Environmental and ecological economics in the 21st century: an age adjusted citation analysis of the influential articles, journals, authors and institutions

We investigate the influence of articles, authors, journals and institutions in the field of environmental and ecological economics. We depart from studies that investigated the literature until 2001 and include a time period that has witnessed an enormous increase of importance in the field. We adjust for the age effect given the huge impact of the year of an article's publication on its influence and we show that this adjustment does make a substantial difference — especially for disaggregated units of analysis with diverse age characteristics such as articles or authors. We analyse 6597 studies on environmental and ecological economics published between 2000 and 2009. We provide rankings of the influential articles, authors, journals and institutions and find that Ecological Economics, Energy Economics and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management have the most influential articles, they publish very influential authors and their articles are cited most. The University of Maryland, Resources for the Future, the University of East Anglia and the World Bank appear to be the most influential institutions in the field of environmental and ecological economics.

Environmental and ecological economics in the 21st century: an age adjusted citation analysis of the most influential articles, journals, authors and institutions

We investigate the influence of articles, authors, journals and institutions in the field of environmental and ecological economics. We depart from studies that investigated the literature until 2001 and include a time period that has witnessed an enormous increase of importance in the field. We adjust for the age effect given the huge impact of the year of an article's publication on its influence and we show that this adjustment does make a substantial difference — especially for disaggregated units of analysis with diverse age characteristics such as articles or authors. We analyse 6597 studies on environmental and ecological economics published between 2000 and 2009. We provide rankings of the influential articles, authors, journals and institutions and find that Ecological Economics, Energy Economics and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management have the most influential articles, they publish very influential authors and their articles are cited most. The University of Maryland, Resources for the Future, the University of East Anglia and the World Bank appear to be the most influential institutions in the field of environmental and ecological economics.

Television and the popular: viewing from the British perspective

The academic discipline of television studies has been constituted by the claim that television is worth studying because it is popular. Yet this claim has also entailed a need to defend the subject against the triviality that is associated with the television medium because of its very popularity. This article analyses the many attempts in the later twentieth and twenty-first centuries to constitute critical discourses about television as a popular medium. It focuses on how the theoretical currents of Television Studies emerged and changed in the UK, where a disciplinary identity for the subject was founded by borrowing from related disciplines, yet argued for the specificity of the medium as an object of criticism. Eschewing technological determinism, moral pathologization and sterile debates about television's supposed effects, UK writers such as Raymond Williams addressed television as an aspect of culture. Television theory in Britain has been part of, and also separate from, the disciplinary fields of media theory, literary theory and film theory. It has focused its attention on institutions, audio-visual texts, genres, authors and viewers according to the ways that research problems and theoretical inadequacies have emerged over time. But a consistent feature has been the problem of moving from a descriptive discourse to an analytical and evaluative one, and from studies of specific texts, moments and locations of television to larger theories. By discussing some historically significant critical work about television, the article considers how academic work has constructed relationships between the different kinds of objects of study. The article argues that a fundamental tension between descriptive and politically activist discourses has confused academic writing about ›the popular‹. Television study in Britain arose not to supply graduate professionals to the television industry, nor to perfect the instrumental techniques of allied sectors such as advertising and marketing, but to analyse and critique the medium's aesthetic forms and to evaluate its role in culture. Since television cannot be made by ›the people‹, the empowerment that discourses of television theory and analysis aimed for was focused on disseminating the tools for critique. Recent developments in factual entertainment television (in Britain and elsewhere) have greatly increased the visibility of ›the people‹ in programmes, notably in docusoaps, game shows and other participative formats. This has led to renewed debates about whether such ›popular‹ programmes appropriately represent ›the people‹ and how factual entertainment that is often despised relates to genres hitherto considered to be of high quality, such as scripted drama and socially-engaged documentary television. A further aspect of this problem of evaluation is how television globalisation has been addressed, and the example that the issue has crystallised around most is the reality TV contest Big Brother. Television theory has been largely based on studying the texts, institutions and audiences of television in the Anglophone world, and thus in specific geographical contexts. The transnational contexts of popular television have been addressed as spaces of contestation, for example between Americanisation and national or regional identities. Commentators have been ambivalent about whether the discipline's role is to celebrate or critique television, and whether to do so within a national, regional or global context. In the discourses of the television industry, ›popular television‹ is a quantitative and comparative measure, and because of the overlap between the programming with the largest audiences and the scheduling of established programme types at the times of day when the largest audiences are available, it has a strong relationship with genre. The measurement of audiences and the design of schedules are carried out in predominantly national contexts, but the article refers to programmes like Big Brother that have been broadcast transnationally, and programmes that have been extensively exported, to consider in what ways they too might be called popular. Strands of work in television studies have at different times attempted to diagnose what is at stake in the most popular programme types, such as reality TV, situation comedy and drama series. This has centred on questions of how aesthetic quality might be discriminated in television programmes, and how quality relates to popularity. The interaction of the designations ›popular‹ and ›quality‹ is exemplified in the ways that critical discourse has addressed US drama series that have been widely exported around the world, and the article shows how the two critical terms are both distinct and interrelated. In this context and in the article as a whole, the aim is not to arrive at a definitive meaning for ›the popular‹ inasmuch as it designates programmes or indeed the medium of television itself. Instead the aim is to show how, in historically and geographically contingent ways, these terms and ideas have been dynamically adopted and contested in order to address a multiple and changing object of analysis.

