1,721,178 research outputs found
The Social Discount Rate in Cost-Benefit Analysis for flood risk management: Reasoning on the intertemporal preferences = Il saggio sociale di sconto nell’Analisi Costi-Benefici per la gestione del rischio alluvionale: Riflessioni sulle preferenze intertemporali
No full textAbout the Flood Risk Management Plans (PGRA) the European Community (DIR. 2007/60; Regulation No. 1303/2013) introduces the need to provide an assessment of the prevention and mitigation measures for the hydraulic risk through a Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA), (Cohesion Fund, 2014-2020). Indeed, the CBA helps identifying a priority ranking of structural and non-structural interventions to be implemented so to reduce the probability of flooding and the negative consequences for human health, the environment, cultural heritage and economic activities. In Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) application, the Social Discount Rate (SDR) covers a fundamental role in revealing the intergenerational concern and the willingness to pay for environmental protection and debt inheritance of a society into a specific territorial-time dimension. In particular, scientific research on the hydraulic risk area like the national and international guidelines demonstrates no agreement about the methodologies for estimating the SSS and the (SSS) value adopted in different territorial contexts. For this reason, this paper aims at investigating literature debates about SDR effectiveness on a value-based assessment and how it is applied in CBA analysis dealing with intergenerational environmental costs redistribution and human heath protections. The theoretical explanation is supported by applying CBA analysis to the real case study of Olbia city, where relevant flood events occurred in the last fifty years and, in particular, the last one in 2013, causing significant losses in economic welfare and human lives. First results from the empirical application show how the choice of the SSS and the time-frame of the interventions have a strong impact on the effectiveness of the strategic decisions from a social point of view. In particular, these two factors’ influence is more evident in longterm scenarios due to intertemporal prices’ cumulative and multiplicative effects, which reduce future values such as environmental and social benefits when discounted
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
Maladaptive plasticity in levodopa-induced dyskinesias and tardive dyskinesias: Old and new insights on the effects of dopamine receptor pharmacology
No full textMaladaptive plasticity can be defined as behavioral loss or even development of disease symptoms resulting from aberrant plasticity changes in the human brain. Hyperkinetic movement disorders, in the neurological or psychiatric realms, have been associated with maladaptive neural plasticity that can be expressed by functional changes such as an increase in transmitter release, receptor regulation, and synaptic plasticity or anatomical modifications such as axonal regeneration, sprouting, synaptogenesis, and neurogenesis. Recent evidence from human and animal models provided support to the hypothesis that these phenomena likely depend on altered dopamine turnover induced by long-term drug treatment. However, it is still unclear how and where these altered mechanisms of cortical plasticity may be localized. This study provides an up-to-date overview of these issues together with some reflections on future studies in the field, particularly focusing on two specific disorders (levodopa-induced dyskinesias in Parkinson's disease patients and tardive dyskinesias in schizophrenic patients) where the modern neuroimaging approaches have recently provided new fundamental insights. © 2014 Cerasa, Fasano, Morgante, Koch and Quattrone
How to Evaluate Public Spaces as High-Value Impact Opportunities for the Last Generation Adaptive Cities
No full textHow to invest in the “Market of Sustainability”: Evaluating the impacts of a Real Estate investment across ESG criteria|Investire nel “Mercato sostenibile”: Valutare gli impatti di un investimento immobiliare attraverso i criteri ESG
No full textThis article is based on recent research and debates on the development and investment models of the Real Estate sector encouraged by the new policies and action programs of the European Union, and primarily the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals-SDGs of the 2030 Agenda. In particular, the research emphasizes evaluating the effects of Italian Residential Real Estate investments on the three dimensions of sustainability conceptualized through the ESG - Environmental Social Governance criteria. In this context, the authors experiment with identifying a set of indicators according to ESG criteria helpful in describing the incidence of activities in Real Estate processes (along the entire life cycle of the asset) and, therefore, to guide residential market investors in choices with a high sustainable impact.
The methodology of this work has firstly identified the European and Italian regulatory framework relating to the ESG sphere by studying the indicators already in use or developed for measuring sustainable performance particularly for real estate sector, like gaps in literature about proper methodologies to measure performance
while involving process’ actors. Then, the proposed participatory methodology has been built by taking as reference a real case study - reuse of a building complex in the city of Milan for residential purposes- to identify with a panel of experts and involved actors the phases and sub-phases listed as work-breakdown structure, which may be subject to performance and impact measurement. Furthermore, ESG impacts in terms of beneficiaries from the project and key performance indicators has been assessed and ranked, resulting in an economic and social sustainability criteria priority in involved actors’ sake. Therefore, this research work provides the foundations for a replicable evaluation system for measuring sustainability standards in the residential Real Estate market considering innovatively co-participative decision-making processes along the project life-cycle. However, the methodology can be reinforced in the future with sensitivity methods on involved actors’ primary choices in the multi-criteria process and the enlargement of Panel experts’ profiles or, even, addressed to other targets more than the residential one
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
- …
