1,720,996 research outputs found
Aquifer nitrate vulnerability assessment using positive and negative weights of evidence methods, Milan, Italy
No full textStatistical methods are extensively used by hydrogeologists for assessing groundwater vulnerability. Several of these methods require to express the response variable as binary and to select a threshold distinguishing between positive and negative indicators of contamination that are usually identified as occurrences and non-occurrences, respectively. In this study, both occurrences and non-occurrences were alternately used as training points (TPs) in the weights of evidence (WofE) for assessing groundwater vulnerability to nitrate contamination of a shallow, unconfined, porous aquifer. This was done to better understand the individual role and the combined effect of explanatory variables in both protecting and exposing groundwater from and to nitrate contamination in the study area. The idea behind this approach is that, for a given aquifer, each explanatory variable should have an unequivocal effect on the physical process of groundwater contamination. As part of this study, a procedure for multi-class generalization was developed. Results showed that an evidential theme, even if it appears to be a statistically significant predictor of occurrences, can show an equivocal spatial relationship with the positive and the negative indicators of contamination due to the presence of a sampling bias between the TPs and the evidential theme.It was demonstrated that, if sampling bias is not recognized and corrected, the use of such evidential theme in the analysis could lead to obtain unreliable groundwater vulnerability maps. In order to deal with this issue, a quantitative methodology to correct the effects of sampling bias was successfully tested. Indeed, once the spatial relationships between the different type of TPs and the considered evidential themes were corrected for the effects of sampling bias, the WofE method was found to be a reliable modeling technique for assessing groundwater vulnerability and proved to be capable of identifying areas characterized by different degrees of vulnerability
Mountain Risks: From Prediction to Management and Governance
No full textReviewed: Mountain Risks: From Prediction to Management and Governance. Edited by Theo Van Asch, Jordi Corominas, Stefan Greiving, Jean-Philippe Malet, and Sterlacchini Simone. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2014. xi + 413 pp. US$ 129.00, € 90.00, € 104.00. Also available as an e-book. ISBN 978-94-007-6768-3
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
Influence of Threshold Value in the Use of Statistical Methods for Groundwater Vulnerability Assessment
No full textStatistical techniques can be used in groundwater pollution problems to determine the relationships among observed contamination (impacted wells representing an occurrence of what has to be predicted), environmental factors that may influence it and the potential contamination sources. Determination of a threshold concentration to discriminate between impacted or non impacted wells represents a key issue in the application of these techniques. In this work the effects on groundwater vulnerability assessment by statistical methods due to the use of different threshold values have been evaluated. The study area (Province of Milan, northern Italy) is about 2000 km(2) and groundwater nitrate concentration is constantly monitored by a net of about 300 wells. Along with different predictor factors three different threshold values of nitrate concentration have been considered to perform the vulnerability assessment of the shallow unconfined aquifer. The likelihood ratio model has been chosen to analyze the spatial distribution of the vulnerable areas. The reliability of the three final vulnerability maps has been tested showing that all maps identify a general positive trend relating mean nitrate concentration in the wells and vulnerability classes the same wells belong to. Then using the kappa coefficient the influence of the different threshold values has been evaluated comparing the spatial distribution of the resulting vulnerability classes in each map. The use of different threshold does not determine different vulnerability assessment if results are analyzed on a broad scale, even if the smaller threshold value gives the poorest performance in terms of reliability. On the contrary, the spatial distribution of a detailed vulnerability assessment is strongly influenced by the selected threshold used to identify the occurrences, suggesting that there is a strong relationship among the number of identified occurrences, the scale of the maps representing the predictor factors and the model efficiency in discriminating different vulnerable areas. (c) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
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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