Bridging The Gap For Destination Extreme Sports - A Model of Sports Tourism Customer Experience

This longitudinal study proposes a conceptual model of sports tourism customer experience in the context of a mountain-biking extreme sport camp. Customer experience is conceptualised as a three-dimensional framework consisting of five dimensions: hedonic pleasure, personal progression, social interaction, efficiency and surreal feeling. Using the means-end approach in 89 semi-structured interviews with clients of a mountain-biking camp, conducted over three years, the authors identified hedonic pleasure and personal progression as the two core experiences valued by customers. The core experience generates surreal feelings, incomparable and memorable evaluations of the overall experience. Social interaction facilitates the core experience, while efficiency enables the core experience. Existing marketing management frameworks lack empirical investigation and social science frameworks fail to take a holistic view; our framework bridges the gap between social science and marketing literatures by exploring, testing and incorporating both streams empirically. Implications for practitioners' customer insight processes and future research directions are discussed. This record was migrated from the OpenDepot repository service in June, 2017 before shutting down

Solo Consumption – A machine learning approach

[EN] This study aims at conceptualizing the solo tourism consumption journey. We use a semisupervised machine learning approach and analyze more than 27,000 tweets. The seed sets extraction, seed and topic confidence and model fit evaluations will provide us with the dimension of solo tourism conceptualization.The results will reveal how consumers perceive solo tourism consumption. This study provides scholars and managers with an evidencebased solo consumption conceptualization, as well as with a marketing, psychological, and operation tool to manage the solo consumer segment.Manthiou, A.; Luong, VH.; Klaus, P. (2023). Solo Consumption – A machine learning approach. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 231-234. https://doi.org/10.4995/CARMA2023.2023.1650823123

Regulatory relevant and reliable methods and data for determining the environmental fate of manufactured nanomaterials

International audienceThe widespread use of manufactured nanomaterials (MN) increases the need for describing and predicting their environmental fate and behaviour. A number of recent reviews have addressed the scientific challenges in disclosing the governing processes for the environmental fate and behaviour of MNs, however there has been less focus on the regulatory adequacy of the data available for MN. The aim of this paper is therefore to review data, testing protocols and guidance papers which describe the environmental fate and behaviour of MN with a focus on their regulatory reliability and relevance. Given the often identified need for modification of OECD testing guidelines, the use of these cannot per se be assigned high regulatory adequacy. Though the specific test considerations will differ between conventional chemicals and MN, the ultimate endpoints of interest are similar. The water compartment must be considered as one of the main points of entry, facilitating dispersion of MN in the environment and establishing a link to the other environmental compartments such as soil, sediment, air, and biota. Once released to water various processes like dissolution, agglomeration, heteroagglomeration, sedimentation, interaction with natural organic matter, transformation and uptake by biota are processes of high relevance for the fate of MN in water. In the review it is found that the OECD draft test guidelines for dissolution and agglomeration will greatly assist in the generation of regulatory relevant and reliable data. Gaps do however exist in test methods for environmental fate, such as methods to estimate heteroagglomeration and the tendency for MNs to transform in the environment

In vitro approaches to assess the hazard of nanomaterials

The rapid development of engineered nanomaterials demands for a fast and reliable assessment of their health hazard potential. A plethora of experimental approaches have been developed and are widely employed in conventional toxicological approaches. However, the specific properties of nanomaterials such as smaller size but larger surface area, and high catalytic reactivity and distinctive optical properties compared to their respective bulk entities, often disable a straightforward use of established in vitro approaches. Herein, we provide an overview of the current state-of the art nanomaterial hazard assessment strategies using in vitro approaches. This perspective has been developed based on a thorough review of over 200 studies employing such methods to assess the biological response upon exposure to a diverse array of nanomaterials. The majority of the studies under review has been, but not limited to, engaged in the European 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development and published in the last five years. Based on the most widely used methods and/or the most relevant biological endpoints, we have provided some general recommendations on the use of the selected approaches which would the most closely mimic realistic exposure scenarios as well as enabling to yield fast, reliable and reproducible data on the nanomaterial-cell response in vitro. In addition, the applicability of the approaches to translate in vitro outcomes to leverage those of in vivo studies has been proposed. It is finally suggested that an improved comprehension of the approaches with its limitations used for nanomaterials' hazard assessment in vitro will improve the interpretation of the existing nanotoxicological data as well as underline the basic principles in understanding interactions of engineered nanomaterials at a cellular level; this all is imperative for their safe-by- design strategies, and should also enable subsequent regulatory approvals

Distributed functions of detection and discrimination of vibrotactile stimuli in the hierarchical human somatosensory system

