1,721,029 research outputs found
Soil biodiversity: functions, threats and tools for policy makers
No full textHuman societies rely on the vast diversity of benefits provided by nature, such as food, fibres, construction materials, clean water, clean air and climate regulation. All the elements required for these ecosystem services depend on soil, and soil biodiversity is the driving force behind their regulation. With 2010 being the international year of biodiversity and with the growing attention in Europe on the importance of soils to remain healthy and capable of supporting human activities sustainably, now is the perfect time to raise awareness on preserving soil biodiversity. The objective of this report is to review the state of knowledge of soil biodiversity, its functions, its contribution to ecosystem services and its relevance for the sustainability of human society. In line with the definition of biodiversity given in the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Convention, soil biodiversity can be defined as the variation in soil life, from genes to communities, and the variation in soil habitats, from micro-aggregates to entire landscapes. Bio Intelligence Service, IRD, and NIOO, Report for European Commission (DG Environment
Costs and benefits related to the use of tax incentives for energy-efficient appliances
Get PDFThe study examines four products with high energy-saving potential: refrigerators, washing machines, boilers and compact fluorescent lamps. The cost-benefit analysis is done in a comparative perspective so that the costs and benefits of energy taxation and a regulatory measure are calculated for the same products. The data from four different Member States (Denmark, France, Italy and Poland) are used in the analysis.European Union, taxation
Analyse du cycle de vie : Évaluation de la qualité des données
No full textNational audienceL'Analyse du Cycle de Vie (ACV) d'un système de produits est une approche visant à fournir une description physique de ce système sous l'angle de ses effets sur l'environnement. Mais que peut-on attendre aujourd'huide la mise en oeuvre d'une approche ACV ? Essentiellement des retombées tangibles dans des domaines comme l'évaluation et l'amélioration de la qualité écologique des produits et services. Cela suppose d'une part que les bases théoriques des ACV soient légitimes et d'autre part que les résultats produits soient crédibles. La méthodologie de l'analyse du cycle de vie est décomposée en quatre étapes : la définition des objectifs, l'inventaire du cycle de vie, l'évaluation des impacts sur l'environnement et la recherche d'améliorations. Ces étapes ont été détaillées dans les articles G 5 500 et suivants [9] [10] [11] [12]. La mise en oeuvre d'une analyse du cycle de vie concerne essentiellement l'inventaire des données décrivant les entrants et les sortants aux frontières d'un système spécifié. Le but de cet inventaire est de fournir une représentation physique d'un système de produits, dans la perspective de répondre aux objectifs, préalablement définis de l'étude, aussi fidèlement que possible. La crédibilité des résultats d'une analyse du cycle de vie repose donc en grande partie sur la maîtrise de la qualité des données de l'inventaire. Or, actuellement les praticiens des ACV ne disposent d'aucun référentiel méthodologique pour qualifier la fiabilité et la fidélité des données d'un inventaire. La qualification des données d'un inventaire est une action encore peu systématique au niveau de la pratique actuelle de la réalisation des ACV, en raison de sa grande difficulté. En effet, noter la qualité d'une donnée d'un inventaire, ou quantifier les incertitudes qu'elle présente, est parfois aussi difficile que d'estimer sa valeur elle-même car les informations nécessaires à cette quantification sont le plus souvent incomplètes, manquantes, voire inexistantes. De plus les données collectées au niveau d'un inventaire sont caractérisées par un volume important (de l'ordre de plusieurs centaines) et par leur grande hétérogénéité. Cet article fait état, d'une part, des réflexions les plus significatives à l'heure actuelle en terme de qualification des données d'inventaire. Ces réflexions devraient permettre, à l'avenir, d'obtenir à terme un cadre méthodologique de référence nécessaire à l'harmonisation de la qualification des données d'un inventaire ACV Par ailleurs, parmi les nombreux indicateurs de qualité identifiés, un indicateur de qualité pertinent, relatif à l'évaluation de l'incertitude des données, fait l'objet d'une description détaillée à l'aide d'un exemple concret
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Get PDFWe 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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe 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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