An exploration of lifestyle migrant entrepreneurs in Tavira, Algarve

In recent years, the Algarve has seen an increasing amount of foreign residents moving for purposes of lifestyle affordances, including the good climate and ‘search for a better way of life’. In their processes of lifestyle migration, many new residents have decided to establish their own businesses in order to gain a good work and lifestyle balance. In the case of Tavira in the Eastern part of the Algarve, there is a considerable amount of new foreign-run businesses showing an increasing trend in this sector. The goal of this research is to gain deeper understanding of the key factors of motivation leading to migration and entrepreneurship. The main exploratory objective of this research is to offer new insight onto the lifestyle migrant entrepreneurs (LMEs) of Tavira specifically as no research has yet been carried out for such a niche area of the Algarve. This study offers knowledge on the motivations for migration and entrepreneurship of the LMEs based in Tavira. Moreover, networking practices of LMEs are examined, along with the relevant partnerships. The study takes a qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews to gather data from a range of lifestyle migrant entrepreneur informants. The data is then analysed through narrative and thematic analysis. The key findings of the study reveal that LMEs cannot all be categorised with the same motives for migration and entrepreneurship, but the selection of a specific place is one of the most important decisions. The social contexts of lifestyle migrants and their work environments are intrinsically linked to each other.Durante os últimos 10 anos, no Algarve tem-se verificado um aumento no número de imigrantes por motivos de estilo de vida, nomeadamente, em busca de um bom clima e da “procura de uma vida melhor”. Para a decisão de migração por motivos de estilo de vida, surgem várias histórias sobre o processo de migração em si. Esta tendência crescente migração de estilo de vida (“lifestyle migration”), aparece associada à ideia de os migrantes abrirem o seu próprio negócio como uma ocupação para sustentar o seu estilo de vida, para o qual contribuem vários fatores de motivação. A decisão de abrir um negócio no local para onde imigram permite aos migrantes manter um estilo de vida confortável, com um bom equilíbrio entre trabalho e lazer. No caso de Tavira, uma pequena cidade turística e cultural, no este do Algarve, há uma quantidade considerável de novos negócios administrados por estrangeiros. Sendo um destino muito procurado pelos turistas, Tavira tem assistido a um grande aumento no número de visitantes que escolhem esta cidade para sua residência primária. Do total dos 24.294 habitantes em Tavira, 29,79% são de nacionalidade estrangeira, e destes, 1773 vieram do Reino Unido (Urbistat 2023). Vários Lifestyle Migrants ao decidir abrir o seu próprio negócio, procuram recriar uma sensação da sua própria cultura e ideias de empreendedorismo para fornecer novos serviços ou produtos dos quais sentem falta. Migrar com o objetivo de melhorar o estilo de vida é um tema que tem sido amplamente estudado na última década. Além disso, parece haver uma tendência migratória crescente nas zonas costeiras de Portugal. Os perfis mais frequentes em migrantes de estilo de vida são os nacionais do norte de Europa que se deslocam para o sul. Estes são os migrantes que procuram um clima melhor e situações socioeconómicas favoráveis para as suas economias. Também a par da tendência de migração de estilo de vida, verifica-se um aumento na quantidade de novas pequenas empresas com o principal objetivo de sustentar o estilo de vida escolhido. Dessa forma, o "turismo residencial" (um termo usado para descrever os residentes a tempo parcial que também se consideram visitantes ou turistas) pode ser facilmente sustentado financeiramente, para além de oferecer um bom equilíbrio entre trabalho e lazer. Ao decidirem abrir os seus próprios negócios, muitos dos Lifestyle Migrants identificam uma necessidade no mercado que acreditam que podem preencher. Neste sentido, fornecem algo que outros membros da mesma comunidade estrangeira solicitam. Assim, é por meio de uma rede social cuidadosa que estas lacunas são identificadas, e a economia destes negócios permanece entre os migrantes que têm o mesmo objetivo de encontrar um bom estilo de vida. Adicionalmente, as conexões criadas formam um forte vínculo entre todos os estrangeiros, onde o compartilhamento de informações importantes pode ser conduzido, bem como amizades para partilhar