An analysis of culture as a tourism commodity

The notion of culture has been the object of multidisciplinary studies attempting, with difficulty, to define this polyhedral social concept expressed in symbolic representations. Culture has a significant role in tourism functioning as an internationally promoted commodity, a role that has often been the subject of debates among academics concerned about the vilification of culture’s primary social role. This article analyzes the complexity of the concept of culture in combination with the characteristics of a product, as conceived in marketing, focusing on the levels of product theory from Kotler and Armstrong. The research is based on secondary data analysis in the discussion. This incorporates culture’s symbolic representations, its tangibility and intangibility, its multiplicity of interpretations and meanings, the ambiguous status of ownership by the buyer and its versatility to satisfy consumers’ needs while functioning as a unit of identification for a society. As a product culture presents a unique configuration with a construct of four different dimensions highlighting the need for special consideration in culture’s marketing process. The research could also be considered as a platform for future investigations on the subject and as supporting material in education

Statistical Description of Rotating Kaluza-Klein Black Holes

We extend the recent microscopic analysis of extremal dyonic Kaluza-Klein (D0-D6) black holes to cover the regime of fast rotation in addition to slow rotation. Fastly rotating black holes, in contrast to slow ones, have non-zero angular velocity and possess ergospheres, so they are more similar to the Kerr black hole. The D-brane model reproduces their entropy exactly, but the mass gets renormalized from weak to strong coupling, in agreement with recent macroscopic analyses of rotating attractors. We discuss how the existence of the ergosphere and superradiance manifest themselves within the microscopic model. In addition, we show in full generality how Myers-Perry black holes are obtained as a limit of Kaluza-Klein black holes, and discuss the slow and fast rotation regimes and superradiance in this context.Comment: 25 pages. v2: minor correction + ref adde

Simultaneous measurement of the microscopic dynamics and the mesoscopic displacement field in soft systems by speckle imaging

The constituents of soft matter systems such as colloidal suspensions, emulsions, polymers, and biological tissues undergo microscopic random motion, due to thermal energy. They may also experience drift motion correlated over mesoscopic or macroscopic length scales, \textit{e.g.} in response to an internal or applied stress or during flow. We present a new method for measuring simultaneously both the microscopic motion and the mesoscopic or macroscopic drift. The method is based on the analysis of spatio-temporal cross-correlation functions of speckle patterns taken in an imaging configuration. The method is tested on a translating Brownian suspension and a sheared colloidal glass

The Application of Business Analytics for Performance Management: The Results of Some Exploratory Case Studies

This study investigates Business Analytics and Big Data applications in the domain of Finance function and controller activities: these applications are often referred to as “Business Performance Analytics” (BPA). Business Performance Analytics (BPA) has been recognized as having a significant impact on a company’s performance and can serve as a sustainable competitive advantage. However, there are limited studies that directly address this topic, often focusing on specific techniques and applications. The purpose of this work is to contribute towards bridging this gap by providing a managerial perspective on how companies implement BPA systems. This involves analyzing the key components of BPA, identifying the improvements it brings to controller activities, and how a company can benefit from implementing BPA. To attain the objectives, a qualitative approach was selected due to the investigative nature of the research. The initial step was to construct a theoretical framework, followed by seeking endorsement from experts and practitioners in the field. Finally, the theoretical framework was used to conduct eight exploratory case studies

