Tourists' perceptions of beach quality improvement during the off-peak season: a segmentation approach

Recently coastal tourism has increased rapidly and has negatively affected environmental, social and cultural sustainability. The Algarve is the main sun-and-sea tourism destination in Portugal, with a large number of beautiful beaches. Due to negative tourism impacts and climate change, coastal tourism management tools need to be assessed and implemented. Most beach areas have the dual mandate of conserving coastal natural resources and providing opportunities for recreation and tourism. This paper aims to identify off-peak season beach users' profiles and to segment them according to their priorities for sustainable beach management in the face of climate change and seasonality balance. Four beaches with different types were chosen in the municipality of Albufeira as case studies: an urban, a rural, a resort and a remote beach. A cluster analysis was applied to data collected through a survey applied to 200 tourists through face-to-face interviews. The survey aimed to measure beach visitors' opinion about beach environment and services, as well as about the importance of 25 quality beach attributes. The cluster analyses generated three segments of beach users with the following profiles: comfort and food lovers, young and active environmentalists and sustainable minimalists. The results provide valuable information and insights for both academics and beach managers, who can adjust their management tasks to suit market segments and their preferences, fulfilling emerging environmental policies.UIDP/SOC/04020/2020info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The economic impact of recreational trails: a systematic literature review

Recreational trails are a type of nature-based tourism providing various activities such as hiking, biking, rafting or horseback riding. Increasing investment in infrastructure and touristic services development has resulted in higher visitor expenditure and thus contributed to economic development. This study aims to review the current economic impact assessment studies on recreational trail tourism and to extract the main economic impact determinants. A systematic literature review analysis was applied in a quantitative approach about economic models, study cases of nature-based tourism, comparison of economic impacts. A qualitative analysis was then applied with an inductive approach to compare the economic impacts of nature-based tourism forms and identify the main determinants of economic impact. This study suggests that I-O is the most suitable theoretical approach to study the economic impact of long-distance trails, while the Keynesian multiplier approach and Ad hoc model are the most suitable approaches to study the economic impact of short-distance trails.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Determinants for the commitment relationship maintenance between the alumni and the alma mater

This study aims to find determinants for the commitment relationship between alumni and alma mater. Based on the literature, satisfaction and image are proposed as drivers of commitment. A survey applied to 2544 alumni in a Portuguese university provides data analyzed through a structural equation modeling technique. The results present 'image of education', 'image of communication' and 'satisfaction with social and academic environment' as determinants of the commitment relationship, which provide important clues for the marketers' decision-making process when developing activities geared towards alumni. This process should emphasize aspects relating to their willingness to give back, academic and relationship quality, and institutional values. Within the Higher Education market, this study underscores the need to maintain and reinforce the relationship with alumni, and contributes to the scarce Portuguese literature on alumni matters.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Exploring online prices with an advance booking horizon on Booking.com

The online market enables hotels to enhance their visibility and drive up their revenue. This study analysed both the average room price and price count (i.e. the sum of the number of prices that hotels offer) on Booking.com for a period of 300 days prior to check-in, with data classified by official hotel category. Hotels’ number of rooms, day of the week, room type, room capacity (i.e. maximum number of guests per room) and length of stay were also tracked. This research was based on a stratified sample of hotels gathered by using random sampling and proportional allocation, as well as defining the strata by hotel categories. The dataset included 1,353,751 records. The results reveal that channel management activities are an important area of hotels’ operations, which generate a considerable workload in terms of the time devoted to updating data and other related tasks. However, hotels’ participation in online channels does not always match their importance in the market as measured by their relative numberof rooms. Most of the variables under study have a significantpositiveimpact on prices, except for hotels’ number of rooms, which failed to follow any discernible pattern of influence.FCT: UIDP/SOC/04020/2020;info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Effect of Transposable Element Insertions on Gene Expression Evolution in Rodents

