1,720,964 research outputs found
Risk analysis of a critical facility threatened by seismic ground motions and collateral hazards
Assessing root reinforcement for slope stabilitzation under different plant-growth conditions
Vegetation has large applications in bio-engineering practices. Root system provides an additional reinforcement whose effects depend on the biotechnical properties. This study evaluates the changes in the additional root cohesion under different conditions of plant-growth, e.g., exposure to light, water and nutrient availability. These determine different root system development in terms of root length, density, root diameter profile, total number of roots. A root topological model is used to simulate the root architectures, which are then coupled with a Root Bundle Model to estimate the additional root strength. Finally, this study proposes a rigorous method to compute the additional root cohesion from the tensile strength
Geopolymer Materials for Low-Pressure Injections in Coarse Grained Soil: Multiscale Approach to the Study of the Mechanical Behaviour and Environmental Impact
The term soil improvement is commonly referred to the modification of soil structure in order to obtain a material with better physical and mechanical properties such as strength, stiffness or permeability. With this purpose, one of the most commonly used applications, particularly in coarse-grained soils, is the low pressure injection of cementitious mixtures. In recent years, there has been a growing demand for solutions with limited environmental impact and limited CO2 emissions and, in this regard, the cement present in the injected grout is evidently the weak point of traditional solutions. In this work, the experimental study of geopolymer materials as a substitute of cement mixture for low-pressure injection for coarse-grained soils improvement is presented. The study started with a focus on the geopolymer fresh mixture properties (density, viscosity, horizontal ellipsis ) and the evolution over the time of the mechanical properties (compression and tensile strength and stiffness) comparing three different mix designs at three different monitoring temperatures. The same evaluations were repeated on sand samples injected with the different types of mixtures previously analyzed. For a selected mix design, a permeation test was carried out under controlled conditions to test the pumpability and effectiveness of geopolymer injection. Finally, to deepen the chemical interaction between the injected mixture and interstitial water, an injection test was carried out using a scaled model of a real injection system. The experimental study carried out was aimed both at the analysis of the characteristics of the geopolymer material and at its physical interaction with coarse-grained soil, passing through the measurement of the mechanical characteristics of the geopolymer material and of the solid sand skeleton mixed with geopolymers. Finally, the possible chemical interaction of the mixtures with groundwater was also evaluated in order to highlight any environmental issues. The results shown provide a preliminary but sufficiently broad picture of the behavior of geopolymer mixtures for low-pressure injection for coarse-grained soil improvement purposes both from physical-mechanical and chemical points of view
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
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
“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
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
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
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