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The cross-cultural transition experience. Phenomenological analysis on a group of international students
No full textSummary
This study is focused on exploration of experience of cultural transition that has lived a group of international students (European and not European) host at an Italian University during particular experiential segment marking the transition from their culture of belonging to the new social and cultural context. From an epistemological point of view that aligns with the phenomenological tradition with individual and group interviews, it was monitored with a longitudinal methodology as the representation of the transit cross-cultural adaptation to the context it emerged from the interviews are associated through the dominant narrative themes.
The results show how in the early stage of contact with the new culture, the group of students, both European and not, have felt a sense of disorientation associated with the loss of its cultural matrix. Over the next step of analysis is rather more clearly the difference between the group of European students, whose performances evoke an adjustment process easier and less based on feelings of ambivalence and close relationships that characterize the group of non-European students.
Keywords: Cross-cultural transition; international students: phenomenology
Advances in tomographic PIV
No full textThis research deals with advanced developments in 3D particle image velocimetry based on the tomographic PIV technique (Tomo-PIV). The latter is a relatively recent measurement technique introduced by Elsinga et al. in 2005, which is based on the tomographic reconstruction of particle tracers in three-dimensional space from a small number of its projections obtained with digital cameras. Tomography is widely known in the medical diagnostics (e.g. computerized axial tomography) to inspect the human body. For PIV applications the problem is formulated as that of reconstructing the spatial distribution of sparse emitters (illuminated tracers). The present work initially surveys the state of advancement of the research conducted on this new measurement technique and the main bottlenecks and aspects to be improved are identified. The two major elements covered in this research are the 3D object reconstruction and the advanced analysis of the tracers motion. Concerning the first aspect, one of the recognized limitations is the exponential increase of ghost particles when a higher particle concentration is desired for high-resolution measurements (e.g. in turbulence studies). Although Tomo-PIV already outperforms other volumetric 3D techniques in terms of allowed particle tracers concentration, many efforts are constantly devoted to find ways to further increase the particle density. A novel concept is presented in this work that makes use for the first time of more than a single recording to increase the accuracy of tomographic reconstruction. This method considers that the moving particle field can be regarded as a solid object recorded from a moving imaging system. That is why the author refers to the concept of fluid tomography, whereby the two recordings of the same set of particles are “deformed back” to the same time instant when the particle tracers come to coincide and the ghost particles do not. The Motion Tracking Enhancement reconstruction technique (MTE) is described in Chapter 4 of this thesis. The validity of the MTE working principle is verified both numerically and by experiments. Its application in turbulent shear flows shows that the seeding density can be increased by a factor 4 (ppp=0.2) with respect to that currently practiced (ppp=0.05) without loss of accuracy. The focus is then set on techniques to increase the spatial resolution of velocity fields measured by tomographic PIV. The approach followed is that of locally adaptive interrogation volume, following the concept of non-isotropic resolution in PIV (Scarano 2003). The study shows a novel technique that exploits the additional degrees of freedom when adapting window shape and orientation in a 3D domain based on velocity gradient tensor invariants analysis (Chapter 5). It is shown that the measurement spatial resolution can be increased by a factor 2.5 and 1.5 across shear layers and in the core of a vortex respectively. The present work deals also with the advanced treatment of time-resolved Tomo-PIV experimental data (Chapter 6), where the accurate measurement of the velocity material derivative is of paramount importance to extract the instantaneous flow field pressure (pressure from PIV, van Oudheusden, 2013). The approach investigated here is based on the use of particle-tracking for a time-resolved sequence of 3D particle fields. Adopting a high-order polynomial basis for the particle trajectory reconstruction allows the reconstruction of long trajectories with a strong reduction of random error and nearly the complete elimination of the truncation error. The application to a 3D measurement of a transitional jet demonstrates the higher accuracy obtained for the estimate of fluid parcels acceleration and in turn of the instantaneous pressure field. The work is concluded with a synthesis of the advances obtained in this field, followed by a perspective towards the most significant upcoming developments for the tomographic PIV technique.AerodynamicsAerospace Engineerin
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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