1,720,962 research outputs found

    Open gridded climate datasets can help investigating the relation between meteorological anomalies and geomorphic hazards in mountainous areas

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    The initiation of geomorphic hazards in mountainous environments is highly susceptible to temperature and precipitation forcing. To assess future changes in these hazards, statistical methods linking meteorological anomalies with the occurrence of past hazards can be employed. These methods are currently trained using long records from in-situ meteorological stations. This requires large efforts for data access, collection and homogenisation, which severely limit the scalability of these approaches. Here, we use a consolidated statistical method and a vast catalogue of geomorphic hazards occurred across the Alpine range to show that open-access datasets of gridded temperature and satellite-based precipitation estimates can be used as surrogates of in-situ observations. Further, we find that satellite data can capture precipitation anomalies leading to debris flows that are missed by in-situ observations

    An integrated approach to investigate climate-driven rockfall occurrence in high alpine slopes: the Bessanese glacial basin, Western Italian Alps

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    Rockfalls are one of the most common instability processes in high mountains. They represent a relevant issue, both for the risks they represent for (infra) structures and frequentation, and for their potential role as terrestrial indicators of climate change. This study aims to contribute to the growing topic of the relationship between climate change and slope instability at the basin scale. The selected study area is the Bessanese glacial basin (Western Italian Alps) which, since 2016, has been specifically equipped, monitored and investigated for this purpose. In order to provide a broader context for the interpretation of the recent rockfall events and associated climate conditions, a cross-temporal and integrated approach has been adopted. For this purpose, geomorphological investigations (last 100 years), local climate (last 30 years) and near-surface rock/air temperatures analyses, have been carried out. First research outcomes show that rockfalls occurred in two different geomorphological positions: on rock slopes in permafrost condition, facing from NW to NE and/or along the glacier margins, on rock slopes uncovered by the ice in the last decades. Seasonal thaw of the active layer and/or glacier debutressing can be deemed responsible for slope failure preparation. With regard to timing, almost all dated rock falls occurred in summer. For the July events, initiation may have been caused by a combination of rapid snow melt and enhanced seasonal thaw of the active layer due to anomalous high temperatures, and rainfall. August events are, instead, associated with a significant positive temperature anomaly on the quarterly scale, and they can be ascribed to the rapid and/or in depth thaw of the permafrost active layer. According to our findings, we can expect that in the Bessanese glacierized basin, as in similar high mountain areas, climate change will cause an increase of slope instability in the future. To fasten knowledge deepening, we highlight the need for a growth of a network of high elevation experimental sites at the basin scale, and the definition of shared methodological and measurement standards, that would allow a more rapid and effective comparison of data

    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

    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

    Author Index

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    koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist

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    We 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

    Evaluating the Effects of Urbanization Evolution on Air Temperature Trends Using Nightlight Satellite Data

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    Confounding factors like urbanization and land-use change could introduce uncertainty to the estimation of global temperature trends related to climate change. In this work, we introduce a new way to investigate the nexus between temporal trends of temperature and urbanization data at the global scale in the period from 1992 to 2013. We analyze air temperature data recorded from more than 5000 weather stations worldwide and nightlight satellite measurements as a proxy for urbanization. By means of a range of statistical methods, our results quantify and outline that the temporal evolution of urbanization affects temperature trends at multiple spatial scales with significant differences at regional and continental scales. A statistically significant agreement in temperature and nightlight trends is detected, especially in low and middle-income regions, where urbanization is rapidly growing. Conversely, in continents such as Europe and North America, increases in temperature trends are typically detected along with non-significant nightlight trends
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