The effect of natural disasters on tourism demand, supply and labour markets: Evidence from La Palma volcano eruption

This paper studies the short-term impact of a volcano eruption on tourism demand, supply, and hospitality labour in La Palma (Spain), an island economy that is highly dependent on the tourism sector. Based on a monthly panel dataset at the touristic zone level, we use Seemingly-Unrelated Difference-in-Differences (SUR-DiD) to identify the distinct responses of these three outcomes during and post eruption. Potential spillover effects on nearby islands are also examined. We find that, in La Palma Island, the volcano produced significant but asymmetrical drops in international demand, number of hotels and hospitality workers both during and after the eruption

Noisy signals: do ratings’ volatility depend on the length of the consumption span?

This paper investigates the informational content of online reviews. For the case of hotels, we model how the length of the stay shapes the variance of review scores. Grounded on violations of temporal monotonicity, errors in recall and hedonic adaptation theories, we first present a characterization of how the consumption span affects the non-deterministic component of consumer satisfaction. Next, we conduct an empirical analysis using more than 525,000 individual reviews from Booking.com in 5 major European cities. Under a heteroskedastic framework, we document that individual ratings’ volatility decreases with the length of the stay. This implies that online ratings from short stayers (short consumption episodes) are noisy signals of the underlying hotel quality. Furthermore, we show that greater volatility in hotel ratings translates into a lower share of useful reviews for subsequent consumers. Our findings offer relevant insights for platform design operators about the sources of ratings’ volatility and how this affects social learning

Intra-household bargaining for a joint vacation

Taking a holiday trip is a common couple-based leisure activity in which both partners tend to be actively involved. This paper studies the intra-household bargaining for the choice of a vacation destination within couples. We conduct a discrete choice experiment in which we elicit both individual and couple preferences for different hypothetical travel portfolios in a two-stage experimental design. The couple choices are modelled as a function of males' and females' individual preferences, allowing for different bargaining weights for each characteristic of the holiday trip. Therefore, we assess partners’ bargaining power (influence) in the couple choices conditional on individual preferences. We find that although males have a more influential role overall, there seems to be a gender specialization in that females decide on the type of accommodation and males focus on the trip cost.This work was financially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport (FPU 16/00031). The authors also acknowledge financial support of MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 through grants ECO2017-82111-R, MCI-21-PID2020-115183RB-C21 and PID2020-113650RB-I00, the Basque Government through grant IT1359-19 (UPV/EHU Econometrics Research Group) and FEDER “Una manera de hacer Europa”/Unión Europea “NextGenerationEU”/PRTR

Bioinformatics Discovery of Vertebrate Cathelicidins from the Mining of Available Genomes

Due to the worrying increase in antimicrobial resistance to conventional antibiotics, the search for alternatives is becoming increasingly important. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), originating from natural resources, have been recognised as a novel class of antibiotics. An advantage of peptides over antibiotics is that the resistance is more difficult to attain than for conventional antibiotics. With the increasing number of genomes sequenced and available in the public domain, one alternative methodology to obtain novel AMPs is to analyse genes and proteins from genomic databases to predict and identify amino acid sequences that share similarities and molecular features with natural bioactive antimicrobial peptides. In this chapter, we summarise some of our recent results on the production of antimicrobial peptides, particularly, how we managed to identify a family of antimicrobial peptides: cathelicidins, through bioinformatics tools, from the genomes of two lower vertebrates (a reptile and a bird) available in public databases. We hope that our preliminary investigation with these novel peptides could be useful for the design of future strategies that pursue the production of antimicrobial peptides through biotechnology

The use of chitosan oligosaccharide to improve artemisinin yield in well-watered and drought-stressed plants

IntroductionArtemisinin is a secondary metabolite well-known for its use in the treatment of malaria. It also displays other antimicrobial activities which further increase its interest. At present, Artemisia annua is the sole commercial source of the substance, and its production is limited, leading to a global deficit in supply. Furthermore, the cultivation of A. annua is being threatened by climate change. Specifically, drought stress is a major concern for plant development and productivity, but, on the other hand, moderate stress levels can elicit the production of secondary metabolites, with a putative synergistic interaction with elicitors such as chitosan oligosaccharides (COS). Therefore, the development of strategies to increase yield has prompted much interest. With this aim, the effects on artemisinin production under drought stress and treatment with COS, as well as physiological changes in A. annua plants are presented in this study.MethodsPlants were separated into two groups, well-watered (WW) and drought-stressed (DS) plants, and in each group, four concentrations of COS were applied (0, 50,100 and 200 mg•L-1). Afterwards, water stress was imposed by withholding irrigation for 9 days.ResultsTherefore, when A. annua was well watered, COS did not improve plant growth, and the upregulation of antioxidant enzymes hindered the production of artemisinin. On the other hand, during drought stress, COS treatment did not alleviate the decline in growth at any concentration tested. However, higher doses improved the water status since leaf water potential (YL) improved by 50.64% and relative water content (RWC) by 33.84% compared to DS plants without COS treatment. Moreover, the combination of COS and drought stress caused damage to the plant’s antioxidant enzyme defence, particularly APX and GR, and reduced the amount of phenols and flavonoids. This resulted in increased ROS production and enhanced artemisinin content by 34.40% in DS plants treated with 200 mg•L-1 COS, compared to control plants.ConclusionThese findings underscore the critical role of ROS in artemisinin biosynthesis and suggest that COS treatment may boost artemisinin yield in crop production, even under drought conditions

Public support for lockdown policies

Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 disease, many countries in the world have been forced to impose non-pharmaceutical policy interventions such as lockdowns to stop community transmission. Although justified by public health reasons, this constitutes a great deprivation of freedom. I investigate public support for the lockdown policy in Spain, one of the countries most affected by the pandemic and with the strictest lockdown in Europe. Based on survey data collected during the first weeks of April and May 2020, Ianalyse how public support for the lockdown relates to the number of confirmed cases in the province of residence, personal institutional trust and concern about the severity of coronavirus. I find that public approval of the lockdown significantly relates to the evolution of COVID cases, institutional trust, political ideology and personal economic situation

La hidratación del deportista

El objetivo de este estudio es supervisar los aspectos generales que hay que tener en cuenta a la hora de reponer líquidos en un deportista, a fin de que su rendimiento no se vea limitado por una mala hidratación. Las concentraciones ideales de hidratos de carbono, la temperatura a la que deben ingerirse los líquidos, y demás aspectos fundamentales de diferentes bebidas son analizados en función de literatura consultada

La suplementación con creatina en el deporte y su relación con el rendimieto deportivo.

En este trabajo nos hemos propuesto analizar el uso de creatina en el deporte y su relación con el rendimiento deportivo. En primer lugar se exponen las características y funciones metabólicas de este compuesto y su relación con el rendimiento deportivo. En segundo lugar se hace una revisión de estudios recientes en los que se analizan los efectos de la suplementación con creatina. Se constata que la creatina aumenta el rendimiento deportivo en acciones de corta duración en las que el metabolismo anaeróbico aláctico es prioritario, sin bien son necesarias futuras investigaciones que demuestren mejoras del rendimiento físico en diferentes contextos y que su uso continuado no provoque alteraciones negativas para la salud de los individuos