1,721,435 research outputs found
Introduction:The persisting presence of Erving Goffman
No full textThis introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the Goffman’s sociological ideas have contributed to the shaping of fields of study, such as media studies, digital studies, mobility studies, disability studies, death studies, police studies, and so on. The post allowed Goffman to devote a substantial portion of his time - some 12 months between December 1949 and May 1951 - to conduct fieldwork in a rural community on the remote Shetland island of Unst. The publication of the Edinburgh edition of The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life launched Goffman’s distinctive way of doing sociology. Born on 11 June 1922 in Mannville, Alberta, Erving Goffman was the second child of Max and Anne Goffman, Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. Goffman then began graduate work at the University of Chicago. A massive influx of ex-servicemen used the US government’s GI Bill to finance their studies.</p
Tax concessions in support of charitable giving: an international comparison
No full textThe Australian taxation system encourages charitable giving through tax deductibility for donations made by individuals and companies, and via tax exemption for income distributed to charities through charitable trusts. Other means of giving, such as through bequests enjoy little tax concessions..
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
Patuxent 75th Anniversary
No full textThis is Part 4 of 4 transcripts from the Patuxent Science Symposium, 75th Anniversary of the Patuxent Science Center. It includes speakers who talk about their time at working at Patuxent and some of the work they did. This transcript includes the following speakers and moderators: Judd Howell (moderator), Dr. Robert Reynolds, Dr. Donald Cahoon, Brad Knudsen, Glenn Olsen1
Patuxent Science Symposium
75th Anniversary
October 13-14, 2011
This transcript is Part 4 of 4 and features the speakers listed below for the 75th Anniversary of the Patuxent Research Center. They talk about their work and experiences while working at Patuxent.
Page
Speaker Judd Howell-Moderator
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Dr. Robert Reynolds 8-18 Dr. Donald Cahoon
18-30
Brad Knudsen 30-37 Glenn Olsen 2
Patuxent Science Symposium
Friday
Session Moderator: Judd Howell
Judd Howell introductory: Dr. Robert Reynolds
Judd Howell:
The last day and a half has really been a celebration of Patuxent's history and where we've been and how we've gotten here. And this afternoon is going to be about what we are doing... Okay, about what we are doing and what we want to do, what our future will be.
And in that vein, since we have paid homage to the area when we were in the Fish and Wildlife Service. Now you see it? Now you don't. We're stepping more into the era of those of us who have served not only at Patuxent, but served our tenure under the auspices of the U.S. Geological Survey, hence the shirt.
Our first speaker, though, is going to talk to us about an organization that has been transcendent beyond the vagaries of this reorganization, that reorganization, or every other reorganization that's taken place since 1887, I believe.
Our speaker is Dr. Robert Reynolds. And you know, Bob, I didn't realize that the pay freeze has affected your haircut budget, but I would like you, I would like to invite you to the podium to tell us about the Biological Survey Unit at the Smithsonian and its august history, and welcome.
Dr. Robert Reynolds:
Thank you Judd, I'm actually surprised that you noticed my hair, so.
I'd like to give you a review of the history and current activities of the Biological Survey Unit. Biological Survey Unit is a field station of Patuxent that's located at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History on the Mall in Washington, D.C.
The United States has a long history of working on wildlife species, and an equally long history of building and maintaining museum collections.
The Biological Survey traces its roots back to 1885 in the Department of Agriculture. And in 1889, a formal partnership was created with the United States National Museum for the deposition of scientific specimens that were collected during the activities of the Biological Survey. 3
The focus at that time was to collect animals and plants from throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico for the purpose of documenting, species identifications, occurrence, and distribution, and also for preserving scientific specimens for deposit in the National Museum.
Part of this agreement also stipulated that Biological Survey staff would be permanently housed in the National Museum to conduct systematic research on the specimens they collected, as well as to care and manage the North American collections of terrestrial vertebrates at the museum.
