1,721,010 research outputs found
The environmental impact of electric vehicles: A comparative LCA-based evaluation framework and its application to the Italian context
No full textIn the last years a progressive shift from the traditional internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV) toward electric vehicles (EV) has been observed, which has as primary objective that of favouring a sustainable mobility. Indeed, one of the most important topics tightly linked with this alternative refers to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced along the entire vehicle's life cycle. The aim of the present work is to develop an emission-model that is able to calculate the CO2 emissions produced along the entire vehicle's life cycle, so to estimate EV CO2 emission values and compare them with those of ICEV. The emission model, developed leveraging on a thorough literature review on the topic, is then applied to the Italian context, to enable a comparison of the emission results for EVs and ICEVs taking into account the peculiarities of such country. It emerges that overall CO2 emissions associated to EVs are lower than the ones associated to ICEVs. A significant portion of emissions arising from the manufacturing of the battery pack still represents the main gap to be filled with respect to ICEVs. Evaluating both vehicle typologies and based on different assumption in terms of the geographical locations in which the stages of the vehicle life cycle take place, it emerges that EVs show a consistent CO2 emission reduction ranging between-11% to-50% compared to ICEVs over the entire vehicle's life cycle. The most relevant contribution for such performance is due to the cleaner energy mixes on which some countries can rely on compared to others. Given that the most impactful phase-in terms of CO2 emissions-is represented by the vehicle use, it has been performed a sensitivity analysis on the energy mix used for vehicle's charging. Results show that coupling of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) and EVs can be a key factor for achieving very low emission values
The environmental impact of electric vehicles: A novel life cycle-based evaluation framework and its applications to multi-country scenarios
Full text linkElectric mobility is being studied as a possible solution for reducing the environmental impact associated to the transportation sector. However, there is a huge ongoing debate among scholars and practitioners on the extent to which Electric Vehicles perform better in terms of greenhouse gases emissions against Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles, and especially on the variables that affect such performance. To the best of our knowledge, most of the studies addressing the topic mainly focus only on some specific phases of a vehicle's life cycle, such as vehicle manufacturing and use, while comprehensive evaluations of the greenhouse gases emissions during a vehicle's life cycle are quite rare. Therefore, the paper aims to develop a comprehensive evaluation framework in order to estimate the environmental impact associated to Electric Vehicles and Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles, by adopting a Life Cycle Assessment approach. The evaluation framework is then adopted to estimate the environmental impact associated to Electric Vehicles and Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles in four different scenarios, each one assuming different countries in which the phases of a vehicle's life cycle take place. Results show that CO2 emissions over the Electric Vehicle's life cycle are lower than the ones associated to a comparable Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle in all the scenarios analysed. Moreover, the analysis highlights: (i) the huge impact on a vehicle's CO2 emissions associated to the geographical location in which the upstream phases of the vehicle supply chain take place (mainly for Electric Vehicles); (ii) the primary impact played by the use phase on the Electric Vehicles CO2 emissions, followed by the vehicle and battery manufacturing ones. Both evidences reinforce the impact of the energy mix on the environmental performance of Electric Vehicles, as further confirmed by the sensitivity analysis. The paper contributes to the extant literature by reaffirming the better environmental performance of Electric Vehicles compared to Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles in terms of CO2 emissions over the whole life cycle, also providing policymakers with useful suggestions for the promotion of Electric Vehicles as a means to tackle environmental issues
Circular Business Models in the Built Environment: an Empirical Investigation on Enablers and Barriers
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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
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
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
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