African language books for children: issues for authors

Growing interest in bilingual education in sub-Saharan Africa has highlighted an urgent need for reading material in African languages. In this paper, we focus on authors, one of several groups of stakeholders with responsibility for meeting this demand. We address three main issues: the nature and extent of African language publishing for children; the challenges for authors; and the available support. Our analysis is based on interviews and focus group discussions with publishers, authors, translators, educationalists, and representatives of book promotion organisations from nine African countries and documentary data on children's books in African languages in South Africa. Although there is evidence of a growing interest in producing books in local languages, the number of titles is constrained by funding. The challenges for authors include the need to understand the ingredients for successful children's books and for the sensitivity necessary to negotiate the linguistic challenges associated with a newly emergent genre in African languages. Support, in the form of competitions and workshops, relies on external funding and expertise and offers only temporary solutions. We finish with suggestions for more sustainable ways forward.

'Nature Conservation': a new dimension in Open Access publishing bridging science and application

This Editorial presents the focus, scope and policies of the inaugural issue of Nature Conservation, a new open access, peer-reviewed journal bridging natural sciences, social sciences and hands-on applications in conservation management. The journal covers all aspects of nature conservation and aims particularly at facilitating better interaction between scientists and practitioners. The journal will impose no restrictions on manuscript size or the use of colour. We will use an XML-based editorial workflow and several cutting-edge innovations in publishing and information dissemination. These include semantic mark-up of, and enhancements to published text, data, and extensive cross-linking within the journal and to external sources. We believe the journal will make an important contribution to better linking science and practice, offers rapid, peer-reviewed and flexible publication for authors and unrestricted access to content.

Introduction: entire hands and main fingers

The ten-volume edition of The Collected Works of Thomas Heywood, forthcoming from Oxford University Press from 2015 to 2022, will attempt to place Heywood’s plays, poetry, and prose back where they belong: at the centre of the study of early modern English literature, drama, and theatre history. Especially as an actor, playwright, reviser, editor, and historical chronicler, Heywood had the longest and widest-ranging career of his contemporaries and thus can reveal how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors and theatrical and literary audiences came to see the practice and production of drama.

Children’s physic: medical perceptions and treatment of sick children in early modern England, c. 1580-1720

Historians of medicine, childhood, and paediatrics, have often assumed that early modern doctors neither treated children, nor adapted their medicines to suit the peculiar temperaments of the young. Through an examination of medical textbooks and doctors’ casebooks, this article refutes these assumptions. It argues that medical authors and practising doctors regularly treated children, and were careful to tailor their remedies to complement the distinctive constitutions of children. Thus, this article proposes that a concept of ‘children’s physic’ existed in early modern England: this term refers to the notion that children were physiologically distinct, requiring special medical care. Children’s physic was rooted in the ancient traditions of Hippocratic and Galenic medicine: it was the child’s humoral makeup that underpinned all medical ideas about children’s bodies, minds, diseases, and treatments. Children abounded in the humour blood, which made them humid and weak, and in need of medicines of a particularly gentle nature.

”Potato seeking rice”: language, culture, and identity in gay personal ads in Hong Kong

This paper examines the relationship between language, culture, and identity in a corpus of gay personal ads collected from two publications in Hong Kong in the three years before the 1997 transition of sovereignty. Gay personal ads are seen äs an "island of discourse," whose marginal nature is reflected in the use of language and in turn reflects issues of marginalization in the larger social context. Using Fairclough's (1992, 1993) three- dimensional model for critical discourse analysis, an attempt is made to uncover the relationship between text structure and issues ofpower/ideology in the society that produces the texts. On the level of text, it was found that structural components, particularly the degree of grammatical elaboration, differ according to the stated race or cultural background of the authors and their targets. On the level of discourse practice, authors were found to appropriate a variety of "voices"from the larger culture arena, the use of which amplifies or limits the participation of particular classes of individuals. Finally, on the level of social practice, the ads were found to reflect and re-create both the racial stereotypes and heterosexist ideology found in the dominant culture.