The first chief of the Biological Survey was C. Hart Merriam. Merriam was also the first president of the American Society of Mammalogist and Merriam was clearly a biogeographic pioneer, and actually coined the term 'biogeography.'
Here we have a impressive array of early bioge..., Biological Survey employees, including Ira Gabrielson, Frederick Lincoln, Alexander Wetmore, Edward Nelson, C. Hart Merriam, Edward Goldman, A. K. Fisher, and others. And the one thing I'd like you to notice about these individuals is the very serious look on their face, and the obvious formal dress that was required at that time. I will contrast that shortly with our current employees.
The Biological Survey has a long history of bio..., biodiversity research. We are involved in vertebrate systematics. And systematics is the study of evolutionary relationships among species as well as the identity, the identification of species, the naming of species, and the classification of species.
Some famous work that was done by early Biological Survey Investigators is... one example is Biological Investigations in Mexico that was published in 1951 by Edward A. Goldman. But Edward Nelson and Edward Goldman literally covered the entire country of Mexico making biological collections, all of which ended up at the National Museum and remain there today.
Faunal surveys continue to this day, although as you can see on the right in this picture that the mode of transportation has changed somewhat. This is a trip that we were making in Peru, and actually had the military helicopter helping us.
And in 2005, a recent example of our compilation of the survey work was a publication on the terrestrial vertebrates of the Guiana Shields.
We currently have 12 employees and one American scientist in the Biological Survey. They're stationed in the Department of Vertebrate Zoology in the Divisions of Birds, 4
Mammals, and Amphibians and Reptiles. And in this photo gallery we have Mercedes Foster, Dick Banks, Terry Chesser, Claudia Angle, and Roger Clapp in the Division of Birds; Bob Fisher, Suzy Peurach, Al Gardner, and Neal Woodman in the Division of Mammals; and Steve Gotte, James Poindexter, Roy McDiarmid, and myself in the Division of Amphibians and Reptiles.
Note, in this series of photographs our staff are actually smiling, and also note that the mode of dress has markedly improved over that from our predecessors.
What does museum work involve? This is unfortunately the classic image that many people have, of old decrepit scientists studying old decrepit dead animals. In fact, museum science is very exciting and it entails lots and lots of things. We work on exhibits, collection management, research on the collections, various kinds of training, and provide much service based on the collections that we maintain.
A big part of our job is acquiring specimens, either through active fieldwork of our own or also getting collections from researchers from around the world, to preserve and manage those scientific collections at the museum. These collections are critical for documenting the science that's being conducted by the people working on these specimens. They have to have the materials deposited in a safe and secure museum.
Major research areas that we're working on are collection-based research, evolutionary systematics and the naming of organisms.
As I mentioned earlier, a major effort that we continue to do to this day is going out and collecting animals and increasing our knowledge about biodiversity. And documenting through museum specimens at the museum.
We have, our current staff have named a very impressive array of new animals. Al Gardner, Neal Woodman, and Dick Banks have identified and described a total of 33 mammal species, which include rodents, bats, voles, and possums. Roy McDiarmid, Steve Gotte, Mercedes Foster, and I have described a total of five snakes, three lizards, 14 frogs and toads. And Mercedes has actually described one species of lizard and three species of plants.
A description that I had the most fun with was a new species of frog from Bolivia that Mercedes and I coauthored. The genus of the frog was, is Colostethus, and the name we chose for it was mcdiarmidi in honor of Roy McDiarmid. And the fun part about this is that Roy McDiarmid had no idea that we were naming this frog for him, and he didn't find about it until he opened his copy of the Journal when it arrived.
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However, whoops, however, that's the end of my talk. However, the most recent animal to be described by one of our staff is this striking short-tailed python, python kyaiktiyo, by Steve Gotte that just appeared on the front cover of the August, 2011 Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. Most important is that this photograph is of the animal when it was still alive. But I can assure you that the animal is preserved, and is now a thing of beauty and a joy forever in the type collection at the Division of Amphibians and Reptiles.
