throughput toxicology methods are spread throughout a large and well-connected research community, which suggests high social validation. Further assessment of social validation involving mixed qualitative and quantitative methods are discussed in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using matching and regression analyses, we measure the difference in citations between articles posted to Academia.edu and other articles from similar journals, controlling for field, impact factor, and other variables. Based on a sample size of 31,216 papers, we find that a paper in a median impact factor journal uploaded to Academia.edu receives 16% more citations after one year than a similar article not available online, 51% more citations after three years, and 69% after five years. We also found that articles also posted to Academia.edu had 58% more citations than articles only posted to other online venues, such as personal and departmental home pages, after five years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]