The Value of Social Media Advertising Strategies on Tourist Behavior: A Game-Changer for Small Rural Businesses

Nature-based tourism represents a growing sector within the tourism industry, and these interests could help improve the conditions of economically disadvantaged rural communities. The new digital landscape, including Internet and social media usage, represents a critical strategic opportunity to inform, educate and reach these tourism segments. The present research examines the impact of social media advertising on nature-based tourism within rural communities. In this research, we utilize the COBRA (Consumers’ Online Brand-Related Activities) model (Muntinga et al., 2011) of consumer behavior to assess the impact social media advertising plays in generating Pre-Consumption, Consumption, Creation, Contribution, and Engagement in rural business. The results are significant, finding that incorporating digital strategies within rural firms is beneficial. According to our research, the careful placement of a social media advertisement can statistically increase engagement components by more than 50%. In theory, this can increase tourism and economic activity in these rural, economically disadvantaged areas

The Value of Social Media Advertising Strategies on Tourist Behavior: A Game-Changer for Small Rural Businesses

Nature-based tourism represents a growing sector within the tourism industry, and these interests could help improve the conditions of economically disadvantaged rural communities. The new digital landscape, including Internet and social media usage, represents a critical strategic opportunity to inform, educate and reach these tourism segments. The present research examines the impact of social media advertising on nature-based tourism within rural communities. In this research, we utilize the COBRA (Consumers’ Online Brand-Related Activities) model (Muntinga et al., 2011) of consumer behavior to assess the impact social media advertising plays in generating Pre-Consumption, Consumption, Creation, Contribution, and Engagement in rural business. The results are significant, finding that incorporating digital strategies within rural firms is beneficial. According to our research, the careful placement of a social media advertisement can statistically increase engagement components by more than 50%. In theory, this can increase tourism and economic activity in these rural, economically disadvantaged areas

The emerging landscape of health research based on biobanks linked to electronic health records: Existing resources, statistical challenges, and potential opportunities

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154448/1/sim8445_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154448/2/sim8445.pd

Associative and Spatial Relationships in Thesaurus-based Retrieval

The OASIS (Ontologically Augmented Spatial Information System) project explores terminology systems for thematic and spatial access in digital library applications. A prototype implementation uses data from the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, together with the Getty AAT and TGN thesauri. This paper describes its integrated spatial and thematic schema and discusses novel approaches to the application of thesauri in spatial and thematic semantic distance measures. Semantic distance measures can underpin interactive and automatic query expansion techniques by ranking lists of candidate terms. We first illustrate how hierarchical spatial relationships can be used to provide more flexible retrieval for queries incorporating place names in applications employing online gazetteers and geographical thesauri. We then employ a set of experimental scenarios to investigate key issues affecting use of the associative (RT) thesaurus relationships in semantic distance measures. Previous work has noted the potential of RTs in thesaurus search aids but the problem of increased noise in result sets has been emphasised. Specialising RTs allows the possibility of dynamically linking RT type to query context. Results presented in this paper demonstrate the potential for filtering on the context of the RT link and on subtypes of RT relationships

Guidelines; from foe to friend? Comparative interviews with GPs in Norway and Denmark

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>GPs follow clinical guidelines to varying degrees across practices, regions and countries, but a review study of GPs' attitudes to guidelines found no systematic variation in attitudes between studies from different countries. However, earlier qualitative studies on this topic are not necessarily comparable. Hence, there is a lack of empirical comparative studies of GP's attitudes to following clinical guidelines. In this study we reproduce a Norwegian focus group study of GPs' general attitudes to national clinical guidelines in Denmark and conduct a comparative analysis of the findings.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A strategic sample of GP's in Norway (27 GPs) and Denmark (18 GPs) was interviewed about their attitudes to guidelines, and the interviews coded and compared for common themes and differences.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Similarities dominated the comparative material, but the analysis also revealed notable differences in attitudes between Norwegian and the Danish GPs. The most important difference was related to GP's attitudes to clinical guidelines that incorporated economic evaluations. While the Norwegian GPs were sceptical to guidelines that incorporated economic evaluation, the Danish GPs regarded these guidelines as important and legitimate. We suggest that the differences could be explained by the history of guideline development in Norway and Denmark respectively. Whereas government guidelines for rationing services were only newly introduced in Norway, they have been used in Denmark for many years.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Comparative qualitative studies of GPs attitudes to clinical guidelines may reveal cross-national differences relating to the varying histories of guideline development. Further studies are needed to explore this hypothesis.</p

