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Achieving food and environmental security: new approaches to close the gap
Get PDFIntroductionAchieving food security in a ‘perfect storm’ scenario is a grand challenge for society. Unless 50% more food, 50% more energy and 30% more freshwater are available by 2030, a ‘perfect storm’ is envisaged where there would be simultaneous shortages of all of these on a global scale [1]. This becomes an even more ‘wicked problem’ when climate change and an expanding global population act in concert, making the challenge of achieving global food security even more complex and demanding.Food security ‘exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’ [2, Plan of Action no. 1]. It is determined by four factors: (i) availability (from agricultural production and land-use or exchange); (ii) stability of supplies (e.g. seasonally and from year to year); (iii) access (dependent on financial means but also physical access and social factors); and (iv) biological utilization of food (e.g. nutritional diversity and food safety issues) [3]. It is estimated that almost one billion people face hunger through lack of macronutrients [4], and a further one billion lack sufficient micronutrients, leading to both negative health and development outcomes [5].Millennium development goal (MDG) number 1 (eradicate hunger and poverty) is effectively coupled to many of the other MDGs; it is imperative that we develop mechanisms to meet MDG 1 and other goals that are complementary and which do not oppose one another. For example, sustainable intensification (SI) of agriculture has been proposed as a way to address hunger while also minimizing further environmental impact. However, the desire to raise productivity and yields has led historically to environmental degradation, reduced biodiversity and limitations to ecosystem services, with the greatest impacts falling upon the poor. Addressing MDGs in isolation can, therefore, be at the expense of others, and improved integration of actions is required. We must increase food security sustainably and in a climate change-resilient manner, while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions, alleviating poverty and conserving biodiversity [4–7]: perhaps the greatest challenge that we have ever faced.The relationship between food security outcomes and the environment is complex and multidimensional [8]. Food security is dependent not only on (non-provisioning) ecosystem services, but it is also one of the greatest drivers of the loss of ecosystem services. The pursuit of food security through increased agricultural production may include changes in land use, land cover, management practices and agricultural inputs, and it a key driver of landscape change [9].The concepts of planetary boundaries and ‘safe operating space’ have already had a significant influence on the international discourse about global sustainability [10]. Nine interlinked ecological boundaries have been defined at the planetary scale, and it is argued that society should remain within these if it is to avoid ‘disastrous consequences for humanity’. Three of these (biodiversity loss, climate change and nitrogen cycling) have all been exceeded, and all are linked to agricultural intensification. A recent and novel framework for considering this concept has been proposed by economists from Oxfam [11]. The ‘safe and just operating spaces’ (doughnut) idea argues for the need to live within the ‘space’ that lies beneath the planetary boundary, yet above the social floor of basic and just needs for food, energy and water security, and social goods such as education and healthcare.How do we deliver food security for all, without further exceeding planetary boundaries that have already been breached? Many of these social and just boundaries are linked to the MDGs and will undoubtedly be within the emerging sustainable development goals planned for post-2015. Science must play a central role in providing innovative solutions to these challenges, and this special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B captures a Discussion Meeting (‘Achieving food and environmental security: new approaches to close the gap’) that took place at the Royal Society, in London between 3 and 4 December 2012, to explore some of avenues that science is currently pursuing. It invited prominent speakers to report on (i) the challenges that we face in achieving food and environmental security, (ii) research and extension in pursuit of sustainable production intensification, (iii) innovation for sustainable agriculture and (iv) using the ecosystem services framework for managing agricultural ecosystems.Following the London meeting, a workshop was held at the Kavli International Centre between 5 and 6 December 2012. Discussions at this meeting focused on reviewing the key issues, barriers and opportunities for science to contribute towards the new global agricultural systems that are needed to deliver food security. From this workshop, a statement ‘The Kavli Declaration: a vision for agriculture in 2050’ was developed. All of the attendees at the Kavli workshop have signed the declaration, which is presented in box 1
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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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