Growth and development of biofeedback: a bibliographic update

Computerized literature searching techniques were used to examine publication patterns in the worldwide biofeedback literature. Searches were completed in the United States and in Japan for the years 1985 through 1987. The results were used to update the results of an earlier study that covered the years from 1964 through 1984. Publication growth curves were generated for several media, including scientific journal articles, books, doctoral dissertations, and popular magazine articles. Although publication of information about biofeedback remains active worldwide, there has been a declining trend in effect for the past several years. The American database grossly underestimated the number of Japanese biofeedback articles, and it is likely that the literatures of other countries outside of North America were similarly underestimated. Possible explanations for the various trends noted are discussed.     

Growth and development of biofeedback: A bibliographic update

Computerized literature searching techniques were used to examine publication patterns in the worldwide biofeedback literature. Searches were completed in the United States and in Japan for the years 1985 through 1987. The results were used to update the results of an earlier study (Hatch & Riley, 1985) that covered the years from 1964 through 1984. Publication growth curves were generated for several media, including scientific journal articles, books, doctoral dissertations, and popular magazine articles. Although publication of information about biofeedback remains active worldwide, there has been a declining trend in effect for the past several years. The American database grossly underestimated the number of Japanese biofeedback articles, and it is likely that the literatures of other countries outside of North America were similarly underestimated. Possible explanations for the various trends noted are discussed.These results were presented in part at the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Margaret Cyr-Provost in preparing the data for analysis.     

Use of Primates in Research: What Do We Know About Captive Strepsirrhine Primates?

The increasing debate and restrictions on primate research have prompted many surveys about their status. However, there is a lack of information regarding strepsirrhine primates in the literature. This study provides an overview of research on strepsirrhines in captivity by analyzing scientific articles published from 2010 to 2013 and assessing publicly available government reports in Europe and the United States. Data on taxonomy, country, research area, research class, and type of institution were extracted. The 174 qualifying articles showed that species in the Galagidae and Cheirogaleidae families were used more often in invasive studies of neuroscience and metabolism, while the most commonly used species in noninvasive studies of behavior and cognition were true lemurs (family Lemuridae). France conducted the greatest number of invasive research projects, and the Duke Lemur Center was the institution with the most noninvasive studies. This study investigates how strepsirrhines are used in captive research and identifies issues in need of further review, which suggest that increased participation by the scientific community in the monitoring of strepsirrhine research is warranted.     

晚清报刊所载真菌类专篇汇录

晚清时期传入中国的西方真菌学知识对于近代中国真菌学的建立和发展具有启蒙作用.在全面分析其影响之前,有必要先对相关文献进行全面的整理,而这些文献中大部分都分布于多种晚清报刊.经过整理和统计,本文共辑得89份真菌类专篇文章,其中大型真菌类44篇、霉菌类27篇、酵母菌类18篇,分布于26种报刊.这些文章中注明是译作的只有28篇,但其余的文章中涉及西方真菌科学知识的实际上都属于介译性质.这些真菌学知识部分是通过日文图书或期刊文献间接引入,部分是直接译自西方的科学文献.     

Why pesticides with mutagenic,carcinogenic and reproductive risks are registered in Brazil

Brazil is the biggest market for pesticides in the world. In the registration process, a pesticide must be authorized by the Institute of the Environment, Health Surveillance Agency and Ministry of Agriculture. Evaluations follow a package of toxicological studies submitted by the companies and also based on the Brazilian law regarding pesticides. We confronted data produced by private laboratories, submitted to the Institute of the Environment for registration, with data obtained from scientific databases, corresponding to mutagenicity, carcinogenicity and teratogenicity of pesticides. All studies submitted by the companies were carried out by private laboratories. From 247 pesticide formulations analyzed, none showed positive results for mutagenicity, carcinogenicity or teratogenicity. From 574 articles in the scientific literature, 84% published by public laboratories showed positive results, while 79% of those showing negative results came from private laboratories. There is an ethical concern about a conflict of interest between public/independent laboratories and private laboratories that produce data for registering pesticides. We demonstrated that there is a clear contradiction between public and private laboratories. Brazilian regulatory authorities have approved the registration of pesticides based almost exclusively on the monographs provided by the pesticide industry, because the use of scientific articles or information from the independent literature is strongly belittled by the industry. Pesticide companies argue that scientific articles cannot be trusted. Also, according to the industry, pesticide registration cannot be refused based on results from scientific articles. Thus, the registration of pesticides with mutagenic, carcinogenic and teratogenic risks has been approved in Brazil.     

