122 research outputs found
Editorial. Multiple outputs from single studies : acceptable division of findings vs. ‘salami’ slicing
No full textIn this information age, transgressions in publishing ethics can readily occur
and many people are concerned that these behaviours are on the rise. The term ‘salami slicing’ is considered to be a publication transgression, carrying
connotations of inappropriate practice and referring to publishing an excessive
number of papers from a single study. Salami slicing describes ‘artificially segmented articles in which related aspects of the same study were published
separately’ (Bailey 2012, p. 212). As implied by this definition, the term suggests that each paper is so thin (akin to slices of salami) and that the whole purpose of multiple outputs is to bolster author CVs, perceived performance and scholarly standing rather than disseminate research findings with integrity. Indeed, the practice is said to be driven primarily by the ambition of authors, particularly from a ‘publish or perish’ culture, with pressure for staff to publish in academic journals for tenure, promotion and other career progression opportunities
Editorial: Multiple outputs from single studies: acceptable division of findings vs. 'salami' slicing
No full textIn this information age, transgressions in publishing ethics can readily occur and many people are concerned that these behaviours are on the rise. The term 'salami slicing' is considered to be a publication transgression, carrying connotations of inappropriate practice and referring to publishing an excessive number of papers from a single study. Salami slicing describes 'artificially segmented articles in which related aspects of the same study were published separately' (Bailey 2012, p. 212). As implied by this definition, the term suggests that each paper is so thin (akin to slices of salami) and that the whole purpose of multiple outputs is to bolster author CVs, perceived performance and scholarly standing rather than disseminate research findings with integrity. Indeed, the practice is said to be driven primarily by the ambition of authors, particularly from a 'publish or perish' culture, with pressure for staff to publish in academic journals for tenure, promotion and other career progression opportunities
Sobrevivência de Listeria monocytogenes em salame tipo italiano de baixa acidez, produzido sob condições brasileiras de fabricação
No full textDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Ciências Agrárias. Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciência dos AlimentosO baixo risco dos salames em provocarem a listeriose é atribuído aos obstáculos criados durante processo de fabricação e presentes no produto final. O pH e atividade água baixos, alta concentração de sal e a presença de bactérias ácido-lácticas e seus metabólitos secundários compõe barreiras que impedem o desenvolvimento de Listeria monocytogenes. Neste trabalho avaliou-se o comportamento das curvas de sobrevivência deste patógeno durante o processo de fabricação de salames tipo Italiano pouco ácidos (pH final de 5,2) em três formulações: inoculada com Lactobacillus plantarum, com adição de 2% lactato de sódio e uma formulação sem agentes inibidores intencionais. Cada formulação foi contaminada artificialmente com L. monocytogenes e paralelamente acompanhada por uma testemunha de igual composição. O tamanho das populações de L.monocytogenes foi avaliado semanalmente através de contagem pela técnica de tubos múltiplos (NMP), durante o período de fabricação de quatro semanas. Os salames naturalmente contaminados apresentaram discreto aumento da população de L. monocytogenes no inicio do processo, seguidas por redução até o final da maturação e os salames artificialmente contaminados tiveram redução considerável da contagem de L.monocytogenes, principalmente na formulação com adição de L. plantarum, seguido pela formulação com lactato de sódio e por último a formulação padrão, entretanto não se verificou diferença significativa entre os tratamentos. The low risk of salamis in provoking listeriosis is attributed to the obstacles created during production process and presents in the final product. The pH and low water activity, high concentration of salt and the presence of lactic acid bacteria and their secondary metabolites compose barriers that prevent the development of Listeria monocytogenes. In this work the behavior of the survival curves of this pathogen was evaluated during the production process in salamis Italian type slightly acid (final pH of 5,2) in three formulations: inoculated Lactobacillus plantarum, with addition of 2% sodium lactate and a formulation without intentional inhibitors agents. Each formulation was contaminated artificially with L. monocytogenes and parallel accompanied by a witness sample of equal composition. The size of the populations of L.monocytogenes was weekly evaluated through counting by the technique of multiple tubes (NMP), during the period of production of four weeks. The naturally contaminated sausage had presented discreet increase of the population of L. monocytogenes in the beginning of the process, followed by reduction until the end of the maturation and the salamis artificially contaminated had considerable reduction of the counting of L.monocytogenes, mainly in the formulation with addition of L. plantarum, followed by the formulation with sodium lactate and last the standard formulation, however significant difference was not verified among the treatments
A Case Study of Salami Slicing: Pooled Analyses of Duloxetine for Depression
