Tourism recovery amid COVID-19: The case of Lombardy, Italy

2021

Travel restrictions and social distancing imposed to curb the spread of the new coronavirus have been strongly hitting tourism since March 2020. Tourism forecasting literature addressed the effects of shocks in contexts characterized by a predictable route to recovery. COVID-19 is without precedents. In this article, monthly overnight stays for the period January 2010 to December 2020 are used to estimate the impact of the pandemic in Lombardy, Italy’s most affected region. A model-based approach is implemented, and the number of overnight stays up to December 2023 is forecasted. Four models are compared. Estimation results from an augmented SARIMA model suggest that, provided a new lockdo…

Double Objective in Mind: Translating American Management Ideas in the Context of Cold War Finland

2021

The transfer of American management ideas was a central part of the Cold War struggle over ideologies. A key mediator was the European Recovery Program, which conveyed American influences to European management specialists. However, a direct influence was not always possible, as in Finland, which officially blocked assistance because of foreign policy considerations. Still, it was among the first countries to follow Harvard University’s lead in launching advanced management training. We examine how and why the focal actors adopted the American model of executive education, and how they managed to translate foreign ideas persuasively to the local business elite. The translation of executive …

Reasons for qualitative psychologists to share human data

2021

ARTICLE PUBLISHED (OPEN ACCESS) IN BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY. Qualitative data sharing practices in psychology have not developed as rapidly as those in parallel quantitative domains. This is often explained by numerous epistemological, ethical, and pragmatic issues concerning qualitative data types. In this essay, I provide an alternative to the frequently expressed (often reasonable) concerns regarding the sharing of qualitative human data by highlighting three advantages of qualitative data sharing. I argue that sharing qualitative human data is not by default “less ethical,” “riskier,” and “impractical” compared to quantitative data sharing, but in some cases more ethical, le…

false

2021

Vibroarthrography measures joint sounds caused by sliding of the joint surfaces over each other. and can be affected by joint health, load and type of movement. Since both warm-up and muscle fatigue lead to local changes in the knee joint (e.g., temperature increase, lubrication of the joint, muscle activation), these may impact knee joint sounds. Therefore, this study investigates the effects of warm-up and muscle fatiguing exercise on knee joint sounds during an activity of daily living. Seventeen healthy, physically active volunteers (25.7 ± 2 years, 7 males) performed a control and an intervention session with a wash-out phase of one week. The control session consisted of sitting on a c…

Transformative change in social service delivery and social work practice in Latvia during the COVID-19 pandemic

2021

COVID-19 epidemiological security measures – social service delivery disruption and restrictions on direct social contacts – stressed the need for transformations in social work practice. These res...

Some aspects of group actions on manifolds

2021

First Measurement of the Absolute Branching Fraction of Λ→pμ−ν¯μ

2021

The absolute branching fraction of Λ→pμ−ν¯μ is reported for the first time based on an e+e− annihilation sample of 10×109 J/ψ events collected with the BESIII detector at s=3.097 GeV. The branching fraction is determined to be B(Λ→pμ−ν¯μ)=[1.48±0.21(stat)±0.08(syst)]×10−4, which is improved by about 30% in precision over the previous indirect measurements. Combining this result with the world average of B(Λ→pe−ν¯e), we obtain the ratio {[Γ(Λ→pμ−ν¯μ)]/[Γ(Λ→pe−ν¯e)]} to be 0.178±0.028, which agrees with the standard model prediction assuming lepton flavor universality. The asymmetry of the branching fractions of Λ→pμ−ν¯μ and Λ¯→p¯μ+νμ is also determined, and no evidence for CP violation is fo…

Growth, domain structure, and atomic adsorption sites of hBN on the Ni(111) surface

2021

One of the most important functionalities of the atomically thin insulator hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) is its ability to chemically and electronically decouple functional materials from highly reactive surfaces. It is therefore of utmost importance to uncover its structural properties on surfaces on an atomic and mesoscopic length scale. In this paper, we quantify the relative coverages of structurally different domains of a hBN layer on the Ni(111) surface using low-energy electron microscopy and the normal incidence x-ray standing wave technique. We find that hBN nucleates on defect sites of the Ni(111) surface and predominantly grows in two epitaxial domains that are rotated by ${60}^{…

