1,720,985 research outputs found
Significant but transient: The impact of an energy saving app targeting Swiss households
Get PDFIn Global North countries, persuasive apps supporting households in reducing their energy consumption are widespread, as promising policy tools for the energy and climate transition. Despite their growing diffusion, fed by the large-scale smart meter roll-out currently ongoing in many energy systems, rigorous studies providing evidence on their effects are still missing, especially for the long-term. We address this research gap by analysing a one-year long app-based electricity saving intervention performed in Switzerland between 2018 and 2019, involving 55 self-selected households. Adopting a quasi-experimental approach and considering four full years of energy consumption data, we estimate the app's average treatment effect over time and perform heterogeneity analyses on household sub-groups, on varying their characteristics and intensity of app use. The app reduced consumption and CO2 emissions during the intervention (average treatment effect on the treated equal to 4.95%, statistically significant at the 0.05 level; Cohen's d effect size equal to 0.35). However, one year later the effect disappeared. Our results put policies based on persuasive app use into perspective: taken in isolation, persuasive apps may exhibit limitations regarding long-lasting effects. To avoid relapse, future interventions might embed app use into broader processes explicitly aimed at redefining shared norms and conventions on household energy consumption practices, for instance within living lab processes
Verbano
Get PDFL’obiettivo del progetto è la soluzione del problema Verbano tramite la scelta di una nuova regolazione e di oppurtuni interventi strutturali. Tale soluzione deve tendere a minimizzare i danni causati da eventi alluvionali tanto a monte quanto a valle, i danni indotti dalla mancata fornitura idrica agli utenti irrigui ed idroelettrici di valle e quelli subiti dalla navigazione e dal turismo quando si deprimono eccessivamente i livelli lacuali, senza trascurare, nel contempo, il mantenimento di un deflusso minimo nel Ticino, a valle dello sbarramento del Panperduto. In tale ricerca si dovranno ovviamente tener conto dei vincoli posti dalla capacità di smaltimento delle portate all’incile del lago e dalla necessità di mantenere attiva la sua naturale funzione di laminazione in occasione di eventi alluvionali che interessino anche il Po
Challenges and opportunities in deploying a mobility platform integrating public transport and car-pooling services
No full textThis paper introduces a new mobility platform that favours reducing individual car use, by combining car flexibility with advantages offered by public transport, such as punctuality, comfort, safety and low environmental impact. Such platform services are delivered by means of a smartphone app that, thanks to advanced artificial intelligence algorithms, performs multi- modal vehicle routing by accounting for walking, public transport and car-pooling rides. To explore citizens’ attitudes and perceptions towards SocialCar, and assess its overall business potential, we tested a prototype version in Canton Ticino (Southern Switzerland), engaging common citizens and their everyday mobility needs.
In this paper we first present the app and the route planning algorithms we developed to match travel demand and offer, commenting on the challenges to be addressed when using real-life data (shortcomings in mapping, public transport and car-pooling data). Then, we describe the methodology used to assess the SocialCar overall potential, based on focus group meetings run before and after the field test, and summarize the results obtained, in terms of strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities for a large-scale diffusion of the SocialCar platform. Finally, we comment on the lessons learnt and provide recommendations for future similar "mobility as a service" platforms
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
Comprehensive Testing and Application of the PIP Procedure: the Verbano Project case study
No full textAppropriate 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
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