1,720,963 research outputs found
Biological Emergency Management: The Case of Ebola 2014 and the Air Transportation Involvement
No full textThe putative spread after the outbreak of the haemorrhagic fever epidemic caused by Ebola virus in West Africa,
in the early months of 2014, puts the spotlight on the management of biological risks involving air transportation.
Ebola virus is a highly pathogenic agent, causing a haemorrhagic fever defined Ebola HF, characterized by a high
fatality. This virus is generally considered to be self-limiting in terms of diffusion; its lethality is in fact so high as to
prevent the exit from rural areas where outbreaks generally occur. However, when the virus comes from rural areas
and reaches urban places, it is important to assess the risk of spreading even in areas far from the outbreak of origin.
Therefore, the development or strengthening of strategies and plans to take action with timely and effective response
in order to reduce the consequences of public health emergencies is paramount. During Ebola virus outbreak in
West Africa in 2014, World Health Organization focused attention on many airports, stops of main flights coming from
Africa; the aviation, due to its nature, has the potential to help boost the global spread of transmissible diseases,
since air travel allow to reach the most remote locations in hours.
The management of biological emergencies during ordinary operations of airlines and airports represents a
real constraint in the event of contrast epidemic situations or endemic outbreaks. An effective response plan should
include a careful assessment of the risks and the establishment of procedures to carry on board of aircrafts or on
the ground.
To ensure that this complex system works correctly, a broad and effective cooperation between the different
actors involved is required. On the international level, several documents and recommendations relating to the
management of contagious diseases in aeronautical environment have been produced by authoritative agencies.
In this paper, after an overview on the international response to public health emergencies in the aviation
environment, the attention is focused on emergency response to the Ebola virus crisis in 2014, including an
evaluation of the potential dispersion of the pathogen
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
Interaction effects between CuO-ZnO-ZrO2 methanol phase and zeolite surface affecting stability of hybrid systems during one-step CO2 hydrogenation to DME
No full textA significant boost to the catalytic technology of CO2-to-DME hydrogenation in a single step was recently given by the design of novel hybrid multimetallic/zeolite systems. However, a significant drop of catalyst activity after few hours of operation time pushes now the research interest towards the development of more stable multifunctional systems, suitable to ensure activity, selectivity and lifetime under typical industrial conditions. In this work, the influence of different home-made zeolite samples (i.e., Sil-1, MFI, Y, FER, BEA, MOR), integrated in a weight ratio of 1:1 with a CuO-ZnO-ZrO2 metal-oxide(s) phase, was investigated under long-term stability tests in a fixed bed reactor during CO2 hydrogenation reaction to assess the activity-selectivity pattern of the hybrid catalyst as well as their deactivation trend during operation time. The individuation of key structure-activity relationships helped to explain how the extent of interaction between the metal-oxides phase with the zeolite surface as well as the strength of the acid sites significantly control the catalyst stability
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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