1,720,957 research outputs found
LCA to choose among alternative design solutions: the case study of a new Italian incineration line
No full textAt international level LCA is being increasingly used to objectively evaluate the performances of different
Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) management solutions. One of the more important waste management options concerns MSW incineration. LCA is usually applied to existing incineration plants.
In this study LCA methodology was applied to a new Italian incineration line, to facilitate the prediction, during the design phase, of its potential environmental impacts in terms of damage to human health, ecosystem quality and consumption of resources. The aim of the study was to analyse three different
design alternatives: an incineration system with dry flue gas cleaning (without- and with-energy recovery) and one with wet flue gas cleaning. The last two technological solutions both incorporating facilities for energy recovery were compared. From the results of the study, the system with energy recovery and dry flue gas cleaning revealed lower environmental impacts in relation to the ecosystem quality.
As LCA results are greatly affected by uncertainties of different types, the second part of the work provides for an uncertainty analysis aimed at detecting the extent output data from life cycle analysis are influenced by uncertainty of input data, and employs both qualitative (pedigree matrix) and quantitative
methods (Monte Carlo analysis)
Life Cycle Assessment: uno strumento per la valutazione degli impatti ambientali
No full textIl Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) è una metodologia scientifica che consente la valutazione degli impatti ambientali di un prodotto lungo tutto il suo ciclo di vita (dal momento in cui viene ideato e progettato al momento in cui viene messo a fine vita).
L’interesse da parte della comunità internazionale verso la metodologia LCA è crescente: ciò è legato anche al fatto che essa viene indicata dalle politiche ambientali comunitarie come uno strumento efficace per il miglioramento delle prestazioni ambientali complessive. Inoltre, l’importanza della metodologia LCA ha portato la comunità internazionale a definire degli standard (le norme ISO della serie 14040), con lo scopo di guidare le organizzazioni che intendono adottare tale strumento per conoscere e quindi migliorare il proprio rapporto con l’ambiente.
L’articolo punta essenzialmente a tre obiettivi:
• far conoscere al mondo industriale ed ai professionisti che lavorano sulle tematiche ambientali lo strumento LCA ed i vantaggi che derivano dalla sua applicazione;
• affrontare i recenti sviluppi in ambito internazionale ed europeo inerenti la diffusione e l’utilizzo della metodologia LCA e presentare gli standard che la regolano;
• comunicare i risultati ottenuti dall’applicazione del LCA in un caso di studio specifico, nato dalla collaborazione del nostro centro con una multinazionale operante nel settore degli imballaggi
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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