1,720,964 research outputs found
Ultrastructural analysis of some functional aspects of Xenopus laevis pancreas during development and metamorphosis
No full textMorphological studies using both light and electron microscope were carried out with the aim of characterizing cells present in the larval and adult pancreas of Xenopus laevis. The following cell types have been seen: exocrine cells, with a very well developed r.e.r. (rough endoplasmic reticulum), well defined Golgi complexes and numerous large secretory granules (A cells); cells without either r.e.r. or secretory granules but with a large number of well developed mitochondria (B cells); endocrine cells often clustered in the typical islets and with small membrane coated granules showing a very dense central core surrounded by a light halo (C cells). During development, the aspect is seen to change from an unorganized tissue in which the acinar structures are still not clearly visible (stage 42), to a more organized form in which the exocrine cells (A cells) are seen to be arranged around the lumen of the acinus together with some B cells. At the stages 54-56, an increasing number of acini surrounded both by A and B cells was observed. At about stage 61, large quantities of necrotic cells were seen and it became more difficult to individualize the acinar organization found in the preceding stages. Finally, there are no necrotic cells in the adult but only A, B cells which are organized in well developed acinar structures and C cells. The investigation also included a study of some pancreatic enzymes (lipase and amylase) synthesized during larval life. Lipase activity shows a peak at stage 54-56 in which the most well organized tissue of the entire larval life was observed. The activity then decreases, reaching a minimum at stage 66, after which it rapidly rises. Maximum amylase activity occurs at stage 51 after which there is a decrease, to a minimum at stage 66. The activity then remains at constant level
High-resolution temperature fields to evaluate the response of Italian electricity demand to meteorological variables : an example of climate service for the energy sector
No full textThe dependence of Italian daily electricity demand on cooling degree-days, heating degree-days and solar radiation is investigated by means of a regression model applied to 12 consecutive 2-year intervals in the 1990–2013 period. The cooling and heating degree-days records used in the model are obtained by (i) estimating, by means of a network of 92 synoptic stations and high-resolution gridded temperature climatologies, a daily effective temperature record for all urbanised grid points of a high-resolution grid covering Italy; (ii) using these records to calculate corresponding grid point degree-days records; and (iii) averaging them to get national degree-days records representative of urban areas. The solar radiation record is obtained with the same averaging approach, with grid point solar radiation estimated from the corresponding daily temperature range. The model is based on deterministic components related to the weekly cyclical pattern of demand and to long-term demand changes and on weather-sensitive components related to cooling degree-days, heating degree-days and solar radiation. It establishes a strong contribution of cooling degree-days to the Italian electricity demand, with values peaking in summer months of the latest years up to 211 GWh day−1 (i.e. about 23 % of the corresponding average Italian electricity demand). This contribution shows a strong positive trend in the period considered here: the coefficient of the cooling degree-days term in the regression models increases from the first 2-year period (1990–1991) to the last one (2012–2013) by a factor 3.5, which is much greater than the increase of the Italian total electricity demand
Report on future evolution of sunshine duration and solar radiation over Sicily. Project ECLISE (Enabling CLimate Information Services for Europe) - RESEARCH REPORT - Work package: WP6 – ENERGY – TASK 6.8: Future energy demand in Italy
No full textThis report describes the activities performed by ISAC-CNR to produce Deliverable 6.17 of the ECLISE Project – High-resolution estimates of 2030-2060 summer temperatures. These activities were performed within task 6.6 - Future energy demand in Italy that also allowed producing deliverable 6.16 – High-resolution gridded temperature dataset over Italy for the past 5 decades. Deliverable 6.17 was produced in order to fulfil RSE (Ricerca sul Sistema Energetico, one of the users of the ECLISE Project) needing. The estimated high-resolution future temperatures were used as input data of a model, developed in cooperation with RSE, in order to assess the impact of temperature on Italian electricity demand. The application of the model to scenario data allowed investigating the sensibility of the present-day electricity demand to climate variability and change
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
The sensitivity of present-time electricity demand on past climate change : a case study for Italy
Get PDFA methodology for estimating secular daily minimum, mean and maximum (Tn, Tm and Tx) temperature records for any urbanised point of a 30-arc-second-resolution grid covering Italy is presented. It is based on the superimposition of 1961–1990 climatologies and departures from them (anomalies). The anomalies are obtained by applying inverse distance weighting to 143 Italian high-quality records, whereas the climatologies are based on a larger dataset and on the application of local weighted linear regression of temperature versus elevation.
The grid-point Tn, Tm and Tx records are then used to set up secular records (period 1801–2013) of temperature-derived variables that influence Italy present-time national electricity demand. They are national averages over Italian urbanised areas of cooling degree-days (CDD), heating degree-days (HDD) and solar radiation deficit with respect to a defined threshold (S), with solar radiation estimated using daily temperature range as a proxy.
The monthly and yearly sums of the daily CDD, HDD and S records are then used, alongside with a model allowing to link these variables to present-time Italy electricity demand, in order to understand the impact of climate variability and change on present-time Italian electricity demand. We find that temperature changes as the ones observed in the last two centuries are capable of altering significantly the present-time monthly profile of the electricity demand, raising (lowering) summer (winter) months contributions. The impact is higher in summer months where it exceeds 5 % of present-time Italy average monthly electricity demand, whereas the decrease of the winter demand is rather low because of a very limited use of electricity for heating. The summer and winter opposite-sign changes result globally in an increase of the yearly demand of about 5 TWh, corresponding to about 1.5-2.0 % of present-time Italy yearly electricity demand
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