Background:Many genomes contain a substantial number of transposable elements (TEs), a few of which are known to be involved in regulating gene expression. However, recent observations suggest that TEs may have played a very important role in the evolution of gene expression because many conserved non-genic sequences, some of which are know to be involved in gene regulation, resemble TEs. Results:Here we investigate whether new TE insertions affect gene expression profiles by testing whether gene expression divergence between mouse and rat is correlated to the numbers of new transposable elements inserted near genes. We show that expression divergence is significantly correlated to the number of new LTR and SINE elements, but not to the numbers of LINEs. We also show that expression divergence is not significantly correlated to the numbers of ancestral TEs in most cases, which suggests that the correlations between expression divergence and the numbers of new TEs are causal in nature. We quantify the effect and estimate that TE insertion has accounted for ~20% (95% confidence interval: 12% to 26%) of all expression profile divergence in rodents. Conclusions:We conclude that TE insertions may have had a major impact on the evolution of gene expression levels in rodents

Depression in medical students: insights from a longitudinal study

Background: Factors associated with depression of medical students are poorly understood. The purpose of this study is to determine the prevalence of depression in medical students, its change during the course, if depression persists for affected students, what are the factors associated with depression and how these factors change over time. Methods: A prospective, longitudinal observational study was conducted at the Medical School of the University of Minho, Portugal, between academic years 2009-2010 to 2012-2013. We included students who maintained their participation by annually completing a questionnaire including Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Anxiety and burnout were assessed using the State Trait Anxiety Inventory and Maslach Burnout Inventory. Surveys on socio-demographic variables were applied to evaluate potential predictors, personal and academic characteristics and perceived difficulties. ANOVA with multiple comparisons were used to compare means of BDI score. The medical students were organized into subgroups by K-means cluster analyses. ANOVA mixed-design repeated measurement was performed to assess a possible interaction between variables associated with depression. Results: The response rate was 84, 92, 88 and 81% for academic years 2009-2010, 2010-2011,2011-2012 and 2012/2013, respectively. Two hundred thirty-eight medical students were evaluated longitudinally. For depression the prevalence ranged from 21.5 to 12.7% (academic years 2009/2010 and 2012/2013). BDI scores decreased during medical school. 19.7% of students recorded sustained high BDI over time. These students had high levels of trait-anxiety and choose medicine for anticipated income and prestige, reported more relationship issues, cynicism, and decreased satisfaction with social activities. Students with high BDI scores at initial evaluation with low levels of trait-anxiety and a primary interest in medicine as a career tended to improve their mood and reported reduced burnout, low perceived learning problems and increased satisfaction with social activities at last evaluation. No difference was detected between men and women in the median BDI score over time. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that personal factors (anxiety traits, medicine choice factors, relationship patterns and academic burnout) are relevant for persistence of high levels of BDI during medical training. Medical schools need to identity students who experience depression and support then, as early as possible, particularly when depression has been present over time.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

MSH3 polymorphisms and protein levels affect CAG repeat instability in huntington's disease mice

Expansions of trinucleotide CAG/CTG repeats in somatic tissues are thought to contribute to ongoing disease progression through an affected individual's life with Huntington's disease or myotonic dystrophy. Broad ranges of repeat instability arise between individuals with expanded repeats, suggesting the existence of modifiers of repeat instability. Mice with expanded CAG/CTG repeats show variable levels of instability depending upon mouse strain. However, to date the genetic modifiers underlying these differences have not been identified. We show that in liver and striatum the R6/1 Huntington's disease (HD) (CAG)~100 transgene, when present in a congenic C57BL/6J (B6) background, incurred expansion-biased repeat mutations, whereas the repeat was stable in a congenic BALB/cByJ (CBy) background. Reciprocal congenic mice revealed the Msh3 gene as the determinant for the differences in repeat instability. Expansion bias was observed in congenic mice homozygous for the B6 Msh3 gene on a CBy background, while the CAG tract was stabilized in congenics homozygous for the CBy Msh3 gene on a B6 background. The CAG stabilization was as dramatic as genetic deficiency of Msh2. The B6 and CBy Msh3 genes had identical promoters but differed in coding regions and showed strikingly different protein levels. B6 MSH3 variant protein is highly expressed and associated with CAG expansions, while the CBy MSH3 variant protein is expressed at barely detectable levels, associating with CAG stability. The DHFR protein, which is divergently transcribed from a promoter shared by the Msh3 gene, did not show varied levels between mouse strains. Thus, naturally occurring MSH3 protein polymorphisms are modifiers of CAG repeat instability, likely through variable MSH3 protein stability. Since evidence supports that somatic CAG instability is a modifier and predictor of disease, our data are consistent with the hypothesis that variable levels of CAG instability associated with polymorphisms of DNA repair genes may have prognostic implications for various repeat-associated diseases