experiências semelhantes e, por sua vez, um benefício comum ao nível do comércio. O principal objetivo desta pesquisa exploratória é oferecer novas perspetivas sobre as empresas de migrantes de estilo de vida, visto que até ao momento nenhuma pesquisa foi realizada sobre este nicho no Algarve. Este estudo fornece conhecimento sobre as motivações para a migração e o empreendedorismo dos Lifestyle Migrants, com negócios baseados em Tavira. O maior desafio encontrado nesta pesquisa foi as potenciais diferenças entre cada experiência pessoal, razões para a migração, e na criação de um negócio próprio. Tais diferenças intensificam a necessidade de explorar as motivações que ligam a migração pessoal e o empreendedorismo. Por isso, este estudo procura analisar os fatores de motivação que levaram à decisão de mudar-se do próprio país de origem, assim como de abrir um negócio na zona selecionada, e se estas ideias ocorreram em conjunto, ou se uma influenciou a outra. A análise explora as características dos negócios bem-sucedidos, mencionados nas suas histórias e os caminhos que lhes trouxeram ao ponto da vida em que se encontram. Alem disso, as práticas de networking dos Lifestyle Migrants são examinadas numa perspetiva de negócio e numa perspetiva social. Foi realizada uma investigação, para explorar se estes participantes tinham criado uma rede para o seu negócio. Uma avaliação também foi realizada sobre a conexão entre os negócios nas comunidades locais e nas estrangeiras. A abordagem metodológica deste estudo foi constituída por dois processos, o primeiro, uma revisão da literatura existente e relevante ao tema de Lifestyle Migration e Lifestyle Migration Entrepreneurs. Foi utilizado um total de cinquenta-e-sete artigos, de diversas bases de dados online, como Research Gate, ScienceDirect e B-on, outros também foram encontrados no Google Scholar. Esta pesquisa decorreu entre fevereiro 2022 e fevereiro 2023, e teve como objetivo encontrar dados relevantes aos temas, e contextualizar o que já foi pesquisado. De seguida, foram realizadas onze entrevistas semiestruturadas para recolher dados de vários migrantes empreendedores na cidade de Tavira. As entrevistas foram gravadas, com o consentimento dos empreendedores, transcritas em ficheiros, codificadas e divididas em padrões e categorias, para além de terem sido analisadas de duas formas distintas. A primeira, e possivelmente a mais importante, foi a análise narrativa, mantendo-se fiel às palavras dos narradores; depois seguiu-se a análise temática, mostrando qualidades comparáveis e contrastantes das entrevistas. Na parte final desta dissertação, é apresentada uma visão de como os Lifestyle Migrants pretendem continuar as suas venturas de migração, e empreendedorismo, e também como se preveem eles próprios e os seus negócios nos próximos 5 anos. A maior parte expressou interesse em manter-se em Tavira, no entanto, um terço quis mudar, mas ainda com intenções de ficar em Portugal, havendo apenas um empreendedor com ideais de mudar para outro país, mostrando um elevado nível de satisfação com a decisão de migrar para Portugal, e Tavira em geral. Em termos de negócio, as ideais para o futuro foram muito variadas, geralmente disseram que teriam o mesmo negócio, com algumas mudanças ou nenhuma mudança. Uns com intenções de vender a empresa, e outros prestes a mudar de localização, mas mantêm o negócio. As principais conclusões do estudo sugerem a natureza muito complexa das motivações que levam à migração e ao empreendedorismo. Os Lifestyle Migrants não podem ser categorizados com só um fator motivacional, mas com uma variedade de decisões, escolhas e razões para abrir um negócio e migrar. O raciocínio mais comum, e também um grande fator motivacional para migrar para Tavira, foi o clima, sendo que muitos procuram condições melhores do que as presentes nos seus respetivos países maternos. Foi notado um padrão de criação de identidade pública, na migração e no empreendedorismo, ambos são formados simultaneamente e um não pode ser considerado sem o outro, pois fazem parte da imagem que dão ao seu negócio. Existem várias camadas em qualquer pesquisa, e este estudo em particular foca-se numa cidade específica no Algarve, com vários casos diferentes. Seria interessante ver o estado destes negócios dos Lifestyle Migrants daqui a dez anos, como um estudo longitudinal. Além disso, compensaria utilizar este mesmo método de estudo com diferentes cidades no Algarve, para a realização de uma análise comparativa entre os Lifestyle Migrants das outras cidades e as apresentadas nesta dissertação

