1,721,345 research outputs found

    Thermal conductivity of lipidic emulsions and its use for production and quality control

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    Thermal conductivity of lipidic emulsions has been experimentally determined by the probe method. To this purpose a special probe has been designed and built in laboratory, with small diameter (0.6 mm) and a high length to diameter ratio (100). The temperature sensor of the probe (type T thermocouple) and the heater (Pt wire) were properly calibrated. Moreover, the probe performance has been tested by means of a pure liquid (glycerin) having well known thermal conductivity by literature. Differences of about 1.5% at ambient temperature in thermal conductivity values between literature and experiments were found. On lipidic emulsions first thermal conductivity has been measured in the temperature range 1040°C, second the same property as a function of time at constant temperature (40°C), then the values after freezing at –15°C and reheating at 20 °C; and last the kinetics of degeneration. Results show a significant difference between thermal conductivity values of a new emulsion (0.51 W/m K), compared with the creamed one (0.62 W/m K), and the decayed one (0.68 W/m K ). It has also put into evidence why the frozen emulsion cannot be used for intravenous injection, i.e. viscosity increases because of breaking of the oil particles. Finally information about the kinetics of the degeneration process have been obtained. The uncertainty resulting from the calibration and tests justifies the possible use of the measurement technique for process control of production, and also for quality control in the clinical practice

    Public Governance and Technological Capabilities in the Kenyan Leather Industry

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    This article focuses on small-And medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Kenya's leather sector. It explores how public governance impacts SMEs' technological capabilities and access to global value chains (GVCs). By public governance, we mean all government regulations and interventions set in place to shape the organization of value chains. Drawing on interview data, the article compares Kenya's leather handbag and footwear manufacturers. On the one hand, handbag SMEs have succeeded in upgrading and entering GVCs through a combination of foreign knowledge and partnership with local universities. Despite meeting with public governance barriers, this process has enabled the transfer of technological capabilities from foreign-owned firms to a number of emerging SMEs owned by Kenyan nationals. On the other hand, leather footwear production was developed during the 1970s by large firms under state support. As protectionist measures were lifted in the 1990s, firms shut down and producers moved into the informal economy, replicating outdated capabilities in a context of price-driven competition, thereby limiting upgrading and participation in GVCs. The article concludes by comparing these findings with the experience of Kenya's apparel manufacturers and highlighting the critical need for GVC research to account for the role of public governance in shaping firms' technological capabilities and access to global markets

    Il ruolo formativo della rappresentanza studentesca universitaria: competenze, riflessioni e sfide educative. In: Ricerca, servizi, politiche territoriali pedagogiche. Trasformative, innovative, emancipative.

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    The University of Florence, through the Teaching and Learning Centre, has set up a working group of elected student representatives. The group aims to create a constructive and inclusive dialogue to co-design specific training opportunities for all those representing the student component of the university. The objective is to put students at the centre of the academic community by giving them the tools to participate in decision-making processes efficiently and consciously, promoting the construction of a shared culture of quality and emphasising the aspects of professionalisation that students develop during their period of representation. This contribution intends to discuss the strategies adopted and the objectives pursued, with a focus on the integration of transversal approaches

    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

    THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY OF OTTAWA SAND PARTIALLY AND TOTALLY SATURATED WITH WATER

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    Ottawa sand is a widely studied material in as much its properties are well known, and so it is particularly suited to be used as reference material to develop new analysis methods. This is the reason why it has been chosen to investigate thermal conductivity of partially saturated with water porous media with the probe method. To this goal a special probe developed by the authors’ laboratory has been used, whose accuracy had been established during previous tests as 1.5 %. Thermal conductivity of Ottawa sand has been measured in three different states: dry, totally saturated with water, and saturated to 50%. In all conditions values were measured as a function of temperature from –20 °C to 80°C. A special procedure has been studied and tested in order to get best uniformity of water distribution in the material. Many measurements have been repeated supplying different electric power to the probe, in order to vary the temperature increase. The aim of this action is to recognize a possible influence of phase change, due to the power supplied for the test procedure itself, during measurements. Results show a typical behaviour of thermal conductivity versus temperature, intermediate between the solid phase and fluid one. Also a characteristic behaviour versus temperature increase is evident in single tests, due to different phenomena occurred in the three phases porous media

    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
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