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Quantitative Indicators (quantitative + indicator)
Selected AbstractsThe role of organizational capabilities in cleaner technology adoption: an analysis of the response of the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector in Ireland to IPC licensing regulationsENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AND GOVERNANCE, Issue 6 2006Rachel M. Hilliard Abstract In introducing integrated pollution control licensing, regulators hope to achieve economic advantages as well as environmental benefits. The licensing is used as a vehicle for encouraging firms to adopt cleaner technology, potentially allowing firms to achieve economic advantages through process efficiencies and reduced environmental control costs. In Ireland, the regulatory approach has been to require firms to make managerial changes in the belief that this is a necessary precursor to the take-up of new technology. This paper examines how the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector has responded to environmental regulations that require cleaner technology adoption and managerial changes. Quantitative indicators are developed using data reported to the Irish Environmental Protection Agency. Analysis shows that firms were differentially able to implement both cleaner technology and the mandated managerial processes. The implications for policy are that regulatory instruments designed to stimulate cleaner technology may not be sufficient to promote change in firms, given that the influence of these instruments is mediated by the role of firm-specific, experience-based organizational capabilities. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source] DNA damage response and cellular senescence in tissues of aging miceAGING CELL, Issue 3 2009Chunfang Wang Summary The impact of cellular senescence onto aging of organisms is not fully clear, not at least because of the scarcity of reliable data on the mere frequency of senescent cells in aging tissues. Activation of a DNA damage response including formation of DNA damage foci containing activated H2A.X (,-H2A.X) at either uncapped telomeres or persistent DNA strand breaks is the major trigger of cell senescence. Therefore, ,-H2A.X immunohistochemistry (IHC) was established by us as a reliable quantitative indicator of senescence in fibroblasts in vitro and in hepatocytes in vivo and the age dependency of DNA damage foci accumulation in ten organs of C57Bl6 mice was analysed over an age range from 12 to 42 months. There were significant increases with age in the frequency of foci-containing cells in lung, spleen, dermis, liver and gut epithelium. In liver, foci-positive cells were preferentially found in the centrilobular area, which is exposed to higher levels of oxidative stress. Foci formation in the intestine was restricted to the crypts. It was not associated with either apoptosis or hyperproliferation. That telomeres shortened with age in both crypt and villus enterocytes, but telomeres in the crypt epithelium were longer than those in villi at all ages were confirmed by us. Still, there was no more than random co-localization between ,-H2A.X foci and telomeres even in crypts from very old mice, indicating that senescence in the crypt enterocytes is telomere independent. The results suggest that stress-dependent cell senescence could play a causal role for aging of mice. [source] Nowcasting and predicting data revisions using panel survey dataJOURNAL OF FORECASTING, Issue 3 2010Troy D. Matheson Abstract The qualitative responses that firms give to business survey questions regarding changes in their own output provide a real-time signal of official output changes. The most commonly used method to produce an aggregate quantitative indicator from business survey responses,the net balance or diffusion index,has changed little in 40 years. This paper investigates whether an improved real-time signal of official output data changes can be derived from a recently advanced method on the aggregation of survey data from panel responses. We find, in a New Zealand application, that exploiting the panel dimension to qualitative survey data gives a better in-sample signal about official data than traditional methods. Out-of-sample, it is less clear that it matters how survey data are quantified, with simpler and more parsimonious methods hard to improve. It is clear, nevertheless, that survey data, exploited in some form, help to explain revisions to official data. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] An evaluation of the process and initial impact of disseminating a nursing e-thesisJOURNAL OF ADVANCED NURSING, Issue 5 2009Colin Macduff Abstract Title.,An evaluation of the process and initial impact of disseminating a nursing e-thesis. Aim., This paper is a report of a study conducted to evaluate product, process and outcome aspects of the dissemination of a nursing PhD thesis via an open-access electronic institutional repository. Background., Despite the growth of university institutional repositories which make theses easily accessible via the world wide web, nursing has been very slow to evaluate related processes and outcomes. Method., Drawing on Stake's evaluation research methods, a case study design was adopted. The case is described using a four-phase structure within which key aspects of process and impact are reflexively analysed. Findings., In the conceptualization/re-conceptualization phase, fundamental questions about the purpose, format and imagined readership for a published nursing PhD were considered. In the preparation phase, seven key practical processes were identified that are likely to be relevant to most e-theses. In the dissemination phase email invitations were primarily used to invite engagement. The evaluation phase involved quantitative indicators of initial impact, such as page viewing and download statistics and qualitative feedback on processes and product. Conclusion., Analysis of process and impact elements of e-thesis dissemination is likely to have more than intrinsic value. The advent of e-theses housed in web-based institutional repositories has the potential to transform thesis access and use. It also offers potential to transform the nature and scope of thesis production and dissemination. Nursing scholars can exploit and evaluate such opportunities. [source] A cluster analysis of scholar and journal