1,721,191 research outputs found

    An Overview of Some Emergent Infectious Diseases of Concern to Montana’s Nongame Species

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    Virulent infectious diseases in a variety of wildlife populations have increased over the past couple of decades in both natural and managed landscapes.  Fungal and viral pathogens, aided by human disturbance of habitats and human, wildlife, and domestic animal derived transport, are playing an increasingly dominant role in wildlife disease epidemics.  State and federal agencies and professional organizations such as this chapter need to do a better job of keeping wildlife professionals fully informed of all emerging infectious diseases in order to facilitate detection and a potential response at the earliest possible time.  I will provide overviews of: 1) White-Nose Syndrome which is caused by a cold-adapted fungus that, since 2006, has killed more than 6 million bats in eastern North America and has continued to spread westward; 2) two chytrid fungi which have caused mass mortalities and extinctions of amphibians worldwide, including near extinction of the Northern Leopard Frog (Lithobates pipiens) and decline of the Western Toad (Anaxyrus boreas) in western Montana; 3) Tiger Salamander Ranavirus, an iridovirus which is the most likely cause of mass mortality events in larval Western Tiger Salamander (Ambystoma mavortium) populations that have been recorded across Montana; and 4) Snake Fungal Disease, which has emerged as a threat to some snake populations in eastern and midwestern North America since 2006 and may be spreading westward.  In general, wildlife professionals in Montana should report observations of unhealthy wildlife and wildlife mortality events that may involve these and other emerging infectious diseases to the Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks Wildlife Laboratory in Bozeman in order to facilitate coordinated diagnoses and responses with other state and federal agencies

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The 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

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    “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

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    We 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

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    We 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

    Author Index

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    koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist

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    We 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

    State-wide assessment of status, predicted distribution, and landscape-level habitat suitability of amphibians and reptiles in Montana

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    Beginning in the late 1980s herpetologists began to realize that amphibians around the world had undergone, and were continuing to undergo, declines, extirpations, and extinctions. In most cases, detections of declines and determinations of the underlying causes has been hampered by a lack of available baseline information on distribution and status. This project was a cooperative effort to address these data deficiencies for amphibians and reptiles in Montana. Watersheds with greater than 30 percent federal or state land ownership were randomly selected for survey in each of 11 geographic strata. Visual encounter and dipnet surveys of all standing water bodies on public lands within these watersheds yielded watershed and site occupancy estimates as a measure of status. Occupancy estimates from this first-ever state-wide base level assessment can be more validly used for future comparisons with future status assessment, provided additional support for declines in Western Toad (Bufo boreas) and Northern Leopard Frog (Rana pipiens) populations in western Montana, and identified a variety of conservation issues of concern that can be addressed through management actions (e.g., clear evidence for negative impacts of fish and importance of maintaining natural disturbance regimes such as flooding, beaver, and fire). The information gathered during field inventories was combined with other existing information and used in maximum entropy modeling to predict state-wide distribution and habitat suitability for all of Montana\u27s amphibians and reptiles. These models out performed GAP analysis models by simultaneously reducing the area predicted and omission error rates. Among other things, models identified scale dependent responses to environmental variables, potentially isolated populations in need of conservation efforts, and areas that are critical for maintaining landscape connectivity. In conjunction with field inventories, a state-wide assessment of the distribution of the pathogenic chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) (Bd) was undertaken using PCR-based detection in skin swabs or tissue samples. Bd was found across Montana in 6 of the 9 species tested at a variety of elevations, habitats, and distances from human activities. The widespread presence of Bd highlights the need for additional studies and measures to prevent the spread of Bd and other novel pathogens
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