1,720,958 research outputs found
Can environmental dust from silo area allow the development of stored product insects?
Get PDFDust derived from food processing can accumulate in places difficult to reach, where stored-product pests could thrive. The purpose of this work was to verify the development of Plodia interpunctella, Ephestia kuehniella, and Tribolium castaneum in dust collected on pipes and beams (15 m and 7.5 m) in a silo area of a pasta industry. Proximate analyses showed a higher metal content in the dust collected at the two different heights than semolina, including the presence of chrome, cobalt, arsenic, and lead. Particle size distribution analysis showed that in the two samples of dust the highest percentage was constituted by particle sizes smaller than 106 mm. The tests were carried out by using two quantities 4 g or 0.15 g of dust (corresponding to 3 mm and 0.1 mm), at controlled conditions. Fifty larvae, 0e24 h old, of each species, were used for each dust, semolina, and thickness test. The number of emerged adults was assessed daily. T. castaneum developed on all the tested substrates, despite the high content of metals and the small particle size in the environmental dust. A significant interaction between diet and thickness of the layer was observed, but thickness had a stronger influence than diet. Moreover, light filth analysis detected a large number of fragments of Tribolium sp. in dust collected at a different height. Dust was unsuitable for the development of moths; only two E. kuehniella adults emerged from 3-mm-deep dust collected at 15 m, and development lasted more than 90 d
Ligno-cellulosic materials as air-water separators in low-tech microbial fuel cells for nutrients recovery
No full textLow-cost materials and low-tech architectures could give competitive advantage in scaling-up applications of microbial fuel cells (MFC), especially for nutrients recovery from wastewater. Here a novel concept is presented, based on cylindrical ligno-cellulosic materials, available as agricultural residues or spontaneous vegetation. Giant canes (Arundo Donax L.) and maize (Zea Mays) stalks were used as porous separators (naturally tubular) for air-cathode MFC modules (GC-MFC and MS-MFC, meaning Giant Cane and Maize Stalk, respectively), with carbon cloth-based electrodes. The MFCs were operated across 100 Ω external load, enriching swine-farming wastewater with addition of sodium acetate (3 g L−1). Initially, these systems showed relatively high internal resistances (especially GC, with Rint = 5600 Ω), before the material was completely imbibed by the anolyte. After 10–20 days acclimation, despite sufficient electrolytic conductivity was established in both systems (internal resistance around 60–90 Ω), relatively low power densities (around 40 mW m−2, normalized by cathode's surface projection) were achieved, if compared to state-of-the-art MFCs, oriented to electricity harvesting. However, the generated electric field was enough to sustain electro-osmotic ions mobility and to establish high pH conditions (pH 11–12) at the cathode. Over 70 days of operation, electro-migration and deposition phenomena of valuable elements (Na, Ca, Mg, Mn, K, etc.) were observed, both inside the separator and on the cathode surface. Simultaneously, partial biodegradation of the ligno-cellulosic biomass, especially for MS, drove partial release of organic carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous and other elements in the anodic chamber. These relevant phenomena have to be taken into account in view of possible applications of ligno-cellulosic materials in MFC-driven nutrients recovery from wastewater
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
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
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
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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