1,720,965 research outputs found
George Church and Ed Regis, Regenesis: how synthetic biology will reinvent nature and ourselves
No full textPharmaceutical cognitive enhancement among Slovenian university students
No full textOver the past two decades, the concept of human enhancement - the idea that the normal capabilities of healthy people can be enhanced through direct technological interventions into the body - has garnered increasing attention in some scientific circles. Most potential enhancement technologies are still in research and development, with a few exceptions, such as pharmaceutical drugs that can increase concentration, memory and wakefulness. Such use has been conceptualized as "pharmaceutical cognitive enhancement" (PCE), and PCE use among students is cited as signifying an important new trend that requires expert and public attention. The article takes up the call to explore PCE trends in national contexts. The results of an online survey covering experiences and attitudes towards PCE among 445 undergraduate students at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, have shown that 6,1 % have already used PCE. Regarding attitudes, 26 % of users and 20 % of nonusers though that healthy adults should be permitted to use PCE according to their own judgment, while 33 % of users and 21 % of nonusers stated they will probably use PCE in the future. A tangible percentage of PCE use is present, but it requires interpretation and several different contextual interpretations are proposed. Ultimately, societies will need to decide how to interpret and potentially address the trend at the national and possibly international level.V zadnjih dveh desetletjih je bil koncept krepitve oz. izboljševanja človeka - ideja, da je običajne zmogljivosti zdravih ljudeh mogoče okrepiti z neposrednimi tehnološkimi posegi v telesu - v nekaterih znanstvenih krogih deležen naraščajoče pozornosti. Večina potencialnih tehnologij krepitve človeka je še vedno v fazi raziskav in razvoja, z nekaj izjemami, kot so farmacevtske učinkovine, ki lahko povečajo koncentracijo, pomnjenje in budnost. Takšna uporaba je pojmovana kot "farmacevtska krepitev kognitivnih zmožnosti" (PCE)uporaba PCE med študenti je pogosto navedena kot pomemben nov trend, ki zahteva strokovno in javno pozornost. Članek se tako odziva pozivu za raziskovanje PCE-trendov v nacionalnih kontekstih. Rezultati spletne ankete, ki zajema izkušnje in odnos do PCE med 445 dodiplomskimi študenti Univerze v Ljubljani, so pokazali, da je 6,1 % že uporabljalo PCE. Stališča do PCE kažejo, da je 26 % uporabnikov in 20 % neuporabnikov mnenja, da bi moralo biti zdravim odraslim dovoljeno, naj PCE uporabljajo po lastni presoji, 33 % uporabnikov in 21 % neuporabnikov pa je izjavilo, da bodo sami najverjetneje uporabljali PCE v prihodnosti. Otipljiv odstotek rabe PCE je torej prisoten, vendar zahteva ustrezno interpretacijo, zato je predlaganih več različnih kontekstualnih razlag. Sodobne družbe se bodo morale navsezadnje odločiti, kako interpretirati in potencialno obravnavati ta trend na nacionalni in morda mednarodni ravni
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
What makes research excellent? Digging into the measures aimed at quantifying and promoting research excellence
Get PDF“Research excellence” is a tricky concept in theory and arguably trickier to capture in practice. Toni Pustovrh shares findings from a recent study which looks at how research is currently quantified and evaluated in Slovenia. In-depth interviews with scientists reveal a variety of views on the concept and the current mechanisms in place. The analysis suggests that neither a predominantly peer-review based evaluation system, nor one based mainly on quantitative metrics will ever be the best solution, as both have their inherent problems. As one survey respondent notes, “numerics do not reveal the content”
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Get PDFWe 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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