1,720,961 research outputs found
Analysis of Light Pollution in Ticino region during the period 2011-2016
No full textSince 2002, the Environmental Observatory of Southern Switzerland (OASI) has monitored a remarkable set of environmental parameters with the purpose of performing an enhanced observation of the regional environmental conditions. Since 2011, a campaign for the supervision of the artificial nighttime skyglow has been included in the OASI monitoring system exploiting the collaboration with DarkSky association. This network monitors the light pollution in several areas of Ticino, the southernmost Swiss Canton bordering Italy. It consists of multiple stations, which continuously measure the sky brightness. The University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland, in collaboration with Politecnico di Milano, introduces the results of a study regarding the skyglow evolution during the period 2011-2016. The time-series of the OASI network were pre-processed to detect and discard data affected by natural perturbing events, such as moon and clouds presence and sun effect during twilights. In a second time, a distribution analysis of the data and an evaluation of the brightness trend during the considered period were performed. The results show that light pollution in Ticino is strictly influenced by the northern area of the nearby Italian Lombardy region and that during the surveyed years a decreasing of the pollution occurred
District thermal systems: State of the art and promising evolutive scenarios. A focus on Italy and Switzerland
Full text linkIn the framework of the built environment enhancement towards energy strategy 2050, interesting debates have been developed at building and district scale. In relation to thermal energy end-uses, that are the most impacting in buildings, district thermal systems (DTS) offer a great flexibility in terms of heat generation technologies and renewable resources integration, resulting, in case of proper management and supply conditions, in primary energy and greenhouse gases savings compared to the most diffuse technologies operating at building scale. Recent progresses in DTS have followed over the years the development of technologies and energy policies resulting in different configurations and operative schemes. The present contribution reviews the different classifications of DTS provided in the technical literature. The European framework of DTS is then analysed, with particular insights to the Italian and Swiss operative context. Currently, DTS have a marginal role in these two countries and can mainly be classified as high-temperature or mid-generation systems. However, there are also innovative systems, on which the attention of the involved stakeholders is focusing. The technological features of DTS are discussed, in order to provide possible challenging evolutive scenarios to enhance their performance and economic appeal through the evaluation of successful recent examples
A Method to Analyze the Performance of Geocooling Systems with Borehole Heat Exchangers. Results in a Monitored Residential Building in Southern Alps
Full text linkGeothermal heat is an increasingly adopted source for satisfying all thermal purposes in buildings by reversible heat pumps (HP). However, for residential buildings located in moderate climates, geocooling, that implies the use of geothermal source for cooling buildings without the operation of HP, is an efficient alternative for space cooling not yet explored enough. Geocooling allows two main benefits: to cool the buildings by high energy efficiencies improving summer comfort; to recharge the ground if space heating is provided by HP exploiting the geothermal source (GSHP). In these cases, geocooling allows to avoid the decreasing of the performances of the GSHP for space heating over the years. To explore these issues, a method has been developed and tested on a real case: a new residential building in Lugano (southern Switzerland) coupled with 13 borehole heat exchangers. The system provides space heating in winter by a GSHP and space cooling in summer by geocooling. During a 40 months monitoring campaign, data such as temperatures, heat flows and electricity consumptions were recorded to calibrate the model and verify the benefits of such configuration. Focusing on summer operation, the efficiency of the system, after the improvements implemented, is above 30, confirming, at least in similar contexts, the feasibility of geocooling. Achieved results provides knowledge for future installations, underlining the replication potential and the possible limits
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
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