Young and Intermediate-age Distance Indicators

Distance measurements beyond geometrical and semi-geometrical methods, rely mainly on standard candles. As the name suggests, these objects have known luminosities by virtue of their intrinsic proprieties and play a major role in our understanding of modern cosmology. The main caveats associated with standard candles are their absolute calibration, contamination of the sample from other sources and systematic uncertainties. The absolute calibration mainly depends on their chemical composition and age. To understand the impact of these effects on the distance scale, it is essential to develop methods based on different sample of standard candles. Here we review the fundamental properties of young and intermediate-age distance indicators such as Cepheids, Mira variables and Red Clump stars and the recent developments in their application as distance indicators.Comment: Review article, 63 pages (28 figures), Accepted for publication in Space Science Reviews (Chapter 3 of a special collection resulting from the May 2016 ISSI-BJ workshop on Astronomical Distance Determination in the Space Age

Exonic DNA Sequencing of ERBB4 in Bipolar Disorder

The Neuregulin-ErbB4 pathway plays a crucial role in brain development and constitutes one of the most biologically plausible signaling pathways implicated in schizophrenia and, to a lesser extent, in bipolar disorder (BP). However, recent genome-wide association analyses have not provided evidence for common variation in NRG1 or ERBB4 influencing schizophrenia or bipolar disorder susceptibility. In this study, we investigate the role of rare coding variants in ERBB4 in BP cases with mood-incongruent psychotic features, a form of BP with arguably the greatest phenotypic overlap with schizophrenia. We performed Sanger sequencing of all 28 exons in ERBB4, as well as part of the promoter and part of the 3′UTR sequence, hypothesizing that rare deleterious variants would be found in 188 cases with mood-incongruent psychosis from the GAIN BP study. We found 42 variants, of which 16 were novel, although none were non-synonymous or clearly deleterious. One of the novel variants, present in 11.2% of cases, is located next to an alternative stop codon, which is associated with a shortened transcript of ERBB4 that is not translated. We genotyped this variant in the GAIN BP case-control samples and found a marginally significant association with mood-incongruent psychotic BP compared with controls (additive model: OR = 1.64, P-value = 0.055; dominant model: OR = 1.73. P-value = 0.039). In conclusion, we found no rare variants of clear deleterious effect, but did uncover a modestly associated novel variant that could affect alternative splicing of ERBB4. However, the modest sample size in this study cannot definitively rule out a role for rare variants in bipolar disorder and studies with larger sample sizes are needed to confirm the observed association

Shedding light on the ‘dark side’ of phylogenetic comparative methods

ORCID: 0000-0003-4919-8655© 2016 The Authors. Methods in Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The attached file is the published version of the article

A chemical survey of exoplanets with ARIEL

Thousands of exoplanets have now been discovered with a huge range of masses, sizes and orbits: from rocky Earth-like planets to large gas giants grazing the surface of their host star. However, the essential nature of these exoplanets remains largely mysterious: there is no known, discernible pattern linking the presence, size, or orbital parameters of a planet to the nature of its parent star. We have little idea whether the chemistry of a planet is linked to its formation environment, or whether the type of host star drives the physics and chemistry of the planet’s birth, and evolution. ARIEL was conceived to observe a large number (~1000) of transiting planets for statistical understanding, including gas giants, Neptunes, super-Earths and Earth-size planets around a range of host star types using transit spectroscopy in the 1.25–7.8 μm spectral range and multiple narrow-band photometry in the optical. ARIEL will focus on warm and hot planets to take advantage of their well-mixed atmospheres which should show minimal condensation and sequestration of high-Z materials compared to their colder Solar System siblings. Said warm and hot atmospheres are expected to be more representative of the planetary bulk composition. Observations of these warm/hot exoplanets, and in particular of their elemental composition (especially C, O, N, S, Si), will allow the understanding of the early stages of planetary and atmospheric formation during the nebular phase and the following few million years. ARIEL will thus provide a representative picture of the chemical nature of the exoplanets and relate this directly to the type and chemical environment of the host star. ARIEL is designed as a dedicated survey mission for combined-light spectroscopy, capable of observing a large and well-defined planet sample within its 4-year mission lifetime. Transit, eclipse and phase-curve spectroscopy methods, whereby the signal from the star and planet are differentiated using knowledge of the planetary ephemerides, allow us to measure atmospheric signals from the planet at levels of 10–100 part per million (ppm) relative to the star and, given the bright nature of targets, also allows more sophisticated techniques, such as eclipse mapping, to give a deeper insight into the nature of the atmosphere. These types of observations require a stable payload and satellite platform with broad, instantaneous wavelength coverage to detect many molecular species, probe the thermal structure, identify clouds and monitor the stellar activity. The wavelength range proposed covers all the expected major atmospheric gases from e.g. H2O, CO2, CH4 NH3, HCN, H2S through to the more exotic metallic compounds, such as TiO, VO, and condensed species. Simulations of ARIEL performance in conducting exoplanet surveys have been performed – using conservative estimates of mission performance and a full model of all significant noise sources in the measurement – using a list of potential ARIEL targets that incorporates the latest available exoplanet statistics. The conclusion at the end of the Phase A study, is that ARIEL – in line with the stated mission objectives – will be able to observe about 1000 exoplanets depending on the details of the adopted survey strategy, thus confirming the feasibility of the main science objectives.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio