1,720,954 research outputs found

    Urine effects on grass and legume nitrogen isotopic composition: Pronounced short-term dynamics of δ<sup>15</sup>N

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    Nitrogen stable isotope (15N) natural abundance is widely used to study nitrogen cycling. In grazed ecosystems, urine patches are hot-spots of nitrogen inputs, losses, and changes in δ15N. Understanding δ15N dynamics in urine-affected vegetation is therefore crucial for accurate inferences from 15N natural abundance in grasslands. We hypothesized that leaf δ15N following urine deposition varies with time and plant functional group. Specifically, we expected (i) short-term decreases in δ15N due to foliar absorption of 15N-depleted volatilized ammonia, (ii) followed by increases in δ15N due to uptake of 15N-enriched soil inorganic nitrogen, and (iii) that the magnitude of these changes is less in legumes than in grasses. The latter should be expected because ammonia absorption depends on leaf nitrogen concentration, which is higher in legumes than grasses, and because biological nitrogen fixation will modify the influence of urine-derived nitrogen on δ15N in legumes. We applied cattle urine to a mixture of Lolium perenne and Trifolium repens in a pot experiment. Nitrogen concentration and δ15N were determined for successive leaf cohorts and bulk biomass either 17 (early) or 32 (late) days after urine application. Early after urine application, leaves of L. perenne were 15N-depleted compared to control plants (δ15N 0.1 vs. 5.8‰, respectively), but leaves of T. repens were not (-1.1 vs. -1.1‰, respectively). Later, both species increased their δ15N, but T. repens (4.5‰) less so than L. perenne (5.9‰). Vegetation sampled within and outside urine patches in the field further supported these results. Our findings confirm that foliar ammonia uptake can substantially decrease grass foliar δ15N, and that in both grass and legume the direction of the δ15N response to urine changes over time. Temporal dynamics of plant δ15N at urine patches therefore need to be explicitly addressed when 15N natural abundance is used to study nitrogen cycling in grazed grasslands.</div

    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

    Effect of potassium fertilization on the contents of antioxidants in three cocktail tomato cultivars

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    Tomatoes are an important source of health beneficial phytochemicals, which act as antioxidants such as ascorbic acid, phenolic compounds, carotenoids, and tocopherols. The content of antioxidants is influenced, among others, by abiotic stress factors, like the nutritional status. Potassium (K) is a macronutrient, which is essential for several physiological functions in plants, for example, translocation of assimilates, activation of enzymes, maintenance of turgescence, and stomata regulation. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of increasing K fertilization on the concentration of antioxidants in cocktail tomatoes. Therefore, three tomato cultivars (Primavera, Resi, and Yellow Submarine), grown in an outdoor pot experiment, were fertilized with increasing K doses for two consecutive years. It was confirmed that antioxidants in tomato fruit can be affected by the K regime, but was also shown that other factors may reduce or even inverse those effects when cultivation takes place in an uncontrolled outdoor environment. Most consistent K fertilization effects were found for naringenin, p-coumaric acid and caffeic acid. However, enrichment of tomatoes with antioxidants by K fertilization is cultivar dependent and, therefore, general statements should be avoided

    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
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