1,720,960 research outputs found
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
Natural products for malaria vector control: flora, fish and fungi
No full textIntroduction Despite international organisations providing much focus over the past 10 years, malaria is still killing vast numbers of Africans, especially children. It is agreed that malaria can only be successfully controlled by using different control tools simultaneously in the spirit of integrated vector management (IVM), and that African communities will need to become more directly involved in mosquito control (Chapter 2). Using mosquito control tools in a way that requires almost no technical equipment or knowledge will open them up to the rural communities that are best placed to deploy them. In addition, widespread insecticide resistance is reducing the ability of insecticide-based tools to control mosquitoes. For these reasons, biological control and other natural mosquito control methods are being researched by many institutions. Several potential natural control tools are readily available in sub-Saharan Africa. If these tools prove effective and become operational, then it is possible that they will be sustainable because communities can intentionally produce the biological agents themselves, bringing a source of money to rural communities. This would be especially important in areas where infrastructure is poorly developed, and repeat applications of chemical control tools are not easily made. This thesis was designed to test the feasibility and effectiveness of a variety of natural products against both larval and adult malaria vector mosquitoes using low-tech methods in laboratory and field trials. Part I: Flora Azadirachta indica A. Juss (Meliaceae) (the neem tree) was chosen due to the already proved mosquitocidal properties, and its ready availability in Africa. We wanted to use neem in a way that could easily be deployed in resource-poor rural areas. Laboratory studies were conducted to examine the larvicidal and pupicidal properties of a crude aqueous extract of neem wood against the principle African malaria vector, Anopheles gambiae Giles s.s. (Diptera: Culicidae) (Chapter 3) [1]. The results indicate that even a relatively low dose of 0.15 grams of dried neem wood in 1 litre of water was able to inhibit the emergence of 90% of mosquito adults when larvae were exposed during their first three larval instars. Even for the fourth (last) larval instar, just 0.6 g/l was required to prevent 90% emergence. Furthermore, neem-exposed larvae exhibited significantly increased development times when compared to the controls. Pupae were also killed by the aqueous neem extracts, and were subject to neem-induced emergence abnormalities, but the concentrations required to kill pupae were much higher than for larvae and not likely to be used operationally. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis identified several polar constituents in the aqueous neem extracts including nimbin and salannin. However, azadirachtin was not present in significant amounts. The effect of this extract on the oviposition behaviour of adult female An. gambiae s.s. mosquitoes was then monitored (Chapter 4) [2]. The oviposition results show that when using 0.1 g/l of the crude aqueous neem extract, significantly more mosquitoes laid their eggs when compared to mosquitoes exposed to the control treatment. For the doses 10x and 100x higher, the same proportion of mosquitoes laid their eggs as in the control, indicating that even at much higher doses than required for successful larval control, female oviposition will not be detrimentally affected. Part II: Fish Larvivorous fish have previously been shown to effectively control mosquito numbers. Therefore, a census was carried out to examine the current status of fish farming in western Kenya (Chapter 5) [3]. Working with the Kenyan Fisheries Department we found that while fish farming is a favoured activity, 30% of the 261 ponds found did not contain fish. These “abandoned” ponds had significantly more An. gambiae s.l., Anopheles funestus Giles and culicine mosquitoes when compared to the ponds that still contained fish. Furthermore, An. gambiae s.l. was proportionally more abundant in the abandoned ponds when compared to the other mosquito types. Surprisingly, vegetation did not significantly affect mosquito distribution. Following our study, demand for fish to restock abandoned ponds increased by 67% when compared to the previous year. The overwhelming majority of fish being farmed in our census area were fish of the tilapiine subfamily. Given this finding, we set up a small-scale field experiment to study the larvivorous potential of the tilapiine fish Oreochromis niloticus L. (Perciformes: Cichlidae) (Chapter 6) [4]. Taking daily measurements of mosquito numbers, we found that immediately after fish introduction, the density of mosquitoes in the treated ponds dropped in comparison to the increase in the control pond. After 15 weeks, anopheline numbers had decreased by >94% in the ponds containing the fish, and we found that fish were able to sustainably control mosquitoes for at least 6 months, when our study finished. It is concluded that this type of fish could be an effective and sustainable way to control mosquito numbers in rural western Kenya. Furthermore, this fish provides a source of much needed income and protein to rural African communities. Part III: Fungi For the control of mosquito adults using natural products, entomopathogenic fungi hold the most promise. In this thesis the entomopathogenic fungi Beauveria bassiana and Metarhizium anisopliae were separately suspended in mineral oil and applied to polyester netting. A laboratory experiment was then conducted to investigate the fungal susceptibility of insecticide-susceptible and insecticide-resistant strains of An. gambiae s.s.. In addition, fungal conidial viability was tested at various time points after application onto polyester netting (Chapter 7) [5]. Whilst both mosquito strains were susceptible to both species of fungal infection, the pyrethroid-resistant An. gambiae s.s. VKPER strain was significantly more susceptible than the insecticide-susceptible SKK strain, dying more quickly. Conidial viability was significantly lower for both species after application onto the polyester netting when compared to the viability in suspension. However, the ability of the treated netting to infect and kill mosquitoes was not significantly diminished over the one week trial period. Given the finding that fungal-treated polyester netting could infect and kill mosquitoes, an experimental hut field trial was conducted in Benin, West