1,721,048 research outputs found
On the cost reduction of a nearly zero energy multifamily house in Italy: Technical and economic assessment
No full textTwo important issues concerning NZEB development are: from one side to guarantee specific heating-cooling balance for each climatic condition, taking into account thermal comfort and indoor environmental quality, and from the other side to enhance the reduction of construction and management costs, ensuring the fulfillment of NZEBs standard requirements. In this paper these two aspects have been analyzed. Numerical analyses under transient thermal conditions demonstrated that passive design (night ventilation and shadings) allow to minimize the overheating risk in summer season and consequently to avoid the installation of an active cooling system: up to 65% average cooling demand reduction can be obtained; 1.5 air change rate of night ventilation allowed to reduce the overeating risks to 16 hours only. Furthermore, the development of low-cost technical solutions in the construction phase guarantees up to 25% reduction of investment costs and high final savings, considering operational costs over the entire building life cycle (50 years). The Net Present Value of the four scenarios range from 63 €/m2 to 140 €/m
Dysfunctional inhibitory control in Parkinson's disease patients with levodopa-induced dyskinesias
No full textIntroduction: Chronic dopamine replacement therapies in Parkinson's disease can induce side effects, such as levodopa-induced dyskinesias and impulse control disorders. A dysfunction of inhibitory brain networks has been related to both disorders; however, there is no clear behavioral evidence supporting this hypothesis. We aimed to determine whether PD patients with levodopa-induced dyskinesias show features of increased impulsivity in parallel with altered motor inhibition.
Methods: Two matched samples of Parkinson's disease patients with (n = 14) or without (n = 14) levodopa-induced dyskinesias and a control group (n = 10) participated in the study. All groups were evaluated by the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale-11 to assess impulsivity traits. Furthermore, participants performed a stop signal task to evaluate reactive-motor inhibition and a Go/NoGo task to evaluate proactive-inhibitory control. PD patients were tested both in OFF and ON levodopa medication.
Results: Parkinson's disease patients with levodopa-induced dyskinesias showed higher impulsivity scores than PD patients without levodopa-induced dyskinesias. Dyskinetic patients presented also delayed stop signal reaction times indicating a worse performance in reactive inhibition. The slowness in inhibiting a motor command correlated with the impulsiveness scores. Furthermore, in the dyskinetic group, a positive correlation was found between stop reaction times and the severity of involuntary movements. Under the effect of levodopa, all patients were faster but dyskinetic patients were significantly less accurate in proactive inhibition. Conclusion Inhibitory control is compromised in dyskinetic patients in parallel with increased impulsivity, revealing an impairment of motor and behavioral inhibitory control in Parkinson's disease patients with levodopa-induced dyskinesias
On the cost reduction of a nearly zero energy multifamily house in Italy: Technical and economic assessment
Full text linkTwo important issues concerning NZEB development are: from one side to guarantee specific heating-cooling balance for each climatic condition, taking into account thermal comfort and indoor environmental quality, and from the other side to enhance the reduction of construction and management costs, ensuring the fulfillment of NZEBs standard requirements. In this paper these two aspects have been analyzed. Numerical analyses under transient thermal conditions demonstrated that passive design (night ventilation and shadings) allow to minimize the overheating risk in summer season and consequently to avoid the installation of an active cooling system: up to 65% average cooling demand reduction can be obtained; 1.5 air change rate of night ventilation allowed to reduce the overeating risks to 16 hours only. Furthermore, the development of low-cost technical solutions in the construction phase guarantees up to 25% reduction of investment costs and high final savings, considering operational costs over the entire building life cycle (50 years). The Net Present Value of the four scenarios range from 63 €/m 2 to 140 €/m
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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