Enhancing Brand Image through Events and Cultural Festivals: the Perspective of the Stresa Festival’s Visitors

Cultural events have become a significant component within the strategies of destination branding of a place. Territories are increasingly using events and cultural festivals to enhance their image and boost tourism development. Many destinations worldwide have built events portfolios as a strategic initiative to attract visitors and to develop their own brand. A destination brand represents a dynamic interaction between the destination’s core assets and the way in which potential visitors perceive them. Thus, the visitor perspective is considered as fundamental in triggering processes of destination branding. This paper investigates how the visitors assess the impact of cultural events and festivals in enhancing the image of a tourist destination. The Stresa Festival (Stresa, Lake Maggiore, Italy) has been selected as a case study. Stresa Festival is undoubtedly one of the best-known European classical music festivals that every year offers performances by internationally famous artists to its audiences. Structured questionnaires have been used as the methodology to carry out the research. Online questionnaires have been handed out to residents and non-resident visitors to the Stresa Festival to extract the opinions and experience from the public on the image effects of this festival. Findings reveal that there is a positive relationship between this cultural event and the enhancement of the city image and its territory

Locomotion performance for oscillatory swimming in free mode

Oscillatory swimming of a fishlike body, whose motion is essentially promoted by the flapping tail, has been studied almost exclusively in axial mode under an incoming uniform stream or, more recently, self-propelled under a virtual body resistance. Obviously, both approaches do not consider the unavoidable recoil motions of the real body which have to be necessarily accounted for in a design procedure for technological means. Actually, once combined with the prescribed kinematics of the tail, the recoil motions lead to a remarkable improvement on the resulting swimming performance. An inviscid impulse model, linear in both potential and vortical contributions, is a proper tool to obtain a deeper comprehension of the physical events with respect to more elaborated flow interaction models. In fact, at a first look, the numerical results seem to be quite entangled, since their trends in terms of the main flapping parameters are not easy to be identified and a fair interpretation is obtained by means of the model capability to separate the effects of added mass and vortex shedding. Specifically, a prevailing dependence of the potential contribution on the heave amplitude and of the vortical contribution on the pitch amplitude is instrumental to unravel their combined action. A further aid for a proper interpretation of the data is provided by accounting separately for a geometrical component of the recoil which is expected to follow from the annihilation of any spurious rigid motion in case no fluid interactions occur. The above detailed decomposition of the recoil motions shows, through the numerical results, how the single components are going to influence the main flapping parameters and the locomotion performance as a guide for the design of biomimetic swimmers

The average transmitted wave in random particulate materials

Microwave remote sensing is significantly altered when passing through clouds or dense ice. This phenomenon isn't unique to microwaves; for instance, ultrasound is also disrupted when traversing through heterogeneous tissues. Understanding the average transmission in particle-filled environments is central to improve data extraction or even to create materials that can selectively block or absorb certain wave frequencies. Most methods that calculate the average transmitted field assume that it satisfies a wave equation with a complex effective wavenumber. However, recent theoretical work has predicted more than one effective wave propagating even in a material which is statistical isotropic and for scalar waves. In this work we provide the first clear evidence of these predicted multiple effective waves by using high fidelity Monte-Carlo simulations that do not make any statistical assumptions. To achieve this, we also had to fill in a missing link in the theory for particulate materials: we prove that the incident wave does not propagate within the material, which is usually taken as an assumption called the Ewald-Oseen extinction theorem. By proving this we conclude that the extinction length - the distance it takes for the incident wave to be extinct - is equal to the correlation length between the particles

Optimization of a perishable inventory system: A simulation study in a Ho.Re.Ca. company

The main goal of this paper is to describe the optimization of the inventory management process in a real context of perishable food products. The study involves one of the largest Italian HO.RE.CA. companies, located in the north of Italy and operating as a provider of the catering, commercial and welfare services. A simulation model was set up with the purpose of adapting three traditional reordering policies (i.e. Re-Order Point, Re-Order Cycle, and (s,S)) to a set of products belonging to company's assortment and evaluating the resulting economic outcomes. To this end, each policy was modelled on Microsoft ExcelTM, so as to compute the total cost of inventory management and determine of the minimum cost strategy. A comparison with the current company's performance and that achievable with the optimized policy is also proposed

