The impact of weather and climate on tourist demand: the case of Chester Zoo

Warmer, drier summer weather brought by global climate change should encourage use of outdoor leisure facilities. Yet few studies assess the effect of current weather and climate conditions upon visits to leisure attractions. Statistical time series models are used to analyse the short-run impact of weather and the long-run impact of climate upon visits to Chester Zoo, England. Temperature has a non-linear effect on visit levels. Daily visits rise with temperature up to a threshold around 21 °C. Thereafter visitor numbers drop on hot days. Visits are redistributed over time in accordance with the weather. Visitors discouraged by rainy weather one day turn up later when the weather improves. Otherwise, visitor behaviour is mainly influenced by the annual rhythm of the year and the pattern of public and school holidays. Out-of-sample tests suggest almost 70 % of the variation in visit levels can be explained by the combination of weather and time of year. Climate change is likely to redistribute visitors across the year. But it does not follow that “summer” visitor behaviour will transfer to spring and autumn. Day length, existing patterns of human activity and availability of leisure time constrain visit levels regardless of better weather. The main implication of potential climate change is the need for physical adaptation of the tourist environment as temperatures rise and rainfall diminishes in summer

Scale-free correlations in the dynamics of a small (N ~ 10000) cortical network

The advent of novel opto-genetics technology allows the recording of brain activity with a resolution never seen before. The characterisation of these very large data sets offers new challenges as well as unique theory-testing opportunities. Here we discuss whether the spatial and temporal correlation of the collective activity of thousands of neurons are tangled as predicted by the theory of critical phenomena. The analysis shows that both, the correlation length $\xi$ and the correlation time $\tau$ scale as predicted as a function of the system size. With some peculiarities that we discuss, the analysis uncovers new evidence consistent with the view that the large scale brain cortical dynamics corresponds to critical phenomena.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Living on a flammable planet: interdisciplinary, cross-scalar and varied cultural lessons, prospects and challenges: Table 1.

Living with fire is a challenge for human communities because they are influenced by socio-economic, political, ecological and climatic processes at various spatial and temporal scales. Over the course of 2 days, the authors discussed how communities could live with fire challenges at local, national and transnational scales. Exploiting our diverse, international and interdisciplinary expertise, we outline generalizable properties of fire-adaptive communities in varied settings where cultural knowledge of fire is rich and diverse. At the national scale, we discussed policy and management challenges for countries that have diminishing fire knowledge, but for whom global climate change will bring new fire problems. Finally, we assessed major fire challenges that transcend national political boundaries, including the health burden of smoke plumes and the climate consequences of wildfires. It is clear that to best address the broad range of fire problems, a holistic wildfire scholarship must develop common agreement in working terms and build across disciplines. We must also communicate our understanding of fire and its importance to the media, politicians and the general public. This article is part of the themed issue ‘The interaction of fire and mankind’

Colombian consensus recommendations for diagnosis, management and treatment of the infection by SARS-COV-2/ COVID-19 in health care facilities - Recommendations from expert´s group based and informed on evidence

La Asociación Colombiana de Infectología (ACIN) y el Instituto de Evaluación de Nuevas Tecnologías de la Salud (IETS) conformó un grupo de trabajo para desarrollar recomendaciones informadas y basadas en evidencia, por consenso de expertos para la atención, diagnóstico y manejo de casos de Covid 19. Estas guías son dirigidas al personal de salud y buscar dar recomendaciones en los ámbitos de la atención en salud de los casos de Covid-19, en el contexto nacional de Colombia