1,720,974 research outputs found
Four unpublished letters from Nicolas Fatio de Duillier to Isaac Newton: Networks and alchemical knowledge
Get PDFThis article analyses four unpublished draft letters from Nicolas Fatio de Duiller to Isaac Newton, dating from June to August 1693, and held in the Special Collections in the Universiteitsbibliotheek in Leiden. Overall, these letters enrich our knowledge of Fatio-Newton's alchemical correspondence in June 1693, a phase which likely represents the peak of the two natural philosophers' alchemical collaboration. By scrutinising the content of the letters, and situating them in relation to primary and secondary sources, the article will place Newton and Fatio's epistolary exchange in relation to the social and historical background of late seventeenth-century London, bringing to light so far undisclosed aspects of the networks, alchemical practices, and expertise of the two natural philosophers
Unveiling nature: Wonder and deception in eighteenth-century London shows and exhibitions
No full textThis paper examines six exhibitions of machines, clocks, and automata which were performed in the squares, salons and coffee-houses of late eighteenth-century London. It does not take into account those natural philosophers whose enquiries were acknowledged by institutional science, rather focusing on those mechanicks, illusionists, and circus owners (Gulielmo Pittachio, John Joseph Merlin, Benjamin Rackstrow, Henry Breslaw, Philip Astley and James Cox), often collocated in the category of charlatans. By taking into account original advertisements, catalogues and pamphlets, it argues that these shows, with their moments of veiling and unveiling, their dissimilar methods to astonish and induce credulity in the beholders, and their separation from institutional venues, were still conceived as places to enlighten and edify the mind, and conveyed concepts such as wonder, deception, curiosity and philosophical understanding to the public. © 2012 by Koninklijke Brill N.V., Leiden, The Netherlands
Forests, Woods, Roads Agricultural Landscapes as Instruments for the Material Administration of an Eighteenth-Century Tuscan Periphery
No full textOn 21 October 1767, the grand duke of Tuscany, Peter Leopold, signed a motu proprio, a copy of which was sent to the court geographer and mathematician, the Jesuit Leonardo Ximenes (1716–86). The motu proprio was about the necessity of obtaining a complete and accurate survey of the forests of the Maremma of Siena, “to understand their conditions and examine how to administer and use them in the most advantageous and profitable manner.” The burden of this task was not to be borne by Ximenes alone. Peter Leopold had two more people in mind. The two other people were Enrico Van Buggenhout, inspector of forestry, and a construction expert known as Imbert. The grand duke ultimately sought to establish control over the management of an important natural resource produced by the Maremma of Siena, that is, wood, and especially the cerro, a local oak tree, and other trees large enough to be used for naval and building construction. He also asked the three deputies to divide the territory under examination into one or two districts (circondari), in order to make it easier to number trees and estimate their value, and he promised to support them in their hard task by providing “any aides they deemed necessary.” The boundaries of the district did not stand for an administrative division of the grand duchy, but rather as spaces artificially constructed to systematize and facilitate control of the natural productions of the region, especially different wood varieties. Finally, Peter Leopold suggested that the three deputies write a detailed report at the end of their survey and propose strategies for the future improvement of the Maremma, “in the interest of the grand duchy and the universal good.” This article will examine the deputies’ survey of the district of the town of Capalbio, at the border with the Papal States and part of the grand duke’s own domain. The survey’s report offers an interesting perspective on the political economy of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany at the end of the 1760s. It shows how concerns with wood production were related to commercial—rather than merely agricultural—questions of wealth production and administration, as well as to the preservation of state sovereignty. The article will focus particularly on Leonardo Ximenes’ exchanges with some of the most renowned public officials in the grand duchy, as well as with the engineer Donato Maria Fini, from whom he and the other deputies—by order of the grand duke—had commissioned a large map, portraying the district of Capalbio
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
- …
