1,720,966 research outputs found
Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) robotics techniques: A possible application in surgery
No full textRobot-assisted surgery is being developed to overcome human limitations and eliminate impediments associated with conventional surgical and interventional tools and the introduction of robotic technology to assist minimally invasive procedures has been shown to significantly improve outcomes. An important role in the future of medicine will be covered by autonomous probes or robots able to navigate outside or inside the patient's body to refer position and discovered problem. It resulted that Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) has great potential in image-guided surgery applications, within the assumption of static environment. SLAM problems gained a big attention by the scientific community in the last decades, being tackled in many areas. In fact, independently of the specific task, the great importance of precise navigation for autonomous robots will affect its success and outcome. In this article, the main techniques adopted in general robotics SLAM problems are firstly reviewed, briefly describing their main characteristics and showing some of most interesting applications in literature. An insight in visual SLAM is then performed, as the optical sensor is of utmost importance in image-guided surgery systems. The second part of this article focuses on the medical field. It opens with some examples of robotic technologies that have been developed to help the surgeons' work in reaching optimal accuracies and with a research on the SLAM techniques adopted in these applications
Effect of information on consumer preferences and willingness-to-pay for sparkling mock wines
No full textPurpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of information about alcohol content, organic labelling and packaging on consumer preferences and willingness-to-pay (WTP) of non-alcoholic sparkling mock wines. Design/methodology/approach: In a two-step study, the consumer’s expectations and overall liking of two novel brands of mock wines were investigated by focus groups followed by a common hedonic test combined with a choice experiment aimed at measuring consumer WTP. A total of 240 consumers were assigned to two tasting groups of equal size: all were presented at least one brand of mock wine, while drinkers also tasted a familiar brand of low-alcohol sweet sparkling wine. A paper-and-pencil choice experiment followed the tasting sessions. Findings: The results demonstrate that participants in blind or manipulated “informed” conditions are not able to discriminate among mock wines and wine, whereas significant differences in preferences for brands under investigation appeared when labels and other information were disclosed. In effect, drinkers and non-drinkers did not differ in hedonic scores of mock wines. While younger participants exhibited the highest scores in blind liking, the overall expected liking is significantly higher for non-drinkers and women if compared, respectively, to drinkers and men. WTP for mock wines is influenced by taste, glass bottle packaging and the organic label, while mock-wine colour is not relevant. Research limitations/implications: Although limited in sample size and representativeness, this study has brought some new insights into the consumption of non-alcoholic mock wines. In this study, a significant influence of blind sensory liking on WTP is demonstrated. This result has theoretical implications: while the effect of product information on WTP is well established, the relationship between hedonic scores and WTP – while theoretically consistent – is not so clear-cut in the literature. Further research is needed to confirm/disconfirm these findings. Practical implications: Sparkling no-alcohol mock wines, despite their sweetness, appear not different in taste to medium-to-low APV (7.5 per cent) sweet wines. Originality/value: The paper suggests that marketing of mock (no-alcohol) wines needs careful branding to elicit significant hedonic effects, while interacting sensory (blind liking) scores with price information in choice models may help to represent taste heterogeneity in WTP estimates in a better way
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
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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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