1,721,042 research outputs found
Retrofitting homes for a recessionary era; energy efficiency retrofitting services (EERS) sector characteristics and routes to increased activity
Full text linkWithin the UK, energy efficiency improvements within the existing housing stock is a key area in which governments have attempted to increase rates of activity to boost carbon reduction and end user cost savings. The most recent UK policy, the Green Deal, was a pay as you save scheme, linking the capital cost of improvements to ongoing energy bill payments.
The success of this policy was limited, with minimal uptake in comparison to expectations. This research investigates the viewpoints of retrofit industry practitioners, to assess their experiences of working under the Green Deal, and evaluate what pathways could be available to move forward into the future. UK and German based individuals interviews were used to compare experiences, along with UK group interviews and focus groups to develop findings via a grounded theory approach, to illuminate possible future strategies for UK retrofit.
Key findings suggest EERS expansion is most successful if policies are designed more holistically; UK policies show strategies which focus on simply the property and not the occupants have their disadvantages. Therefore, a move away from marginal financial incentives, such as the Green Deal's loan structure, to a wider consideration of how policy tools interact with supply chains and end users, would enable increased impact. Precise strategies identified to achieve this include; EERS sector members providing an attractive investment prospect to customers external to any government subsidy, linking of energy efficiency improvements with more standard property upgrades, and an increase in training levels to increase professionalism
A study of socio-spatial behaviour in traditional and contemporary shopping environments in Dubai, UAE
Full text linkShopping as a phenomenon which has existed since the early history of humanity to
meet human needs, has become one of the main daily life activities. Traditional
shopping environments are places where people in the past spent their time
shopping, talking to each other and discussing their issues. Today, shopping
environments are constructed in a modern architectural style and at much larger
scales. Arab and Islamic countries met with the initial concept of shopping malls in
the 1980s, which have become more common in most Arab countries in recent years.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is one of these countries where, as a result of rapid
economic growth, modern shopping environments have proliferated. These modern
shopping environments do not relate to the physical and cultural contexts of UAE.
Dubai, which has become an important tourist destination, is an Arab Islamic city
with several souks (traditional markets in the Arab world).
This research aims to develop our knowledge and understanding of the shopper’s
socio-spatial behaviour within the built environment in traditional and contemporary
shopping environments in Dubai, UAE. It addresses this issue through an in-depth
investigation of human perceptions and activities in a traditional souk (Souk Naif)
and a shopping mall (Dubai Mall).
The research methods divided into two stages: the first stage is based on qualitative
methods, which include literature review, analysis of documents, and physical
survey of the buildings. The second stage combines quantitative and qualitative
methods including a questionnaire (mostly quantitative, with a couple of questions
focusing on reasons for people’s behaviour and motivations) and two types of
unobtrusive observation – snapshot and individual behaviour mapping (qualitative
methods which generate quantitative data).
Shopping malls seem to encourage the involvement of young people, especially
shoppers who are 20-29 year, within the shopping environment more than traditional
souks, which the research showed older shoppers in Dubai still prefer. Malls, as
modern shopping places, display more density, longer duration and slower speed of
shoppers' behaviour in contrast to the lower density, shorter duration and faster speed
of shoppers' behaviour in souks
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
Optimal Subsidies for Increasing Two-Year and Four-Year College Graduation Rates
No full textIn 2015, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) in collaboration with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) undertook an ambitious 60 30 TX plan as a part of its implementation of House Bill 22, introduced by the 85th Texas House of Representatives to enhance public school accountability. The 60 x30TX is a higher education plan that focuses on attaining a postsecondary graduation rate of 60% amongst the 25-34 age demographic in Texas by the year 2030. In this paper, I estimate the cost per high school graduate of attaining this target. I also compare the per student cost of this policy objective with that of two other counterfactual policies; the fi rst being one in which community colleges are made tuition-free for all high school graduates and the second being one in which public four-year college tuition is subsidized annually by 2,114 per student. I find that a 10,594. Finally, I fi nd that a conditional cash transfer of 3,640 for two-year and four-year college enrollment, respectively, attains the targeted postsecondary graduation rate of 60% by age 29 and costs 2.3 billion. This is far in excess of the THECB's FY2018 operating budget of $807million
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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