1,721,166 research outputs found
The Monetary‐Equivalent Effect of Voluntary Work on Mental Wellbeing in Europe
Get PDFThe hypothesis that active community involvement and, more specifically,
voluntary work is beneficial for mental wellbeing has an established tradition.
Community involvement is one of the main suggestions in policy guidelines
for active ageing1 formulated in most high-income countries (see, among others,
those of Australia, New Zealand, the US and UK in Hutchison et al., 2006). The
rationale behind this policy is well explained by Watson and Hall (2001), who
argues that “continued participation in the workforce, volunteering, community
activities or family responsibilities contributes to the maintenance of mental
capacity and a sense of well-being in older adults. This is a type of psychological
capital or the extent to which the person can deal with threats to mental health –
whether, for example, they can resist depression and anxiety when under stress.
Individuals who have built up their psychological capital are resilient and able
to cope with change and other stresse
Modelling habitat suitability of Pinguicula crystallina sibth. & sm. subsp. hirtiflora (Ten.) Strid (Lentibulariaceae) in Campania (Southern Italy) through an expert based approach.
No full textIn the last few decades, modelling species’ distribution and habitat suitability has greatly improved as a result of new powerful statistics and GIS tools which can use a wide number of ecological variables. Species distribution models represent an important technique for the conservation of biodiversity and for town-and-country planning (Guisan & Zimmermann, 2000). Rare and threatened plant species, particularly the ones with known scattered distribution, can be of highest interest in modelling to assess conservation priorities and evaluate habitat suitability.
Pinguicula crystallina Sibth. & Sm. subsp. hirtiflora (Ten.) Strid (Lentibulariaceae) is a carnivorous plant which has sticky leaves used as flypaper-type traps and grows on dripping carbonate or serpentine rocks primarily in mountain ecosystems such as wet cliffs inside ravines which can be mainly ascribed to Natura 2000 priority habitat 7220, which is petrifying springs with tufa formation (Cratoneurion W. Koch). Current distribution of this taxon is in South-Eastern Europe (mainly Albania and Greece), with only few populations living in Southern Italy (Campania and Calabria) (Innangi et al. 2011). Many studies about karyology (Casper & Stimper, 2009) and molecular data (Degtjareva et al., 2006), suggest that P. crystallina subsp. hirtiflora along with P. crystallina could be the sister group of all the other species in the genus Pinguicula, which comprises 74 species distributed in the Northern hemisphere, South America and South-Eastern Asia.
In Campania, where the vast majority of Italian populations are found, according to IUCN the plant has been assessed as Vulnerable (VU). Within this region, the plant is known to grow only in ravines and river gorges of two mountain systems, namely Monti Lattari and Monti Picentini (Innangi et al., 2011). For this region, an expert-based habitat suitability model has been developed in order to look for unknown locations and/or plan possible repopulation strategies. Expert-based models, although introducing a subjective component in their development, can take into account a wide range of ecological needs for a taxon and their results are extremely synthetic (Boitani et al., 2002).
According to the ecological features of known presence points of in Campania (Innangi et al., 2011), a set of five variables has been chosen, namely altitude, slope, rock type, CORINE land cover, and distance from rivers. For each variable, four scores have been assigned, that is zero for no suitability to three for best suitability. The results highlight the strict connection of this plant to water streams and courses, thus, in order to correlate chemical and biological features of the water to the habitat suitability for P. crystallina subsp. hirtiflora, water has been sampled in both presence and not-presence locations for chemical analysis, namely chromatography and toxicity tests, using bioassay organisms such as Daphnia magna Straus, Sorghum saccharatum Pers., and Lepidium sativum L. (APAT, 2002).
Acknowledgements. The authors are grateful to Prof. M. Guida and M. Trifuoggi for the toxicity tests and chemical analyses
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
From the Apennines to the Alps: recent range expansion of the crested porcupine Hystrix cristata L., 1758 (Mammalia: Rodentia: Hystricidae) in Italy
Get PDFIn the last few decades, the crested porcupine (Hystrix cristata L., 1758) showed a marked range expansion in Italy. Published and unpublished material was collected to reconstruct this phenomenon. Data were gathered by means of: (i) specific papers on crested porcupine distribution and more generic books and articles, (ii) expert collaboration in various Italian regions and (iii) information from the national Vertebrates mailing list. Until the 1970s, H. cristata was only present in Central and Southern Italy, mostly in the western part. Since 1978, the porcupine has been protected by Italian national law. The species first crossed the Apennines from the Tyrrhenian coast to the Marche, where the expansion to the north may have begun, and then reached the northernmost regions. An analysis of the potential distribution of the species was performed in a species distribution modeling framework (Maxent). The model suggested a high suitability of most of the Central and Southern Italian Peninsula for H. cristata, including the two major islands. Northern Italy proved suitable for the species' establishment only in some central and western areas of the Po Valley. The core areas of the Apennines and of the Alps, as well as some areas characterized by low annual rainfall, were predicted as unsuitable. Historical and social factors related to the progressive urbanization and the consequent abandonment of the traditional land use in mountain landscapes probably helped the re-expansion of forests and uncultivated fields. Three introduced populations have been detected in Sardinia, Liguria and the province of Varese. In order to make the data collected easily consultable and to give people the opportunity to contribute to a continuous updating of the distributional map of the species, a web page dedicated to H. cristata was set up, in the framework of an open-source wildlife mapping project. © 2013 Unione Zoologica Italiana
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Hydromorphology meets mammal ecology: morphological quality index, recent channel adjustments and otter resilience
No full textThe need for a multidisciplinary approach for characterizing water bodies in terms of morphological, chemical and ecological quality has
hastened the growth of hydromorphology as a cross-disciplinary topic at the interface of hydrology, geomorphology and ecology. Many
authors have analysed how hydroecology may affect freshwater biodiversity, although little is known about how this biodiversity might
be affected by river morphological quality. We examined how well the presence of the semi-aquatic Eurasian otter can be predicted by
the rivers’ morphological quality and its adjustments over the last decades. We tested the morphological quality index (MQI) methodology
in 38 reaches of five rivers in southern Italy, 23 of which were positive to otter presence. In each reach, we examined 28 indicators contributing
to the MQI and its 11 sub-indices. The results showed a significant relationship between the probability of the presence of otters, MQI,
and some sub-indices. The best performing sub-indices were related to channel adjustments and the continuity of river processes. A more
detailed analysis of channel adjustments showed a detrimental effect of channel incision (>3m) and a positive effect of narrowing, particularly
where it occurred simultaneously with the development of forest in the new floodplain. The continuity of river processes has driven the
migration of river banks and the development of ponds and secondary channels, likely increasing the availability of dens and resting sites and
the hunting capabilities of otters. Our results stressed the importance of fluvial dynamics and sustainable adaptive river management for the
habitat quality of semi-aquatic species
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe 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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