1,721,641 research outputs found
Laggards in the global fertility transition
No full textBetween the early 1950s and the present, the global fertility transition has been nearly universal in the developing world. However, as of 2017, two countries out of the 190 countries for which the United Nations provides fertility estimates had not yet met the conventional criterion for establishing the onset of the fertility transition (a decline of at least 10 per cent from peak fertility), and another five countries did so only very recently. These are the laggards in the global fertility transition. The countries are all in sub-Saharan Africa: Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, The Gambia, Mali, Niger, and Somalia. This paper first reviews the fertility history of these seven countries, and subsequently provides data on the timing and pace of the global fertility transition in the four major developing regions: Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Northern Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa. It then explores potential reasons for the slow emergence of fertility decline in each country. The paper concludes with a discussion of each country’s prospects for fertility decline, which generally are weaker than those in the projections of the United Nations
On the pace of fertility decline in sub-Saharan Africa
Full text linkBackground: This descriptive finding examines the comparative pace of fertility decline in sub-Saharan Africa, relative to Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Northern Africa. Objective: We seek to determine if fertility decline has been slower in sub-Saharan Africa than elsewhere in the developing world. Methods: United Nations 2017 estimates of national fertility are used in assessing the comparative pace of fertility decline, and the four regions are compared in terms of how far they are into their fertility transition. Results: The data shows clearly that fertility decline in sub-Saharan Africa, still at a comparatively early stage, has been considerably slower than the earlier declines in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Northern Africa at comparable stages of the transition, and displays less within-region heterogeneity than the transitions in these other regions. Conclusions: The slower pace of fertility decline in sub-Saharan Africa, in conjunction with the high current fertility levels in the region, means that in the absence of policies seeking to accelerate fertility decline, sub-Saharan Africa will continue to experience rapid population growth that in turn will constrain its development. Contribution: Presentation of data in a novel way (Figures 2‒4, and associated calculations) unambiguously demonstrates the slow pace of fertility decline in sub-Saharan Africa compared with other regions of the world
Single and combined effects of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity on perceptual sensitivity and attention
Full text linkPulse rate and cephalic pulse volume were recorded from 17 male and 37 female normal subjects during performance of an attentional task under high and low stress conditions. Verbal threshold (perceptual sensitivity) and word recognition (attention) were assessed using a visual verbal recognition task. Subjects were divided at the median for pulse rate and pulse volume during baseline, instruction, and task periods and grouped in terms of these two measures to represent different patterns of parasympathetic (vagal) and sympathetic activity. Analysis of variance was used to examine the effects of gender, stress condition, and autonomic pattern on autonomic activity, perceptual sensitivity, and attentional performance. Gender showed significant effects for pulse rate with higher scores for women during the instruction and task periods. High stress reduced perceptual sensitivity and resulted in better attentional performance. Whereas stress-induced sympathetic activity was related to low perceptual sensitivity and good attentional performance, high sympathetic in conjunction with low vagal baseline activity predicted relatively high perceptual sensitivity and poor attentional performance. Low or high baseline activity in both autonomic systems predicted low perceptual sensitivity and good attentional performance. Predictions of perception and attention can be improved by examining the effects of patterns of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity
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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