1,721,039 research outputs found
Agro-ecological typization of hay meadows in mountain areas: a tool for the sustainable management of local forage resources
No full textA new method and integrated approach for sustainable management of animal manure and slurry in alpine ecosystems
No full text
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
A GIS-based approach for the sustainable management of livestock effluents on Alpine meadows
Full text linkSustainable livestock effluent management is becoming an increasingly important issue in mountain areas, with particular regard to the agro-environmental performance of forage production and the social acceptability of organic fertilizer application in mixed urban-rural contexts. The present paper proposes a GIS-based methodological approach to the management and planning of digestate spreading on hay meadows, based on the integration of geo-morphological, agro-botanical and spatio-functional data about cultivated agricultural land. The proposed methodology was tested in a case-study Community of the Italian Alps, with seven dairy farms operating an anaerobic digestion plant. Nitrogen production by cattle was quantified and compared to sustainable nitrogen requirements of cut meadows, computed at the single-plot level through agro-botanical typization of swards. Subsequently, spreading restrictions provided by national and local regulations were spatially implemented. Farm-tailored nitrogen balances and digestate spreading plans were designed to help livestock farms adjust effluent spreading patterns according to meadow type and surface runoff risk. Findings are transferrable to other mountain regions based on cattle farming and grassland managemen
Selection of autochthonous starter cultures for Malga cheese production
No full textMalga cheese is made from raw cow’s milk without addition of starter cultures, in small scale on-farm plants or huts during the summer season. Huts are located at least 1400 meters above the sea level in Trentino, an alpine province in northern Italy.
The aim of this work was to select autochthonous lactic acid bacteria (LAB) strains as dairy starter cultures in order to improve the fermentation process. 243 mesophylic and 164 termophylic LAB were isolated from the raw milk curdle and the cheese after one day. All bacterial isolates were clustered by Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA Polymerase Chain Reaction (RAPD-PCR) using two primers and identified by partial sequencing of 16S rRNA gene and species-specific PCR. After clustering by RAPD-PCR we obtained 245 biotypes that were tested for their technological properties (acidifying, proteolytic, autolytic activities and coliforms growth inhibition ability). In order to use them in scaled-up cheese-making process, 20 strains were selected because showing better acidifying and autolytic activities and some ability in coliforms growth inhibition. These 20 strains were also tested for their resistance to freeze-drying process. Lactococcus lactis strains showed the fastest acidifying ability lowering the milk pH to 4.5 in 12 hours both at 30 and 15 °C. Streptococcus thermophilus strains showed the best acidifying ability lowering the milk pH to 3.5 but their acidifying activity needed at least 36 hours. They also showed the highest autolysis values (their values ranged between 30 and 70%). All the strains showing inhibition of coliforms’ growth.belonged to Enterococcus faecium or faecalis species. The 20 strains selected for cheese-making process showed a surviving ability to freeze-drying test between 15 and 20%. The development of autochthonous starter cultures selected on the basis of technological tests would ensure the dominance of desired strains in the first hours of ripening that is crucial to minimize microbial variability and growth of undesired spoilage bacteria which could survive during the further ripening
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
- …