Citrate usage in the leading causes of blindness: new possibilities for the old metabolite

Introduction

Citrate is an old metabolite which is best known for the role in the Krebs cycle. Citrate is widely used in many branches of medicine. In ophthalmology citrate is considered as a therapeutic agent and an useful diagnostic tool—biomarker.

Objectives

To summarize the published literature on citrate usage in the leading causes of blindness and highlight the new possibilities for this old metabolite.

Methods

We conducted a systematic search of the scientific literature about citrate usage in ophthalmology up to January 2018. The reference lists of identified articles were searched for providing in-depth information.

Results

This systematic review included 30 articles. The role of citrate in the leading causes of blindness is presented.

Conclusions

Citrate might help inhibit cataract progression, in case of questions confirm glaucoma diagnosis or improve cornea repair treatment as adjuvant agent (therapy of ulcerating cornea after alkali injury, crosslinking procedure). However, the knowledge about possible citrate usage in ophthalmology is not widely known. Promoting recent scientific knowledge about citrate usage in ophthalmology may not only benefit of medical improvement but may also limit economic costs caused by leading causes of blindness. Further studies on citrate usage in ophthalmology should continuously be the field of scientific interest.

     

An effective and reliable computerised system for storage and retrieval of references to scientific publications

A suite of programs has been implemented to facilitate the storage and retrieval of references to published works in a typical scientific research establishment. The retrieval process is governed by searches for specified combinations of keywords, author names, individual references, and lengths of time that references have been held on file. The system currently caters for approximately 1290 journals together with abstracts, reports, supplements, symposia, proceedings and books. Five years experience has proved the system to be reliable and effective, and it requires only 1.5 technician-days per week to operate it and to input about 25 000 articles annually. This system fulfills a requirement felt by many specialised institutions in providing localised control over quantities of information which are too large to be processed manually.     

Fundamental concepts in statistics: elucidation and illustration

Fundamentalconcepts in statistics form the cornerstone of scientific inquiry. Ifwe fail to understand fully these fundamental concepts, then thescientific conclusions we reach are more likely to be wrong. This ismore than supposition: for 60 years, statisticians have warned that thescientific literature harbors misunderstandings about basic statisticalconcepts. Original articles published in 1996 by the AmericanPhysiological Society's journals fared no better in their handling ofbasic statistical concepts. In this review, we summarize the two mainscientific uses of statistics: hypothesis testing and estimation. Mostscientists use statistics solely for hypothesis testing; often,however, estimation is more useful. We also illustrate the concepts ofvariability and uncertainty, and we demonstrate the essentialdistinction between statistical significance and scientific importance.An understanding of concepts such as variability, uncertainty, andsignificance is necessary, but it is not sufficient; we show also thatthe numerical results of statistical analyses have limitations.

     

Archaea--timeline of the third domain

The Archaea evolved as one of the three primary lineages several billion years ago, but the first archaea to be discovered were described in the scientific literature about 130 years ago. Moreover, the Archaea were formally proposed as the third domain of life only 20 years ago. Over this very short period of investigative history, the scientific community has learned many remarkable things about the Archaea--their unique cellular components and pathways, their abundance and critical function in diverse natural environments, and their quintessential role in shaping the evolutionary path of life on Earth. This Review charts the 'archaea movement', from its genesis through to key findings that, when viewed together, illustrate just how strongly the field has built on new knowledge to advance our understanding not only of the Archaea, but of biology as a whole.     

Analysis of acanthocephalan literature published since 1900.

The data for this study are based on more than 6000 articles that mention Acanthocephala. The results indicate: (1) the difficulty in being current on world literature. It took about 3 years beyond the date of publication to discover many articles. (2) Except for World Wars I and II there has been a sustained increase in the number of articles. At present this rate exceeds 1000 titles per 5-year period. (3) Investigator interest, as measured by multiple publications by a given author, has remained very small. (4) Most publications have originated in the U.S.S.R. and U.S.A. followed by Great Britain and Germany. (5) Number of authors per title has increased dramatically. Currently, there are more four-author than single-author articles. (6) Fish are host animals most likely to be mentioned as containing acanthocephalans.     