Socioeconomic background influences children’s attitudes and learning in creative programming workshop

Programming and creative thinking are important skills for the twenty-first century. A large body of evidence suggests that a playful approach to learning helps children engage deeply with programming, improves their creative thinking skills, and shapes a positive attitude towards programming. However, such research has rarely considered how differences in socioeconomic background impact the way children experience such programming activities. The theoretical perspective of science capital suggests that children from high income families will hold more positive attitudes towards science and technology and will perform better in programming than children from lower income families based on their generally higher exposure to experiences involving computing technology. To examine this assumption, we designed and implemented single-occasion programming workshops lasting two hours that followed the Lifelong Kindergarten Approach and investigated differences in children’s attitudes, their learning outcomes (measured by a pre-post-test, perceived learning, and task-based performance), and the fun they experienced during the workshops. We collected data from three primary schools in three distinct socioeconomic neighborhoods (i.e., high-, middle-, and low-income areas), involving, in total, 138 children. Findings indicate that the workshops had a positive effect on the children’s attitude towards programming in the middle- and low-income schools only. The self-reported learning was similar in the three schools, but children from the low-income school significantly outperformed children from the high-income school in their task-based performance. Children from the middle-income school had the most fun, however, the experience of fun only significantly affected the low-income school children’s perceived learning scores. We conclude that children from the middle- and low-income schools profited the most from the playful programming workshop and call on future research to investigate further underlying factors of perception, acceptance, and enjoyment of out-of-school programming activities in relation to participants’ socioeconomic background when studying children’s participation of programming in school.</p

Carlo Goldoni and the 18th century London stage

This is an investigation into Goldoni's working relationship as a librettist with the King's Theatre in London and it covers the period between 1749 and 1793. The King's Theatre was known as the Italian Opera House and Goldoni was invited to write libretti for its productions. This he did successfully - so successfully that he can be said to have become an integral part of the cultural life of an exalted section of London society. The cultural climate in London in the 18th century favoured entertainments such as pantomime, farce and burlesque, that had derived from or imitated Commedia dell'Arte. This liking for traditional theatrical forms was a European phenomenon and had its roots in the theatre of Shakespeare in England as well as in the popular and the classical theatre in Prance. In Italy the Commedia dell'Arte never really died, although in the 18th century Goldoni tried to free himself from it in an attempt to modernise the Italian theatre. But even so, Commedia dell'Arte survived in libretti of the type Goldoni was writing and which proved suitable for Comic Opera. This was the result of an evolution from simpler musical forms such as intermezzi and cantata a llengua and soon rivalled Opera Seria in popularity. In the second half of the century and under the influence of proto-Romanticism comic-opera libretti became increasingly sentimental, a trend which was reflected in Goldoni's own libretti for this type of theatrical entertainment. Comic Opera was evolving in the direction of the type of "melodrama" which was to dominate the theatre of the 19th century. In this context Goldoni's La Buona Figliuola - one of the great successes of the King's Theatre - demonstrates that while preserving links with a traditional past Goldoni seemed to be looking forward to a future development in Comic-Opera libretti, which, dying as he did in 1793, he was not to live to see.<p

Demographic Disparities in 1-to-Many Facial Identification

Most studies to date that have examined demographic variations in face recognition accuracy have analyzed 1-to-1 matching accuracy, using images that could be described as "government ID quality". This paper analyzes the accuracy of 1-to-many facial identification across demographic groups, and in the presence of blur and reduced resolution in the probe image as might occur in "surveillance camera quality" images. Cumulative match characteristic curves(CMC) are not appropriate for comparing propensity for rank-one recognition errors across demographics, and so we introduce three metrics for this: (1) d' metric between mated and non-mated score distributions, (2) absolute score difference between thresholds in the high-similarity tail of the non-mated and the low-similarity tail of the mated distribution, and (3) distribution of (mated - non-mated rank one scores) across the set of probe images. We find that demographic variation in 1-to-many accuracy does not entirely follow what has been observed in 1-to-1 matching accuracy. Also, different from 1-to-1 accuracy, demographic comparison of 1-to-many accuracy can be affected by different numbers of identities and images across demographics. Finally, we show that increased blur in the probe image, or reduced resolution of the face in the probe image, can significantly increase the false positive identification rate. And we show that the demographic variation in these high blur or low resolution conditions is much larger for male/ female than for African-American / Caucasian. The point that 1-to-many accuracy can potentially collapse in the context of processing "surveillance camera quality" probe images against a "government ID quality" gallery is an important one.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, Conference submissio

