1,720,954 research outputs found
Unfolding hidden environmental impacts of food waste: An assessment for fifteen countries of the world
No full textFood waste is becoming a global issue since about one third of all the food produced worldwide for human consumption is wasted every year along the food supply chain while a large number of people (822 million) still do not have enough food for an active and a healthy life. In addition to the ethical aspects connected to wasting this huge amount of food in a still food insecure global context, this scenario also implies hidden environmental costs and impacts negatively impacting the biosphere. Indeed, a large consumption of renewable and non-renewable resources and the release of emissions are sustained to produce food becoming waste. All this prevents from reaching the achievement of several United Nation Sustainable Development Goals. This study aims at unfolding hidden environmental impacts of food waste in fifteen different countries at both individual and national scale by means of selected LCA-based indicators. At individual level, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), United States of America (USA), United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Canada showed worse indicators compared to South Africa, Lebanon, Argentina, and Mexico. At national scale, all the environmental impact indicators calculated for the USA resulted much higher when compared to all the other investigated countries. In particular, in the case of USA, the annual contribution of food waste to the climate change, fossil depletion, and water depletion impact categories resulted in 172 Mt CO2 eq., 22 Mt oil eq., and 11 billion m3 water, respectively. Considering the remarkable ethical and environmental implications of food waste, the outcomes of this study are useful to inform citizens and policy makers about the urgent need for adopting more responsible and sustainable food consumption patterns
Applying network analysis to explore the global scientific literature on food security
No full textFood security represents one of the most pressing challenges to humankind to be faced in the twenty-first century. Food security is a complex issue dealing with multiple research domains, among which human health and nutrition, environment, and policy. Several recent studies showed that biodiversity loss, soil erosion, and water scarcity are key problems exacerbating the issue of food security at local and global scale. The attention towards the issue of food security, highly recognized by international policy and scientific research, has considerably increased over the last decades. In this context, it is expected that the scientific literature on food security will continue increasing over the next years. The present study aims at exploring the global scientific literature on food security tracking its evolution and trends by applying social network analysis to bibliometric science. The bibliometric analysis performed over the timeframe 1990–2019 allowed the generation of maps based on network data displaying the relationships among scientific journals, researchers, and countries. Results showed that a number of 19,449 publications on food security were published from 193 countries in 3792 journals with 219 different subject categories. Mario Herrero resulted the most productive author with 50 documents, while USA resulted the first country publishing 5634 documents on food security. Among the journals, Food Security ranked first by total link strength, links, and number of documents, while Science showed the highest number of citations. The co-occurrence network map of keywords showed that, over the last decades, the main focus of food security research has shifted from socio-economic to environmental aspects. In conclusion, the integration of social network analysis and bibliometric science resulted a useful approach capable of capturing the multidimensional nature of food security by analyzing a large amount of literature data while identifying the main scientific patterns in this field of science
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
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
Integrating environmental and socio-economic indicators to explore the sustainability of food patterns and food security in Lebanon
No full textFood security is a complex issue whose comprehension requires multidisciplinary research exploring environmental, socio-economic, and policy aspects. World population is expected to continue increasing in the next decades. As a consequence, the global food demand is also expected to increase, exacerbating the contribution of food consumption and production patterns to environmental problems and climate change. In addition, the problem of socio-economic inequalities is also noteworthy, with a very high number of undernourished people at global level. Considering the complex nature of food security, the integration of environmental and socio-economic indicators is much needed for assessing its multiple dimensions. In this study, environmental and socio-economic indicators were assessed to explore the sustainability of food patterns and food security in Lebanon. Environmental indicators were calculated to assess the environmental costs and impacts of the Lebanese and refugee diets. All the environmental indicators calculated for the Lebanese diet resulted higher compared to the refugee diet. The overall contribution of the refugee diet to the investigated impact categories resulted in about 25%, confirming its significance in terms of direct and indirect natural resources consumption and environmental impacts. The socio-economic indicators showed that food security is a critical issue for the Lebanese population and, particularly, for the refugees living in Lebanon. In particular, 59% and 15% of Lebanese and refugee populations resulted having an adequate individual access to food. In conclusion, the outcomes of the study provide scientific information to support policy-makers and a benchmark for future studies aimed at improving food security in Lebanon
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