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Editorial for the "Environmental Science and Policy" special issue, on "Multidisciplinary research findings in support to the EU air quality planning: experiences from the APPRAISAL, SEFIRA and ACCENT-Plus FP7 projects"
No full textThe European Union has since long recognized the strong impacts of air pollution on human health and the environment in general (EC, 2001). While there are success stories of European air pollution policies (such as the case of sulphur dioxide, that has definitely decreased) other pollutants such as particulate matter, ground level ozone and nitrogen dioxide are still of concern.
The latest study from the World Health Organization (WHO, 2013) provides strong evidences in this respect, clearly linking long-
term exposure to fine particles (PM2.5) with deaths due to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, as well as increased morbidity, particularly in children and asthmatics. According to the European Environmental Agency (EEA, 2015), more than 80% of the urban population in the EU Member States is exposed to PM levels above the WHO guidelines. This translates into a decrease of life expectancy of more than eight months (on average), and up to two years in the most polluted areas. Air pollution also causes significant damage to ecosystems and the environment. Ground level ozone damages agricultural crops and vegetation. Nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide and ammonia contribute to the acidification of soil, lakes and rivers, causing loss of biodiversity. Ammonia and NOx also negatively impact upon water ecosystems by introducing excessive amount of nutrients, in turn causing algal blooms and water hypoxia – a process known as ‘eutrophication’. Estimates suggest that two-thirds of the protected sites in the EU Natura 2000 network are currently under severe threat from air pollution.
The awareness of this difficult situation and the simultaneous growing concern in the public opinion has fostered the launch of a number of research and coordination projects, particularly within the 7th Framework and the Life+ Programs, to best integrate the ongoing scientific activities and make their results available to the decision makers at the different levels.
Among the many actions developed in this context, this special issue of “Environmental Science and Policy” presents some of the main results of the APPRAISAL, SEFIRA and ACCENT-Plus EU-FP7 projects.JRC.C.5 - Air and Climat
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
Struttura produttiva territoriale ed efficienza di emissioni attraverso la NAMEA regionale
No full textVengono esaminate le relazioni fra struttura produttiva regionale ed emissioni di gas serra utilizzando
i dati NAMEA (National Accounting Matrix including Environmental Accounts) per il Lazio relativi
all’anno 2000. L’obiettivo è mostrare come i dati NAMEA possano fornire una buona base per comprendere
le relazioni fra economia ed emissioni, e possano quindi fornire supporto ai decisori pubblici. Sebbene
ISTAT abbia prodotto conti NAMEA a livello nazionale per il 1990-2002, quella per il Lazio per il 2000 è
la prima NAMEA di scala regionale prodotta in Italia. Nel lavoro è stata applicata alla NAMEA Lazio un’analisi
shift share al fine di esaminare quali siano i fattori determinanti del gap dell’efficienza di emissioni
atmosferiche fra Lazio e situazione media Italiana. L’analisi shift share permette di isolare forze distinte: la
prima legata al mix strutturale o industriale del territorio, la seconda basata sull’efficienza specifica di emissione
dei singoli settori, la terza costituita dalla covarianza dei primi due fattori. In questa versione, tra le
dieci categorie di emissioni disponibili in NAMEA, vengono esaminate solo quelle di CO2, N2O e CH4
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
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