1,721,138 research outputs found

    Financial support program for small farmers, and its impact on local food security. Evidence from Indonesia

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    This paper addresses the implementation of the Kawasan Mandiri Pangan (KMP) program, a microfinance program for farmer groups, assessing whether the program affects farmers’ decisions concerning production, marketing, and consumption or not, and its impacts on household food security along three dimensions: food availability, food access, and food utilization. Based on a qualitative and theory of change mixed-methods analysis, which uses interviews and focus group discussions (FGDs), this research sheds light on the program’s success among two groups of farmers. Both groups experienced improved productivity and increased food availability, but only one group sustained the program. The results indicate that the program has not affected the commercialization of any particular crop, where the crop’s best selling price, relationships, and commitments are factors that affect the farmers’ marketing decisions. Other findings show how food access at the household level increased when the crop’s selling price was reasonable, while food utilization was influenced predominantly by local wisdom. Taken together, the research findings highlight the importance of the capability of the management, the commitment of the members, and the supervision of the agricultural extension agents. There is a need for a locally owned enterprise to absorb agricultural products and maintain the selling price of crops, which is the primary driver of food accessibility and utilization at the household level

    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

    Electrochemical characterization of a polymer/polymer rechargeable lithium solid-state cell

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    The characteristics of solid-state lithium cells, using (PEO)20 LiClO4 as electrolyte and the electrosynthesized polymers polypyrrole, polybithiophene and polydithienothiophene as positive electrodes, were investigated by cyclic voltammetry, charge-discharge galvanostatic cycles and a.c. impedance spectroscopy. The experimental data suggest that solid-state polymeric systems can be employed in ultrathin batteries at 70°C operating temperature. © 1989

    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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