1,720,955 research outputs found
The evaluation of the effects of hazardous spills by road accidents on the surface performance of an asphalt-wearing course
No full textAccidental spills of hazardous substances are an important road safety topic due to the reduction of surface performance and the possible structural damage to the pavement. Thus, it is even more important to investigate the consequences of hazardous spills on the functional characteristics of road surfaces and the effects of efficient clean-up operations over time. In the present paper, trial field, laboratory tests and cored samples contaminated with five liquids were carried out on a road pavement to assess the influence of different substances on asphalt features. British Pendulum Tester and micro Grip Tester were performed to compare the adherence properties between the contaminated and cleaned-up conditions. Furthermore, the British Pendulum Tester, Indirect Tensile Stiffness Method used to assess the mechanical behaviour of samples spilled with hazardous substances were carried out in a laboratory. The achieved trial field results demonstrated that rapid cleaning treatment can optimally restore skid resistance compared to untreated areas. Depending on the type of spill, the clean-up procedure leads to the complete skid resistance recovery in a short period. The prolonged presence of hazardous substances on asphalt samples causes decay of mechanical performances as evidenced by the laboratory tests
Sustainable and Resistant Road Infrastructures: The Role of the Envision Framework as a Guide to a New Design Approach
Full text linkIn Italy, resilience and sustainability concepts are generally applied to road infrastructures (mainly in terms of pavements) in order to minimize the environmental impacts of their construction and maintenance. In this paper the Envision framework has been adopted to evaluate the sustain-ability of a road project, optimizing its resilience for both short-term and long-term impacts. The rating approach has been applied considering not only pavements analysis but also the complete project process. The authors have upgraded the original Envision framework to road infrastructures, in compliance with the Italian regulatory framework. Four scenarios have been considered. The first allowed us to understand which credits can be evaluated with the available project documentation. The second represents a snapshot of the state of the project. The third evaluates the effect of the improvement in the performance level obtained by analyzing the potential increases. Finally, the last considers also for “pending” credits
Skid resistance measurement: Correlation analysis between the British pendulum tester and micro GripTester
No full textABSTRACT: Standardized equipment available on the market that investigate the surface skid-resistance characteristics are multiple and operationally different. The Micro GripTester, for in-stance, is a relatively new portable push-mode continuous friction measuring device for the as-sessment of the condition of surface grip on road pavements. In the present paper, over 80 sur-vey points arising from different experimental field tests are analysed to compare the skid-resistance characteristics of multiple asphalt surfaces. The major objective of this study is to de-termine a reliable correlation between the GripNumber (GN) and the Pendulum Test Value (PTV). The obtained linear regression is representative of the confidence of the results consider-ing level of correlation. The use of the Micro GripTester, along with the traditional British Pen-dulum, allows obtaining continuous measurements increasing the amount of data and the size of the investigated area, with a consequent benefit related to the reliability of the obtained re-sults
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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