1,720,965 research outputs found
The Imperative of Systems Thinking Approach in Driving Food Systems Transformation through Science and Innovation
Full text linkAs the world became progressively aware that increasing production did not solve global hunger and health problems, the issue of the environmental and social costs of focusing solely on food security and nutrition came to the fore. The term ‘food systems transformation’ was introduced as a radical idea of rethinking the key outcomes of food systems. A complete rethink of the attributes of food systems, including its purpose, rules, and power structures. Food system transformation processes would ideally reshape the way a food system is organized for the desired outcomes: food security, healthy diets, economic wellbeing, social wellbeing and environmental sustainability.Most of the social, economic, moral, and environmental challenges are interconnected and interact with each. Fully understanding the causes and solutions to these challenges is not possible when handled in isolation. Food systems are complex adaptive systems consisting of several actors, linkages, dynamics, etc. These complexity means food systems exhibit unpredictable behaviour, with nonlinear change, tipping points, and unintended responses to shocks and interventions. Systems thinking is a high-level approach to thinking, acting and practice necessary to effect transformational change in any domain.For food systems transformation to be inclusive, science and technology-based innovations must be accompanied by institutional innovations (social, business and policy innovations), underpinned by science (basic sciences and applied sciences, natural sciences and social sciences). Also, innovations need to be aligned with sustainability concerns. All these certainly requires attention and joint engagement by researchers from all areas of the food system-related discipline
Innovative solutions: Of internet of things and biotechnology
Full text linkThe broad term, "biotechnology" dates to domestication of animals, cultivation of plants, and their modification through breeding programmes using artificial choice and conjugation. Attaining sustainability requires fast research and developments in every sector including the most diversified field of biotechnology. The Internet of Things (IoT), one of the coveted areas in technological revolution carries tremendous potential for the transformation of research, innovation and invention in every discipline. IoT provides a window for the efficient, reproducible, fast and precise research into biotechnological research. The potential role of IoT in advancing innovation, conferring economic up-scaling and invention in biotechnology was explored in this editorial
Editorial - Enhancing food security and nutrition through resilient agrifood value chains
Full text linkThe war in Ukraine, with other attendant consequences, has resulted in a massive decline in the supply of major staple foods leading to a rise in food prices globally. As the world focuses on the global food crises precipitated by the Ukrainian war; it is important to contextualize food and nutrition insecurity in the light of domestic challenges. Nigeria’s population in conflict zones have faced and will continue to face food insecurity crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity due to ruthless banditry in the northwest. For example, in 2016, the United Nations reported that Boko Haram bombings in Northern Nigeria disrupted trade routes between Chad and Nigeria, interrupting the supply of basic goods and causing local price hikes.In addition, climate change, natural disasters, violence between farmers and herders; kidnappings, and other forms of insecurity have impacted food production and distribution in Nigeria making food crisis a daily war for Nigerians. At the same time, agricultural productivity has steadily grown, and technological and institutional innovations have proliferated within agrifood markets and value chain with the potential to reduce poverty and food insecurity around the world.A food value chain (FVC) consists of all the stakeholders who participate in the coordinated production and value-adding activities that are needed to make food products. According to HLPE (2014), losses and wastes are common in all the phases of the FVCs (pre-harvest, harvesting and initial handling, storage, transport and logistics, processing and packaging, retailing and, finally, consumption activities). The agrifood value chain development in Nigeria is facing many barriers to fulfilling its potential including but not limited to capacity, enabling environment, governance, infrastructure, and policies conducive to sustainability and growth.Adding value post-production and minimizing losses with innovations in post-harvest and processing phases can have significant economic and environmental impacts, with input savings and carbon footprint reduction
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
A call to strengthen eco-innovation using indigenous resources and waste products
Full text linkWaste is often taken for granted, as a broad category, which encompasses materials we no longer need. Another category of waste would be local resources that we have hitherto not found use for. Although waste management has always existed, recent studies seem to suggest that waste management needs to be addressed principally in poorer countries, given that since the 1970s the developed world has promoted techniques and policies to tackle waste (Jgensen, 2013) and has also advanced innovative measures and practices often associated with green ideas and care for the environment. However, waste management associated with indigenous practices have long been in existence in Africa. For example, according to Solomon et al. (2016) the old use of ash and recycled material to make the soil fertile among indigenous groups in Liberia and Ghana, West Africa, has been ignored (Salim et. al., 2018).
The concept of innovation refers to a broad guiding principle that mobilizes science and technology in the service of the goals of national development. Today as a favourite concept eco-innovation is developing new ideas, promoting new operations, products, and processes to protect the environment, thus obtaining environmental sustainability. Worldwide, eco-innovation is one of the leading strategies to promote resource and energy efficiency and create a low carbon society.
Some of the articles published in this regular edition support the eco-innovation principle, which imagines resources with a life cycle perspective, they consider all phases of the product life cycle, from the extraction of raw materials through material processing, manufacturing, distribution, use, repair and maintenance to disposal or re-use. From the outcome of the publications in this edition, it is recommended that eco-innovative research should be fostered through strategic investment in exploiting local resources and waste products for home grown solutions to sustainable development challenges. This provides opportunities to improve resource management and ensure the reuse of waste or prevent waste by developing indigenous resources
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
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