No full textBACKGROUND: Publishing separate, yet very similar pieces of a single dataset across multiple papers is known as 'salami slicing'. This practice may be motivated by researchers wishing to increase their publication counts and by the desire to increase exposure of their findings. 'Salami slicing' may also be used by the drug industry to help widely disseminate positive findings regarding its products. Journal editors across many scientific disciplines have bemoaned such duplicative publications on several occasions. However, little research has been conducted on the frequency of such publication practices, and findings have been inconsistent. No research has investigated whether 'salami slicing' may also occur in publications presenting results from pooled analyses of clinical trials. METHODS: We examined the scientific literature on duloxetine as a treatment for depression, examining how data from clinical trials were reported across 43 pooled analyses. RESULTS: The vast majority of pooled analyses (88%) had at least one author who was employed by the manufacturer of duloxetine. Several pooled analyses based on highly overlapping clinical trials presented efficacy and safety data that did not answer unique research questions, and thus appeared to qualify as salami publications. Six clinical trials had their data utilized as part of 20 or more separately published pooled analyses. CONCLUSIONS: Such redundant publications add little to scientific understanding and represent a poor use of peer reviewer and editorial resources
Strategic Culture Cult of Defense: Dominant Culture in China's Salami Slicing Geopolitical Strategy
No full textChina continues to try to establish norms in international dynamics, especially in Asia, with a "salami-slicing" strategy to expand its influence without triggering major conflicts. This strategy is seen in how China responds to its two territorial disputes; the occupation of islands in the South China Sea and the Indian border. The salami-slicing strategy helps China gradually occupy disputed territories and offers a fait accompli that the other party must accept. This paper will then use Bloomfield's strategic culture framework which emphasizes the existence of dominant and subordinate subcultures. The author finds that in influencing China's policies in territorial disputes, the dominant strategic culture is the Cult of Defense coined by Scobell. This strategic culture has three (3) implications for policy, namely projecting strength when on the verge of crisis and the tendency to take risks, and in the outline of its actions, China will then justify using its power
John Fowles's fiction and the poetics of postmodernism
No full textThis book presents a deconstructive reading of the novels and short stories of John Fowles. As a contemporary novelist, Fowles began as a modernist self-consciously aware of the various narratological problems that he encountered throughout his writings. In his most recent novel, A Maggot, however, he assumes the role of the postmodernist who not only subverts the tradition of narratology, but also poses a series of problems concerning history and politics. Throughout this study, Mahmoud Salami attempts to locate Fowles's fiction in the context of modern critical theory and narrative poetics. He provides a lively analysis of the ways in which Fowles deliberately deployed realistic historical narrative in order to subvert them from within the very conventions they seek to transgress, and he examines these subversive techniques and the challenges they pose to the tradition of narratologySalami presents, for instance, a critique of the self-conscious narrative of the diary form in The Collector, the intertextual relations of the multiplicity of voices, the problems of subjectivity, the reader's position, the politics of seduction, ideology, and history in The Magus and The French Lieutenant's Woman. The book also analyzes the ways in which Fowles uses and abuses the short-story genre, in which enigmas remain enigmatic and the author disappears to leave the characters free to construct their own texts. Salami centers, for example, on A Maggot, which embodies the postmodernist technique of dialogical narrative, the problem of narrativization of history, and the explicitly political critique of both past and present in terms of social and religious dissent. These political questions are also echoed in Fowles's nonfictional book The Aristos, in which he strongly rejects the totalization of narratives and the materialization of societyIndeed, Fowles emerges as a postmodernist novelist committed to the underprivileged, to social democracy, and to literary pluralism. This study clearly illustrates the fact that Fowles is a poststructuralist--let alone a postmodernist--in many ways: in his treatment of narratives, in mixing history with narrative fiction and philosophy, and in his appeal for freedom and for social and literary pluralism. It significantly contributes to a better understanding of Fowles's problematical narratives, which can only be properly understood if treated within the fields of modern critical theory, narratology, and the poetics of postmodernis
Multi-pulse decomposition for nonlinear seismic analysis of structural systems
No full textLarge sympathetic, resonance-like, structural behaviour to earthquake excitations with analogous frequency content often plays a critical role in determining its maximum seismic response. Earthquake excitation typically contains a broad spectrum of non-stationary frequency content, wave packets, which are difficult to observe from the recorded time series. Therefore, identifying the root cause of large responses (which act sympathically with the input but do not achieve full-resonance) of a structure is problematic. Hence, this paper proposes a new multi-pulse decomposition method of ground motions, through which components of a ground motion within a specific period range are determined. In this method, a ground motion is approximated with a Gauss-Fourier wave packet series. The decomposed components, wave packets, contain information about it’s time-position, frequency, amplitude, pulse width and phase angle. Unlike the Ricker (Morlet) wavelet the Gauss-Fourier wave packet is not limited to symmetrical pulses. One ensemble of 40 near-fault ground motions and one ensemble of 44 far-fault ground motions are used to demonstrate the application and efficiency of the proposed method. The method is shown to be precise in reconstructing the original ground motion using its decomposed components. It is also concluded that the method is accurate in replication of elastic and inelastic response spectra of ground motions within a specific period range. It is demonstrated that for some structure/ground motion combinations, only a few Gauss-Fourier components are required to faithfully describe response behaviour. This highlights that, for these systems, most of the recorded earthquake time series acts like noise on a much simpler wave-packet signal
