1,721,046 research outputs found
People in nature and nature in people: a constructivist exploration of ecosystem cultural services
Full text linkThe ecosystem services approach is a set of institutional practices which aim to improve natural resource management and policy making, by highlighting the relationship between well-functioning ecosystems and human wellbeing. Within the approach, cultural services (CS) signify the psycho-social aspects of people-nature interrelations. This concept is an understudied area, and is recognised to exhibit high levels of complexity which make it difficult to evaluate. This thesis deconstructs, explores, clarifies and enhances the CS concept. A flexible, phased research design explores cultural services in relation to a specific case-study site, 'Aspley Woods and Heaths' (England). Cultural services are examined through a series of lenses: as an interdisciplinary construct, as an experience of place, as context, as a resource regime, as a discursive resource and as a personal discourse. Mixed qualitative methods identify how CS is constructed through action, speech and text; via an in depth analysis of primary data from semi-structured visitor and expert interviews, unstructured key informant interviews, and marginal participant observation. Additional data informs the enquiry, from a discourse analysis of key study site documents, and a review of site-related historic, ecological, land management, and policy documents. Results from this thesis subsequently challenge the current published definition and subcategorisation of cultural services. The notion that cultural services are nonmaterial is disputed due to the centrality of physical activities, physical sensations, and access management regimes which require material inputs. The benefits premise is challenged since CS experiences included references to anxiety, injury and conflict. The notion that CS are obtained is disputed due to the reciprocal nature of information exchange between people and features of the environment. The idea that CS are solely from ecosystems is challenged due to the part played by interpretative socio-cultural contexts, and natural and social processes which occur outside site boundaries and specified time frames. Instead, this thesis recommends that cultural services be redefined as the ways that humans use discourse to construct and communicate perceptions of nature. CS arise from processes of interaction (activities) and reciprocal information exchange (information functions) with ecosystems. CS subcategories are hence a series of cognitive, retrospective, intuitive, creative, communicative and regenerative interpretative repertoires, which form the basis of social practices such as designation, restoration and policy. The propensity of environments to embody discourse is concluded to be crucial in defining what is valuable about natural ecosystems, and how these contribute to wellbeing
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
Heartwood Decay and Vertical Distribution of Red-Naped Sapsucker Nest Cavities
No full texts paper describes a dynamic spatial pattern of Red-naped Sapsucker (Sphyrupicus nuchalis) cavity excavation in aspen groves and evaluates the possible importance of heartwood decay distribution, a prerequisite for nest excavation, in producing it. Sapsuckers typically situate the first cavity excavation in a tree relatively close to the ground and then make progressively higher excavations in subsequent years. Heartwood decay is reported to infect aspen via the roots or broken branch stubs, mostly at the base of the trees. Coring revealed that all nest trees were rotted at the base. The pattern of sapsucker cavity excavation can be explained as the outcome of an interaction between the distribution over height within trees of both heart rot and predation risk
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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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