130,411 research outputs found
Preliminary investigations to possible introduction of Entomophaga maimaiga in Sardinia
No full textThe fungus Entomophaga maimaiga Humber, Shimazu and Soper (Entomophtorales: Entomophtoraceae) is a virulent and very host specific pathogen of the gypsy moth Lymantria dispar L., capable of causing epizootics also when the defoliator is at low population density. This fungus, originally described from the Asian gypsy moth, was introduced in the last decades of the 1900’s in the USA and Bulgaria where now it is well established causing high levels of mortality of gypsy moth larvae. The possible presence of E. maimaiga was recently investigated in Sardinia, Italy. The fungus is not present in the island so we decided (after obtaining the permit from the Ministero delle Politiche Agricole Alimentari e Forestali) to start bioassays to confirm its effectiveness against Sardinian larvae of L. dispar. Two methodologies were followed: 1) gypsy moth larvae were exposed to contaminated soil containing E. maimaiga azygospores; 2) larvae were sunk for three seconds in a water suspension containing E. maimaiga azygospores. The mortality caused by the fungus during our bioassays was 4.16% in 2012 and 3% in 2013 for the first method and 4.7% for the second method used only in 2013. We are currently verifying the action of the fungus against other lepidopteran larvae in order to avoid negative effects for the environment and lay foundations for the introduction of E. maimaiga in Sardinia
Potential impact of Entomophaga maimaiga Humber, Shimazu, and Soper (Entomophthorales: Entomophthoraceae) on the lepidopteran fauna inhabiting cork forests in Sardinia (Italy)
No full textDifferent susceptibility of indigenous populations of Lymantria dispar to the exotic entomopathogen Entomophaga maimaiga
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MeSH term explosion and author rank improve expert recommendations
No full textInformation overload is an often-cited phenomenon that reduces the productivity, efficiency and efficacy of scientists. One challenge for scientists is to find appropriate collaborators in their research. The literature describes various solutions to the problem of expertise location, but most current approaches do not appear to be very suitable for expert recommendations in biomedical research. In this study, we present the development and initial evaluation of a vector space model-based algorithm to calculate researcher similarity using four inputs: 1) MeSH terms of publications; 2) MeSH terms and author rank; 3) exploded MeSH terms; and 4) exploded MeSH terms and author rank. We developed and evaluated the algorithm using a data set of 17,525 authors and their 22,542 papers. On average, our algorithms correctly predicted 2.5 of the top 5/10 coauthors of individual scientists. Exploded MeSH and author rank outperformed all other algorithms in accuracy, followed closely by MeSH and author rank. Our results show that the accuracy of MeSH term-based matching can be enhanced with other metadata such as author rank
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe 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
Survey of pathogens and parasitoids in late instar Lymantria dispar larval populations in Sardinia, Italy
No full text"Closing the R&D Gap, Evaluating the Sources of R&D Spending"
No full textBoth spending and tax policies have been implemented in the United States with the goal of stimulating private sector research and development (R&D). Karier questions whether current R&D policy, especially the research and experimentation tax credit, can contribute to closing the gap between nondefense expenditures on R&D in the United States and such expenditures in other countries, such as Japan and Germany. He also explores possible changes to our current R&D policy to make it more effective.
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
No full textWe 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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