Discourse Acts in Antenatal Clinic Literacy Classroom in South-Western Nigeria
No full textThis study examines the organization of discourse in antenatal classrooms in south-western Nigeria. Antenatal literacy classrooms are classes organized in hospitals and health centres for pregnant women to intimate them with the necessary health information needed in pregnancy. The data for this study were randomly selected from series of data recorded during some antenatal classes in some selected hospitals in Ile-Ife and its environs, all in south-western Nigeria. The data consist of tape recordings of the classroom sessions and observational notes. The study reveals that three categories of discourse act were most prominent in the data - informative, elicitation and directive. This shows that the antenatal educators were more active in the classes than the students. They maximized the use of their power in discourse, which gives them the [+ HIGHER] role. They therefore had the privilege to talk while the mothers listened. This places the pregnant women at the disadvantage of being passive learners, who cannot see the knowledge being passed across beyond the context of the class. Despite that they have access to information, they are not adequately empowered to influence the society with what they are being exposed to. Their perception of their role in the discourse was that of listeners. The findings have significant implications for health literacy programmes in Nigeria. It clearly shows that health literacy programmes, as we have observed in antenatal classrooms exist only as an aspect of functional health literacy - the aspect that recognizes that pregnant women need to know about their health by listening to experts. This makes the practice, as it is essentially transactional. The study concludes that for antenatal classrooms to achieve their goal of health security of pregnant women and their foetus, they have to be more interactive. There must be a departure from the lecture method used now to a method that actually involves the mothers
Reservoir characteristics and palaeo depositional environment of Duski Field, onshore, Niger-Delta, Nigeria
No full textThe Niger Delta is a prolific hydrocarbon producing belt in the southern Nigeria sedimentary basin on the continental margin of the Gulf of Guinea. This study used well log suites to delineate the hydrocarbon reservoirs, depositional environments and lithostratigraphy of the Duski Field, Onshore Niger Delta, Nigeria. A comprehensive interpretation of the three wells revealed five (5) reservoir units with low volume of shale and thickness variations between 24m and 60.20m. The average porosity values ranged from 12% to 34%, with high hydrocarbon saturation in all the reservoir sands. Generally, porosity and permeability values decrease with depth in all the wells. Cross-plots of water saturation (Sw) and porosity (ø) (Buckles plot) revealed that some reservoirs were at irreducible water saturation; hence producing water-free hydrocarbons. Therefore the hydrocarbon accumulation of this field is commercially viable and promising. This study revealed that the reservoir sand units were deposited within marginal marine depositional environment which include fluvial channel, transgressive marine, progradational and deltaic settings.Keywords: Reservoir characteristics, depositional environment, Niger Delt
Fluid replacement dynamics: evolving reservoir properties during hydrocarbon production in X-field, Niger Delta, Nigeria
No full textAbstract During hydrocarbon recovery, fluid replacement takes place in reservoirs, affecting the reservoir properties and consequently altering the production model and forecast. These attributes were utilized to refine fluid replacement modeling (FRM). This research aims to generate geological models capable of serving as predictive tools for reservoir monitoring. The FRM was carried out using rock-physics analysis of the wells of X-field, onshore Niger Delta, while the reservoirs’ stress state was determined using Dynamic Rock-Physics Template (RPT). Rock-physics modeling was used to characterize the reservoirs dynamically and estimate their geomechanical responses due to fluid replacement. As hydrocarbons were replaced by brine, the FRM showed a consistent increase in density (ρ) attributed to a gradual rise in bulk and shear moduli. Gas dissolution resulted from the unusual reduction of compressional wave velocity (Vp) from 3.92 to 3.86 km/s in reservoir D of well A1. As hydrocarbon is replaced by water, the reservoir's shearing strength decreases. Reservoir B of well A2 has comparatively low resistance to deformation and rock strength of 18.40 GPa and 77.70 MPa, while 34.29 GPa and 142.85 MPa were recorded for reservoir D (well A1), while 34.29 GPa and 142.85 MPa were recorded for reservoir D (well A1), respectively, at 100% S w . The increase in young modulus and strength (138.86–142.85 MPa) in reservoir D (well A1) implied mechanical and well-bored stability. Pore pressure depletion in reservoir B (well A2) from RPT could induce well instability. This study highlights tailored production strategies to mitigate destabilizing effects, stressing the relationship between pore pressure depletion, stress redistribution, and fluid migration for sustainable hydrocarbon exploitation and well integrity
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