When the Future is Now: An Experimental Study on the Role of Future Thinking and Affective Forecasting in Accommodation Decision-Making

When people make travel decisions, they consult their imagination, considering how they would feel in the respective travel situation. Both, researchers who examine this phenomenon and practitioners executing it, commonly hold the vague assumption of an evaluative cognitive process that enables tourists to factor such information into their decision-making process. The nature and functioning of such a process is largely unknown. The authors suggest that travelers, often subconsciously, mentally simulate future hotel stays and predict future feelings to inform their decision-making, a process referred to as affective forecasting. Executing an experimental design, the authors show that actively engaging in episodic future thinking to trigger affective forecasting increases travelers’ intentions toward holiday accommodations. This effect is mediated by hotel trust and risk perception, demonstrating that affective forecasting is an effective way for regaining tourists’ trust and reducing their perceived risk during a pandemic. Contributions to theory and practical implications are discussed

A Leg(acy) to Stand on? A Non-Host Resident Perspective of the London 2012 Olympic Legacies

This study extended the temporal and spatial evaluation of mega-event impacts, by investigating residents’ perceptions of the Olympic legacies from a non-host community perspective. The study site was the Borough of Weymouth and Portland in South West England, which hosted the sailing competitions of the 2012 Olympic Games. Cross-sectional data were collected at two post-event intervals in 2013 and 2016. Across the two stages, the overall perceived legacies improved, with the most significant change related to perceived economic legacies and community legacies at the national level. Since residents’ attitudes toward the 2012 Olympic Games influenced their support for future event hosting, a strategic approach to event planning and leveraging is important to engender positive legacies that benefit broader communities than the host city. Future studies are recommended which replicate and extend this research to more fully understand resident support for mega-events

Exploring the constraint profile of winter sports resort tourist segments

Many studies have confirmed the importance of market segmentation both theoretically and empirically. Surprisingly though, no study has so far addressed the issue from the perspective of leisure constraints. Since different consumers face different barriers, we look at participation in leisure activities as an outcome of the negotiation process that winter sports resort tourists go through, to balance between related motives and constraints. This empirical study reports the findings on the applicability of constraining factors in segmenting the tourists who visit winter sports resorts. Utilizing data from 1,391 tourists of winter sports resorts in Greece, five segments were formed based on their constraint, demographic and behavioral profile. Our findings indicate that such segmentation sheds light on factors that could potentially limit the full utilization of the market. To maximize utilization, we suggest customizing marketing to the profile of each distinct winter sports resort tourist segment that emerge

Health related quality of life six months following surgical treatment for secondary peritonitis - Using the EQ-5D questionnaire

Background: To compare health related quality of life (HR-QoL) in patients surgically treated for secondary peritonitis to that of a healthy population. And to prospectively identify factors associated with poorer (lower) HR-QoL. Design: A prospective cohort of secondary peritonitis patients was mailed the EQ-5D and EQ-VAS 6-months following initial laparotomy. Setting: Multicenter study in two academic and seven regional teaching hospitals. Patients: 130 of the 155 eligible patients (84%) responded to the HR-QoL questionnaires. Results: HR-QoL was significantly worse on all dimensions in peritonitis patients than in a healthy reference population. Peritonitis characteristics at initial presentation were not associated with HR-QoL at six months. A more complicated course of the disease leading to longer hospitalization times and patients with an enterostomy had a negative impact on the mobility (p = 0.02), self-care (p &lt; 0.001) and daily activities: (p = 0.01). In a multivariate analysis for the EQ-VAS every doubling of hospital stay decreases the EQ-VAS by 3.8 points (p = 0.015). Morbidity during the six-month follow-up was not found to be predictive for the EQ-5D or EQ-VAS. Conclusion: Six months following initial surgery, patients with secondary peritonitis report more problems in HR-QoL than a healthy reference population. Unfavorable disease characteristics at initial presentation were not predictive for poorer HR-QoL, but a more complicated course of the disease was most predictive of HR-QoL at 6 months.</p

Ensembl 2011

The Ensembl project (http://www.ensembl.org) seeks to enable genomic science by providing high quality, integrated annotation on chordate and selected eukaryotic genomes within a consistent and accessible infrastructure. All supported species include comprehensive, evidence-based gene annotations and a selected set of genomes includes additional data focused on variation, comparative, evolutionary, functional and regulatory annotation. The most advanced resources are provided for key species including human, mouse, rat and zebrafish reflecting the popularity and importance of these species in biomedical research. As of Ensembl release 59 (August 2010), 56 species are supported of which 5 have been added in the past year. Since our previous report, we have substantially improved the presentation and integration of both data of disease relevance and the regulatory state of different cell types

Genome-wide meta-analysis of common variant differences between men and women

The male-to-female sex ratio at birth is constant across world populations with an average of 1.06 (106 male to 100 female live births) for populations of European descent. The sex ratio is considered to be affected by numerous biological and environmental factors and to have a heritable component. The aim of this study was to investigate the presence of common allele modest effects at autosomal and chromosome X variants that could explain the observed sex ratio at birth. We conducted a large-scale genome-wide association scan (GWAS) meta-analysis across 51 studies, comprising overall 114 863 individuals (61 094 women and 53 769 men) of European ancestry and 2 623 828 common (minor allele frequency >0.05) single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Allele frequencies were compared between men and women for directly-typed and imputed variants within each study. Forward-time simulations for unlinked, neutral, autosomal, common loci were performed under the demographic model for European populations with a fixed sex ratio and a random mating scheme to assess the probability of detecting significant allele frequency differences. We do not detect any genome-wide significant (P < 5 × 10−8) common SNP differences between men and women in this well-powered meta-analysis. The simulated data provided results entirely consistent with these findings. This large-scale investigation across ∼115 000 individuals shows no detectable contribution from common genetic variants to the observed skew in the sex ratio. The absence of sex-specific differences is useful in guiding genetic association study design, for example when using mixed controls for sex-biased trait