bibliometric indicatorsJOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Issue 10 2009Massimo Franceschet We investigate different approaches based on correlation analysis to reduce the complexity of a space of quantitative indicators for the assessment of research performance. The proposed methods group bibliometric indicators into clusters of highly intercorrelated indicators. Each cluster is then associated with a representative indicator. The set of all representatives corresponds to a base of orthogonal metrics capturing independent aspects of research performance and can be exploited to design a composite performance indicator. We apply the devised methodology to isolate orthogonal performance metrics for scholars and journals in the field of computer science and to design a global performance indicator. The methodology is general and can be exploited to design composite indicators that are based on a set of possibly overlapping criteria. [source] Toward an "omic" physiopathology of reactive chemicals: Thirty years of mass spectrometric study of the protein adducts with endogenous and xenobiotic compoundsMASS SPECTROMETRY REVIEWS, Issue 5 2009Federico Maria Rubino Abstract Cancer and degenerative diseases are major causes of morbidity and death, derived from the permanent modification of key biopolymers such as DNA and regulatory proteins by usually smaller, reactive molecules, present in the environment or generated from endogenous and xenobiotic components by the body's own biochemical mechanisms (molecular adducts). In particular, protein adducts with organic electrophiles have been studied for more than 30 [see, e.g., Calleman et al., 1978] years essentially for three purposes: (a) as passive monitors of the mean level of individual exposure to specific chemicals, either endogenously present in the human body or to which the subject is exposed through food or environmental contamination; (b) as quantitative indicators of the mean extent of the individual metabolic processing which converts a non-reactive chemical substance into its toxic products able to damage DNA (en route to cancer induction through genotoxic mechanisms) or key proteins (as in the case of several drugs, pesticides or otherwise biologically active substances); (c) to relate the extent of protein modification to that of biological function impairment (such as enzyme inhibition) finally causing the specific health damage. This review describes the role that contemporary mass spectrometry-based approaches employed in the qualitative and quantitative study of protein,electrophile adducts play in the discovery of the (bio)chemical mechanisms of toxic substances and highlights the future directions of research in this field. A particular emphasis is given to the measurement of often high levels of the protein adducts of several industrial and environmental pollutants in unexposed human populations, a phenomenon which highlights the possibility that a number of small organic molecules are generated in the human organism through minor metabolic processes, the imbalance of which may be the cause of "spontaneous" cases of cancer and of other degenerative diseases of still uncharacterized etiology. With all this in mind, it is foreseen that a holistic description of cellular functions will take advantage of new analytical methods based on time-integrated metabolomic measurements of a new biological compartment, the "adductome," aimed at better understanding integrated organism response to environmental and endogenous stressors. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., Mass Spec Rev 28:725,784, 2009 [source] Metrics or Peer Review?POLITICAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 1 2009Evaluating the 2001 UK Research Assessment Exercise in Political Science Evaluations of research quality in universities are now widely used in the advanced economies. The UK's Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) is the most highly developed of these research evaluations. This article uses the results from the 2001 RAE in political science to assess the utility of citations as a measure of outcome, relative to other possible indicators. The data come from the 4,400 submissions to the RAE political science panel. The 28,128 citations analysed relate not only to journal articles, but to all submitted publications , including authored and edited books and book chapters. The results show that citations are the most important predictor of the RAE outcome, followed by whether or not a department had a representative on the RAE panel. The results highlight the need to develop robust quantitative indicators to evaluate research quality which would obviate the need for a peer evaluation based on a large committee. Bibliometrics should form the main component of such a portfolio of quantitative indicators. [source] Anthropology and Fisheries Management in the United StatesANNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICE, Issue 1 2007Palma Ingles The collection of articles in this volume of NAPA Bulletin describes various types of social science research currently conducted in support of federal and state fisheries management by anthropologists and sociologists studying fishing-dependent communities and fisheries participants. The contributors work for NOAA, National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS); various state fisheries agencies; in academia; or as contract researchers. These articles represent a wide geographical range, employ a diverse set of methods, and demonstrate different research goals ranging from responding to specific statutory or management requirements to establishing broader baseline social information to exploring the theoretical constructs that constrain or advance the field of applied anthropology in fisheries. This introduction provides background to the recent expansion of anthropological capacity in U.S. fisheries management and the divergent methods employed by practitioners. The range of methods includes classic ethnography and survey methods, cultural modeling, participatory research, and quantitative indicators-based assessment. The compilation of articles presents an opportunity to think about standardizing some methodological approaches for certain types of tasks, while expanding the array of accepted methodologies available to anthropologists advising fisheries managers. [source] | ||||||||||