1,721,012 research outputs found
Della Modernità. Nove approssimazioni
No full textLa questione della modernità è oggetto di un dibattito vivace e attuale: è difficile individuare una prospettiva che, univocamente, descriva la contemporaneità, ed è altrettanto difficile stabilire se questa fase rappresenti una prosecuzione lineare della precedente o se sussistano elementi tali da riconoscere una crasi, una cesura tra un "prima" e un "dopo". Probabilmente si può riconoscere nell'attuale periodo di crisi e nei suoi epifenomeni economici e sociali, il bisogno di una ridefinizione epistemica capace di fornire una chiave di interpretazione della contemporaneità. Le nove approssimazioni vogliono rappresentare un contributo in questo senso
Migrations and culture. Essential reflections on wandering human beings
Full text linkIt is possible that our century and the one just past will be remembered in the future as the centuries of migration. Faced with the extent of migration today, social scientists have posed several questions, and in particular they have examined the causes of migration, the integration of immigrants into host countries, and the development of their cultural identity. The newcomers are almost always poorer than those who settled before them, and have different languages, physical appearance, customs, beliefs, and religious practices. The widespread perception is that of an upheaval of the social order. For some, it is the dawn of a new world, under the banner of métissage (or hybridization) and universal brotherhood; for most, it is the beginning of an invasion. Immigration is always a matter of borders: Who is “us”? Who is “them”? The host society has the power to define, classify, and construct the social category of immigrants. There are many differences within this category and obviously any strategic policy should be able to manage every specificity. Nevertheless, we need starting by focusing the more general ideal type of what is “otherness” and what it can be in the social representations in order to construct new conditions of encounter. In this scenario, urban spaces represent the stages on which the encounter with difference takes place. The space is never neutral and may affect, sometimes significantly, the conditions of that encounter. The physical form of the city is the result of widespread social representations of all phenomena, but it is also able to act on those same social representations by altering the processes that take shape within it. The urban dimension and the redesign of the urban space become increasingly key to shaping and managing social processes aimed at governing the transformation processes in a multi-ethnic sense of the European societies. Urban policy-makers can either wait for spontaneous processes of integration and virtuous composition of differences, or implement actions to manage differences, to prevent potential conflicts and start processes of active inclusion. In order to support the act of wandering within this second pattern of urban policies, moving from simple tolerance to a Habermasian process of dialogical exchange, at least two conditions are necessary: the existence of shared public spaces, and the quality of policies for regulating the use of urban public spaces
Slouching toward New Humanism
Full text linkIn the contemporary era, novel social and cultural patterns have emerged, prompting the social sciences to engage in timely reflections on current phenomena and the very essence of humanity. These models have undergone significant transformations, so much so that New Humanism appears to be a viable prospect. It is upon this premise that all the observations put forth in this study are centered, operating under the assumption that the evolution of knowledge is a continuous process, marked by perpetual paths of research and reflection. It is well established that Humanism represents a recurring theme in our daily lives, with its premises inscribed on the walls of cities and subways. In the modern era, the concept of Humanism is liberated from its "classical" meanings. As such, it becomes crucial to consider New Humanism as a supplement for the soul, capable of invigorating spirituality, restoring energy, and instilling ethics rooted in solidarity, recognition, and mutual respect among individuals. This mission serves as a formidable catalyst, motivating and mobilizing the consciences and intelligence of individuals, particularly those in the Western world. Furthermore, this pressing need necessitates the adoption of conceptualization and analytical reconstruction pathways, which are functional in actualizing the perspective of New Humanism, establishing it as a proposition of contemporary culture. It is often implicit in widespread individualism, which tends to manifest exaggerated and exasperating tones of hyper-individualism. It is thus essential not to overlook the doctrine espoused by classical Humanism, which suggests that it is possible to be disenchanted and yet remain builders of utopias, and realists who can see new lands and infinite ideal worlds. Indeed, human beings can transcend existing barriers, using tradition as a viaticum for the future, as evidenced by numerous disciplinary fields
Seismic scattering attribute for sedimentary classification of nearshore marine quarries for a major beach nourishment project: Case study of Adriatic coastline, Regione Abruzzo (Italy)
No full textOf fundamental importance for any major beach nourishment project using marine quarries is a correct sedimentary classification. The main purpose of such a classification is to identify sand with the appropriate features for beach nourishment. This task is more onerous when quarry sediments are heterogeneous and mixed with silt. This is typical of nearshore marine quarries. The presence of excess silt compromises the use of marine quarries because of the water turbidity that may be induced in the nourished beaches, especially when the beaches are protected by defense structures. Here we discuss the use of scattering amplitude of seismic data, acquired with a pinger source (2-10 kHz), to detect and classify the unconsolidated sediment of a marine quarry. A robust correlation was found between this seismic attribute and the silt content in the sediment. The scattering amplitude was numerically calculated from the seismic data and used to map slices of silt content at different depths. The results have been validated with sedimentary analysis of vibra- and rotary cores, and by the dredged material used for the beach nourishment. The marine quarry produced about 1.200.000 m(3) of sand used to nourish eight different beach sites along the Adriatic coasts of the Regione Abruzzo (Italy). The large-scale sedimentary assessment of the area was based on seismic boomer data and the evaluation of the volume of dredged sediments on multibeam data surveyed before and after the exploitation of the quarry. The study shows that this approach is effective in sites with high lateral and vertical variations in the percentage of sand in the sediments
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
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