1,721,025 research outputs found
Environmental Efficiency Analysis of Basmati Rice Production in Punjab, Pakistan: Implications for Sustainable Agricultural Development
Full text linkThe intensive use of chemicals worked as a catalyst to shift the production frontier but the most critical factor of maintaining a clean environment was totally ignored. The present study attempts to estimate the environmental efficiency of rice production by employing the translog stochastic production frontier approach. The data are collected from five major Basmati rice growing districts (Gujranwala, Sheikupura, Sialkot, Hafizabad, and Jhang) of Punjab in 2006. Chemical weedicides and nitrogen are treated as environmentally detrimental inputs. The mean technical efficiency index is sufficiently high (89 percent) but the environmental efficiency index of chemical weedicides alone is 14 percent while the joint environmental efficiency index of chemical weedicides and nitrogen is 24 percent implying that joint environmental efficiency is higher than chemical weedicide alone. It indicates that substantial reduction (86 percent) in chemical weedicide use is possible with higher level of productivity. Moreover, it is likely to contribute a considerable decrease in environmental pollution which is expected to enhance the performance of agriculture labour. The reduction in chemical weedicides will save Rs 297 per acre and Rs 1307.3 million over all from the rice crop in Punjab, improving the profitability of rice growing farmers by the same proportion. Empirical analysis indicates that reduction in environmental pollution together with higher level of profitability in rice production is achievable.Rice Production, Environmental Efficiency, Weedicide, Fertiliser (NPK), Stochastic Translog Frontier
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Wheat Self-sufficiency in Different Policy Scenarios and Their Likely Impacts on Producers, Consumers, and the Public Exchequer
Full text linkEvery government faces a challenge to select an optimum policy to provide food supplies to the consumers at a reasonable price and maintain a reasonable nutritional standard. The alternative policy options available are an uninterrupted market, imports, input subsidies, price support, combined policy developed by the combination of input subsidy and price support, and investment on research and infrastructure development. This paper analyses the impact of these options on consumers’ and producers’ welfare, tax revenue, and foreign exchange requirement. The import and input subsidy give net return to the society while price support generates net loss. The triple combined policy option generates the highest net return to the society when each import and input subsidy component is combined with price support in the ratio of 40 and 20 percent, respectively. The best policies to provide higher wheat supplies at lower prices and to improve the welfare of consumers and producers were investment on agricultural research and development of irrigation infrastructure in the long run, but for the short run, the first and the second best option were respectively the combined and the input subsidy policy.
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