1,720,962 research outputs found
A meso-level water use assessment in the Mediterranean agriculture. Multiple applications of water footprint for some traditional crops
Full text linkCurrently, agriculture uses about 70–80% of global water resources and, in the Mediterranean area, it accounts for the high pressure of freshwater demand. This study provides a useful framework for the meso-level assessment of the Water Footprint (WF) in agriculture. Particularly, the WF methodology is used to quantify the water consumption and pollution of olives, grapes and tomatoes, traditional crops widespread both in the Apulia region, in Southern Italy, and in the Mediterranean area. Hence, from a meso-level assessment of the Water Footprint of Apulian agriculture, a general level of evaluation of the use of Mediterranean water resources was provided, estimating the Virtual Water (VW) too. Furthermore the climate change effects on the Water Footprint of the traditional crops identified were predicted, proposing some scenarios useful to reduce the grey component, which values for olives were evaluated by a sensitivity analysis. The results highlight that olives present the highest value of the WF and that grapes are the most affected by the variations according to the climate change scenarios, increasing over 200% of the green component and 77% of the blue one. Finally, a Circular Economy proposal, based on the reuse of the wastewater from a meso-scale perspective, highlights saving up to 70% of the water resource. The research questions proposed displayed the novelty of this paper, particularly as concerns the use of the Water Footprint analysis on a meso-level evaluation. Particularly, the new insights of this research addressed the needs of stakeholders in areas suffering from drought, such as the Mediterranean, to integrate and systematize a data-set of indicators to rationalize and plan water resource usage and safety in agriculture
A comparative life cycle assessment between conventional and organic chickpea cultivation in southern Italy
No full textLegumes combine a high protein intake with reduced environmental impact and are suitable for application in rotational cropping systems, with the twofold function of producing grains and fixing N into the soil. By doing so, whether put in combination with low-input systems, they can contribute to implementing sustainable agriculture paths. Chickpea is the third most consumed grain legume in the world, and its nitrogen-fixing capacity can be beneficial for the next crops for improving soil fertility, structure, and water retention capacity and for reducing chemical fertilizer production and application. Despite the benefits, it is however needed to explore the relevant environmental sustainability issues associated with chickpea cultivation. To that end, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is proven valid methodology to compare cropping system alternatives, to support decision making. In this study, LCA was used in fact to compare conventional vs. organic cultivation of chickpea grains in Southern Italy in the period 2020–2022, through LCA application with a cradle-to-gate approach, using the EF 3.1 method. For the assessment, following previously published LCAs,1 kg asported N was chosen as the functional unit (FU), to make allocation possible between the harvested chickpea grains (modelled as kg eq of asported N), and the N leftover, thereby best representing the twofold function of the investigated system to produce legumes and fix N into the soil. From a review of the literature, the authors found that only a few LCAs have been developed that dealt with chickpea cultivation, which highlights the relevant contribution that this article is expected to make to specialized literature. This study represents one of the few LCAs focused exclusively on chickpea cultivation, providing a comparative analysis of conventional and organic systems, using an innovative N-based functional unit and an allocation between grain yield and nitrogen fixation. With such a FU, organic cultivation resulted to be more environmentally damaging (7.81 mPt vs. 3.40 mPt) than the conventional one, due to its lower yields that amplify the environmental impacts per unit of product. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis was incorporated in the study to explore the extent to which the choice of other FUs influence results from the assessment. The study highlighted, in particular, that results change in favour of the organic system in the case of a surface-based FU, thanks to the reduced agricultural activities and inputs per unit of ha (252 mPt for organic farming, and 279 mPt for conventional farming). These findings suggest that, while organic cultivation performs better from an environmental sustainability perspective, conventional farming is more efficient in terms of productivity. The study contributed to understanding the importance of FU selection in LCAs and provided valuable insights that can be useful to farmers for improving the sustainability of chickpea production systems and to practitioners to improve LCA applications in this research content area
A review of research on tourism industry, economic crisis and mitigation process of the loss: Analysis on pre, during and post pandemic situation
Full text linkThroughout time, the global tourism industry and economy have been significantly affected by disasters and crises. At present, COVID-19 represents one of these disasters as it has been causing a serious economic downturn with huge implications in tourism. In this review paper, we have analysed more than 100 papers regarding the effect and consequences of a pandemic on tourism and related industries, the economic situation in countries and areas, and mitigation of the loss incurred due to pandemic situations. The article (1) is based on past research on tourism and economy, (2) examines the effects of a pandemic on listed sectors and mitigation processes, and (3) suggests future research and approaches to help progress the field. We have gathered and categorised the literature reviews into several parts. In addition, we have listed the name of authors, journal names, books, websites, and relevant data
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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