Inland water quality monitoring with native bryophytes: A methodological review

Aquatic bryophytes are used as a simple, reliable and economic tool for passive biomonitoring of water quality. However, a harmonized protocol that would enable use of the method outside of the scientific field is not yet available. The aim of this literature review, which considers 73 articles published between 1979 and 2013, is to ascertain the current status of the technique and to evaluate the degree of standardization of each aspect of the method. The use of this tool is largely limited to Europe (80% of the articles reviewed). It has mainly been used to biomonitor inorganic (in 97% of the articles) and to a lesser extent organic contaminants (in 4% of the articles; note that the sum is greater than 100% because both inorganic and organic contaminants were studied in some studies). Methodological aspects were only considered in 15% of the articles. Moreover, 81% of the authors have only published one article on the topic and many different protocols have been used. As a result, the technique is not standardized, which hampers comparison of the results of different studies. Finally, we propose a protocol that would facilitate the use of the technique as a routine tool for monitoring the quality of inland waters.     

The HIV Mutation Browser: A Resource for Human Immunodeficiency Virus Mutagenesis and Polymorphism Data

Huge research effort has been invested over many years to determine the phenotypes of natural or artificial mutations in HIV proteins—interpretation of mutation phenotypes is an invaluable source of new knowledge. The results of this research effort are recorded in the scientific literature, but it is difficult for virologists to rapidly find it. Manually locating data on phenotypic variation within the approximately 270,000 available HIV-related research articles, or the further 1,500 articles that are published each month is a daunting task. Accordingly, the HIV research community would benefit from a resource cataloguing the available HIV mutation literature. We have applied computational text-mining techniques to parse and map mutagenesis and polymorphism information from the HIV literature, have enriched the data with ancillary information and have developed a public, web-based interface through which it can be intuitively explored: the HIV mutation browser. The current release of the HIV mutation browser describes the phenotypes of 7,608 unique mutations at 2,520 sites in the HIV proteome, resulting from the analysis of 120,899 papers. The mutation information for each protein is organised in a residue-centric manner and each residue is linked to the relevant experimental literature. The importance of HIV as a global health burden advocates extensive effort to maximise the efficiency of HIV research. The HIV mutation browser provides a valuable new resource for the research community. The HIV mutation browser is available at: http://hivmut.org.     

Of truth and pathways: chasing bits of information through myriads of articles

Knowledge on interactions between molecules in living cells is indispensable for theoretical analysis and practical applications in modern genomics and molecular biology. Building such networks relies on the assumption that the correct molecular interactions are known or can be identified by reading a few research articles. However, this assumption does not necessarily hold, as truth is rather an emerging property based on many potentially conflicting facts. This paper explores the processes of knowledge generation and publishing in the molecular biology literature using modelling and analysis of real molecular interaction data. The data analysed in this article were automatically extracted from 50000 research articles in molecular biology using a computer system called GeneWays containing a natural language processing module. The paper indicates that truthfulness of statements is associated in the minds of scientists with the relative importance (connectedness) of substances under study, revealing a potential selection bias in the reporting of research results. Aiming at understanding the statistical properties of the life cycle of biological facts reported in research articles, we formulate a stochastic model describing generation and propagation of knowledge about molecular interactions through scientific publications. We hope that in the future such a model can be useful for automatically producing consensus views of molecular interaction data.     

What do Israeli high school students understand about biodiversity? An evaluation of the high school biology programme, ‘Nature in a World of Change’

One of the most serious problems facing our planet is the biodiversity crisis. As a solution to this problem, both scientists and educators have emphasised the need for educating people about how to conserve the Earth’s biodiversity. As a small contribution to this effort, we have designed a learning unit about biodiversity, Nature in a world of change, which has recently been implemented with 74 12th-grade Israeli high-school biology students. This unit consists of two components: an introductory module and a collection of three articles adapted from the primary scientific literature. This paper focuses on an in-depth examination with 25 students participating in the programme’s implementation. The evaluation process includes a self-assessment of prior basic ecological knowledge and a post-test focusing on concepts and issues central to the understanding of biodiversity, such as niche and Simpson’s Index. Analysis of perturbations in a food web (by an invasive species) was a special focus of the assessments, reflecting similar concerns prevalent among the scientific community. The results of this evaluation revealed that students with a solid ecological background could successfully deal with the newly acquired concepts presented in the module and the articles.     

