On the significance of data bases keywords for alarge scale bibliometric investigation in fundamental physics

We present an automatized bibliometric investigation applied to the field of fundamental research in physics. We briefly describe the scientific context motivating this study and the statistical method used for analyzing the data. We discuss in more detail how we adapted our investigation to the questions motivating this study, namely the identification of relevant groups working in a well defined subfield of physics. We next present the results of our investigation. We particularly focus on an analysis of Index and Free terms, as obtained from the INSPEC data base we used for performing the bibliometric investigation. We discuss the relevance of Index and Free terms by means of a separation between Noise, Interesting and Trivial entries. We show that Index and Free terms exhibit somewhat different behaviors when considered as distributions in terms of frequencies of occurrence in the references. We show the particular relevance of Free terms in this analysis. This may be connected to the emerging nature of the subfield of physics under consideration. This shed an interesting light on the respective importance of Index and Free terms, as entries of data bases, in particular in the case of rapidly evolving scientific domains.     

Aspects angulaires de la transmission d'électrons à travers des cibles d'aluminium

This paper deals with the angular and energy-angular analysis of the transmission of electrons with energies below 3 keV through thin self-supporting aluminium films with thicknesses between 150 and 785 Å; for 150 Å thick targets, values of the transmission coefficient and the energy distributions of transmitted electrons are given.     

Calciphylaxis in a chronic hemodialysis patient with protein S deficiency

Vascular calcifications are common in uremic patients whereas calciphylaxis is rare. We report the case of a 45-year-old woman on chronic hemodialysis since 1977. She had a subtotal parathyroidectomy in 1985, aortic and mitral valve replacement in 1986, and has been treated since then with nicoumalone. In June 1991, she presented with repeated, painful cutaneous necrosis suggesting panniculitis. A skin biopsy showed lobular panniculitis and evidence of calciphylaxis. There was an obvious biological hyperparathyroidism. Protein C functional level was in the normal range whereas protein S functional level was low, i.e. 42%. The patient underwent cervical surgery to remove two parathyroid glands, and daily hemodialysis sessions. Despite this treatment, cutaneous necrosis progressed with superinfection. A few weeks later, the patient died from a septic shock after a myocardic infarction. Necropsy was not performed.     

Software And Sanity

Can a consultant overcome the forces of human nature and get executives, programmers, and users to work together to produce software that makes everyone happy?     

Acute renal insufficiency in renal transplants treated with interferon-alpha for chronic hepatitis C

Small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) can provide information on mean size, predominant orientation and typical shape of mineral crystals in bone. In this paper, recent developments of this technique for application in bone research are reviewed. Then the structure of the collagen/mineral composite in bone, as determined by SAXS, is compared for a number of species. The thickness of the mineral crystals was found to increase with age up to a value around 3 to 4 nanometers in adult animals, depending on the species. The SAXS results also suggest the existence of needle-shaped mineral crystals in mouse or rat bone and more plate-shaped crystals in other tissues like adult human bone or mineralized turkey leg tendon.     

Subcellular distribution of survival motor neuron (SMN) protein: possible involvement in nucleocytoplasmic and dendritic transport

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is among the most common recessive autosomal diseases and is characterized by the loss of spinal motor neurons. A gene termed 'Survival of Motor Neurons' (SMN) has been identified as the SMA-determining gene. Recent work indicates the involvement of the SMN protein and its associated protein SIP1 in spliceosomal snRNP biogenesis. However, the function of SMN remains unknown. Here, we have studied the subcellular localization of SMN in the rat spinal cord and more generally in the central nervous system (CNS), by light fluorescence and electron microscopy. SMN immunoreactivity (IR) was found in the different regions of the spinal cord but also in various regions of the CNS such as the brainstem, cerebellum, thalamus, cortex and hippocampus. In most neurons, we observed a speckled labelling of the cytoplasm and a discontinuous staining of the nuclear envelope. For some neurons (e.g. brainstem nuclei, dentate gyrus, cortex: layer V) and, in particular in motoneurons, SMN-IR was also present as prominent nuclear dot-like-structures. In these nuclear dots, SMN colocalized with SIP1 and with fibrillarin, a marker of coiled bodies. Ultrastructural studies in the anterior horn of the spinal cord confirmed the presence of SMN in the coiled bodies and also revealed the protein at the external side of nuclear pores complexes, in association with polyribosomes, and in dendrites, associated with microtubules. These localizations suggest that, in addition to its involvement in the spliceosome biogenesis, the SMN protein could also play a part in nucleocytoplasmic and dendritic transport.     

Highly homogeneous silica coatings for optical and protective applications deposited by PECVD at room temperature in a planar uniform distributed electron cyclotron resonance plasma reactor.

Thin near-stoichiometric silica films were deposited by plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) using pure SiH₄ and O₂ in a planar plasma reactor based on the proprietary uniform distributed electron cyclotron resonance (UDECR) technology. Samples were kept approximately at room temperature during the process. In the pressure range 0.1–0.4 Pa, dense ( > 5 × 10¹⁰ cm⁻³) diffusion plasmas could be sustained very homogeneously over areas larger than 200 mm× 200 mm. In conjunction with appropriate distributed gas injection set-up, extremely good layer uniformities were obtained, with no visible irisations for thicknesses of 0.1–6 μm. The reactor concept intrinsically lends itself to process scale-up which is even trivial along one dimension. The effects of gas flow rates and substrate r.f. bias were investigated, mainly by Fourier transform infrared absorption spectroscopy and spectroscopic ellipsometry (1.4–5.0 eV). The Si-H and O-H bond contents were found to be very low for all samples. For films deposited under sufficient ion bombardment energy, typical values for the refractive index at 2.0 eV (1.458) and the Si-O-Si stretching frequency (1075 cm⁻¹) were very close to those obtained in the case of thermally grown silica, indicating an unusually dense microstructure for the as-deposited PECVD films grown at quasi-ambient temperature.

Transparent protective coatings 3–5 μm thick showing excellent abrasion resistance and weatherability could thus be deposited on metals and optical polymers.     

Conditions and delay time of ignition of iron microparticles in oxygen

Experiments on autoignition and combustion of iron microparticles in oxygen have been conducted. The parameters of the gas medium were created using a rapid-compression machine. Investigations have been carried out on powders with particle size from 20 to 125 μm at an oxygen pressure of to 28 MPa and a temperature from 650 to 1100 K. The ignition delay was measured by recording radiation from the lateral wall of the combustion chamber and determining the pressure on the end wall. Autoignition conditions have been represented as the dependences of the oxygen density and pressure at the end of the compression stroke on the temperature and the particle size. A point semiempirical mathematical model making it possible to satisfactorily describe experimental data on the dependence of the delay time of ignition of a microparticle fill on the oxygen temperature has been proposed.     

Bibliometric law used for information retrieval

Zipf's law was used to qualify all the key-words of documents in a data set. This qualification was used to build a graphical representation of the resulting indicator in each document. The graphical resolution leads to a document dispatch in a three dimensional space. This graphical representation was used as an information retrieval tool without using any keyword. The presentation of a case study is internet available. The graph is drawn in Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML) allowing a dynamic picture which is linked to a Database Management System (FreeWais). The experimentation was drawn to get a first impression of documents data set by querying without any keyword.