Social media marketing in the hospitality industry : is it worth the effort?

This paper explores the impact of hotel social media activity on potential reservations and revenue generation. It does this by firstly exploring the perceptions of senior hotel executives towards the ROI of hotel social media activity. Secondly by data mining hotel reservation data to examine the extent of social media engagement being undertaken by guests with a hotel prior to and post a reservation being made. Thirdly through an experiment using social media advertising to examine its impact on the behaviour of fans and non-fans. The research suggests that social media engagement and advertising do have a positive impact on hotel reservations and revenue generation

Multi-porous extension of anisotropic poroelasticity : linkage with micromechanics

We thank the Editor, Prof. Ronaldo Borja, Prof. Mark Kachanov, and anonyomus reviewers for careful reading of themanuscript and their insightful comments. This research was supported financially by the NERC grant: “Quantifying theAnisotropy of Poroelasticity in Stressed Rock”, NE/N007826/1 and NE/T00780X/1.Peer reviewe

Multi-porous extension of anisotropic poroelasticity : consolidation and related coefficients

We thank the Editor, Prof. Ronaldo Borja, and anonymous reviewers for careful reading of the manuscript and theirinsightful comments. This research was supported financially by the NERC grant: “Quantifying the Anisotropy of Poroelasticity in Sstressed Rrock”, NE/N007826/1 and NE/T00780X/1Peer reviewe

Uniaxial compression of 3D printed samples with voids: laboratory measurements compared with predictions from Effective Medium Theory

3D printing technology offers the possibility of producing synthetic samples with accurately defined microstructures. As indicated by effective medium theory (EMT), the shapes, orientations, and sizes of voids significantly affect the overall elastic response of a solid body. By performing uniaxial compression tests on twenty types of 3D-printed samples containing voids of different geometries, we examine whether the measured effective elasticities are accurately predicted by EMT. To manufacture the sample, we selected printers that use different technologies; fused deposition modelling (FDM), and stereolithography (SLA). We show how printer settings (FDM case) or sample cure time (SLA case) affect the measured properties. We also examine the reproducibility of elasticity tests on identically designed samples. To obtain the range of theoretical predictions, we assume either uniform strain or uniform stress. Our study of over two hundred samples shows that measured effective elastic moduli can fit EMT predictions with an error of less than 5% using both FDM and SLA methods if certain printing specifications and sample design considerations are taken into account. Notably, we find that the pore volume fraction of the designed samples should be above 1% to induce a measurable softening effect, but below 5% to produce accurate EMT estimations that fit the measured elastic properties of the samples. Our results highlight both the strengths of EMT for predicting the effective properties of solids with low pore fraction volume microstructural configurations, and the limitations for high porosity microstructures.Comment: 43 pages, 19 figs, 9 table

Stress-Induced Anisotropic Poroelasticity in Westerly Granite

Funding Information: We thank T‐f. Wong and the associate editor for helpful reviews of this paper. We acknowledge financial support from the UK Natural Environment Research Council through Grants NE/L002485/1 to B.E., NE/S000852/1 to N.B. and NE/T007826/1 to D.H., T.M., and P.M., and the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (project RockDEaF, Grant agreement 804685 to N.B.). Erratum In the originally published version of this article, the author contributions omitted coauthor Nicolas Brantut. Dr. Brantut has been added to Methodology, Software, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing, and Supervision. This version may be considered the authoritative version of record.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A new anisotropic poroelasticity model to describe damage accumulation during cyclic triaxial loading of rock

Acknowledgments The paper benefited from useful comments by two referees, Manolis Veveakis and Klaus Regenauer-Lieb, and the editor, Alexis Maineult. The contributions by Lyakhovsky and Shalev was supported by grant from the Israel Science Foundation, ISF 363/20. The contributions by Browning, Meredith, Healy and Mitchell were supported by UKRI NERC awards NE/N003063/1, NE/N002938/1, NE/T007826/1, NE/T00780X/1. The contributions by Browning was also supported by FONDECYT grant number 11190143. The contribution by Panteleev was supported by Russian Science Foundation (project N 19-77-30008).Peer reviewedPostprin