Africa, to investigate the effect of fungal treatment on blood feeding behaviour and survival of wild insecticide-resistant mosquitoes. Benin was chosen due to the presence of multi-insecticide-resistant mosquito populations that are threatening the effectiveness of current vector control. We used fungal-treated netting to infect mosquitoes entering the hut windows, and either an untreated or insecticide-treated bednet was placed into each hut to examine how the entomopathogenic fungi would work with current control tools (Chapter 8) [6]. Only enough Culex quinquefasciatus Say (Diptera: Culicidae) mosquitoes were collected from the huts for accurate analysis. Our study was the first to monitor the effect of entomopathogenic fungi on blood feeding of wild mosquitoes. We found that the B. bassiana treatments caused significant and instantaneous reductions in blood feeding. No significant effect of the fungi on mosquito mortality was found. Conidial viability of B. bassiana and M. anisopliae was found to decrease rapidly under field conditions [7]. Conclusions This thesis used several different experimental techniques to examine the potential of three natural products to control mosquitoes. For the flora, it was found that even a small amount of neem wood in water would control mosquitoes (Chapter 3), and at this and higher doses, the oviposition behaviour was not adversely affected (Chapter 4). Neem trees are readily available in many areas of Africa, and promising field trials indicate that the use of this tree species should be incorporated into malaria control trials. This thesis reports that edible native African fish can be effective at controlling mosquitoes (Chapter 6), but if fish farming is abandoned and the ponds not filled in, then they can allow large numbers of the most effective malaria vectors to breed (Chapter 5). Fish have been successfully used for malaria vector control in many countries and this could be rolled out across appropriate areas of Africa, as long as it is accompanied with adequate education about the dangers of abandoned ponds. We found that insecticide-resistant mosquitoes were more susceptible to fungal infection than the insecticide-susceptible strain. Under field conditions fungi were able to prevent blood feeding but did not cause significant mortality in the wild-caught mosquitoes. Although entomopathogenic fungi produce high levels of mortality in laboratory settings, (Chapter 7), their use under field conditions still has a long way to go and is not yet at the operational stage. Although the results found in this thesis are encouraging for the use of fungi in African situations (Chapter 8), further work should be carried out to maximise fungal persistence under field conditions. The current emphasis is on IVM for malaria control (Chapter 2), and focus is turning to biological control tools that can help manage insecticide-resistant populations. With this in mind, the natural products investigated in this thesis have produced encouraging results that show they have the potential to be integrated into malaria control strategies. Furthermore, flora and fish are readily available in the areas where they are most required, and could be used almost immediately to help reduce mosquito numbers and correspondingly, malaria disease transmission. <br/
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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
Author Under Sail The Imagination of Jack London, 1893-1902
No full textIn Author Under Sail, Jay Williams offers the first complete literary biography of Jack London as a professional writer engaged in the labor of writing. It examines the authorial imagination in London's work, the use of imagination in both his fiction and nonfiction, and the ways he defined imagination in the creative process in his business dealings with his publishers, editors, and agents. In this first volume of a two-volume biography, Williams traverses the years 1893 to 1902, from London's "Story of a Typhoon" to The People of the Abyss. The Jack London who emerges in the pages of Author Under Sail is a writer whose partnership with publishers, most notably his productive alliance with George Brett of Macmillan, was one of the most formative in American literary history. London pioneered many author models during the heyday of realism and naturalism, blurring the boundaries of these popular genres by focusing on absorption and theatricality and the representation of the seen and unseen. London created an impassioned, sincere, and extremely personal realism unlike that of other American writers of the time. Author Under Sail is a literary tour de force that reveals the full range of London as writer, creative citizen, and entrepreneur at the same time it sheds light on the maverick side of machine-age literature.Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Spirit Truth -- 2. From Absorption to Theatricality and Back Again -- 3. "I Will Build a New Present" -- 4. Sons as Authors -- 5. Fathers as Publishers -- 6. The Daughter as Author -- 7. Lovers as Authors -- 8. At Sea with the Family -- 9. Yellow News, Yellow Stories -- 10. The Return Home -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About Jay WilliamsIn Author Under Sail, Jay Williams offers the first complete literary biography of Jack London as a professional writer engaged in the labor of writing. It examines the authorial imagination in London's work, the use of imagination in both his fiction and nonfiction, and the ways he defined imagination in the creative process in his business dealings with his publishers, editors, and agents. In this first volume of a two-volume biography, Williams traverses the years 1893 to 1902, from London's "Story of a Typhoon" to The People of the Abyss. The Jack London who emerges in the pages of Author Under Sail is a writer whose partnership with publishers, most notably his productive alliance with George Brett of Macmillan, was one of the most formative in American literary history. London pioneered many author models during the heyday of realism and naturalism, blurring the boundaries of these popular genres by focusing on absorption and theatricality and the representation of the seen and unseen. London created an impassioned, sincere, and extremely personal realism unlike that of other American writers of the time. Author Under Sail is a literary tour de force that reveals the full range of London as writer, creative citizen, and entrepreneur at the same time it sheds light on the maverick side of machine-age literature.Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, YYYY. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries
- …