Programme de développement de l’intelligence émotionnelle auprès de pongistes pensionnaires de pôles espoir et France de la Fédération Française de T…

2021

International audience

Financial Literacy Self-Evaluation of Young People in Latvia

2021

Regular and proportionate voluntary savings in private pension funds can become an important part of oldage pensions. However, this can happen if the savings are made for a long period of time. This justifies the target group of the 3rd pension level, which are young people who have started to receive a regular income from their professional activity. One of the most discussed issues in promoting voluntary pension savings is the level of financial literacy. In addition to other motivating factors, such as financial incentives, the level of knowledge of the population about the opportunities to participate in the third pillar of pensions makes them want to build up voluntary savings. Effecti…

Possible Role of Butyrylcholinesterase in Fat Loss and Decreases in Inflammatory Levels in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis after Treatment with Epig…

2021

(1) Background. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is characterised by the loss of muscle throughout the course of the disease, which in many cases is accompanied by obesity and related to inflammation. Nonetheless, consuming epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) and ketone bodies (especially β-hydroxybutyrate (βHB)) produced after metabolising coconut oil, have exhibited anti-inflammatory effects and a decrease in body fat. In addition, butyrylcholinesterase (BuChE), seems to be related to the pathogenesis of the disease associated with inflammation, and serum concentrations have been related to lipid metabolism. Objective. The aim of the study was to determine the role of BuChE in the changes caused after…

Carrier-induced ferromagnetism in two-dimensional magnetically doped semiconductor structures

2021

We show theoretically that the magnetic ions, randomly distributed in a two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor system, can generate a ferromagnetic long-range order via the RKKY interaction. The main physical reason is the discrete (rather than continuous) symmetry of the 2D Ising model of the spin-spin interaction mediated by the spin-orbit coupling of 2D free carriers, which precludes the validity of the Mermin-Wagner theorem. Further, the analysis clearly illustrates the crucial role of the molecular field fluctuations as opposed to the mean field. The developed theoretical model describes the desired magnetization and phase-transition temperature ${T}_{c}$ in terms of a single parameter, na…

Città e organismi territoriali. Verso un approccio olistico alle crisi dell’Antropocene

2021

From the second half of the nineteenth century, urban planning was understood, according to a top-down approach managed by government systems, as a cure for the city affected by the disease, injustice, and violence. This approach, aimed at regulating the behaviour of producers in cities and territories, aims at favouring the strongest economic and social actors to the detriment of the weakest social tissues. Today, the various factors of economic and social crisis, which act on a global scale, have made the picture of inequalities even more complicated and uncertain than in the past. Consequently, the technocratic responses provided by central governments are no longer enough and indeed som…

Support for Prostitution Legalization in Romania: Individual, Household, and Socio-cultural Determinants.

2021

Romania is a major source country of labor migration to other EU countries, being commonly perceived as a source country for sex workers operating in more prosperous economies. However, very little is known about population attitudes in relation to prostitution in Romania. Based on nationally representative data from the Romanian Gender Barometer (2018) survey, we analyzed data on 860 individuals to examine the predictors of policy preferences for legalizing prostitution. We considered individual-level socio-demographics and household-level indicators such as the presence of children and migrants, as well as socio-cultural beliefs and behaviors related to social liberalism and religiosity. …

Families of ICIS with constant total Milnor number

2021

We show that a family of isolated complete intersection singularities (ICIS) with constant total Milnor number has no coalescence of singularities. This extends a well-known result of Gabriélov, Lazzeri and Lê for hypersurfaces. We use A’Campo’s theorem to see that the Lefschetz number of the generic monodromy of the ICIS is zero when the ICIS is singular. We give a pair applications for families of functions on ICIS which extend also some known results for functions on a smooth variety.