In-situ high temperature spatially resolved X-ray diffraction of TiB2 up to ~3250 ˚C

Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Environmental conical nozzle levitator equipped with dual lasers

Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

From the atomic scale to the bulk: Ultra high temperature evaluation of metal diborides MB2 (M = Ta, Ti, Hf, Zr, Nb)

Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

The Alström Syndrome Protein, ALMS1, Interacts with α-Actinin and Components of the Endosome Recycling Pathway

Alström syndrome (ALMS) is a progressive multi-systemic disorder characterized by cone-rod dystrophy, sensorineural hearing loss, childhood obesity, insulin resistance and cardiac, renal, and hepatic dysfunction. The gene responsible for Alström syndrome, ALMS1, is ubiquitously expressed and has multiple splice variants. The protein encoded by this gene has been implicated in ciliary function, cell cycle control, and intracellular transport. To gain better insight into the pathways through which ALMS1 functions, we carried out a yeast two hybrid (Y2H) screen in several mouse tissue libraries to identify ALMS1 interacting partners. The majority of proteins found to interact with the murine carboxy-terminal end (19/32) of ALMS1 were α-actinin isoforms. Interestingly, several of the identified ALMS1 interacting partners (α-actinin 1, α-actinin 4, myosin Vb, rad50 interacting 1 and huntingtin associated protein1A) have been previously associated with endosome recycling and/or centrosome function. We examined dermal fibroblasts from human subjects bearing a disruption in ALMS1 for defects in the endocytic pathway. Fibroblasts from these patients had a lower uptake of transferrin and reduced clearance of transferrin compared to controls. Antibodies directed against ALMS1 N- and C-terminal epitopes label centrosomes and endosomal structures at the cleavage furrow of dividing MDCK cells, respectively, suggesting isoform-specific cellular functions. Our results suggest a role for ALMS1 variants in the recycling endosome pathway and give us new insights into the pathogenesis of a subset of clinical phenotypes associated with ALMS

The Child and Parent Emotion Study: Protocol for a longitudinal study of parent emotion socialisation and child socioemotional development

Introduction:&nbsp;Parents shape child emotional competence and mental health via their beliefs about children&rsquo;s emotions, emotion-related parenting, the emotional climate of the family and by modelling emotion regulation skills. However, much of the research evidence to date has been based on small samples with mothers of primary school-aged children. Further research is needed to elucidate the direction and timing of associations for mothers and fathers/partners across different stages of child development. The Child and Parent Emotion Study (CAPES) aims to examine longitudinal associations between parent emotion socialisation, child emotion regulation and socioemotional adjustment at four time points from pregnancy to age 12 years. CAPES will investigate the moderating role of parent gender, child temperament and gender, and family background.Methods and analysis:&nbsp;CAPES recruited 2063 current parents from six English-speaking countries of a child 0&ndash;9 years and 273 prospective parents (ie, women/their partners pregnant with their first child) in 2018&ndash;2019. Participants will complete a 20&ndash;30 min online survey at four time points 12 months apart, to be completed in December 2022. Measures include validated parent-report tools assessing parent emotion socialisation (ie, parent beliefs, the family emotional climate, supportive parenting and parent emotion regulation) and age-sensitive measures of child outcomes (ie, emotion regulation and socioemotional adjustment). Analyses will use mixed-effects regression to simultaneously assess associations over three time-point transitions (ie, T1 to T2; T2 to T3; T3 to T4), with exposure variables lagged to estimate how past factors predict outcomes 12 months later.Ethics and dissemination:&nbsp;Ethics approval was granted by the Deakin University Human Research Ethics Committee and the Deakin University Faculty of Health Human Research Ethics Committee. We will disseminate results through conferences and open access publications. We will invite parent end users to co-develop our dissemination strategy, and discuss the interpretation of key findings prior to publication.Trial registeration:&nbsp;Protocol pre-registration: DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/NGWUY.</jats:sec