Effects of climate warming on carbon fluxes in grasslands- A global meta-analysis.

Climate warming will affect terrestrial ecosystems in many ways, and warming-induced changes in terrestrial carbon (C) cycling could accelerate or slow future warming. So far, warming experiments have shown a wide range of C flux responses, across and within biome types. However, past meta-analyses of C flux responses have lacked sufficient sample size to discern relative responses for a given biome type. For instance grasslands contribute greatly to global terrestrial C fluxes, and to date grassland warming experiments provide the opportunity to evaluate concurrent responses of both plant and soil C fluxes. Here, we compiled data from 70 sites (in total 622 observations) to evaluate the response of C fluxes to experimental warming across three grassland types (cold, temperate, and semi-arid), warming methods, and short (≤3 years) and longer-term (>3 years) experiment lengths. Overall, our meta-analysis revealed that experimental warming stimulated C fluxes in grassland ecosystems with regard to both plant production (e.g., net primary productivity (NPP) 15.4%; aboveground NPP (ANPP) by 7.6%, belowground NPP (BNPP) by 11.6%) and soil respiration (Rs) (9.5%). However, the magnitude of C flux stimulation varied significantly across cold, temperate and semi-arid grasslands, in that responses for most C fluxes were larger in cold than temperate or semi-arid ecosystems. In semi-arid and temperate grasslands, ecosystem respiration (Reco) was more sensitive to warming than gross primary productivity (GPP), while the opposite was observed for cold grasslands, where warming produced a net increase in whole-ecosystem C storage. However, the stimulatory effect of warming on ANPP and Rs observed in short-term studies (≤3 years) in both cold and temperate grasslands disappeared in longer-term experiments (>3 years). These results highlight the importance of conducting long-term warming experiments, and in examining responses across a wide range of climate.

Bibliometric analysis of regional Latin America's scientific output in Public Health through SCImago Journal & Country Rank.

BACKGROUND: In the greater framework of the essential functions of Public Health, our focus is on a systematic, objective, external evaluation of Latin American scientific output, to compare its publications in the area of Public Health with those of other major geographic zones. We aim to describe the regional distribution of output in Public Health, and the level of visibility and specialization, for Latin America; it can then be characterized and compared in the international context. METHODS: The primary source of information was the Scopus database, using the category "Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health", in the period 1996-2011. Data were obtained through the portal of SCImago Journal and Country Rank. Using a set of qualitative (citation-based), quantitative (document recount) and collaborative (authors from more than one country) indicators, we derived complementary data. The methodology serves as an analytical tool for researchers and scientific policy-makers. RESULTS: The contribution of Latin America to the arsenal of world science lies more or less midway on the international scale in terms of its output and visibility. Revealed as its greatest strengths are the high level of specialization in Public Health and the sustained growth of output. The main limitations identified were a relative decrease in collaboration and low visibility. CONCLUSIONS: Collaboration is a key factor behind the development of scientific activity in Latin America. Although this finding can be useful for formulating research policy in Latin American countries, it also underlines the need for further research into patterns of scientific communication in this region, to arrive at more specific recommendations.

Climate change and air pollution impacts on cultural heritage building materials in Europe and Mexico.

Climate and air pollution have adverse effects on cultural heritage building materials. However, the quantified damage due to modeled changes in climate and air pollution is still poorly studied. Here, we review first the damage affecting these materials and the associated damage equations in the literature. Across all relevant studies (n = 87), we found only nine independent equations to estimate different damage categories, mainly limited to limestones. Then, by using current meteorological data and future bias-corrected CMIP6 climate and air pollution data at high resolution (1 km; historical and business-as-usual scenario) and applying these equations, we quantified the relative contributions of climate and air pollution changes on the building materials of eight cultural heritage sites of the European project Sustainable COnservation and REstoration of built cultural heritage (SCORE) from 2020 to 2100. On average across the sites, a significant decrease in damage is projected in surface recession (-10 % ± 10 %), biomass accumulation (-20 % ± 18 %), and wind-rain erosion (-7 % ± 6 %) in response to future climate and air pollution changes, except in the regions where precipitation substantially increases (Northern Europe). A large uncertainty in the relative magnitude of the damage to built cultural heritage materials was found for the same site, changes in surface recession vary up to a 40 % difference across the equations. Moreover, thermal expansion and lifetime multiplier equations project an increase in the related damage while all the other types of damage are significantly reduced. Finally, in general, but not systematically, climate-induced damage was found to be predominant over the pollution-induced one. Our results allow prioritizing cultural heritage maintenance decisions in regions where damage will further increase. Beyond simulated damages which are still limited use, we urge more campaign studies to determine real in situ damage in different climate locations to validate or build the best equations.