Our unit has curatorial responsibility for nearly one million North American amphibian, reptile, bird, and mammal museum specimens.
Other major areas that our staff are involved with is comparative anatomy and development, distribution, biogeography, ethnozoology, ethnobotony, ecology, evolution, conservation, population genetics, and paleontology.
We are all very much involved in training of postdocs, predocs, graduate and undergraduate students, interns and participating in workshops, both nationally and internationally. And here is Suzy Peurach in the Division of Mammals, providing instruction to workshop participants and interns.
Along with other forms of training that we do is the books that were produced for measuring and monitoring biological diversity on amphibians and reptiles and mammals. And this is to standardize efforts throughout the world to, so that researchers all try and do the same sorts of measuring and monitoring of biodiversity.
We provide to federal agencies, state agencies, universities, researchers, NGOs primarily information about the collections that we manage as well as information about the animals that we are experts on.
Another service that we provide is to accept collections from researchers from around the world in order to voucher their research and maintain their databases and maintain the research collections.
Our unit has authored an impressive array of systematic and biodiversity resources for use by wildlife and conservation managers. And here are examples for amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds which are used by the scientific community around the world. And many cases are the standard by which all systematic research is compared.
Two of the most recent books by Biological Survey Unit staff are the Mammals of South America, edited by Alfred Gardner. And more recently, Reptile Biodiversity Standard Methods for Inventory and Monitoring, edited by Roy McDiarmid and Mercedes Foster. 6
Historically, the systematic work that we did was based primarily on morphology of the museum specimens.
Molecular genetics is becoming an increasingly important tool in museum systematic work. And our unit became involved in systematics when we thankfully hired Terry Chesser as a curator of Ornithology in 2005.
Some examples of our current and future research includes work on the AOU (American Ornithologists Union) Check-list of Birds by Terry Chesser and Dick Banks. Mercedes Foster and Terry Chesser are working on systematics and evolution of Neotropical birds. Terry continues work on the seasonal and geographic distribution of South American austral migrants; this is an extension of his dissertation work. Roger Clapp is working on the breeding birds of Virginia. And Mercedes continues studies on Neotropical studies of avian frugivores and characteristics of fruit resources. And Claudia Angle is primarily responsible for managing the scientific collections for use by scientists as well as for arranging for visitor use of the collections, and she handles visitors from all around the world that come to the museum just to study these birds.
Continuing with mammals; Al Gardner is working on a third volume of the Mammals of South America. Neal Woodman is working with the State of California on the taxonomic status of the California shrew. Neal is also continuing work on the fore foot anatomy of tree shrews. Both Al and Neal are involved in various new..., descriptions of new species of bats, voles, and shrews from Middle America. Suzy Peurach continues her long-term studies on bat hair identification that she gets from aircraft strikes with United States Air Force planes. And I guess bats will never learn that they are no match for fighter jets or any other aircraft.
Bob Fisher has just, within the last couple of weeks, finished a catalogue of the Mammal Type Specimens at the National Museum, and has submitted it for publication in the Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology. And has now begun work on the second volume of the Mammal Type Specimens at the museum.
And last but not least, and arguably the most interesting, is the work being done in the Division of Amphibians and Reptiles.
I'm currently working on a book with coauthors from the American Museum and the Royal Ontario Museum on the amphibians and reptiles of Guyana, where we are compiling information on all 320 species of amphibians and reptiles.
Roy is working on Volumes II and III of the Snakes Species of the World, which will 7
complement the first volume that's already been published.
Steve Gotte is finishing up a synonymy of the snake genus Leptophis.
Roy is also working on the history of herpetology and herpetologists in the Department of the Interior.
I'm working with a Smithsonian colleague on the descriptions of two new blind snakes from the eastern Caroline Islands of Micronesia.
Roy is working with Ron Alton of Mississippi State University on a handbook of larval amphibians.