Adjusting foraging strategies : a comparison of rural and urban common mynas (Acridotheres tristis)

The research was funded by a FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IRSES research staff exchange grant to TB, SH, OG and ASG. OG was additionally supported by Gu227/16-1 and IF by an FWF grant (Y366-B17) to TB.Establishment in urbanized environments is associated with changes in physiology, behaviour, and problem-solving. We compared the speed of learning in urban and rural female common mynas, Acridotheres tristis, using a standard visual discrimination task followed by a reversal learning phase. We also examined how quickly each bird progressed through different stages of learning, including sampling and acquisition within both initial and reversal learning, and persistence following reversal. Based on their reliance on very different food resources, we expected urban mynas to learn and reversal learn more quickly but to sample new contingencies for proportionately longer before learning them. When quantified from first presentation to criterion achievement, urban mynas took more 20-trial blocks to learn the initial discrimination, as well as the reversed contingency, than rural mynas. More detailed analyses at the level of stage revealed that this was because urban mynas explored the novel cue-outcome contingencies for longer, and despite transitioning faster through subsequent acquisition, remained overall slower than rural females. Our findings draw attention to fine adjustments in learning strategies in response to urbanization and caution against interpreting the speed to learn a task as a reflection of cognitive ability.PostprintPeer reviewe

A Directional Crack Damage Memory Effect in Sandstone Under True Triaxial Loading

We thank J.G. Van Munster for providing access to the true triaxial apparatus at KSEPL and for technical support during the experimental program. This work was partly funded by NERC awards NE/N002938/1, NE/N003063/1, and by a NERC Doctoral Studentship, which we gratefully acknowledge. Supporting data are included in an SI file; any additional data may be obtained from JB (email: [email protected]).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The prevalence of Fabry disease in a statewide chronic kidney disease cohort – Outcomes of the aCQuiRE (Ckd.Qld fabRy Epidemiology) study

Background: Prevalence of Fabry disease amongst Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) patients on haemodialysis has been shown to be approximately 0.2%. Methods: We undertook a cross-sectional study employing a cascade screening strategy for Fabry Disease amongst 3000 adult, male and female patients affected by CKD stage 1-5D/T at public, specialty renal practices within participating Queensland Hospital and Health Services from October 2017 to August 2019. A multi-tiered FD screening strategy, utilising a combination of dried blood spot (DBS) enzymatic testing, and if low, then lyso-GB3 testing and DNA sequencing, was used. Results: Mean (SD) age was 64.0 (15.8) years (n = 2992), and 57.9% were male. Eight participants withrew out of the 3000 who consented. Of 2992 screened, 6 (0.20%) received a diagnosis of FD, 2902 (96.99%) did not have FD, and 84 (2.81%) received inconclusive results. Of the patients diagnosed with FD, mean age was 48.5 years; 5 were male (0.29%) and 1 was female (0.08%); 4 were on kidney replacement therapy (2 dialysis and 2 transplant); 3 were new diagnoses. Conclusions: Estimated overall FD prevalence was 0.20%. Screening of the broader CKD population may be beneficial in identifying cases of FD. Trial registration: The aCQuiRE Study has been prospectively registered with the Queensland Health Database of Research Activity (DORA, https://dora.health.qld.gov.au) as pj09946 (Registered 3rd July 2017)

Roughening Transition of Interfaces in Disordered Systems

The behavior of interfaces in the presence of both lattice pinning and random field (RF) or random bond (RB) disorder is studied using scaling arguments and functional renormalization techniques. For the first time we show that there is a continuous disorder driven roughening transition from a flat to a rough state for internal interface dimensions 2<D<4. The critical exponents are calculated in an \epsilon-expansion. At the transition the interface shows a superuniversal logarithmic roughness for both RF and RB systems. A transition does not exist at the upper critical dimension D_c=4. The transition is expected to be observable in systems with dipolar interactions by tuning the temperature.Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX, 1 postscript figur