Preliminary Considerations on Cultural Tourism in Abruzzo as a Strategic Tool for the Renewal of the Regional Tourist Offerings

Although the number of initiatives of place promotion, the Abruzzo tourism offer remains essentially polarized around two basic segments (the seaside/summer segment and the mountain/snow-based one) and it strongly depends on the proximate tourist demand. Actually the Abruzzo region holds a wider and varied heritage, composed by cultural attractions, historical and architectural resources, wine and food potential and, more generally speaking, a lot heterogeneous environments and landscapes. These resources could respond to the new philosophies of tourism demand, characterised by the experiential motivations of peacefulness, tranquility and soul regeneration in a very close contact with nature. The goal of this study is to evaluate the potential tourism usability of the Abruzzo cultural heritage assessing the levels of the distribution of accommodation facilities and attractiveness. A more aware and integrated tourism offer may produce complementarities both at product and territory levels and may also absorb some critical issues of the regional tourism industry (no awareness of cultural tourism potential, the fragmentation of public policies, the inability to cooperate with a networking mentality)

Exploring the Fashion Visiting Experience: a Content Analysis about the “Boncompagni Ludovisi Museum”

Fashion represents a multi-disciplinary and to some extent a cross-disciplinary field of research, spanning economic and industry studies, cultural, heritage and sociological research, geographical and tourism reflections.Fashion is a hallmark of Italian exports: through the fashion products, Italy exports its outstanding sense of beauty and aesthetics, the artisanal manufacturing expertise and a certain artistic value. Furthermore, fashion characterizes the cultural and touristic image of Italy, affecting and/or enriching the tourists’ experience.The aim of the work is exploring the experience of visitors of the “Boncompagni Ludovisi Decorative Art Museum” in Rome, through a content analysis of the posts published on the Facebook Official Page and the reviews shared on TripAdvisor.More in details, after a literature review about the ‘museification’ trends in the fashion tourism, the work will deeply explore through a content analysis the several dimensions of post visiting experience, in order to understand the mutual roles of core attractions (collections and location’s architecture) and museum’s quality of welcome.Tourism management and policy’s implications will be discussed.La moda rappresenta un campo di ricerca multidisciplinare e, in una certa misura, interdisciplinare, che abbraccia studi economici e industriali, ricerche culturali, storiche e sociologiche, riflessioni geografiche e turistiche.La moda è un capitolo cruciale dell'export italiano: attraverso i prodotti della moda, l'Italia esporta il suo eccezionale senso di bellezza ed estetica, la competenza artigianale manifatturiera e un certo valore artistico. Inoltre, la moda caratterizza l'immagine culturale e turistica dell'Italia, influenzando e / o arricchendo l'esperienza turistica.L'obiettivo del lavoro è quello di esplorare l'esperienza dei visitatori del "Museo delle arti decorative Boncompagni Ludovisi" a Roma, attraverso una “analisi del contenuto” dei post pubblicati sulla Pagina ufficiale di Facebook e delle recensioni condivise su TripAdvisor.Più in dettaglio, dopo una revisione della letteratura sulle tendenze alla  “museificazione” nel settore del fashion, il lavoro esplorerà profondamente le diverse dimensioni dell'esperienza di visita, al fine di comprendere il ruolo delle principali attrazioni (collezioni e location) e la qualità dell'accoglienza del museo.Verranno inoltre discusse le principali implicazioni di gestione e policy

The Specialisation of EU Regions in Fast Growing and Key Enabling Technologies

In the context of the Europe 2020 objective of establishing in the EU a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy, European regions have been called to design and implement national and regional 'Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation' (RIS3). The rationale behind the concept of smart specialisation is that, in a context of global competition for talent and resources, most regions can only acquire a real competitive edge by finding niches or by mainstreaming new technologies into traditional industries and exploiting their ‘smart’ regional potential. Although the most promising way for a region to promote its knowledge-based growth is to diversify into technologies, products and services that are closely related to existing dominant technologies and the regional skills base, the European Commission puts special emphasis on a set of technologies labelled as 'Key Enabling Technologies' (KETs). Despite the great emphasis on KETs, there is only very limited evidence on the capability of EU regions to specialise in these fields and there are no studies directly investigating the actual impact of these technologies on regional innovation and economic growth. This report aims at filling these gaps by: i) looking at the relationship between KETs and 'Fast Growing Technologies' (FGTs); ii) providing empirical evidence on the EU regional specialisation in KETs and FGTs; iii) relating technological specialisation to regional innovation and economic growth. In particular, the report aims at answering these questions: 1) Which technologies have emerged as the fastest growing ones in the recent decades? 2) Is there a relationship between fast growing technologies and KETs? 3) Which regions are specialised in FGTs and KETs? 4) Are there convergence and polarization phenomena observable in the evolution of EU regions’ innovative activities in fast growing technologies and KETs? 5) Do EU regions specialized in fastest growing technological fields and key enabling technologies exhibit higher innovation and economic performances? The main results of the report can be summarised as follows. First, only a small share of KETs are also fast growing technologies, although the degree of overlapping between KETs and FGTs varies substantially across different KETs fields. Second, while KETs are concentrated in Central Europe, FGTs prevail in Scandinavian countries and the UK. Third, while there is evidence of some regional convergence in KETs and, to a less extent, in FGTs, spatial correlation increases over time, showing that diffusion often occurs across contiguous regions. Finally, the results of the estimations of the effects of FGTs and KETs on innovation (patents) and economic (GDP per capita) growth show that only specialisation in KETs directly affects economic growth, while specialisation in FGTs has an impact on growth only indirectly, that is through its impact on regions’ innovation performances. Overall, these results confirm the pervasive and enabling role of KETs pointing to the importance for European regions to target these technologies as part of their RIS3 strategies.JRC.J.2-Knowledge for Growt

