Rethinking tourism destinations: collaborative network models for the tourist 2.0

In the increasingly saturated tourism market, an effective tourism destination management is essential to support competitive and sustainable growth. The topic becomes interesting in light of the spread of the collaborative network (CN) organisational models and the massive diffusion of web 2.0 and mobile technology. The formers have proven to give concrete opportunities of development in many industrial sectors, the latter has been changing the way tourists experience a destination. Even if several case studies of CNs in tourism are known, a comprehensive study of how tourism destinations can benefit of CN models and enabling technologies is not present; especially in the effort to help tourism destinations in setting up services able to actively support each phase of the tourist 2.0 lifecycle. In this paper we highlight how CN models are able to support the tourism destination management in order to gain competitiveness for local areas, to improve flexibility in services provision and to give tourists the possibility to live an augmented tourism experience. Furthermore, a review of the most suitable forms of collaborative network for tourism destination and their ways to actively support the augmented experience of the tourist 2.0 are proposed

Application areas of social media in external B2B transactions - An empirical analysis of Finnish technology industry

Despite the topic popularity, social media research is still limited, and focuses largely on the role of consumer-to-consumer (C2C) and business-to-consumer (B2C) domains. In many parts, the B2C social media practices are not directly useful for inter-organizational and B2B purposes. Main aim of this paper is to help to understand the current application areas of social media especially in external B2B transactions. This is carried out by an extensive survey to companies representing the technology industry, which are operating purely in B2B markets, having only other companies as customers. We wanted to understand how industrial B2B companies currently apply social media in their own inter-organizational applications, which types of potential they see in social media in this context, and what kind of support they experience their companies to need for better adopting social media together with their customers and partners. A population of 2488 Finnish decision-makers were observed from the Federation of Finnish Technology Industries. From the answers of 143 different companies, 125 companies represented wholly (100%) B2B markets, which were chosen as the sample of this study. Researches on social media, especially survey-based studies, have not focused particularly on B2B companies only, especially on the inter-organizational applications of social media in B2B’s. Except for the B2B-marketing oriented study of Michaelidou et al., (2011), and study of social media utilization in B2B-relationships by Pettersson et al. (2014). This study extends the previous studies especially by creating new understanding on the maturity of social media integration to business, organizational business problems that companies perceive that can be solved with social media, and approaches that can support social media adoption in B2B companies. Managerially, the results can be used, for instance, to better understand the various types of possibilities of applying social media in the inter-organizational use in B2Bs, which are currently only superficially understood by a significant part of managers. This can help to support and facilitate external social media use in B2B

Perception fields: analysing distributions of optical features as a proximity navigation tool for autonomous probes around asteroids

This paper suggests a new way of interpreting visual information perceived by visible cameras in the proximity of small celestial bodies. At close ranges, camera-based perception processes generally rely on computational constructs known as features. Our hypothesis is that trends in the quantity of available optical features can be correlated to variations in the angular distance from the source of illumination. Indeed, the discussed approach is based on treating properties related to these detected optical features as readings of a field - the perception fields of the title, assumed induced by the coupling of the environmental conditions and the state of the sensing device. The extreme spectrum of shapes, surface properties and gravity fields of small celestial bodies heavily affects visual proximity operational procedures. Therefore, self-contained ancillary tools providing context and an evaluation of estimators' performance while using the least number of priors are extremely significant in these conditions. This preliminary study presents an analysis of the occurrences of optical feature observed around two asteroids, 101955 Bennu and (8567) 1996 HW1 in visual data simulated within Blender, a computer graphics engine. The comparison of three different feature detectors showed distinctive trends in the distribution of the detected optical features, directly correlated to the spacecraft-target-Sun angle, confirming our hypothesis

Knowledge Management and Emerging Collaborative Networks in Tourism Business Ecosystems

If we critically look at the evolution of the Tourism Industry (TI), we can note that, in the past decade, nothing has changed as much as ICTs and the Internet which caused an extensive transformation of the TI. Both demand and supply of ICT, together with innovation in transportation and international trade agreements, have evolved the tourism sector in operational workflows, management and marketing of new of tourism experiences. The massive use of new technologies has facilitated the rise of new flat organizational models where traditional brokers have disappeared, replaced by direct connections between local providers and tourists, or they have been reconfigured into new forms of dynamic and web-based tourism package providers. The depicted industry evolution shows potential, unthinkable just a few years ago, for local service providers usually marginalized from main tourism flows, due to their small sizes, and who are unable to compete in the globalized market. In many regions characterized by a niche tourism vocation, local tourism operators have started organizing themselves spontaneously in Collaborative Networks in order to create aggregate tourism offers that are able to compete with big tourism operators thus transforming regions with potential and vocation in real tourism destinations. The main socialeffect of instantiating these tourism partnerships, is the stimulus towards Tourism Business Ecosystems (TBEs) giving local tourism service providers a means for economic growth. The aim of this paper is to describe how the organizational paradigm of CNs, applied to the TBEs knowledge management and supported by ICTs, can be the key means for the growth of emerging TBEs. Such models are able to reengineer the tourism destination management model in order to gain much more flexibility in service provision and provide tourists the possibility to live an augmented tourism experience.In this paper we point out that tourism destinations, in an effort to give services able to actively support each phase of the 2.0 tourist lifecycle, can benefit from collaborative network models

NAV-Landmarks: deployable 3D infrastructures to enable CubeSats navigation near asteroids

