1,720,985 research outputs found
The role of sustained observations in tracking impacts of environmental change on marine biodiversity and ecosystems
No full textMarine biodiversity currently faces unprecedented threats from multiple pressures arising from human activities. Global drivers such as climate change and ocean acidification interact with regional eutrophication, exploitation of commercial fish stocks and localized pressures including pollution, coastal development and the extraction of aggregates and fuel, causing alteration and degradation of habitats and communities. Segregating natural from anthropogenically induced change in marine ecosystems requires long-term, sustained observations of marine biota. In this review, we outline the history of biological recording in the coastal and shelf seas of the UK and Ireland and highlight where sustained observations have contributed new understanding of how anthropogenic activities have impacted on marine biodiversity. The contributions of sustained observations, from those collected at observatories, single station platforms and multiple-site programmes to the emergent field of multiple stressor impacts research, are discussed, along with implications for management and sustainable governance of marine resources in an era of unprecedented use of the marine environment
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
Recovery of an urbanised estuary: clean-up, de-industrialisation and restoration of redundant dock-basins in the Mersey
Full text linkFor much of the 20th century, the Mersey in North West England was one of the worst polluted estuaries in Europe. Water from a range of polluting industries plus domestic sewage was discharged into the Mersey Catchment and Estuary. Recovery came through a concerted clean-up campaign and tightening environmental regulations, partly driven by European Commission Directives, coupled with de-industrialisation from the 1970s onward. Recovery of oxygen levels in the Estuary led to the return of a productive ecosystem. This led to conservation designations, but also concerns about transfer of pollutants to higher trophic levels in fish, birds and humans. As part of urban renewal, ecosystems in disused dock basins were restored using mussel biofiltration and artificial de-stratification, facilitating commercial redevelopment and creation of a tourist destination. The degradation and recovery of the Mersey from peak-pollution in the mid-20th century is put in the context of wider environmental change and briefly compared to other systems to develop a hysteresis model of degradation and recovery, often to novel ecosystems
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
Impacts and effects of ocean warming on intertidal rocky habitats.
Full text link• Intertidal rocky habitats comprise over 50% of the shorelines of the world, supporting a diversity of marine life and providing extensive ecosystem services worth in the region of US$ 5-10 trillion per year. • They are valuable indicators of the impacts of climate change on the wider marine environment and ecosystems. • Changes in species distributions, abundance and phenology have already been observed around the world in response to recent rapid climate change. • Species-level responses will have considerable ramifications for the structure of communities and trophic interactions, leading to eventual changes in ecosystem functioning (e.g. less primary producing canopy-forming algae in the North-east Atlantic). • Whilst progress is made on the mitigation1 required to achieve goals of a lower-carbon world, much can be done to enhance resilience to climate change. Managing the multitude of other interactive impacts on the marine environment, over which society has greater potential control (e.g. overfishing, invasive non-native species, coastal development, and pollution), will enable adaptation1 in the short and medium term of the next 5-50 years
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