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

Microemulsion synthesis of copper oxide nanorod-like structures

Copper oxide (CuO) nanorod-like structures made of spherical nanocrystals were synthesized at moderate temperature (80◦C) starting from CuCl2·2H2O crystals in a water/n-heptane microemulsion stabilised by the nonionic Brij-30 surfactant. Whole Powder Pattern Modelling of the X-ray diffraction pattern shows absence of linear and planar defects with crystalline domains in the range of 4–8 nm. A linear correlation between the average size of the particles and the quantity of water in the system was observed: all synthesised specimens show a large blue shift of the energy bandgap (up to 2.7 eV versus 1.2 eV of bulk CuO) resulting from quantum confinement effects. The mechanism of growth of the spherical nanoparticles into nanorod-like structures has been elucidated.http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gmcl2

Inhibition of herpes simplex-1 virus replication by 25-hydroxycholesterol and 27-hydroxycholesterol

Oxysterols are known pleiotropic molecules whose antiviral action has been recently discovered. Here reported is the activity of a panel of oxysterols against HSV-1 with the identification of a new mechanism of action. A marked antiviral activity not only of 25HC but also of 27HC against HSV-1 was observed either if the oxysterols were added before or after infection, suggesting an activity unrelated to the viral entry inhibition as proposed by previous literature. Therefore, the relation between the pro-inflammatory activity of oxysterols and the activation of NF-kB and IL-6 induced by HSV-1 in the host cell was investigated. Indeed, cell pre-incubation with oxysterols further potentiated IL-6 production as induced by HSV-1 infection with a consequent boost of the interleukin's total cell secretion. Further, a direct antiviral effect of IL-6 administration to HSV-1 infected cells was demonstrated, disclosing an additional mechanism of antiviral action by both 25HC and 27HC. Keywords: Oxysterols, 27-hydroxycholesterol, 25-hydroxycholesterol, Herpes simplex-1, Viral inhibition, Interleukin-

Daily very low UV dose exposure enhances adaptive immunity, compared with a single high‐dose exposure. Consequences for the control of a skin infection

Ultraviolet radiation (UVr) promotes several well‐known molecular changes, which may ultimately impact on health. Some of these effects are detrimental, like inflammation, carcinogenesis and immunosuppression. On the other hand, UVr also promotes vitamin D synthesis and other beneficial effects. We recently demonstrated that exposure to very low doses of UVr on four consecutive days [repetitive low UVd (rlUVd)] does not promote an inflammatory state, nor the recruitment of neutrophils or lymphocytes, as the exposure to a single high UV dose (shUVd) does. Moreover, rlUVd reinforce the epithelium by increasing antimicrobial peptides transcription and epidermal thickness. The aim of this study was to evaluate the adaptive immune response after shUVd and rlUVd, determining T‐cell and B‐cell responses. Finally, we challenged animals exposed to both irradiation procedures with Staphylococcus aureus to study the overall effects of both innate and adaptive immunity during a cutaneous infection. We observed, as expected, a marked suppression of T‐cell and B‐cell responses after exposure to an shUVd but a novel and significant increase in both specific responses after exposure to rlUVd. However, the control of the cutaneous S. aureus infection was defective in this last group, suggesting that responses against pathogens cannot be ruled out from isolated stimuli.Fil: Cela, Eliana Maiten. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Departamento de Microbiología, Inmunología y Biotecnología. Cátedra de Inmunología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Estudios de la Inmunidad Humoral Prof. Ricardo A. Margni. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Instituto de Estudios de la Inmunidad Humoral Prof. Ricardo A. Margni; ArgentinaFil: Gonzalez, Cintia Daniela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Investigaciones en Microbiología y Parasitología Médica. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Instituto de Investigaciones en Microbiología y Parasitología Médica; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Departamento de Microbiología; ArgentinaFil: Friedrich, Adrián David. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Departamento de Microbiología, Inmunología y Biotecnología. Cátedra de Inmunología; ArgentinaFil: Ledo, Camila. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Departamento de Microbiología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Investigaciones en Microbiología y Parasitología Médica. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Instituto de Investigaciones en Microbiología y Parasitología Médica; ArgentinaFil: Paz, Mariela Laura. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Departamento de Microbiología, Inmunología y Biotecnología. Cátedra de Inmunología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Estudios de la Inmunidad Humoral Prof. Ricardo A. Margni. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Instituto de Estudios de la Inmunidad Humoral Prof. Ricardo A. Margni; ArgentinaFil: Leoni, Juliana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Estudios de la Inmunidad Humoral Prof. Ricardo A. Margni. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Instituto de Estudios de la Inmunidad Humoral Prof. Ricardo A. Margni; ArgentinaFil: Gomez, Marisa Ines. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Departamento de Microbiología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Investigaciones en Microbiología y Parasitología Médica. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Instituto de Investigaciones en Microbiología y Parasitología Médica; ArgentinaFil: Gonzalez Maglio, Daniel Horacio. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Departamento de Microbiología, Inmunología y Biotecnología. Cátedra de Inmunología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Estudios de la Inmunidad Humoral Prof. Ricardo A. Margni. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Instituto de Estudios de la Inmunidad Humoral Prof. Ricardo A. Margni; Argentin

Open Government Data: Fostering Innovation

The provision of public information contributes to the enrichment and enhancement of the data produced by the government as part of its activities, and the transformation of heterogeneous data into information and knowledge. This process of opening changes the operational mode of public administrations, leveraging the data management, encouraging savings and especially in promoting the development of services in subsidiary and collaborative form between public and private entities. The demand for new services also promotes renewed entrepreneurship centred on responding to new social and territorial needs through new technologies. In this sense we speak of Open Data as an enabling infrastructure for the development of innovation and as an instrument to the development and diffusion of Innovation and Communications Technology (ICT) in the public system as well as creating space for innovation for businesses, particularly SMEs, based on the exploitation of information assets of the territory. The Open Data Trentino Project has initiated and fosters the process of opening of public information and develops as a natural consequence of this process of openness, the creation of innovative services for and with the citizens. In this paper we present how our project acts on long-chain, from raw data till reusable meaningful and scalable knowledge base that leads to the production of data reuse through the implementation of services that will enhance and transform the data into information capable of responding to specific questions efficiency and innovation