Do Blue Flag promotions influence tourists’ willingness to pay a price premium for coastal destinations?

The Blue Flag is a popular eco-label in tourism. This study aims at examining the effectiveness of Blue Flag promotion on tourists' willingness to pay a price premium to coastal destinations via two online experiments. Study 1 shows (n = 152) that the Blue Flag stimulates higher willingness to pay a price premium for coastal destinations directly as well as indirectly through self-congruity and destination brand identification. Study 2 (n = 160) used a new sample to enhance external validity and generalizability of the Study 1 findings. Study 2 shows that destination brand quality and destination brand identification serially mediate the effect of Blue Flag promotions on the tourist's willingness to pay a price premium. The findings suggest that destination managers should deploy the Blue Flag Logo in destination promotions to enhance self-congruence, destination brand identification, perceived destination quality, and the tourist's willingness to pay a price premium

Comment on "Evidence for Quantized Displacement in Macroscopic Nanomechanical Oscillators"

In a recent Letter, Gaidarzhy et al. [1] claim to have observed evidence for "quantized displacements" of a high-order mode of a nanomechanical oscillator. We contend that the methods employed by the authors are unsuitable in principle to observe such states for any harmonic mode

The Current Perspectives of Stem Cell Therapy in Orthopedic Surgery

Context: Musculoskeletal injuries may be painful, troublesome, life limiting and also one of the global health problems. There has been considerable amount of interest during the past two decades to stem cells and tissue engineering techniques in orthopedic surgery, especially to manage special and compulsive injuries within the musculoskeletal system. Evidence Acquisition: The aim of this study was to present a literature review regarding the most recent progress in stem cell procedures and current indications in orthopedics clinical care practice. The Medline and PubMed library databases were searched for the articles related with stem cell procedures in the field of orthopedic surgery and additionally the reference list of each article was also included to provide a comprehensive evaluation. Results: Various sources of stem cells have been studied for orthopedics clinical care practice. Stem cell therapy has successfully used for major orthopedic procedures in terms of bone-joint injuries (fractures-bone defects, nonunion, and spinal injuries), osteoarthritis-cartilage defects, ligament-tendon injuries, femoral head osteonecrosis and osteogenesis imperfecta. Stem cells have also used in bone tissue engineering in combining with the scaffolds and provided faster and better healing of tissues. Conclusions: Large amounts of preclinical studies have been made of stem cells and there is an increasing interest to perform these studies within the human population but preclinical studies are insufficient; therefore, much more and efficient studies should be conducted to evaluate the efficacy and safety of stem cells

Tunneling through a multigrain system: deducing the sample topology from the nonlinear conductance

We study a current transport through a system of a few grains connected with tunneling links. The exact solution is given for an arbitrarily connected double-grain system with a shared gate in the framework of the orthodox model. The obtained result is generalized for multigrain systems with strongly different tunneling resistances. We analyse the large-scale nonlinear conductance and demonstrate how the sample topology can be unambiguously deduced from the spectroscopy pattern (differential conductance versus gate-bias plot). We present experimental data for a multigrain sample and reconstruct the sample topology. A simple selection rule is formulated to distinguish samples with spectral patterns free from spurious disturbance caused by recharging of some grains nearby. As an example, we demonstrate experimental data with additional peaks in the spectroscopy pattern, which can not be attributed to coupling to additional grains. The described approach can be used to judge the sample topology when it is not guaranteed by fabrication and direct imaging is not possible.Comment: 13 pages (including 8 figures

Local differences of the position of the mental foramen

The mental foramen has been reported to vary in position in different ethnic groups. Repeated failures during injections and operative procedures involving the mental foramen suggest the presence of local differences in a given population. The aim of the present study was to investigate possible local differences of the mental foramen in Eastern Anatolian individuals in the Turkish population. The present investigation is based on the examination of 70 adult mandibles. The study consisted of three measurements, to include the relations of the mental foramen to the following: 1) the lower teeth; 2) the body of mandible; 3) the mandibular symphysis and posterior border of the ramus of the mandible. The most common position of the foramen was in line with the longitudinal axis of the second premolar tooth (relation IV), at the midpoint of the mandibular body height and at 1/3.5 of the distance from the mandibular symphysis to the posterior border of the ramus. Local differences of the mental foramen may occur in a population. Prior to surgery knowledge of the most common location of the foramen peculiar to a local population may enable effective mental block anaesthesia to be provided. (Folia Morphol 2008; 67: 32-35)

q-Breathers and thermalization in acoustic chains with arbitrary nonlinearity index

Nonlinearity shapes lattice dynamics affecting vibrational spectrum, transport and thermalization phenomena. Beside breathers and solitons one finds the third fundamental class of nonlinear modes -- $q$-breathers -- periodic orbits in nonlinear lattices, exponentially localized in the reciprocal mode space. To date, the studies of $q$-breathers have been confined to the cubic and quartic nonlinearity in the interaction potential. In this paper we study the case of arbitrary nonlinearity index $\gamma$ in an acoustic chain. We uncover qualitative difference in the scaling of delocalization and stability thresholds of $q$-breathers with the system size: there exists a critical index $\gamma^*=6$, below which both thresholds (in nonlinearity strength) tend to zero, and diverge when above. We also demonstrate that this critical index value is decisive for the presence or absense of thermalization. For a generic interaction potential the mode space localized dynamics is determined only by the three lowest order nonlinear terms in the power series expansion.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Infrared Studies of the Onset of Conductivity in Ultra-Thin Pb Films

In this paper we report the first experimental measurement of the infrared conductivity of ultra-thin quenched-condensed Pb films. For dc sheet resistances such that $\omega \tau \ll 1$ the ac conductance increases with frequency but is in disagreement with the predictions of weak localization. We attribute this behavior to the effects of an inhomogeneous granular structure of these films, which is manifested at the very small probing scale of infrared measurements. Our data are consistent with predictions of two-dimensional percolation theory.Comment: Submitted to Physical Review Letter

Destination Image and Destination Personality: An Application of Branding Theories to Tourism Places

This study investigates the relationship between destination image and destination personality. While brand image and brand personality studies is well documented in the generic marketing literature, application of branding theories to places, in particular to tourism destinations, is relatively new. Using tourism destinations as a setting, this study contribute to the debate on the brand image – brand personality relationship. Results indicate that destination image and destination personality are related concepts. Canonical correlation analysis reveals that the emotional component of destination image captures the majority of variance on destination personality dimensions