And Steve Gotte and I are continuing a study on the effects of formalin vs. alcohol preservation for larval amphibians.
And James Poindexter is primarily responsible for taking digital photography of preserved amphibians and reptiles in our collection for use by researchers, both at the museum as well as around the world. And James's photographs of dead animals are appearing in journals all around the world.
Thank you very much.
Judd Howell:
Thanks, Bob.
Dr. Robert Reynolds:
You bet.
Judd Howell:
But don't go away. We actually have a few minutes for questions. And let's see if we can get this thing to work again. It does work so.
Audience Member:
I don't want to be the first to ask questions in all of these august scientists here, but this has been so inspiring. I would like to ask the speaker what one, just to put a name on the new snakes as a herpetologist; you said five and I had one final (unclear: 21:26) just so we know. I assume it was not a subspecies or species of poisonous, or we would have heard of it in some way. Do you have the name?
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Dr. Robert Reynolds:
That new snake?
Audience Member:
Yes.
Dr. Robert Reynolds:
Was Python kyaiktiyo; that new snake that was on the cover of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington was named Python kyaiktiyo. And the way we choose, and I'm speaking for Steve Gotte who's in the audience, but I can tell you that the way we chose the name is typically something to do with the morphology of an animal or with the location where the animal was collected. And actually that name kyaiktiyo was named for kyaiktiyo pagoda in Burma, where the snake was captured, and it translates to golden rock. And I know this because I just read the paper.
Audience Member:
And the other one was, and you gave maybe one of the best answers, you know, such as Roxie Laybourne, who had such great contributions to. Maybe I'm just throwing this out; somebody tonight will have a story about Roxie. I know Bob Hines had many, but I'd be glad to hear something.
Dr. Robert Reynolds:
Yeah, Roxie, of course, is a legend in the museum. If you have the opportunity to talk to Claudia Angle, Claudia probably, and Mercedes Foster; Claudia and Mercedes were personal friends of Roxie and knew her very, very well.
Judd Howell:
Great, thank you Bob.
Patuxent Science Symposium
Friday
Session Moderator: Judd Howell
Judd Howell introductory: Dr. Donald Cahoon
Judd Howell:
Okay, our next speaker is Dr. Donald Cahoon. And Don, I can probably guarantee that in his family there is a haircut budget because I'm pretty sure Elizabeth makes sure he gets his hair cut.
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Don's going to talk to us about his global climate change research and his work on the marsh vegetation and accumulation, vertical rise and fall and all those kinds of things.
So, thank you, Don.
Dr. Donald Cahoon:
Well, good afternoon. I don't normally use notes, but I decided I had to do some notes because the last day and a half we've seen some really fabulous talks about the history of this place. And so I thought, "Okay, when and how did the Coastal Ecosystems Group come into effect?" And, "What is its history?" So I asked a lot of people last night over wine and cheese, and these are a few of the facts, I think, that we can come up with.
There was general consensus that the Coastal Ecosystems Group came into being about 1995, and it would seem like there's probably three factors, could be more, could be less. That the confluence of these three factors led to the development of this group of researchers here.
The first one being, of course, money; in 1990 was when the climate change program funding became available. So you always got to have money. But that money was, of course, designated for climate-related research, which is..., could also be more process-based, more ecosystem level-based.
The second factor was probably the creation of the National Biological Survey, because a lot of people from other agencies outside Fish and Wildlife Service ended up here at Patuxent. Most notably, the Park Service's Coastal Lab in Rhode Island. And there was some process-based researchers there; Charlie Roman in Wetland Ecology, Jim Allen in Coastal Geomorphology. So there was the germ of some new process-based ecosystem level researchers arriving here.
And then I think probably it's safe to say that when Jim Kushlan arrived in 1995, he put a push on this ecosystem level process-based kind of research through hiring several new scientists; Jan Keough, Glenn Guntenspergen, and Hilary Neckles, and myself.
