1,721,017 research outputs found
Control of foot-and-mouth disease in a closed society: A case study of Soviet Estonia
Full text linkFoot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a dangerous infectious disease of even-toed ungulates, however since 1991, the European Union has banned preventive vaccination. During the occupation of the USSR, there were two outbreaks in Estonia: the first started in 1952 (at which time the barns typically housed about 20 cows); and the second began in 1982 (a period when barns typically housed several 100 animals). Neither outbreak was reported to the international community. At that time, it was also forbidden to talk about the disease in the internal media, and speakers could be punished. This study sought to find answers as to how the disease was treated and eliminated in the Estonian SSR, how infected animals and milk were handled, and if some of the methods used can be applied today. Written archival sources and 29 interviews with specialists remembering the outbreaks were used. Preventive slaughter of animals in the USSR was prohibited during the outbreak. As a preventive measure vaccination was used, traveling out of their counties by people were restricted and disinfection mats were used on the roads. In sick animals, udder wounds were treated with various wound ointments, such as zinc ointment, but also ointment made from boiled spruce resin. Birch tar was also recommended in the literature for leg treatments. Mouth wounds were washed with potassium permanganate solution. Workers used rubber gloves when handling sick animals. The barns were disinfected with lime and ash water. The milk from the diseased cows was pasteurized and given to calves, pigs, or diseased animals. Animals that did not recover were transferred to a meat processing plant. The meat was kept in potassium permanganate solution before processing and canned or made into sausages. When the disease was discovered, farm workers were locked in barns and released only when the disease had been eliminated. Such inhumane treatment could only be practiced in a totalitarian society
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
Rahvapäraste taimenimede seosed botaanilise nomenklatuuriga HERBAs
No full textHERBA, the Estonian folk medicine database of herbal treatment (available at http://www.folklore.ee/herba), has been the source of lore texts about the use of plants and herbs as popular remedies since 2006. At the present moment, the database includes the earliest archive texts up to the year 1939, estimated to constitute slightly less than half of the total number of texts. The identification of plant names in the texts are largely based on the monograph Eesti taimenimetused (‘Estonian Plant Names’) by Gustav Vilbaste (1993). Even though most of the collected Estonian plant names have been identified by Vilbaste, new ethnobotanical names emerge while processing the lore material. The article describes the linking of new folk plant names with the botanical nomenclature and establishing connections with the already known folk plant names (on the basis of texts in the database and specialised literature). The database text can be associated with the species on the basis of three criteria: folk plant name (according to Vilbaste’s monograph), the Latin name included in the text, and the plant description. The number of informants with more than one Latin extension in the database is currently 11. Some texts may correspond to nearly all the criteria, but this is an exception rather than a rule. The largest number of Latin names has been contributed by the following informants: pharmacist Hans Jako (in Jakob Hurt files), physician Mihkel Ostrov in 1891 and 1892 (folklore files of the Society of Estonian Literati), school teacher Julius Lunts in 1937 (Estonian Folklore Archives collection) and medical student Jaan Lääts in 1938 (Estonian Folklore Archives collection). Gustav Vilbaste has likewise used the texts of the said informants, though selectively; for instance, the text contributed by Mihkel Ostrov yielded more than 15 new equivalents. The most time-consuming section of the work was to establish connections according to other plant names and/or description and habitat represented in the texts. Usually, a plant can not be identified on the basis of a single text and the results are unreliable. For identification, texts from different collections were gathered together and were analysed according to different parameters, such as the origin of the text, informant’s background, other names mentioned in the text and so on; in addition, the results were compared against the data of plant geography. As to the more complicated texts, mycologists and botanists had to be consulted with. One of the aims of the article is to publish the plant names rediscovered in the course of the work and provide inspiration for deriving new Estonian names for species so far unnamed (e.g., family Gymnosporangium)
Naturaliseerunud ravimtaimed etnobotaanika vaatenurgast. Hariliku katkujuure, hariliku siguri, aedvaagi, aed-mädarõika, hariliku seebilille ja lõhnava kannikese näitel
Full text linkThe paper gives an overview of six plants, naturalized in Estonia: butterbur (Petasites hybridus), chicory (Cichorium intubus), elecampane inula (Inula helenium), horseradish (Armoracia rusticana), soapwort (Saponaria officinalis) and sweet violet (Viola odorata).The approach to their naturalization is based on ethnobotanical rather than biological qualities. The first disseminators of foreign plants were merchants. The earliest cultivators may have also been monasteries, although it is not known what exactly was grown in these gardens. The most important plants cultivated in monasteries were herbs, which were planted in 4-12 beds, vegetables in 9-18 beds, whereas the rest of the garden was reserved for an orchard. The establishing of the first pharmacies in Estonian towns introduced the planting of new species in gardens for sale (the earliest pharmacy, the Tallinn Town Hall Pharmacy, dates back to 1422, with a herb garden founded in 1452). The oldest preserved list of plants growing in pharmacy garden originating from Narva pharmacy from the year 1677 contains already following herbs: chicory, elecampane inula, butterbur and sweet violet. Next to pharmacies, foreign species were also disseminated by grocers and drugstores. A century later, in 1777, the list of tracheophytes found in Estonia and Livonia was compiled; this list has been considered the first written source in the field of botany. In the list all the six plants were noted as natural species. The spread of the plants was speeded by their versatile usage - all these plants were used as medicines; chicory, horseradish and elecampane inula were also vegetable plants; elecampane inula, sweet violet, soapwort and butterbur were popular landscape plants; soapwort was used to clean silk and wool. Various legal acts, which have been applied to the plants, have also influenced their spread. Elecampane inula was listed in the first Estonian dictionary in 1660. Translated literature became an important factor in introducing herbs into broader use. Already the first journal (published in 1766-1767) and the earliest popular medical book (1771) in Estonian describe the use of horseradish, butterbur, elecampane inula and sweet violet. The plants, especially garden horseradish, are repeatedly mentioned in almanacs and books published since. The use of chicory is described only once in 1895, and soapwort once in 1870. The paper describes in more detail the formation of new ethnic names. The plant names were mostly derived from adaptations of German names (e.g. aland, pestilens-wurtsel, wiola, sigur, etc.), later from German translations (e.g. katkujuur for butterbur) and in some cases, the name of the local plant was used to mark a similar new plant (e.g. sinilill, or hepatica, for sweet violet and põierohi, or campion, for soapwort). In conclusion it has to be said that the important factors in distributing those plants were changes in landscape gardening and eating habits as well as the fact that the plants were eventually abandoned from use and thus, lost the most powerful natural enemy - the man
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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