1,721,358 research outputs found
Assessing the impacts of commercial gas hydrate development
No full textGas hydrate offers a large prospective reserve of unconventional natural gas. While research continues into possible production technology, investigation of the broader impacts of commercial development is needed to determine its future. I present the first attempt to comparatively analyse different commercial gas hydrate projects considering economic, social and environmental impacts, providing a foundation framework for future study. To this end, I develop a protocol using the ELECTRE multi-criteria decision analysis method for assessing between different gas hydrate exploitation projects. I define possible economic, social and environmental impacts to measure within this protocol, and suggest how each can be appraised by quantitative or qualitative decision criteria. These criteria are used, in collaboration with stakeholders, for structured comparative evaluation of development alternatives by means of an impact matrix. I construct criteria weights and decision thresholds from stakeholder input and use this information to calculate alternative rankings. Uncertainty remains in the effect of heterogeneity in petrophysical parameters on gas production, and this uncertainty is currently poorly represented in many production models. Gas hydrate saturation heterogeneity has been seen in natural systems, but it has not been modelled adequately for my protocol needs. I use TOUGH+Hydrate, a numerical thermo-hydraulic code for gas hydrate bearing geological systems, to provide a detailed quantification of gas production error margins resulting from heterogeneity in gas hydrate saturation. This modelling indicates that 10% saturation heterogeneity causes gas production fluctuations of ±25%, and 1% saturation variation in heterogeneous systems has equivalent impact to 10% saturation variation inhomogeneous systems. I test the complete protocol in Alaska to explore wider public perception of gas hydrate development, where I find society split into two groups, those prioritising resource production and economic returns from development, and those prioritising maximum benefit, or minimum damage, in the affected social and environmental systems. During fieldwork, the protocol proved accessible to a wide range of stakeholders across Alaskan society, satisfying the need for a broadly applicable tool. In all cases, Alaskan gas hydrate development is unsupported under current conditions due to the high economic, social and environmental costs of necessary infrastructure. Lastly I give examples of three further sites where the protocol may see use to illustrate the range of problems it has been designed for. For each site I suggest a series of qualitative and quantitative impact measures that may be used in future work and highlight a range of operational issues to consider. I use scenario analysis to explore the impact of varying the input parameters and ensure the protocol computes rational and justifiable results. Future protocol applications will benefit from wider collaboration throughout for better understanding of stakeholder priorities, especially with traditionally under-represented groups. Each of these case studies allows ultimate protocol refinement into a powerful and versatile tool, suitable for evaluating any gas hydrate production proposal. These studies show how an MCDA approach can be applied to gas hydrate development, providing a framework for future impact analysis
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
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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