1,721,198 research outputs found

    Biochemical plant-soil microbe feedback in response to climate warming in peatlands

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    Peatlands act as global sinks of atmospheric carbon (C) through the accumulation of organic matter, primarily made up of decay-resistant litter of peat mosses. However, climate warming has been shown to promote vascular plant growth in peatlands, especially ericaceous shrubs. A change in vegetation cover is in turn expected to modify aboveground-belowground interactions, but the biogeochemical mechanisms involved remain unknown. Here, by selecting peatlands at different altitudes in order to simulate a natural gradient of soil temperature, we show that the expansion of ericaceous shrubs with warming is associated with an increase of polyphenol content in both plant litter and pore-water, which retards the release of nitrogen (N) from decomposing litter, increases the amount of dissolved organic N, and reduces N immobilization by soil microbes. A decrease of soil water content with increasing temperature promotes the dominance of fungi, which feeds back on the growth of ericaceous shrubs by facilitating the symbiotic acquisition of dissolved organic N. We also observed a higher release of labile C from vascular plant roots at higher soil temperatures, which promotes the microbial investment in C degrading enzymes. Our data suggest that climate-induced changes in plant cover can reduce the productivity of peat mosses and potentially prime the decomposition of organic matter by affecting the stoichiometry of soil enzymatic activity

    Linking soil microbial communities to vascular plant abundance along a climate gradient

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    The ongoing expansion of shrub cover in response to climate change represents a unique opportunity to explore the link between soil microbial communities and vegetation changes. This link is particularly important in peatlands where shrub expansion is expected to feed back negatively on the carbon sink capacity of these ecosystems. Microbial community structure and function were measured seasonally in four peatlands located along an altitude gradient representing a natural gradient of climate and associated vascular plant abundance. We show that increased soil temperature and reduced water content are associated with greater vascular plant biomass, in particular that of ericoids, and that this, in turn, is correlated with greater microbial biomass. More specifically, microbial community structure is characterized by an increasing dominance of fungi over bacteria with improved soil oxygenation. We also found that the carbon and nitrogen stoichiometry of microbial biomass differs in relation to soil microbial community structure and that this is ultimately associated with a different investment in extracellular enzymatic activity. Our findings highlight the fact that the determination of the structural identity of microbial communities can help to explain the biogeochemical dynamics of organic matter and provide a better understanding of ecosystem response to environmental changes

    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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