Technology, global value chains and functional specialisation in Europe

This paper provides empirical evidence on the role of technology in affecting the relationship between the participation of EU countries and industries in Global Value Chains (GVCs) and their employment structure over the period 2000–2014. The empirical analysis is based on country-sector level data for 21 EU countries on employment, trade in value added, patents and investments in intangible assets, and focusses on backward linkages within GVCs. The role of technology is analysed by taking into account both the technological intensity of country-sectors participating in GVC and that of their GVC partners. We study the employment structure by looking at the shares of managers and manual workers, which reflect the “functional specialisation” of the country-sector within GVCs. We find that participation in GVC per se is not related to the employment structure of a country-sector. We show that different patterns of GVC integration and functional specialisation emerge that depend on the initial patents/intangibles intensity of the country-sector integrating in GVC and those of the partners

Exceptional and Durable Responses to TDM-1 After Trastuzumab Failure for Breast Cancer Skin Metastases: Potential Implications of an Immunological Sanctuary

Breast Cancer (BC) skin metastases represent a challenging clinical scenario. Although they usually arise when other distant metastases are already present, they may also represent a form of locoregional recurrence (LRR). Systemic therapy in this setting may have a role both in case a radical locoregional approach is unfeasible in order to achieve disease control, and as adjuvant strategy after radical removal of cutaneous lesions, in order to prevent or delay subsequent disease spread. Systemic therapy for HER2+ metastatic BC (MBC) currently relies on anti-HER2 targeted agents. In this context TDM1 is an option in trastuzumab-resistant patients.Here we present 2 cases of isolated skin metastases in patients with HER2+ BC progressing during or early after trastuzumab-based therapy, showing impressive responses to TDM1. We hypothesize that the unique properties of skin immune microenvironment may explain the failure of trastuzumab, which exerts its action also through immunological mechanisms, and the subsequent outlier responses to TDM1, that relies on a partially different mechanism of action

Tourism and digital endowment in Italy: a spatial analysis

In consideration of the recent trend reversal in the number of foreigners’ and residents’ arrivals and nights spent in the Italian tourism system, this work is proposing to evaluate to what extent the endowment of infrastructures for telephonic and telematic and the digital endowment among the enterprises are able to boost the domestic tourism demand in Italy. The results of the proposed spatial models confirm the general assumption regarding the centrality of the digitalization processes, both from the public interventions perspective and from the entrepreneurial initiatives perspective. In this way, the need to harmonize public and private policies becomes pivotal in order to revitalize and stimulate the internal tourism demand in Italy. The policy implications can be read as an instrument for rebalancing a troubling trend involving the tourism demand in Italy of the last 30 years

Intermittent versus continuous energy restriction on weight loss and cardiometabolic outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Additional file 1. Electronic search strategy

HPV and Cytology Testing in Women Undergoing 9-Valent HPV Opportunistic Vaccination: A Single-Cohort Follow Up Study

Background: This study evaluates the possible effect of 9-valent (9vHPV) vaccination on the results of HPV and cytological tests in a cohort of adult women. Methods: This study is a retrospective, single-cohort, monocentric study. Sexually active women aged 14–70 years, who underwent 9vHPV vaccination, were enrolled. Dose administration dates, side effects and data on Pap smears and HPV tests performed before and after the first vaccine dose were collected. Subjects were considered “unexposed” to the vaccine for all time intervals before the first dose administration, and “exposed” to the first, second and third vaccine doses in all time intervals following each specific dose. Results: A total of 512 women underwent the first 9vHPV dose administration and were enrolled in the study. Median age at vaccination was 30.5 (14–70). Log-rank tests and Cox regression analyses showed a highly statistically significant (p Conclusions: 9vHPV vaccination may play a role in shortening the clearance time of HPV HR+ or Pap positivity in sexually active adult women