Global trends and scenarios for terrestrial biodiversity and ecosystem services from 1900 to 2050.

Based on an extensive model intercomparison, we assessed trends in biodiversity and ecosystem services from historical reconstructions and future scenarios of land-use and climate change. During the 20th century, biodiversity declined globally by 2 to 11%, as estimated by a range of indicators. Provisioning ecosystem services increased several fold, and regulating services decreased moderately. Going forward, policies toward sustainability have the potential to slow biodiversity loss resulting from land-use change and the demand for provisioning services while reducing or reversing declines in regulating services. However, negative impacts on biodiversity due to climate change appear poised to increase, particularly in the higher-emissions scenarios. Our assessment identifies remaining modeling uncertainties but also robustly shows that renewed policy efforts are needed to meet the goals of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

[Psychology in the Spanish scientific domain through categories cocitation of Journal Citation Report 1990-2005]. / La Psicología en el dominio científico español a través de la cocitación de categorías del Journal Citation Report 1990-2005.

This work aims to reveal some aspects of the scientific domain of Psychology, in the context of the internationally visible Spanish science in the databases of the Citation Index of The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), which is represented by a map. We used the methodology of cocitation of thematic categories (JCR-Thompson Scientific), with which we obtained a representation of the scientific activity. The resulting map allowed us to focus on the area of Psychology, whose representation acts as database for the analysis of this discipline in the scientific field with international visibility. This study offers an empirical view of the underlying structure of Spanish Psychology. This is important because most scientists have an intuitive idea of this structure, but this may or may not be real. This way, we present a global vision of the entire discipline that favours its objective analysis as a function of scientists' behaviour as it affects their patterns of communication through the established formal channels.

Identification and visualization of the intellectual structure and the main research lines in nanoscience and nanotechnology at the worldwide level.

The aim of this paper is to make manifest the intellectual and cognitive structure of nanoscience and nanotechnology (NST) by means of visualization techniques. To this end, we used data from the Web of Science (WoS), delimiting the data to the category NST during the period of 2000-2013, retrieving a total of 198,275 documents. Through direct author citation of these works, we identified their origins and the seminal papers, and through word co-occurrence extracted from the titles and abstracts, the main lines of research were identified. In view of both structures, we may affirm that NST is a young scientific discipline in constant expansion, needing time to establish its foundations but showing a strongly interdisciplinary character; its development is furthermore dependent upon knowledge from other disciplines, such as physics, chemistry, or material sciences. We believe that this information may be very useful for the NST scientific community, as it reflects a large-scale analysis of the research lines of NST and how research has changed over time in the diverse areas of NST. This study is moreover intended to offer a useful tool for the NST scientific community, revealing at a glance the main research lines and landmark papers. Finally, the methodology used in this study can be replicated in any other field of science to explore its intellectual and cognitive structure.