Autonomous operations in the proximity of Near Earth Objects (NEO) are perhaps the most challenging and demanding type of mission operation currently being considered. The exceptional variability of geometric and illumination conditions, the scarcity of large scale surface features and the strong perturbations in their proximity require incredibly robust systems to be handled. Robustness is usually introduced by either increasing the number and/or the complexity of on-board sensors, or by employing algorithms capable of handling uncertainties, often computationally heavy. While for a large satellite this would be predominantly an economic issue, for small satellites these constraints might push the ability to accomplish challenging missions beyond the realm of technical possibility. The scope of this paper is to present an active approach that allows small satellites deployed by a mothership to perform robust navigation using only a monocular visible camera. In particular, the introduction of Non-cooperative Artificial Visual landmarks (NAVLandmarks) on the surface of the target object is proposed to augment the capabilities of small satellites. These external elements can be effectively regarded as an infrastructure forming an extension of the landing system. The quantitative efficiency estimation of this approach will be performed by comparing the outputs of a visual odometry algorithm, which operates on sequences of images representing ballistic descents around a small non-rotating asteroid. These sequences of virtual images will be obtained through the integration of two simulated models, both based on the Apollo asteroid 101955 Bennu. The first is a dynamical model, describing the landing trajectory, realized by integrating over time the gravitational potential around a three-axis ellipsoid. The second model is visual, generated by introducing in Unreal Engine 4 a CAD model of the asteroid (with a resolution of 75 cm) and scattering on its surface a number N of cubes with side length L. The effect of both N and L on the navigation accuracy will be reported. While defining an optimal shape for the NAV-Landmarks is out of the scope of this paper, prescriptions about the beacons geometry will be provided. In particular, in this work the objects will be represented as high-visibility cubes. This shape satisfies, albeit in a non-optimal way, most of the design goals

Vida e a Origem da vida: o que pensam os docentes do ensino fundamental – anos iniciais de um município paranaense

Reflexões a respeito do conceito de “Vida e a Origem da Vida” vem, ao longo dos anos, despertando a inquietação dos pesquisadores, que corroboram com o aprofundamento da compreensão sobre a temática. Como forma de ampliar as discussões acerca do tema, desenvolvemos essa pesquisa, com o objetivo de compreender o que pensam os docentes que lecionam o componente curricular de Ciências nos anos iniciais do Ensino Fundamental sobre os conceitos de “Vida e a Origem da Vida”. Os dados dessa investigação emergiram da pesquisa de doutorado e mestrado em andamento de dois dos autores desse artigo. Realizou-se um estudo a partir da oficina Concepção de Vida e a Origem da Vida, realizada com os professores que atuam no Ensino Fundamental anos iniciais em um município do estado do Paraná. A oficiana fez parte do Grupo Colaborativo de Alfabetização Didático-Científico (GC-ADC), locus da investigação. A pesquisa de natureza qualitativa foi constituída por meio da coleta de dados com questionário contendo questões abertas e objetivas sobre os temas. Os dados foram analisados tendo como referência a Análise de Conteúdo. Ao término da investigação percebeu-se que muitos educadores apresentam percepções sobre o conceito “vida” relacionada à perspectiva científica/biológica, por outro lado, quando questionados sobre “a origem da vida”, muitos relacionaram os conceitos ao criacionismo. As justificativas apresentadas em geral são simplistas e necessitam de maior aporte teórico-científico, por isso sugerimos a necessidade de oportunizar aos docentes uma Educação Continuada que aborde a temática em questão como uma das estragegias para o aprimoramento da docência.Reflections on the concept of "Life and the Origin of Life" have, over the years, aroused the concern of researchers, who corroborate the deepening of understanding about the theme. As a way to broaden the discussions on the subject, we developed this research, with the objective of understanding what the teachers who teach the curricular component of Sciences in the early years of Elementary School on the concepts of "Life and the Origin of Life" think. ". The data of this investigation emerged from the doctoral and master's research in progress of two of the authors of this article. A study was carried out from the workshop Conception of Life and the Origin of Life, carried out with teachers working in elementary school early years in a municipality in the state of Paraná. The officer was part of the Collaborative Group of Didactic-Scientific Literacy (GC-ADC), locus of the research. The qualitative research was constituted through data collection with a questionnaire containing open and objective questions about the themes. The data were analyzed using content analysis as reference. At the end of the investigation it was noticed that many educators present perceptions about the concept of "life" related to the scientific/biological perspective, on the other hand, when questioned about "the origin of life", many related the concepts to creationism. The justifications presented in general are simplistic and require greater theoretical and scientific support, so we suggest the need to provide teachers with a Continuing Education that addresses the theme in question as one of the spoils for the improvement of teachin

Observation of gravitational waves from the coalescence of a 2.5–4.5 M ⊙ compact object and a neutron star

We report the observation of a coalescing compact binary with component masses 2.5–4.5 M ⊙ and 1.2–2.0 M ⊙ (all measurements quoted at the 90% credible level). The gravitational-wave signal GW230529_181500 was observed during the fourth observing run of the LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA detector network on 2023 May 29 by the LIGO Livingston observatory. The primary component of the source has a mass less than 5 M ⊙ at 99% credibility. We cannot definitively determine from gravitational-wave data alone whether either component of the source is a neutron star or a black hole. However, given existing estimates of the maximum neutron star mass, we find the most probable interpretation of the source to be the coalescence of a neutron star with a black hole that has a mass between the most massive neutron stars and the least massive black holes observed in the Galaxy. We provisionally estimate a merger rate density of 55−47+127Gpc−3yr−1 for compact binary coalescences with properties similar to the source of GW230529_181500; assuming that the source is a neutron star–black hole merger, GW230529_181500-like sources may make up the majority of neutron star–black hole coalescences. The discovery of this system implies an increase in the expected rate of neutron star–black hole mergers with electromagnetic counterparts and provides further evidence for compact objects existing within the purported lower mass gap