The Value of Sustainable Tourism Destinations in the Eyes of Visitors

The first objective of this study is to analyze visitors’ perceived value of four Italian small areas, that have been granted the European Regional Development Fund’s financing for developing sustainable tourism. The second objective of this work is to investigate the influences of socio-demographic and trip-related characteristics on the tourists’ assessments of the main aspects of such destinations, for detecting variables useful for market segmentation and for designing better-targeted marketing actions. These areas host protected natural reserves, historical heritage, rural or mountain traditions, and ways of life, the conservation of which is combined with local economic growth through the development of green, cultural, and slow tourism. Thus, insights on how visitors’ perceived value is configured there might provide hints useful for upgrading the local tourism supply consistently with the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 for sustainable development and the European Green Deal Strategy. Results confirm that the perceived value is a fundamental construct, as it strongly and positively influences satisfaction, intention to recommend, and destination image. The value of sustainable destinations, as perceived by visitors, is mainly based on the affective benefits that sustainable experiences provide, starting from positive social interactions making tourists feel welcomed. The tourist segment valorizing sustainable destinations is mostly composed of old people and low-income travelers, who seek basic services and facilities, as their satisfaction depends mainly on relaxing immersed in pristine nature

Fraxino Angustifoliae-Ulmetum Glabrae: an original endemic and extremely localized forest from mainland Portugal

The natural occurrence of Ulmus glabra in mainland Portugal has been recently recognized. These punctuated occurrences are peripheral and scattered from the main distribution area in the centre and north of Europe. U. glabra colonizes soils of heavy textures, relatively rich in bases, cool and frequently rocky on steep slopes (e.g. ravines, shadowy canyons), under supra to orotemperate, humid to hyperhumid bioclimates. This combination of ecological factors is rather unusual inmainland Portugal, however during an inventory excursion in the north of Portugal (Serra do Montemuro), in a small canyon ofBalsemão riverwe detected a mesophilous/temporihygrophilous forest dominated by U. glabra and Fraxinus angustifolia. This forest is extremely localized occurring on Ordovician silty schists, under upper mesotemperate to supratemperate hyperhumid bioclimate. It probably corresponds to an interglacial refugium for the species. We ran an edaphoclimatic model within a geographical information system, in order to highlight other possible areas of occurrence for this forests and guide future efforts in finding it in mainland Portugal

An investigation of the self- and inter-incompatibility of the olive cultivars 'Arbequina' and 'Koroneiki' in the Mediterranean climate of Sicily

In this investigation, the self-(in)compatibility of the Spanish cultivar Arbequina and the Greek cultivar Koroneiki was studied for the first time in Sicily, where these low vigour cultivars were recently introduced in super-intensive olive groves. Self- (S.P.) and openpollination (O.P.) tests, observation of fruit set and paternity test of seeds with microsatellite (SSR) markers, were performed to ascertain whether these cultivars were self-fertile and/or inter-compatible. For S.P. tests, branches with flowers at the balloon stage were bagged. For the O.P. tests, flowers were left to pollinate under natural conditions. Fruits from S.P. and O.P. were collected in November and fruit set was calculated. Genomic DNA was extracted from seeds. None of the 'Arbequina' seeds studied in either the S.P. or O.P. tests originated from self-fertilization. In addition, none of these seeds had 'Koroneiki' as the pollen parent. In contrast, 'Koroneiki' was found to be predominantly self-compatible in self-bagged branches, with 70% of the seeds originating from selffertilization. However, the incidence of self-fertilization was low (11%) in seeds from the O.P. test. Low levels of inter-compatibility were found between 'Arbequina' and 'Koroneiki', while many local cultivars were found to be good pollinators. The information presented here will be useful to growers for planning their orchards with suitable pollinators and for our breeding program aiming at obtaining new low vigour olive genotypes. In addition, our results suggested that the recent model of attribution of S-alleles and the prediction of suitable pollinizers for a given variety should be more cautious and always based on controlled crosses and paternity testing of seed from those crosses