Patrones de comunicación e impacto de la producción científica cubana en salud pública / Patterns of communication and impact of the Cuban scientific output in public health

Objetivo: caracterizar el patrón cubano de comunicación científica en salud pública en la base de datos Scopus a partir de los patrones de producción y colaboración y su influencia en el impacto de las publicaciones. Métodos: se aplicaron indicadores bibliométricos de producción, visibilidad y colaboración extraídos de los portales SCImago Institutions Rankings y SCImago Journal and Country Rank a partir de datos de Scopus, categoría Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health, período 2003-2011. Resultados: el patrón de comunicación presentó una tendencia al incremento de la producción científica con un alto liderazgo de autores cubanos y escasa colaboración nacional e internacional. Este incremento no repercutió en un mayor impacto en la comunidad internacional; el 7,22 por ciento de los documentos aparecieron en revistas de alto impacto, y el 2,16 por ciento entre los documentos de excelencia. La producción de excelencia con liderazgo fue casi inexistente. El 75 por ciento de la producción se ubicó en revistas de bajo impacto (cuarto cuartil) y la mayoría en revistas nacionales. La producción en inglés representó menos del 30 percent del total y alcanzaron mayor impacto que los artículos en español. Conclusiones: se caracterizó el patrón de comunicación científica cubano en salud pública, donde la poca publicación en inglés, en revistas de alto impacto y la insuficiente colaboración nacional e internacional son factores que pudieran estar influenciando en el bajo impacto científico. Estos resultados pueden utilizarse como complemento de la evaluación de la investigación en salud pública en el marco de su décima función esencial(AU)

Objetive: to characterize the Cuban pattern of scientific communication in public health in Scopus database on the basis of the output and collaboration patterns and their influence on the impact of publications. Methods: bibliometric indicators of output, visibility and collaboration taken from SCImago Institutions Rankings and SCImago Journal and Country Rank portals were used, according to Scopus database, in the Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health category in 2003-2011 period. Results: the communication pattern showed an increasing tendency of the scientific output, with great leadership of Cuban authors and poor national and international collaboration. This increase did not have a higher impact on the international community; 7.22 percent of documents were published in high impact journals and 2.16 percent were among excellence documents. The excellence output with leadership was almost non-existent. Seventy five percent of the output was seen in low impact journals (fourth quartile) and most of it in national journals. The English output accounted for less than 30 percent of the total amount but had higher impact than the Spanish articles. Conclusions: the pattern of Cuban scientific communication in public health was characterized, in which low number of English publications, of publications in high impact journals and poor national and international collaborations are factors that may influence on the low scientific impact. These results can be used to supplement the assessment of research in public health within the tenth basic function of this specialty(AU)

La psicología en el cienciograma de los paises iberoamericanos / Psychology in the Map of Science in Ibero America

El objetivo de este trabajo es presentar una comparativa de las representaciones científicas de la Psicología en distintos países iberoamericanos; para ello utilizamos una metodología de cocitación de categorías temáticas (clasificación JCR-Thompson & Cia.) que nos facilita larepresentación de la actividad científica. Los mapas resultantes permiten focalizar el área de Psicología, cuya representación nos servirá como base de información para el análisis de ladisciplina, en el ámbito científico de cada país, con visibilidad internacional. Con este estudio se ofrece una visión empírica de la estructura que subyace en la Psicología de los países objetode estudio, esto es de importancia puesto que la mayoría de los científicos tienen una idea intuitiva de esta estructura, que puede o no corresponderse con la realidad, pero de esta manera se les presenta una visión global de toda la disciplina que favorece el análisis objetivo de la misma en función del comportamiento de los científicos en la comunicación de la ciencia a través de los canales formales establecidos. Este modelo nos permite realizar una comparación objetiva de la investigación psicológica entre ocho países iberoamericanos.

The objective of this study is to compare the scientific representation of Psychology in the different Latin-American countries. We use a methodology of subject categories cocitation (JCR-Thomsom Cia, Subject Category Listing) which facilitates the representation of the scientific activity, the resulting maps permit us to focus on the Psychology Area, whose representation will serve as information base for the analysis of the discipline in each country scope, with international visibility. This is an empirical view of the underling structure in the Psychology in the countries studied and this is interesting since the majority of scientist have an intuitive idea of this structure which may or may not correspond to reality. Nevertheless ourrepresentation show an objective global view based on the scientist formal communication behavior. With this model an objective comparison of the Psychology research in the eight mostimportant Latin-American countries is carried out.