Methodology in medical research; the need for controlled clinical studies

Too many medical researchers vitiate their work by ignoring the problem of uncontrolled variables. They therefore publish clinical impressions "dressed up" in scientifically meaningless numbers. A prototypical example of this practice is contrasted with a controlled study, each employing the same (small) number of patients. It is shown how the use of controls can convert a meaningless experiment into one that has assessable scientific significance.A survey of current literature revealed that in only 21 of 100 articles studied were adequately controlled experimental conditions employed. Since they usually deal with very complex systems, it is urged that medical researchers exercise more scientific rigor with regard to control problems.     

2001-2010 年MEDLINE 收录福建省医疗机构科技论文文献计量学分析

目的:通过分析福建省医疗机构科技论文被国际权威检索工具MEDLINE收录情况,以评价福建省各医疗机构的科研水平和学术地位.方法:应用文献计量学和数理统计方法对2001-2010年MEDLINE收录的福建省医疗机构科技论文进行统计分析.结果:近10年MEDLINE一共收录福建省医疗机构科技论文1385篇,包括中文文献908篇,英文文献477篇,国内刊物发表文献1085篇,国外刊物发表文献300篇,其中美国、英格兰、荷兰位列国外出版刊物前三;发文机构中,福建医科大学附属协和医院、南京军区福州总医院、福建医科大学附属第一医院位列前三;发文地区分布主要集中在福厦泉漳医疗事业发达地区,地区分布不均衡;论文合作率达98.3％,论文合作度达5.21.结论:近10年来,福建省医疗机构科研水平发展总体处在上升的趋势,但地区分布不平衡,且外文文献和国外刊物发文文献所占比例较少.     

Dragging scientific publishing into the 21st century

Scientific publishers must shake off three centuries of publishing on paper and embrace 21st century technology to make scientific communication more intelligible, reproducible, engaging and rapidly available.The Internet has massively disrupted how we communicate - primarily for the better. Many business sectors, however, have struggled to adapt to online platforms, with many simply resisting change. The newspaper industry is an example of a centuries-old industry persisting in the face of new conditions - until it can’t. In the early 1990s the Web began displacing traditional information delivery. By the mid 2000s it had become a widespread facet of life in many countries. Web 1.0 journalism translated ink to pixels, but as technology advanced the slow erosion of print became a landslide [1].Scientific publishing is following a similar path, with its hesitance to adapt and slow (or no) adoption of the many advantages the Internet affords.For now, scientific publishing remains profitable. Nevertheless, its sustainability rests upon antiquated pillars. Scholarly print journals date back hundreds of years to the availability of a cheap distribution method with the introduction of the printing press.Most journals have made only incremental changes. A few have taken some advantage of the Internet and experimented with multimedia, but use of the medium has been limited primarily to extra content, such as unsearchable encyclopedic online supplements to accompany articles that maintain print page limits; or publishing many more articles by relaxing peer-review requirements for ‘novelty’, as exemplified by PLoS ONE, which has published 30,000 articles in 2013 alone [2]. Overall print-era anachronisms still persist through the continuation of page limits and surcharges and the release of discrete issues, as if all articles remain subject to print-only production schedules.So how do we imagine the future of scientific publishing?     

METHODOLOGY IN MEDICAL RESEARCH—The Need for Controlled Clinical Studies

Too many medical researchers vitiate their work by ignoring the problem of uncontrolled variables. They therefore publish clinical impressions “dressed up” in scientifically meaningless numbers. A prototypical example of this practice is contrasted with a controlled study, each employing the same (small) number of patients. It is shown how the use of controls can convert a meaningless experiment into one that has assessable scientific significance.A survey of current literature revealed that in only 21 of 100 articles studied were adequately controlled experimental conditions employed.Since they usually deal with very complex systems, it is urged that medical researchers exercise more scientific rigor with regard to control problems.