Modelling perceived value as a driver of tourism development

This study investigates visitors’ perceived value in little known small areas, at the early stage of tourism development, participating in a European regional development project, for improving the local tourism supply and marketing initiatives, with limited investments. We suggest to employ an Ordinal Structural Equation Model with Pairwise Likelihood estimator to deal with non-normal and missing data. We detect which destinations’ aspects convey the greatest value to tourists, identify market segmentation variables, test the relations of perceived value with satisfaction, intention to recommend and destination image. Results are relevant for policymakers and destination managers, even more in the post-COVID-19 tourism recovery

The first high-density sequence characterized SNP-based linkage map of olive (Olea europaea L. subsp. europaea) developed using genotyping by sequencing

A number of linkage maps have been previously developed in olive; however, these are mostly composed of markers that have not been characterized at the sequence level, supplemented with smaller numbers of microsatellite markers. In this investigation, we sought to develop a saturated linkage mapping resource for olive composed entirely of sequence characterized markers. We employed genotyping by sequencing to develop a map of a F2 population derived from the selfing of the cultivar Koroneiki. The linkage map contained a total of 23 linkage groups comprised of 1,597 tagged SNP markers in 636 mapping bins spanning a genetic distance of 1189.7 cM. An additional 6,658 segregating SNPs were associated with the 23 linkage groups identified but their marker order was not determined in this investigation. The SNP markers sequences were submitted to NCBI database. The linkage map produced will be an invaluable resource for the study of tree habit and vigour traits segregating in the progeny, and will assist to anchor and orientate sequencing scaffolds from future genome sequencing efforts

Constraints on the emission mechanisms of gamma-ray bursts

If the emission of gamma-ray bursts were due to the synchrotron process in the standard internal shock scenario, then the typical observed spectrum should have a slope F(nu) \propto nu^{-1/2}, which strongly conflicts with the much harder spectra observed. This directly follows from the cooling time being much shorter than the dynamical time. Particle re-acceleration, deviations from equipartition, fastly changing magnetic fields and adiabatic losses are found to be inadequate to account for this discrepancy. We also find that in the internal shock scenario the relativistic inverse Compton scattering is always as important as the synchrotron process, and faces the same problems. This indicates that the burst emission is not produced by relativistic electrons emitting synchrotron and inverse Compton radiation.Comment: 5 pages, accepted for publications in MNRAS, pink page

Titanium dioxide nanoparticles temporarily influence the sea urchin immunological state suppressing inflammatory-relate gene transcription and boosting antioxidant metabolic activity.

Abstract Titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2NPs) are revolutionizing biomedicine due to their potential application as diagnostic and therapeutic agents. However, the TiO2NP immune-compatibility remains an open issue, even for ethical reasons. In this work, we investigated the immunomodulatory effects of TiO2NPs in an emergent proxy to human non-mammalian model for in vitro basic and translational immunology: the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus. To highlight on the new insights into the evolutionarily conserved intracellular signaling and metabolism pathways involved in immune-TiO2NP recognition/interaction we applied a wide-ranging approach, including electron microscopy, biochemistry, transcriptomics and metabolomics. Findings highlight that TiO2NPs interact with immune cells suppressing the expression of genes encoding for proteins involved in immune response and apoptosis (e.g. NF-κB, FGFR2, JUN, MAPK14, FAS, VEGFR, Casp8), and boosting the immune cell antioxidant metabolic activity (e.g. pentose phosphate, cysteine-methionine, glycine-serine metabolism pathways). TiO2NP uptake was circumscribed to phagosomes/phagolysosomes, depicting harmless vesicular internalization. Our findings underlined that under TiO2NP-exposure sea urchin innate immune system is able to control inflammatory signaling, excite antioxidant metabolic activity and acquire immunological tolerance, providing a new level of understanding of the TiO2NP immune-compatibility that could be useful for the development in Nano medicines