1,720,955 research outputs found
Circular Economy practices in Italian agriculture. A case study
No full textThis paper aims to analyze the Circular Economy (CE) practices adopted within the agricultural sector, focusing on the farm-level perspective.
Current agricultural practices exert significant pressures on soil, water, and atmospheric ecosystems, compromising their long-term capability in supporting agricultural activities, and generate significant amounts of biological waste. CE is advocated as a means to mitigate environmental degradation while improving the economic viability of farms. However, the overall implications of CE for agriculture remain unclear. Existing studies predominantly concentrate on CE processes and single crops, lacking a comprehensive understanding of the determinants and effects of CE at the farm level, where crucial decisions regarding CE adoption are made, and where the relationships between agricultural activities (particularly), farm environment, and stakeholders unfold. The utilization of scarce natural resources in conditions of uncertain access may be studied under the Resource Dependence Theory lens and in the frame of Ostrom’s Socio-Ecological System model (SES), according to Tashman (2021).
As a first step we propose to model the farm within its SES. The farmer’s production depends on the land ecosystem and the quality of soil provided, and feedbacks into the ecosystem through the practices adopted. The farmer also interacts with the secondary stakeholders (both formal and informal institutions). The empirical analysis is based on multiple case studies conducted on a sample of 13 Italian fruit and vegetable producers. The selected farms are located in the Pianura Padana region and specialize in the cultivation of melon (5 cases), radicchio (3 cases), and pear (5 cases). By incorporating multiple cases within the same value chains and regional ecosystems, the findings of this study are both more reliable and generalizable. The investigation of different crops allows for detecting differences and similarities between them, enhancing generalizability while comparing information from different farmers growing the same crops helps in identifying patterns. Semi-structured interviews and on-site visits are the main strategies for investigating the case studies. The interviews used a questionnaire addressing the farm's state, waste management practices, adopted CE practices, and underlying drivers. The interviews are transcribed and analyzed using a mixed approach combining inductive and deductive coding techniques.
Additionally to the SES model of farms, a first contribution of this study is the development of a framework that establishes a connection between the types of CE practices adopted and the corresponding in-farm waste streams. Secondly, the identification of the main determinants influencing farmers' decisions to implement CE practices is still ongoing, but preliminary results suggest that secondary stakeholders’ actions and farm vertical structure have an influence on CE adoption.
The findings of this research have implications for pinpointing the antecedents of CE adoption and exploring the potential integration of literature on strategic drivers of CE (e.g., stakeholders' actions) with research focusing on operational dimensions such as waste management. For farmers, the expected benefit lies in the availability of a comprehensive framework to guide their decision-making processes concerning CE adoption
Are Geographical Indication products environmentally sound? The case of pears in North of Italy
Get PDFThe sustainability of Geographical Indication (GI) products has been investigated from social and economic standpoints, but their environmental sustainability is not yet well understood. This gap is especially problematic for food products because their production processes have significant impacts on the environment and at the same time are highly affected by climate change. This research is aimed to investigate the environmental performances of an Italian GI pear, by comparing its impacts with those of the corresponding conventional production, and to identify the most important improvement strategies. The case of “Pera Mantovana” is assessed through a life cycle assessment. Primary data are collected through extensive in-person interviews across a local sample of four on-field farms and two post-harvest organizations. The environmental impacts are not found to differ between GI and conventional productions. Moreover, the main hotspots are identified, and improvement strategies are evaluated. It is recommended to use the existing GI specification as a vehicle of environmental standards, also profiting from the new European regulation on GIs
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
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
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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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