1,721,020 research outputs found
Geomorphological Impact Assessment in the River Mincio Plain (Province of Mantua, Northern Italy).
No full textThe research takes into account the landscape modifications induced by man's activity in the past 40 years in the sector of the River Mincio plain located between the Pleistocene morainic hills of Lake Garda to the north and the Mantua lakes to the south. From the geomorphological standpoint the study area is comprised within a stretch of territory made up of the outwash plain deposited by the paleocourse of the River Mincio and the wide triangle-shaped depression
cut by the Mincio itself, north of the city of Mantua.
The morphological setting within this depression is characterised by several scarps of varying height,
mainly developed in a N-S direction, which form various orders of terraces. The study includes a detailed bibliographical research, the examination of maps and of aerial photographs taken in different years and a morphological survey carried out in the present day. The plain sector considered has been subjected to intense quarrying activities since the beginning of this century, because the outcropping sediments have good characteristics as building materials. Indeed, the
outwash plain and the terraces inside the Mincio erosional depression are mainly made up of rounded coarse gravels. From a petrographic viewpoint, carbonatic, magmatic and metamorphic rocks are present in various percentages. On the contrary, in the present R. Mincio alluvial plain sandy sediments with a dominant carbonatic component are found, which are the most recent deposits. The open quarries are classified as trench quarries exploited above the water table and trench quarries exploited below the water table. The first-type quarries are excavated only up to a depth of a few metres below the original ground surface and, in any case, up to about 1 m above the maximum level of the water
table. When no longer in use, these quarries are reclaimed for farming after the laying of a pedogenised level of organic soil on their floor. The second-type quarries can reach a depth of up to 20 m and when no longer in use are abandoned or in some cases used as occasional dumping sites or equipped for recreational
fishing. All these quarrying activities have caused relevant landscape changes. The trench quarries above the water
table appear as large, deep rectangular holes, which impress an "artificial" look on the area affected;
also the trench quarries below the water table have formed several small ponds which are extremely different in shape from natural bodies of water (moreover, the interception at ground level of the most superficial aquifer causes potential pollution hazards owing to the possible uncontrolled inflow of waste materials). More in general, quarrying activities have implied the partial or total obliteration of relict fluvial landforms, such as terraces and paleo-riverbeds.
The reclamation of the quarrying areas implies their restitution to farming practices, according to
management criteria based on the safeguard of natural assets and landscape values. Another aspect of man's activities during the past decades concerns the construction of important artificial canals (Scaricatore Pozzolo-Mincio and Diversivo Mincio) which, besides modifying the natural flow of both surface and sub-surface waters, have altered the natural morphological features of the areas affected. In this research a simple methodology for the assessment of the scientific quality of landforms was applied. According to this model, the scientific quality for each element of the landforms is given by the product of their intrinsic scientific value and their condition of preservation. The impact on the landscape is defined as the reduction in scientific quality due to the assessment of the degree of damage produced by man's activity in the past 40 years
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
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
Geomorphological impact assessment in the River Mincio plain (Province of Mantova, Northern Italy)
No full textThis study deals with the changes in the landscape caused by human activity in the past 40 years in the sector of the River Mincio plain located between the morainic hills of Lake Garda to the north and the Mantova lakes to the south.The study includes the analysis of topographical maps and of aerial photographs taken in different years, and the compilation of geomorphological maps referring to the landscape features in 1995 and in 1955.The plain sector considered has been subjected to intense quarrying activities since the beginning of this century. The open quarries are classified as quarries exploited above the water table and trench quarries exploited below the water table. When no longer in use, the first-type quarries are reclaimed for farming after laying a pedogenised level of organic soil on their floor; the second-type quarries are abandoned or equipped for recreational fishing or in some cases used as occasional dumping sites. All these quarrying activities have caused significant landscape changes. Another aspect of human activities during the past decades concerns the construction of important artificial canals which, besides modifying the natural flow of both surface and sub-surface waters, have altered the natural morphological features of the areas affected.Urban development has also been responsible for important modifications in the landscape, especially in the vicinity of the main built-up areas.In this research a simple methodology for the assessment of the scientific quality of landforms was applied. The impact on the landscape is defined as the reduction in scientific quality due to the assessment of the deterioration produced by human activity .The study has shown that among the main human activities the most serious damage to the landscape has been caused by quarrying. The greatest impact, with over 50% loss of quality of the geomorphological assets, has occurred between Goito and Rivalta
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