Mediated action and sexual risk: Searching for 'culture' in discourses of homosexuality and AIDS prevention in China

This paper examines the concept of ‘culture’ and its relationship to HIV prevention. Culture is here seen as the interaction between human beings and the various ‘cultural tools’ they appropriate when taking action. Among these tools are ways of speaking which encode certain meanings, ideologies and social practices. When individuals take action with regard to AIDS, what they do is mediated through voices which they borrow strategically from their environ- ment. The textual tools that are available and the ways individuals adapt and combine them work to either limit or amplify their participation in HIV prevention. What are traditionally seen as ‘cultures’ or ‘sub-cultures’, or worse, ‘risk groups’, are, in this perspective, viewed as ‘communities of practice’, groups of individuals who share particular cultural tools and ways of using them. This conceptual framework is applied to recent discourses of homosexuality and AIDS prevention in China. An instance of ‘of� cial’ discourse in the form of an AIDS education pamphlet for ‘gays’ is analysed for the voices it contains and how these voices are strategically marshalled by the authors and mixed with other voices in ways which amplify participation in AIDS prevention for some and limit it for others. This ‘offical’ discourse is then compared to the discourse of homosexually active Chinese men recently interviewed in Beijing and Fuzhou to examine which of these of� cial voices and other voices they appropriate, and how they adapt these voices in responding to HIV.

Ken Thompson's 6-man Tables

Ken Thompson recently communicated some results mined from his set of 64 6-man endgame tables. These list some positions of interest, namely, mutual zugzwangs and those of maximum depth. The results have been analysed by the authors and found to be identical or compatible with the available or published findings of Karrer, Nalimov, Stiller and Wirth.

Hyper-parallel tempering Monte Carlo simulations of Ar adsorption in new models of microporous non-graphitizing activated carbon: effect of microporosity

The adsorption of gases on microporous carbons is still poorly understood, partly because the structure of these carbons is not well known. Here, a model of microporous carbons based on fullerene- like fragments is used as the basis for a theoretical study of Ar adsorption on carbon. First, a simulation box was constructed, containing a plausible arrangement of carbon fragments. Next, using a new Monte Carlo simulation algorithm, two types of carbon fragments were gradually placed into the initial structure to increase its microporosity. Thirty six different microporous carbon structures were generated in this way. Using the method proposed recently by Bhattacharya and Gubbins ( BG), the micropore size distributions of the obtained carbon models and the average micropore diameters were calculated. For ten chosen structures, Ar adsorption isotherms ( 87 K) were simulated via the hyper- parallel tempering Monte Carlo simulation method. The isotherms obtained in this way were described by widely applied methods of microporous carbon characterisation, i. e. Nguyen and Do, Horvath - Kawazoe, high- resolution alpha(a)s plots, adsorption potential distributions and the Dubinin - Astakhov ( DA) equation. From simulated isotherms described by the DA equation, the average micropore diameters were calculated using empirical relationships proposed by different authors and they were compared with those from the BG method.

Stakeholder interpretations of design: Semiotic insights into the briefing process

Briefing phase interactions between clients and designers are recognized as social engagements, characterized by communicative sign use, where conceptual ideas are gradually transformed into potential design solutions. A semiotic analysis of briefing communications between client stakeholders and designers provides evidence of the significance and importance of stakeholder interpretation and understanding of design, empirical data being drawn from a qualitative study of NHS hospital construction projects in the UK. It is contended that stakeholders engage with a project through communicative signs and artefacts of design, referencing personal cognitive knowledge in acts of interpretation that may be different from those of designers and externally appointed client advisers. Such interpretations occur in addition to NHS client and design team efforts to ‘engage’ with and ‘understand’ stakeholders using a variety of methods. Social semiotic theorizations indicate how narrative strategies motivate the formulation of signs and artefacts in briefing work, the role of sign authors and sign readers being elucidated as a result. Findings are contextualized against current understandings of briefing communications and stakeholder management practices, a more socially attuned understanding of briefing countering some of the process-led improvement models that have characterized much of the post-Egan report literature. A stakeholder interpretation model is presented as one potential method to safeguard against unforeseen interpretations occurring, the model aligning with the proposal for a more measured recognition of how designs can trigger interpretations among client stakeholders.

Unwriting food labels: discursive challenges in the regulation of package claims

This article examines the challenges resulting from the regulation of written discourse on food packages. It uses as a case study Hong Kong’s strict new food-labeling law that requires distributers and retailers to remove certain nutritional claims from packages of imported food before they sell them. This practice of redacting unlawful text on packages requires that distributers and retailers engage in complex processes of discursive reasoning, and it some- times results in packages that are difficult for customers to interpret. The case study highlights important issues in the regulation of commercial texts concerning collaboration, intertextuality, and the conflicts that can arise when the principals, authors, and animators of such texts have different agendas.