According to the hierarchical view of human somatosensory network, somatic sensory information is relayed from the thalamus to primary somatosensory cortex (Si), and then distributed to adjacent cortical regions to perform further perceptual and cognitive functions. Although a number of neuroirnaging studies have examined neuronal activity correlated with tactile stimuli, comparatively less attention has been devoted toward understanding how vibrotactile stimulus information is processed in the hierarchical somatosensory cortical network. To explore the hierarchical perspective of tactile information processing, we studied two cases: (a) discrimination between the locations of finger stimulation; and (b) detection of stimulation against no stimulation on individual fingers, using both standard general linear model (GLM) and searchlight multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) techniques. These two cases were studied on the same data set resulting from a passive vibrotactile stimulation experiment. Our results showed that vibrotactile stimulus locations on fingers could be discriminated from measurements of human functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In particular, it was in case (a) we observed activity in contralateral posterior parietal cortex (PPC) and supramarginal gyrus (SMG) but not in Si, while in case; (b) we found significant cortical activations in Si but not in PPC and SMG. These discrepant observations suggest the functional specialization with regard to vibrotactile stimulus locations, especially, the hierarchical information processing in the human somatosensory cortical areas. Our findings moreover support the general understanding that Si is the main sensory receptive area for the sense of touch, and adjacent cortical regions (i.e., PPC and SMG) are in charge of a higher level of processing and may thus contribute most for the successful classification between stimulated finger locations.open0

Diffusion tensor imaging of post mortem multiple sclerosis brain.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is being used to probe the central nervous system (CNS) of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), a chronic demyelinating disease. Conventional T(2)-weighted MRI (cMRI) largely fails to predict the degree of patients' disability. This shortcoming may be due to poor specificity of cMRI for clinically relevant pathology. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has shown promise to be more specific for MS pathology. In this study we investigated the association between histological indices of myelin content, axonal count and gliosis, and two measures of DTI (mean diffusivity [MD] and fractional anisotropy [FA]), in unfixed post mortem MS brain using a 1.5-T MR system. Both MD and FA were significantly lower in post mortem MS brain compared to published data acquired in vivo. However, the differences of MD and FA described in vivo between white matter lesions (WMLs) and normal-appearing white matter (NAWM) were retained in this study of post mortem brain: average MD in WMLs was 0.35x10(-3) mm(2)/s (SD, 0.09) versus 0.22 (0.04) in NAWM; FA was 0.22 (0.06) in WMLs versus 0.38 (0.13) in NAWM. Correlations were detected between myelin content (Tr(myelin)) and (i) FA (r=-0.79, p<0.001), (ii) MD (r=0.68, p<0.001), and (iii) axonal count (r=-0.81, p<0.001). Multiple regression suggested that these correlations largely explain the apparent association of axonal count with (i) FA (r=0.70, p<0.001) and (ii) MD (r=-0.66, p<0.001). In conclusion, this study suggests that FA and MD are affected by myelin content and - to a lesser degree - axonal count in post mortem MS brain

Multidimensional heritability analysis of neuroanatomical shape

In the dawning era of large-scale biomedical data, multidimensional phenotype vectors will play an increasing role in examining the genetic underpinnings of brain features, behaviour and disease. For example, shape measurements derived from brain MRI scans are multidimensional geometric descriptions of brain structure and provide an alternate class of phenotypes that remains largely unexplored in genetic studies. Here we extend the concept of heritability to multidimensional traits, and present the first comprehensive analysis of the heritability of neuroanatomical shape measurements across an ensemble of brain structures based on genome-wide SNP and MRI data from 1,320 unrelated, young and healthy individuals. We replicate our findings in an extended twin sample from the Human Connectome Project (HCP). Our results demonstrate that neuroanatomical shape can be significantly heritable, above and beyond volume, and can serve as a complementary phenotype to study the genetic determinants and clinical relevance of brain structure.National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (U.S.) (P41EB015896)United States. National Institutes of Health (S10RR023043)United States. National Institutes of Health (S10RR023401)United States. National Institutes of Health (K25CA181632)United States. National Institutes of Health (K01MH099232)United States. National Institutes of Health (K99MH101367)United States. National Institutes of Health (R21AG050122-01A1)United States. National Institutes of Health (R41AG052246-01)United States. National Institutes of Health (1K25EB013649-01)United States. National Institutes of Health (K24MH094614)United States. National Institutes of Health (R01MH101486

Augmented Reality als Entscheidungshilfe beim Möbelkauf

Diese Studie untersucht den Einfluss von Augmented Reality (AR) auf den Kaufentscheidungsprozess beim Möbelkauf. Ziel der Studie waren konkrete, handlungsleitende und wissenschaftlich fundierte Erkenntnisse für die Praxis im Umgang mit der digitalen Transformation. Dafür wurde der Einfluss einer AR-App in der Möbelbranche untersucht. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass die AR-App ihren Nutzern eine wertvolle Unterstützung im Kaufentscheidungsprozess bietet. Die App funktioniert jedoch nicht als eigenständiger Kanal, sondern entfaltet ihren Nutzen nur im Zusammenspiel mit den bisherigen Kanälen und Hilfsmitteln. Insbesondere der Austausch mit Dritten bietet deutliches Entwicklungspotenzial und Chancen, die Customer Experience weiter zu verbessern. Einen klaren Kundenmehrwert würde eine händlerübergreifende AR-App bieten. Weiterer Forschungsbedarf ergibt sich aus den Rückkoppelungseffekten zwischen veränderter Kundeninteraktion und Technologieentwicklung