Evaluating and Comparing Montana\u27s Geotravelers

Recently, the state of Montana has taken steps to manage and market its tourism industry under the principles of geotourism. Geotourism is an integrated form of sustainable tourism aimed at maintaining and enhancing the geographical character of a destination by focusing upon multiple aspects of the travel experience (Stokes, Cook, & Drew, 2003). After an initial study on geotourism in Montana (Boley & Nickerson, 2009) confirmed the presence of geotravelers in the Crown of the Continent region, research interest now lies in learning more about the geotouristic tendencies of visitors at the statewide level. The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which nonresident visitors to Montana are geotravelers based on general travel behavior and the importance placed on geotourism attributes while traveling in Montana. A statewide geotourism survey instrument was developed for this purpose. The survey instrument included the travel behavior section from the Geotourism Survey Instrument (GSI) as well as a geotourism attribute importance scale. Prospective respondents for the study were intercepted at gas station, rest areas, and airports throughout the state. Overall, 419 visitors participated in the study from July through September of 2009. Results from the study indicate that statewide visitors can be considered geotravelers. On a scale from 1 to 6 with 1 representing a non-geotraveler and 6 representing a perfect geotraveler score, respondents scored an average of 4.34 on the travel behavior section of the GSI. In addition, high mean scores on the majority of geo-attributes confirms that the statewide respondents in this study are geotravelers. As travelers to the state are in agreement with the principles of geotourism, it is recommended that Montana’s tourism industry continues to manage and market itself as a geotouristic destination

First and Subsequent Visits to Montana: A Behavioral Analysis

Interviews of nonresident repeat vacationers to Montana told the story of their very first visit to Montana. Seventy percent came to Montana and visited either Yellowstone or Glacier National Park. Thirty percent came originally for business, VFR, or passing through. All of these visitors felt the need to return to Montana. This report discusses the first and subsequent visits to Montana. Marketing implications of this study suggest that Yellowstone, specifically, and Glacier secondly, should be used to draw first time visitors to Montana. Other first time visitors are drawn to Montana for specific activities such as fishing, skiing, hunting, backpacking, scenery, and history. These activities need to part of the marketing message. Policy implications of this study suggest that Montana’s tourism industry should be strong supporters of federal lands, especially the national parks since these parks are responsible for about 70 percent of the tourism draw to the state. Without Yellowstone and Glacier, the economic impact of nonresidents to the state would be substantially reduced

The Geotourism Handbook: A Reference and Guide for Montana Businesses

The handbook includes a basic background on geotourism, why it is beneficial to local residents and businesses, and what geotravelers are looking for when visiting the state. The handbook provides links to organizations and businesses who provide assistance and suggestions to the business owner on how to become a geotraveler business. Employees and business owners will be able to grasp the concept and take steps to become part of the comprehensive geo-management and marketing strategy which has been facilitated by the Montana Office of Tourism

Statewide Vacationers to Montana: Are They Geotravelers?

Nonresident vacationers in Montana were surveyed concerning their geotraveler behaviors as well as what was important to them while traveling in Montana. The study found that vacationers do exhibit geotraveler tendencies and can be divided into strong and moderate geotravelers. Strong geotravelers represent 34 percent of vacationers, and they were the youngest, most educated, and most affluent group

Are the times changing enough? Print media trends across four decades

Media analysis is an established area of sport sociology which has been documented by researchers systematically since the 1980s. Some trends have explored the differences between male and female athletes in the print media with significant evidence demonstrating that female athletes do not gain proportional representation and that many strategies employed by journalists traditionally seek to trivialise, sexualise and emphasise the female identity as ‘other’ rather than as athlete. This longitudinal study uniquely documents an analysis of a two week period in the British print media across four decades 1984-2014. This study, grounded in liberal feminism, presents both quantitative and qualitative data and the main quantitative results demonstrate that coverage for female athletes has decreased from 13% to 6.2%. Qualitative themes presented include: relationships, appearance, performance and nationality, the latter emerging as a new theme from the 2014 data set. The results demonstrate that there is little change in amount of representation afforded to female athletes but that there are reporting changes with a greater emphasis on performance and less reliance on appearance. The paper concludes with the position that although sports reporting, in general is on the increase, women athletes are being given less but potentially better coverage

Five endometrial cancer risk loci identified through genome-wide association analysis.