Validation of TMMS-24 in Three Spanish-Speaking Countries: Argentina, Ecuador, and Spain

2021

Emotional intelligence (EI) is a fundamental skill related to different aspects of human life, such as psychological well-being or mood states. The present study has a triple objective: first, to explore the psychometric properties of the TMMS-24 in three Spanish-speaking countries (Argentina, Ecuador, and Spain)

Untargeted Metabolomics Investigation on Selenite Reduction to Elemental Selenium by Bacillus mycoides SeITE01

2021

Bacillus mycoides SeITE01 is an environmental isolate that transforms the oxyanion selenite (SeO32−) into the less bioavailable elemental selenium (Se0) forming biogenic selenium nanoparticles (Bio-SeNPs). In the present study, the reduction of sodium selenite (Na2SeO3) by SeITE01 strain and the effect of SeO32− exposure on the bacterial cells was examined through untargeted metabolomics. A time-course approach was used to monitor both cell pellet and cell free spent medium (referred as intracellular and extracellular, respectively) metabolites in SeITE01 cells treated or not with SeO32−. The results show substantial biochemical changes in SeITE01 cells when exposed to SeO32−. The initial u…

Progressions in Learning in the Age of (Mis)Information (PLATO) – Advances in Higher Education Learning Research

2021

In the 21st century, using the Internet for learning has become one of the most crucial factors of students’ study success in higher education (HE). Students use formally approved HE learning mater...

Dall’iper–densificazione all’abbandono: la negazione della qualità della vita nella città moderna

2021

A partire dall’Ottocento si assiste ad un fenomeno che porta le città europee ad ingrandirsi ed espandersi. Non si tratta solo di un’estensione territoriale, ma anche di un incremento della densificazione dovuto agli ingenti spostamenti di popolazione dalle campagne ai centri urbani. Il fenomeno della densificazione non deve essere inteso solo come rapporto tra la superficie e il numero degli abitanti, ma anche come complessità delle relazioni sociali ed è un processo che dalle città si estende alla dimensione planetaria a causa delle tecnologie che hanno trasformato il mondo in un villaggio globale. Dopo aver messo a fuoco le componenti storiche, economiche politiche e sociali che determin…

Sticker Multivalency in Metallo-supramolecular Polymer Networks

2021

Le potentiel symbiotique des microorganismes du sol et les leviers d'intervention

2021

National audience

Reply on RC1

2021

Retrospective screening for SARS-CoV-2 among influenza-like illness hospitalizations: 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 seasons, Valencia region, Spain

2021

Este artículo se encuentra disponible en la siguiente URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/irv.12899 En este artículo de investigación también participan: Juan Mollar-Maseres, Germán Schwarz-Chavarri, Sandra García-Esteban, Joan Puig-Barberà, Javier Díez-Domingo y F. Xavier López-Labrador. On 9 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Influenza Programme (GIP) asked participant sites on the Global Influenza Hospital Surveillance Network (GIHSN) to contribute to data collection concerning severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). We re-analysed 5833 viral RNA archived samples collected prospectively from hospital admissions for influenza-lik…

Adoption of ubiquitous crm for operational sustainability of the firms: Moderating role of technology turbulence

2021

Ubiquitous CRM (UCRM) enhances customer relationship management. It can sense customer needs and demands, to which firms can respond quickly. Therefore, UCRM helps to improve a firm’s agility. There is a growing interest among researchers and practitioners to understand how the adoption of UCRM impacts the sustainability of firms’ operations, but not many studies have investigated this issue. In this context, the aim of this study is to examine how firms’ absorptive capacity and dynamic capability could impact the adoption of UCRM to influence the operational sustainability of the firms and their performance. The study also investigates the moderating role of technology turbulence on the re…

Von Fachsprachen zu Fachkulturen über Fachdiskurse: zum neuen Stellenwert sozio-und kulturlinguistischer Ansätze in der Fachsprachenforschung

2021

International audience; Die traditionelle Fachsprachenforschung war lange Zeit systemorientiert, insbesondere durch ihre starke Fokussierung auf Terminologie und Fachphraseologie. Seit ungefähr zwei Jahrzehnten hat sie ihr Spektrum, vor allem unter dem Einfluss der Interdisziplinarität, erweitert und bemüht sich heute, Einflüsse aus benachbarten Disziplinen wie Sozio-, Varietäten-, Diskurs- oder auch Ethnolinguistik zu integrieren. Dementsprechend stehen nun nicht nur Wörter, Sätze und Texte im Vordergrund, sondern vielmehr Akteure, Sprechergemeinschaften, Diskurse, Diskurstraditionen, usw. im Vordergrund.Der Beitragsvorschlag reiht sich in diese Tendenz ein und möchte an zwei unterschiedli…

From Sequences to Variables : Rethinking the Relationship between Sequences and Outcomes

2021

Sequence analysis is increasingly used in the social sciences for the holistic analysis of life-course and other longitudinal data. The usual approach is to construct sequences, calculate dissimilarities, group similar sequences with cluster analysis, and use cluster membership as a dependent or independent variable in a regression model. This approach may be problematic, as cluster memberships are assumed to be fixed known characteristics of the subjects in subsequent analyses. Furthermore, it is often more reasonable to assume that individual sequences are mixtures of multiple ideal types rather than equal members of some group. Failing to account for uncertain and mixed memberships may l…

Disorder-induced vibrational anomalies from crystalline to amorphous solids

2021

The origin of boson peak -- an excess of density of states over Debye's model in glassy solids -- is still under intense debate, among which some theories and experiments suggest that boson peak is related to van-Hove singularity. Here we show that boson peak and van-Hove singularity are well separated identities, by measuring the vibrational density of states of a two-dimensional granular system, where packings are tuned gradually from a crystalline, to polycrystals, and to an amorphous material. We observe a coexistence of well separated boson peak and van-Hove singularities in polycrystals, in which the van-Hove singularities gradually shift to higher frequency values while broadening th…

Influence of a thin horizontal weak layer on the mechanical behaviour of shallow foundations resting on sand

2021

The presence of minor details of the ground, including soil or rock masses, occurs more frequently than what is normally believed. Thin weak layers, shear bands, and slickensided surfaces can substantially affect the behaviour of foundations, as well as that of other geostructures. In fact, they can affect the failure mechanisms, the ultimate bearing capacity of footings, and the safety factor of the geotechnical system. In this research, numerically conducted through Finite Element Code Plaxis 2D, the influence of a horizontal thin weak layer on the mechanical behaviour of shallow footings was evaluated. The obtained results prove that the weak layer strongly influences both the failure me…

Becoming a Gamer: Performative Construction of Gendered Gamer Identities

2021

This article examines how women construct their gameplay identities in relation to the hegemonic “gamer” discourse. The article is based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with women who occupy central roles in the Finnish gaming industry. We deploy Judith Butler’s theorization of performative identity construction to examine how the women negotiate their identity in relation to the hegemonic gamer discourse, focusing on how they both embrace and resist the hegemonic, masculine constructions of gameplay. The study shows the dynamics surrounding the gamer identity. While women submit to the hegemonic gamer discourse, reproducing the masculine gamer notions to gain recognition as a viabl…

Analysis of the Legal and Regulatory Situation of Uncovered Corporate Bond Issuance in the Baltic States: is there a Common Framework Possible?

2021

While the development of the Baltic corporate bond market is based on the uncovered bond segment, the elaboration of the legislative base has a devoted emphasis on the covered bonds. The shift from a country-focused to the pan-Baltic-focused capital market has been publicly acknowledged by the governments (Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Latvia, 2018) and is in line with the ongoing Capital Markets Union initiative of the European Commission (The High Level Forum on the Capital Markets, 2020). Moreover, a pan-Baltic covered bond legal and regulatory framework has been initiated (Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Lithuania, 2019). The strong demand for the corporate bond segment …

Identification of a discrete neuronal circuit that relays insulin signaling into the brain to regulate glucose homeostasis

