Guest editorial: Service marketing and the winds of change

" ... it is our pleasure to present the ANZMAC 2019 Journal of Service Theory and Practice’s (JSTP) special section. It comprises a selection of papers initially submitted to the conference’s Services Marketing Track. Our special section is entitled “Service Marketing and the Winds of Change”"

The genetic study of three population microisolates in South Tyrol (MICROS): study design and epidemiological perspectives

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>There is increasing evidence of the important role that small, isolated populations could play in finding genes involved in the etiology of diseases. For historical and political reasons, South Tyrol, the northern most Italian region, includes several villages of small dimensions which remained isolated over the centuries.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The MICROS study is a population-based survey on three small, isolated villages, characterized by: old settlement; small number of founders; high endogamy rates; slow/null population expansion. During the stage-1 (2002/03) genealogical data, screening questionnaires, clinical measurements, blood and urine samples, and DNA were collected for 1175 adult volunteers. Stage-2, concerning trait diagnoses, linkage analysis and association studies, is ongoing. The selection of the traits is being driven by expert clinicians. Preliminary, descriptive statistics were obtained. Power simulations for finding linkage on a quantitative trait locus (QTL) were undertaken.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Starting from participants, genealogies were reconstructed for 50,037 subjects, going back to the early 1600s. Within the last five generations, subjects were clustered in one pedigree of 7049 subjects plus 178 smaller pedigrees (3 to 85 subjects each). A significant probability of familial clustering was assessed for many traits, especially among the cardiovascular, neurological and respiratory traits. Simulations showed that the MICROS pedigree has a substantial power to detect a LOD score ≥ 3 when the QTL specific heritability is ≥ 20%.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The MICROS study is an extensive, ongoing, two-stage survey aimed at characterizing the genetic epidemiology of Mendelian and complex diseases. Our approach, involving different scientific disciplines, is an advantageous strategy to define and to study population isolates. The isolation of the Alpine populations, together with the extensive data collected so far, make the MICROS study a powerful resource for the study of diseases in many fields of medicine. Recent successes and simulation studies give us confidence that our pedigrees can be valuable both in finding new candidates loci and to confirm existing candidate genes.</p

State of balance of the cryosphere

This is the published version, also available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/91RG00784.The current state of balance of the terrestrial ice sheets and glaciers is poorly known. What little data are available suggest that, worldwide, mountain glaciers have receded since about the mid-nineteenth century, with occasional interruptions of the retreat. The interior part of the Greenland ice sheet appears to be thickening or in near equilibrium, but this ice sheet may be thinning in the coastal areas. Estimates of the mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet suggest that it is positive, although the error limits allow for a slightly negative balance. There is an urgent need to greatly improve the current estimates and to monitor the ice sheets continuously for changes in volume and extent. A program based on satellite observation techniques, in cooperation with ground-based surveys repeated over long time periods (many years or decades), appears to be most opportune to achieve this

Feeling ‘nickel and dimed’? Consumer appraisals of ancillary fees

Over the last few years, ancillary fees have become a significant source of revenue for businesses in various service industries. The popular press in the U.S. has used the term “nickel and dimed” as companies charge consumers numerous (optional and otherwise) fees for new and/or those earlier considered as “free.” Despite media-focused controversy, cross- industry research on consumers’ perceptions of ancillary fees has been sparse. Based on attribution and fairness theory, the objective of this paper is to investigate consumer appraisals of being “nickel and dimed” in three consumer service industries (banking, hotels, and airlines). Implications for managers and researchers are discussed