1,720,962 research outputs found

    Bio-upcycling of multilayer materials and blends: closing the plastics loop

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    The urge to discover and develop new technologies for closing the plastic carbon cycle is motivating industries, governments, and academia to work closely together to find suitable solutions in a timely manner. In this review article, a combination of uprising breakthrough technologies is presented highlighting their potential and complementarity to be integrated one with the other, therefore providing a potential solution to efficiently solve the plastics problem. First, modern approaches for bioexploration and engineering of polymer-active enzymes are presented to degrade polymers into valuable building blocks. Special focus is placed on the recovery of components from multilayered materials since these complex materials can only be recycled insufficiently or not at all by existing technologies. Then, the potential of microbes and enzymes for resynthesis of polymers and reuse of building blocks is summarized and discussed. Finally, examples for improvement of the bio-based content and enzymatic degradability and future perspectives are given

    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

    Engineering of the zinc-binding domain of an esterase from Clostridium botulinum towards increased activity on polyesters

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    The carboxylesterase from Clostridium botulinum (Cbotu_EstA) has been shown to hydrolyze the surface of the polyester polyIJbutylene adipate-co-terephthalate) (PBAT) releasing the monomeric building blocks. Cbotu_EstA contains a zinc ion, tetrahedrally coordinated by two histidine and two aspartic acid residues, which is buried inside an extra domain typical for members of the I.5 lipase family. To elucidate the role of this extra domain with regard to polyester hydrolysis, variants of the zinc-binding domain were constructed and expressed in E. coli BL21-GoldIJDE3). These enzyme variants were characterized with respect to their specific activity, kinetic parameters and thermostability on soluble substrates as well as on PBAT. All the variants exhibited a similar affinity towards the small substrate para-nitrophenyl butyrate (pNPB), with KM values between 0.4 and 1.2 mM, while the catalytic efficiency decreased approximately 1000-fold for the zinc-binding variants and 5-fold for the zinc cavity variants. Moreover, all four variants of the zinc- coordination site (D130L, H150F, H156F, and D302L) showed a loss of thermostability. However, H156F and D302L revealed a drastic loss of thermostability compared to D130L and H150F. Nevertheless, compared to Cbotu_EstA, variants carrying substitutions of amino acids in the zinc-binding domain were able to re- lease up to 10 times more soluble products from the polymeric substrate PBAT. The thermostability at 50 °C was increased in the case of F154Y and W274H, carrying more hydrophilic residues. These data clearly demonstrate the importance of different regions of the zinc-binding domain for the hydrolysis of polyes- ters like PBAT

    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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