1,720,959 research outputs found
Road Accidents - Study of the Evolution and Mapping of Accidents Within the Municipality of Cagliari – Italy
No full textIn recent decades, great attention has been paid to the issue of road safety, both at the international level and on a national scale, in which individual nations have gradually put into practice both direct and indirect interventions, the effects of which have been measured by the reduction in the number of accidents over time.
However, critical issues remain, and the zero road fatalities goal advocated by the PNSS [1, 2] in its 2010 and 2020 editions has not yet been achieved; in fact, we are still quite far from the goal.
In this study, the authors analyzed accident data provided by the Cagliari Municipality for the years 2014 to 2022. The data divided by nature of accident, type of vehicles involved, accident circumstances, and severity were analyzed in order to provide an overview of their evolution. In addition, location data were mapped with GIS – Geographic Information System - and represented in thematic maps. These provide a powerful tool for analysts and local administrators to (i) visualize critical and conflict areas immediately and clearly and (ii) identify risk factors on which to potentially intervene in order to remove criticality.
The application to a local context through the operational use of maps, in the authors’ opinion, represents the added value of the study
Potential Application of Marble and Crushed Mussel Shells By-products to be Used as Aggregates in Plain Concrete Mixes
No full textThe main objective of the following paper is to verify the possible applications of marble by-products obtained from the ornamental stone industry and mussel shells deriving from aquaculture farming to be used as alternative aggregates in plain concrete mixes. Both marble and mussel shells came from Sardinia Island (Italy), very active in the commercialization of marble for ornamental purposes and mussels from aquaculture farming. Italy is the third producer in Europe of mussel and one of the leaders worldwide together with China and Turkey for the production of marble. Marble by-products were used to replace coarse natural aggregates while the crushed mussel shells partially replaced fine aggregates. The mixes were studied to obtain non-structural concrete. Various mix designs were studied, in which marble and mussel shells, in different percentages, replaced natural aggregates (sand and gravel). The research aimed to identify the characteristics of the materials through laboratory tests and to create the optimal mix design. From the test conducted it was possible to evaluate that marble and mussel shells by-products can be considered valid alternatives to natural aggregates. From the preliminary results, encouraging mechanical performances were obtained when replacing 50% of coarse aggregates fraction 8–16 mm with marble by-products and 8% of fine aggregates 0–4 mm with crushed mussels shells. The reuse of these materials is essential in a sustainable and environmentally friendly circular economy approach, which focuses on reducing waste and reusing materials within production cycles. The resulting advantages are less exploitation of natural aggregates and less production of waste
Experimental Campaign on the Application of Fast Falling Weight Deflectometer for Possible Rapid Bridge Condition Monitoring
No full textThe following paper describes the possible applications of the Fast Falling Weight Deflectometer (Fast-FWD) as a tool for quantitatively character-izing the performance and condition of bridges by measuring the stiffness of the deck and embankment. The FWD is already widely used by transportation agencies for pavement evaluation programs and airfield pavement testing cam-paigns. This paper reports the testing campaign conducted on eight bridges in which the efficacy of using a Fast-FWD, a controlled excitation device for im-pact dynamic testing, on short to medium span reinforced concrete bridges.
There are many testing methods available, capable of monitoring and evaluating the performance and condition of bridges. Full scale testing consists of static load and dynamic testing methods using either controlled or uncontrolled dy-namic excitation. Although each method has advantages and disadvantages in terms of the experimental campaign, logistical purposes and data analysis are also time consuming. This research establishes that the testing campaign, in-volving the measurement of local deflections of bridge structures to obtain stiffness values, resulted in rapid, accurate, and cost-effective assessments with minimal impact on traffic flow, providing a valuable alternative to traditional testing methods. Further validation and integration efforts are necessary, to ful-ly exploit the potential of Fast-FWD in bridge assessment practices
Evaluating Skid Resistance of Indoor Pavements Using the Tortus Tribometer and British Pendulum Tester: A Case Study
No full textSlippery floors are a leading cause of indoor injuries, emphasizing the importance of effective flooring safety assessments. In high-traffic buildings such as hospitals, airports, and schools, ensuring slip resistant surfaces is essen-tial to prevent injuries and reduce costs associated with compensation claims and maintenance. According to Italian legislation, the Tortus Digital Tribometer (TDT) is the standard device used to measure the Coefficient of Friction (CoF) on indoor pavements, ensuring compliance with safety standards established by the British Ceramic Research Association (BCRA). This instrument plays a crit-ical role in evaluating the slip resistance of flooring materials, both in existing structures and during the design phase, to enhance overall safety and reduce the risk of slip-related accidents. In this research, six types of pavements with dif-ferent materials were analyzed under both wet and dry conditions using both the TDT and British Pendulum Tester (BPT) devices. The data were first analyzed to verify whether the pavements met the Italian regulations and also to explore any potential correlation between the two methods. The study found that the re-sults of the TDT method can be affected by the dimensions of the tile grout and the surface level. Additionally, under wet conditions, deformations in the leath-er friction pad were observed, leading to questionable measurements. In con-trast BPT provided more reliable measurements in both wet and dry conditions
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
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