105,087 research outputs found
Todorov and Bakhtin
No full textIT IS COMMON TO VIEW Tzvetan Todorov's life as made up of two distinct parts. There is less consensus, though, on what may constitute these two parts. Is it structuralism and humanism? Literary theory and philosophy? Or totalitarianism in Bulgaria and liberal democracy in France? How one defines these two parts of course influences when one would set the break. Although his thought evolved over several years, Todorov himself conceded that his engagement with Mikhail Bakhtin’s work had a decisive impact on his own approach, that it was “the dividing line,” thus drawing it in the late 1970s to early 1980s. In more recent years though, Todorov glossed on his childhood and youth under communist rule in his native Bulgaria and how this background had shaped his thinking. This would suggest the existence of another dividing line, much earlier, in the early 1960s, when he moved from communist Bulgaria to democratic France. Totalitarianism obviously stands in stark contrast to democracy politically. But for Todorov that early break was no less sharp in personal terms: before the demise of the various Eastern European regimes in the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a move from Bulgaria to Fr ance constituted an irremediable split. Yet Todorov himself complic ates this picture by pointing out that until the demise of communist Bulgaria he remained in some ways hostage to his homeland's regime for fear that his views might trigger reprisals against his parents and the other family members he had left behind. It is worth noting that he did not defect but that his departure was entirely legal: he went to study for a year in Paris, then stayed for another two years, and finally was granted permanent residency before gaining French citizenship ten years later in 1973.
These considerations aside, Todorov himself highlights his encounters with Arthur Koestler and Isaiah Berlin as two crucial moments in the development of his thought. From the former, he garnered the feeling that his own apolitical stance was fruitless. From the latter, he took away the idea that philosophical topics such as nihilism and liberalism might be worth studying. Literature, Berlin had told him, “is not made up of structures alone, but also of ideas and history.
Fast self-testing quantum random number generator based on homodyne detection
No full textSelf-testing and semi-device independent protocols are becoming the preferred choice for quantum technologies, being able to certify their quantum nature with few assumptions and simple experimental implementations. In particular, for quantum random number generators, the possibility of monitoring, in real time, the entropy of the source only by measuring the input/output statistics is a characteristic that no other classical system could provide. The cost of this possibility is not necessarily increased complexity and reduced performance. Indeed, here we show that with a simple optical setup consisting of commercially available components, a high bit generation rate can be achieved. We manage to certify 145.5 MHz of quantum random bit generation rate
[Ongoing breastfeeding with breast abscess]
No full textMastitis puerperalis can frequently be complicated by a breast abscess. Immediate diagnosis and treatment are crucial if breastfeeding is to be continued and for the prevention of further complications. Somatic and psychological interventions are of importance for recovery. Specialised nurses and midwives have an important impact on the promotion of well-being of affected mothers
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe 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
A Direct search procedure to optimize combinations of epidural Bupivacaine, Fentanyl and Clonidine for postoperative analgesia
No full textAppropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
No full textWe 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
No full textWe 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
The construction of Karen Karnak: The multi-author-function
No full textThis thesis is situated within the comparatively recent developments of Web 2.0 and the emergence of interactive WikiMedia, and explores the mode of authorship within a Read/Write culture compared to that of a Read/Only tradition. The hypothesis of this study is that the role of the audience has become merged with the author, and as such, represents new functions and attributes, distinct from a more conventional concept of authorship, in which the roles of audience and author are more separate. Read/Write and participatory culture, as defined by this study, is focused on collaboration, and includes the influences of D.I.Y. culture, Open-Source practices and the production of text by multiple authors. Multi-authorship presents a re-thinking of several concepts which support the notion of the individual author, since the focus of multi-authorship is not on attribution and ownership of a finished text, but on the continued malleability of a text. Modes of multi-authorship, demonstrated in the use of the pseudonyms Alan Smithee and Karen Eliot, represent declarative authors whose names signify multiple origins, whilst concurrently indicating a distinct body of work. The function of these names form an important context to this study, since primary research involves the construction of an experimental mode of multi-authorship utilising WikiMedia technology and the interaction of thirty nine participants, who are invited to create a body of work under the collective pseudonym Karen Karnak. The data generated by this experiment is analysed using aspects of Michel Foucault's author-function to identify and determine power structures inherent in the WikiMedia context. The interplay of power structures, including concepts such as identity, ownership and the body of work, affect the resulting mode of authorship and contribute to the construction of Karen Karnak, suggesting further areas of research into the emerging multi-author
Contribution of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Country’S H-Index
No full textThe aim of this study is to examine the effect of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) development on country’s scientific ranking as measured by H-index. Moreover, this study applies ICT development sub-indices including ICT Use, ICT Access and ICT skill to find the distinct effect of these sub-indices on country’s H-index. To this purpose, required data for the panel of 14 Middle East countries over the period 1995 to 2009 is collected. Findings of the current study show that ICT development increases the H-index of the sample countries. The results also indicate that ICT Use and ICT Skill sub-indices positively contribute to higher H-index but the effect of ICT access on country’s H-index is not clear
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