Paesaggi costieri modificati da mezzi nautici a fine vita

Guardare dei luoghi prodotti da eterogenee mescolanze di elementi di varia natura può attivare dei processi trasformativi dei paesaggi in cui è possibile plasmare e riusare ciò che si trova. La ricerca sui Beni galleggianti a fine del ciclo di vita nei paesaggi costieri indaga il fenomeno dell’abbandono dei mezzi nautici alla fine del ciclo di vita come forma apparente che muta in altra forma e il paesaggio contaminato come deposito dell’energia di una natura persistente. Paesaggi fluviali, marittimi o lacustri accolgono l’azione umana per ciò che in essi lascia, vale a dire resti di natanti arenati sulle coste o accatastati in luoghi di fortuna; stampi di costruzione dismessi; relitti faticosamente censibili di imbarcazioni affondate per avaria o deliberatamente inabissate in quanto ritenute desuete. L’insieme delle imbarcazioni alla fine del ciclo di vita assume la forma di un patrimonio nautico dell'abbandono che occupa porzioni di litorali, depaupera gli ecosistemi di terra e d'acqua e altera la percezione del paesaggio preesistente. Il riconoscimento del fragile stato di quei particolari ambiti terrestri ed acquatici, vitali e limitati, è fondamentale per la loro sopravvivenza, e non solo. Preludio per nuovi stadi evolutivi, i paesaggi costieri contaminati si possono trasformare in metafore poetiche di un dialogo rinnovato fra uomo e natura, luoghi d’innovazione e di possibilità in grado di autogenerarsi e garantire nel tempo una fruibilità condivisa.Looking at places produced by heterogeneous mixtures is possible activate the transformative processes of the landscapes where to reuse what you find. The research on "floating at the end of the life cycle in coastal landscapes" explores the phenomenon of abandoned boat at the end of life as a form apparent, and the polluted landscape as the storage of persistent nature. Landscapes of river, sea or lake the accommodate human actions: the remains of boats stranded on the coasts or stacked; molds abandoned; wrecks of sunken ships to deliberately damage or sunken as they are considered obsolete. The set of vessels at the end of the life cycle takes the form of a abandoned nautical heritage which occupies portions of the coasts, depletes ecosystems of land and water and alters the perception of the landscape preexisting. The recognition of the fragile state of those particular areas of land and water, vitals and limited, it is essential for their survival, and more. Prelude to new developmental stages, the coastal landscape hybridized can transformed into poetic metaphors of a renewed dialogue between man and nature, place of innovation and opportunity that can self-generate and ensure the usability.Peer Reviewe

A new mixed-integer modeling approach for capacity-constrained continuous-time scheduling problems

Nowadays, scheduling and resource management are increasingly important issues for organizations. Indeed, they do not only constitute an underlying necessity to make things work properly within the companies, but are and will always be more critical means to reduce costs and get competitive advantage in the market. Different approaches have been typically employed for these problems during the years. Among the others, linear programming techniques represent a valid tool that, despite applicable only to instances of limited dimension, offers an extremely flexible modeling opportunity, able to produce either optimal or approximate solutions of certified quality. In this spirit, the definition of suitable indicator variables and the use of particular constraints are proposed in the present work, with the aim of providing a useful basis for different mathematical models, taking into account scarce resources and other potential limitations. More in detail, a very well-known problem from the literature, the Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem, is investigated, and a new mixed-integer linear formulation is introduced, which treats time as a continuous variable. The considered model presents several advantages from the computational point of view, that are deeply studied and compared with those of one of the best methods recently developed in the same field. Extensive experiments reveal the good performances achieved by the proposed formulation over all the KPIs included in the analysis, thus motivating further applications to derived problems, such as the workforce planning and scheduling framework presented at the end of this dissertation

Projecte de física: Houston, tenim uns problemes

Houston tenim uns problemes és un projecte col·laboratiu en què alumnesde 1r de batxillerat del Jesuïtes Casp de Barcelona han d’inventar problemesde física i compartir-los en un blog

A simheuristic algorithm for solving an integrated resource allocation and scheduling problem

Modern companies have to face challenging configuration issues in their manufacturing chains. One of these challenges is related to the integrated allocation and scheduling of resources such as machines, workers, energy, etc. These integrated optimization problems are difficult to solve, but they can be even more challenging when real-life uncertainty is considered. In this paper, we study an integrated allocation and scheduling optimization problem with stochastic processing times. A simheuristic algorithm is proposed in order to effectively solve this integrated and stochastic problem. Our approach relies on the hybridization of simulation with a metaheuristic to deal with the stochastic version of the allocation-scheduling problem. A series of numerical experiments contribute to illustrate the efficiency of our methodology as well as their potential applications in real-life enterprise settings

Phytocannabinoids and endocannabinoids: different in nature

Abstract Cannabis is one of the earliest cultivated plants, of which Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica are the most widespread and best characterized species. Their extracts contain (phyto)cannabinoids (pCBs) of therapeutic interest, such as Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol and cannabidiol, along with many other compounds, so that there is no "one cannabis" but several mixtures even from the same plant. This complexity is mirrored, or even exceeded, by the complexity of the molecular targets that pCBs find in our body, most of which belong to the so-called "endocannabinoid (eCB) system". Here, we describe the major pCBs and the main components of the eCB system to appreciate their differences and mutual interactions, as well as the potential of using pCB/eCB-based drugs as novel therapeutics to treat human diseases, both in the central nervous system and at the periphery. Moreover, we address the question of the evolution of pCBs and eCBs, showing that the latter compounds were the first to appear in nature, and that the former substances took a few million years to mimic the three-dimensional structures of the latter, and hence their biological activity in our body. Graphic abstrac