We conducted a meta-analysis of three endometrial cancer genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and two follow-up phases totaling 7,737 endometrial cancer cases and 37,144 controls of European ancestry. Genome-wide imputation and meta-analysis identified five new risk loci of genome-wide significance at likely regulatory regions on chromosomes 13q22.1 (rs11841589, near KLF5), 6q22.31 (rs13328298, in LOC643623 and near HEY2 and NCOA7), 8q24.21 (rs4733613, telomeric to MYC), 15q15.1 (rs937213, in EIF2AK4, near BMF) and 14q32.33 (rs2498796, in AKT1, near SIVA1). We also found a second independent 8q24.21 signal (rs17232730). Functional studies of the 13q22.1 locus showed that rs9600103 (pairwise r(2) = 0.98 with rs11841589) is located in a region of active chromatin that interacts with the KLF5 promoter region. The rs9600103[T] allele that is protective in endometrial cancer suppressed gene expression in vitro, suggesting that regulation of the expression of KLF5, a gene linked to uterine development, is implicated in tumorigenesis. These findings provide enhanced insight into the genetic and biological basis of endometrial cancer.I.T. is supported by Cancer Research UK and the Oxford Comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre. T.H.T.C. is supported by the Rhodes Trust and the Nuffield Department of Medicine. Funding for iCOGS infrastructure came from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement 223175 (HEALTH-F2-2009-223175) (COGS), Cancer Research UK (C1287/A10118, C1287/A10710, C12292/A11174, C1281/A12014, C5047/A8384, C5047/A15007, C5047/A10692 and C8197/A16565), the US National Institutes of Health (R01 CA128978, U19 CA148537, U19 CA148065 and U19 CA148112), the US Department of Defense (W81XWH-10-1-0341), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) for the CIHR Team in Familial Risks of Breast Cancer, the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. SEARCH recruitment was funded by a programme grant from Cancer Research UK (C490/A10124). Stage 1 and stage 2 case genotyping was supported by the NHMRC (552402 and 1031333). Control data were generated by the WTCCC, and a full list of the investigators who contributed to the generation of the data is available from the WTCCC website. We acknowledge use of DNA from the British 1958 Birth Cohort collection, funded by UK Medical Research Council grant G0000934 and Wellcome Trust grant 068545/Z/02; funding for this project was provided by the Wellcome Trust under award 085475. NSECG was supported by the European Union's Framework Programme 7 CHIBCHA grant and Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics Core Grant 090532/Z/09Z, and CORGI was funded by Cancer Research UK. BCAC is funded by Cancer Research UK (C1287/A10118 and C1287/A12014). OCAC is supported by a grant from the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund thanks to donations by the family and friends of Kathryn Sladek Smith (PPD/RPCI.07) and the UK National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centres at the University of Cambridge.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Nature Publishing Group via http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ng.356

The PDF perspective on the tracer-matter connection: Lagrangian bias and non-Poissonian shot noise

International audienceWe study the connection of matter density and its tracers from the probability density function (PDF) perspective. One aspect of this connection is the conditional expectation value 〈δ_tracer|δ_m〉 when averaging both tracer and matter density over some scale. We present a new way to incorporate a Lagrangian bias expansion of this expectation value into standard frameworks for modelling the PDF of density fluctuations and counts-in-cells statistics. Using N-body simulations and mock galaxy catalogues we confirm the accuracy of this expansion and compare it to the more commonly used Eulerian parametrization. For haloes hosting typical luminous red galaxies, the Lagrangian model provides a significantly better description of 〈δ_tracer|δ_m〉 at second order in perturbations. A second aspect of the matter-tracer connection is shot-noise, i.e. the scatter of tracer density around 〈δ_tracer|δ_m〉. It is well known that this noise can be significantly non-Poissonian and we validate the performance of a more general, two-parameter shot-noise model for different tracers and simulations. Both parts of our analysis are meant to pave the way for forthcoming applications to survey data

Common condition indices are no more effective than body mass for estimating fat stores in insectivorous bats

Researchers often use simple body condition indices (BCI) to estimate the relative size of fat stores in bats. Animals determined to be in better condition are assumed to be more successful and have higher fitness. The most common BCI used in bat research are the ratio index (body mass divided by forearm length) or residual index (residuals of body mass-forearm length regression) of size-corrected body mass. We used data from previous and ongoing studies where body composition (fat mass and wet lean mass) was measured by quantitative magnetic resonance to test basic assumptions of BCI, determine whether BCI is an effective proxy of fat mass, and whether other approaches could be more effective. Using data from 1,471 individual measurements on 5 species, we found no support for the underlying assumption that, within species, bats with longer forearms weigh more than bats with shorter forearms. Intraspecific relationships between body mass and forearm length were very weak (R2 \u3c 0.08 in all but one case). BCI was an effective predictor of fat mass, driven entirely by the relationship between fat mass and body mass. With little variation in forearm length, calculation of BCI is essentially equivalent to dividing body mass by a constant. We evaluated alternative approaches including a scaled mass index, using tibia length, or predicting lean mass, but these alternatives were not more effective at predicting fat mass. The best predictor of fat mass in our data set was body mass. We recommend researchers stop using BCI unless it can be demonstrated the approach is effective in the context of their research

Rapid immunodiagnostics of multiple viral infections in an acoustic microstreaming device with serum and saliva samples

There is a growing need to screen multiple infections simultaneously rather than diagnosis of one pathogen at a time in order to improve the quality of healthcare while saving initial screening time and reduce costs. This is the first demonstration of a five-step protein array assay for the multiplexed detection of HIV, HPV and HSV antibodies on an integrated microfluidic system. HIV, HPV and HSV reactive antibodies from both serum and saliva were rapidly detected by acoustic streaming-based mixing and pumping to enable an integrated, rapid and simple-to-use multiplexed assay device. We validated this device with 37 serum and saliva samples to verify reactivity of patient antibodies with HIV, HPV and HSV antigens. Our technology can be adapted with different protein microarrays to detect a variety of other infections, thus demonstrating a powerful platform to detect multiple putative protein biomarkers for rapid detection of infectious diseases. This integrated microfluidic protein array platform is the basis of a potent strategy to delay progression of primary infection, reduce the risk of co-infections and prevent onward transmission of infections by point-of-care detection of multiple pathogens in both serum and oral fluids