1,720,972 research outputs found

    Decision analysis support for sustainable allocation of newly-arrived refugees according to water security criteria

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    Site selection is a critical factor in the ability to provide safe and healthy environment for refugees. At the outset of an emergency, limited resource and time create large planning uncertainties and current refugee sites’ assessments based on field visit are no longer adequate. The selection of unsuitable locations triggers a number of issues such as environmental degradation, competition for scarce resources and, exploitation of water sources. These can be reduced through a rational refugee allocation decision process. The question that arises is, can the refugee allocation process be supported by a structured decision-making (SDM) approach and more specifically, by a portfolio decision analysis (PDA) model? Focusing on water security criteria, this study presents the initial phases of the SDM-approach intended to ensure a more sustainable allocation of newly-arrived refugees among new and/or existing hosing sites. To this end, a procedural tool for supporting WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) officers in the site assessment is proposed. This was obtained based on 15 semi-structured interviews and questionnaires carried out in a global stakeholder environment, in order to make the SDM framework applicable to other settings. The generic procedural tool was tested in a case-study in south-western Uganda by applying a portfolio decision analysis model. Local and global data were combined with stakeholder preferences to predict the performance of diverse sets of alternatives. The latter were generated according to different combinations of numbers of refugees, hosting locations and percentage of water extracted from surface water, groundwater and rain water. To identify efficient portfolios, we used the Robust Portfolio Modelling - Decisions software. Results showed that overlooked solutions outperforms over the current allocation strategy. In specific, the scatter of newly arrived refugees showed the highest scores on availability of water, socio-economic costs and host communities' advantages. The proposed framework provides also options for the optimal repartition of the future water extraction among available water sources, aiming to avoid their depletion while preserving sustainable costs of the water services.Water Managemen

    Technological catching up, quality of exports and competitiveness: a sectoral perspective

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    In the paper we focus on emerging market economies’ pattern of trade, with a view to explaining the different features of competitiveness for high skill- and low skill-intensive firms. We consider a theoretical dynamical setup where high-skill firms engage in innovation activity and gain market shares in high-income ”quality dominated” markets thanks to technological catching up, whereas low-skill firms face price competition for their exports. On the basis of the theoretical model, we run econometric estimations for trade between CEECs and EU economies over the period 2000-2007. In the econometric analysis we first test the assumption that UVR is an adequate indicator of quality in trade, showing that in high skill-intensive firms it is systematically correlated to domestic and foreign technological variables; we then use the fitted UVR in the estimation of the role of preference for quality in the evolution of CEECs’ market shares. The estimations support the results of the theoretical model as to the role of non-price competitiveness stemming from quality-supply as well as quality-demand factors

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The 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

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    “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

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    We 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

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    We 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

    Author Index

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    koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist

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    We have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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