And during that time there was also a realignment of some people that were already here, including Mike Erwin and Mary Freeman.
So you see here a list of people that are currently in the Coastal Group, but that's not everybody that's ever been in the Coastal Group here. Let me just read you a quick list of names, that would be Charlie Roman, Paul Buckley from the Coastal Lab in Rhode Island, Jim Allen from that lab in Rhode Island who, after his passing, was replaced my Cheryl Hapke, Howie Ginsberg, Janet Keough, Glenn Guntenspergen and Hilary 10
Neckles, Mike Erwin, Mary Freeman, and myself.
So, as best as we can tell, that's the history of the Coastal Eco..., the history of the evolution and creation of the Coastal Ecosystems Group here.
If I left anybody out I'm sorry, I apologize right now. If anybody has more information to correct what I just said, please say so.
Alright, let me just run though this real quick. Who does what? Mike Erwin, of course, you know, you heard his talk yesterday; Mary Freeman works on streams in Georgia; Glen is a landscape ecologist, and works in coastal wetland systems as well; Matt Kirwan is a former post doc of Glen and mine; Glen is also a modeler and Matt is a modeler; and Hilary Neckles works mainly in sea grasses.
Alright, the Department of the Interior’s Mission Statement according to the most recent GPRA Strategic Plan is something that we all work in response to. 'The U.S. Department of the Interior protects and manages the Nation's natural resources and cultural heritage, and provides scientific and other information about those resources.’ And we just listened to a day and a half of some really fabulous information about the science and information that's been collected here at Patuxent.
But today, what I'm going to talk about now is more ecosystem level process-based kind of research that our group is doing. And this is a list of our goals from the U.S., from the Patuxent Strategic Science Plan, latest edition being 2008:
First of all, we are trying to develop scientifically based methods for understanding ecosystem changes in coastal and freshwater ecosystems. And develop tools for forecasting future conditions under different scenarios.
Secondly, we're developing the scientific bases for regional comparisons of coastal and freshwater systems, and the ability to generalize at greater spatial and temporal scales.
Thirdly, we are developing the scientific bases for monitoring programs capable of detecting and predicting changes, forecasting changes maybe, in the status of coastal and freshwater ecosystems.
And lastly, improve the scientific bases for restoration and mitigation of impaired or altered freshwater and coastal ecosystems.
The research focus for our group focuses on three main areas; environmental monitoring, ecological forecasting, and wetland restoration through integrated and multidisciplinary science addressing global change effects. 11
Now this graphic is adaptive from a Park Service Vital Sign's Monitoring Plan for the Northeast Coastal and Barrier Network. Basically, what you see across the top are threats to coastal ecosystems. And they stem from indirect human impacts of land use in the surrounding watershed, direct impacts, direct human impacts in the form of physical habitat alterations, and long-term impacts of a changing global climate.
The effects of human activities can be exacerbated by natural disturbances including severe weather and biotic, geomorphic, and climatic processes.
So collectively, these anthropogenic and natural disturbances produce a multitude, and you see the stressors, a multitude of stressors in the center portion of this cartoon, with far-reaching consequences. Ranging from (across the bottom) degraded habitat structure to major shifts in ecosystem function. In many cases, the long term and cumulative effects of multiple stressors on the structure function and sustainability of coastal habitats are unknown, and this is the motivation for a lot of our research.
Another poi
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
A Complicated but Not Impossible Marriage: Critical Theory and Symbolic Interactionism
No full textThe paper explores the potential for dialogue between Symbolic Interactionism and Critical Theory. The first part lists all the difficulties of this attempt, while the rest illustrates four theoretical perspectives showing that convergence is possible:
1) Athens' Radical Interactionism;
2) Clarke's Situational Analysis;
3) Goffman's thematisation of power;
4) Burawoy's Extended Case Method.
The paper concludes that narrowing the gap between these two theoretical approaches can only produce generalised benefits and mutual enrichment
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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