2021

Abstract26RFa (QRFP) is a biologically active peptide that regulates glucose homeostasis by acting as an incretin and by increasing insulin sensitivity at the periphery. 26RFa is also produced by a neuronal population localized in the hypothalamus. In the present study, we have investigated whether the 26RFa neurons may be involved in the hypothalamic regulation of glucose homeostasis. Our data indicate that 26RFa, i.c.v. injected, induces a robust antihyperglycemic effect associated with an increase of insulin production by the pancreatic islets. In addition, we found that insulin strongly stimulates 26RFa expression and secretion by the hypothalamus. RNAscope experiments revealed that neu…

Glial Chloride Homeostasis Under Transient Ischemic Stress

2021

High water permeabilities permit rapid adjustments of glial volume upon changes in external and internal osmolarity, and pathologically altered intracellular chloride concentrations ([Cl–]int) and glial cell swelling are often assumed to represent early events in ischemia, infections, or traumatic brain injury. Experimental data for glial [Cl–]int are lacking for most brain regions, under normal as well as under pathological conditions. We measured [Cl–]int in hippocampal and neocortical astrocytes and in hippocampal radial glia-like (RGL) cells in acute murine brain slices using fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy with the chloride-sensitive dye MQAE at room temperature. We observed s…

The ARF GAPs ELMOD1 and ELMOD3 act at the Golgi and Cilia to Regulate Ciliogenesis and Ciliary Protein Traffic

2021

ABSTRACTELMODs are a family of three mammalian paralogs that display GTPase activating protein (GAP) activity towards a uniquely broad array of ADP-ribosylation factor (ARF) family GTPases that includes ARF-like (ARL) proteins. ELMODs are ubiquitously expressed in mammalian tissues, highly conserved across eukaryotes, and ancient in origin, being present in the last eukaryotic common ancestor. We described functions of ELMOD2 in immortalized mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) in the regulation of cell division, microtubules, ciliogenesis, and mitochondrial fusion. Here, using similar strategies with the paralogs ELMOD1 and ELMOD3, we identify novel functions and locations of these cell regu…

Food Tray Sealing Fault Detection in Multi-Spectral Images Using Data Fusion and Deep Learning Techniques

2021

A correct food tray sealing is required to preserve food properties and safety for consumers. Traditional food packaging inspections are made by human operators to detect seal defects. Recent advances in the field of food inspection have been related to the use of hyperspectral imaging technology and automated vision-based inspection systems. A deep learning-based approach for food tray sealing fault detection using hyperspectral images is described. Several pixel-based image fusion methods are proposed to obtain 2D images from the 3D hyperspectral image datacube, which feeds the deep learning (DL) algorithms. Instead of considering all spectral bands in region of interest around a contamin…

Metabolic Profiling and Metabolite Correlation Network Analysis Reveal That Fusarium solani Induces Differential Metabolic Responses in Lotus japonic…

2021

Root fungal endophytes are essential mediators of plant nutrition under mild stress conditions. However, variations in the rhizosphere environment, such as nutrient depletion, could result in a stressful situation for both partners, shifting mutualistic to nonconvenient interactions. Mycorrhizal fungi and dark septate endophytes (DSEs) have demonstrated their ability to facilitate phosphate (Pi) acquisition. However, few studies have investigated other plant–fungal interactions that take place in the root environment with regard to phosphate nutrition. In the present research work, we aimed to analyze the effect of extreme Pi starvation and the fungal endophyte Fusarium solani on the model …

false

2021

Sports-related pain and injury is directly linked to tissue inflammation, thus involving the autonomic nervous system (ANS). In the present experimental study, we disable the sympathetic part of the ANS by applying a stellate ganglion block (SGB) in an experimental model of delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) of the biceps muscle. We included 45 healthy participants (female 11, male 34, age 24.16 ± 6.67 years [range 18–53], BMI 23.22 ± 2.09 kg/m2) who were equally randomized to receive either (i) an SGB prior to exercise-induced DOMS (preventive), (ii) sham intervention in addition to DOMS (control/sham), or (iii) SGB after the induction of DOMS (rehabilitative). The aim of the study was t…