1,720,967 research outputs found
La Governance Territoriale nel dibattito scientifico. Spunti di riflessione e prime indicazioni operative
No full textTHE ROLE OF DIVERSITY AND DIVERSIFICATION FOR RESILIENT AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS
Full text linkBiodiversity is a unique and precious heritage: generic but also cultural, social and economic. Its drastic
curtailment, however, puts at risk the survival of local farming systems, and this is even more so in fragile
socio-economic contexts where it risks translating into conditions of food insecurity and poverty. From the
elementary level of the gene, rising in complexity up to the ecosystem, it is therefore a central element in
defining first the resistance and then the resilience of the system, and by the first term meaning the degree
of resistance to a disruption that distances it from the initial state of equilibrium and by the second the
capacity of a system to return to guaranteeing minimum standards following a disturbance, the capacity to
get back on ones feet after a fall.
It seems to be crucial, then, at a time when cooperation development projects that operate in various ways
to safeguard and promote biodiversity are far more numerous, to intervene to preserve and restore the
local biodiversity in order to avert future problems, and even curb them ahead of time, using resilience as
an approach for managing the system we are dealing with (natural or heavily affected by human activity).
In any event, this is a passage that is not routine, which makes it necessary to look at the ecosystem, at its
various components, both natural and human. In the light of these preliminary remarks, the article will
analyse the potentiality for applying, also in the field of development cooperation, the theoretical approach
including empirical methods and instruments represented by the Diversified Farming Systems DFS),
where the starting point is diversity and diversification as functional elements in the construction of
resilient farming systems
Evaluating the sustainability in complex agri-food systems: The SAEMETH framework
Full text linkDuring the last few years, the definition of sustainability and the translation of its general principles into practical and operative tasks have come into the foreground of scientific research and political agendas throughout the world. The understanding and the evaluation of the environmental, social and economic performances of complex agricultural food systems is probably the real challenge, and the design of more sustainable alternatives has been recognized as necessary for a correct territorial management. This study's primary goal is the proposition of an interpretive structure "Sustainable Agri-Food Evaluation Methodology" (SAEMETH), able to guide the evaluation of the sustainability of the various organizational forms of the small-scale agri-food supply chain. As a case study, the methodology was applied to 10 small-scale agri-food systems. The application of SAEMETH, as a monitoring tool based on qualitative indicators that are user-friendly and strongly communicative, demonstrates that it is possible to carry out sustainability evaluations of the small-scale agri-food systems through a long-term approach that is participatory, interdisciplinary and multi-institutional and that integrates a solid theoretical base with an operative framework tested in the field. SAEMETH can, in this way, generate a cyclical process that increases the probability of success in the design of sustainable alternatives and the implementation of projects and initiatives at the local/regional scale
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
Alla ricerca del city-region food system: dalle teorie alle pratiche. Riflessioni e possibilità per le città italiane e Torino in particolare
Full text linkA partire dalla presentazione di uno studio dedicato all’analisi dell’area funzionale di Torino, l’articolo riflette su come la conoscenza che viene prodotta intorno alle singole componenti del sistema locale del cibo possa essere valorizzata e diventare il tassello per un ragionamento più ampio e maggiormente integrato per la pianificazione e governance del sistema locale del cibo per le città italiane. Di fronte ad un deficit informativo non trascurabile, alle difficoltà di integrare dati e scale di competenza, scale di organizzazione e scale di azione dei processi legati all’atto del mangiare e a tutto ciò che lo precede e ne consegue, è necessaria una maggiore integrazione degli aspetti teorici con quelli pratici e soprattutto anche politici
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
- …