On the feasibility of the Rayleigh cycle for dynamic soaring trajectories

Dynamic soaring is a flight technique used by albatrosses and other birds to cover large distances without the expenditure of energy, which is extracted from the available wind conditions, as brightly perceived five centuries ago by Leonardo da Vinci. Closed dynamic soaring trajectories use spatial variations of wind speed to travel, in principle, indefinitely over a prescribed area. The application of the concept of closed dynamic soaring trajectories to aerial vehicles, such as UAVs, may provide a solution to improve the endurance in certain missions. The main limitation of dynamic soaring is its dependence on the wind characteristics. More than one century ago, Lord Rayleigh proposed a very simple model, based on the repeated crossing of a step wind profile, presently known as Rayleigh cycle, that provides a clear explanation of the physical phenomenon. The present paper studies the feasibility of closed, single-loop, energy-neutral trajectories for a broad set of wind and vehicle conditions. Through the use of trajectory optimization methods, it was possible to see how the shape of the wind profile, the initial flight conditions and the vehicle constraints influence the required wind strength to perform dynamic soaring trajectories and consequently their feasibility. It was possible to conclude that there are optimal values for the initial airspeed and initial height of the vehicle, that minimize the required wind strength. In addition, it was seen how the structural and aerodynamic constraints of the vehicle affect dynamic soaring at high and low airspeeds respectively. Finally, some new trajectories that can be performed in conditions of excess wind are proposed. The purpose is to maximize the time spent aloft and the path length while maintaining the concept of single-loop, energy-neutral trajectories, making them especially useful for aerial vehicles surveillance applications

The allometric partition of whole body protein in lean fraction of growing pigs using information from three different datasets

The hypothesis that a single allometric relationship relating carcass lean protein (CLP) to whole body protein (WBP) can allow accurate estimates of CLP on pigs of different populations, sex and nutritional history, was tested. Three datasets of different origins were used. Data were representative of 548 pigs, castrated males and females, of 8 pig populations, serially slaughtered over ample empty body weight (EBW) ranges (from 22 to 217 kg). WBP and CLP ranged, respectively, from 2 to 28 and from 1 to 16 kg. The pooled data were run and the following relationship was found: CLP=0.497*WBP1.021 (CV=0.062; rsd=0.501 kg). The residuals were subjected to ANOVA to test the effects due to dataset, pig population within dataset and sex; significant differences between datasets mean residuals (+0.095, SE=0.041; -0.258, SE=0.094; -0.116, SE=0.055 kg, P<0.001) were observed. No differences due to sex and pig populations were found. The average residuals were low and only in few cases they differed from zero. Conclusions: CLP can be accurately predicted from WBP; the coefficients of this function are mainly influenced by the procedures of slaughtering, dissection, sampling and analysis

E- CONVEX FUNCTIONS

Youness introduced the concepts of E – convex sets and E – convex functions and studied their properties. Following this in this paper we further characterize E- convex functions. AMS Subject Cllasification(2000)Nos: 26A51,26B25,32F,32T,46A03,46A55,52A

SURGERY IN PATIENTS WITH TESTICULAR MALIGNANT GERM CELL TUMORS: COMPLIANCE TO SURGICAL GUIDELINES AND RESULTS IN THE ITALIAN COOPERATIVE STUDY

Purpose: Surgery represents a main and often the only treatment in patients with testicular Malignant Germ Cell Tumors (MGCT). We analyzed the compliance to surgical guidelines and the results in a series of patients with testicular MGCT -/+ retroperitoneal node involvement, without distant metastases. Method: 42 patients, observed in 15 Centers were enrolled in the Italian Cooperative Study on MGCT (January2004–December2010). 14/42 were younger than 2 y. of age, 28/42 between 13–18 y. Treatment was delivered according to COG-Staging-System: St.I patients (complete excision with inguinal orchifunicolectomy+decrease of markers, +hemiscrotectomy if scrotal involvement) did not receive further treatment; St.II patients (scrotal involvement after hemiscrotectomy and/or retroperitoneal node (RPN) enlargement:2 cm) had RPN Dissection if residuals were suspected after PEBx3or4. Results: St.I: 26 patients. 3/26 had a scrotal approach due to suspected testicular torsion: 1/3 underwent hemiscrotectomy, 2 did not receive further therapy after decrease of alphaFP, due to patient’s or physician’s decision respectively. 3/26 were successfully treated for RPN relapse, occurred at 3,6,9 months after adequate surgery (2 adolescents, 1 infant). St.II: in 4 patients CTwas delivered due to slight enlargement of RPN (+persistent alphaFP in 1). St.III: 12 patients received CT and RPND (bilateral in 1). Histology was negative in 11/12. All patients are alive without disease, 39 in 1stCR, 3 in 2ndCR (f.u 9–86 m.:med.48). 1 St.1 patient suffered from postoperative scrotal hematoma. Among patients younger than 2 y, 10/14 had a pure YST, 12/14 had St.I disease; among those between 13–18 y, 27/28 had a mixed histology, 14/28 were St.II or St.III. In 3 adolescents a testicular prosthesis was positioned during primary operation. Conclusion: Outcome was excellent. Regional relapses, observed only in St.I patients, were cured. Surgical guidelines were followed in 40/42 cases. Scrotal approach did not worsen the outcome of patients who did not receive further treatment

INTERACTIVE POLYPHENOLS-BASED BIOPACKAGING FOR FOOD PRESERVATION: AN IN VITRO STUDY

Producing green, sustainable and renewable materials is one of the major challenge nowadays in the food-packaging sector. In this context, the aim of our study is to develop an active cellulose-based packaging, cellulose in fact is one of the most plentiful polymer on the earth. Tetrahydrocurcumin (THC), a derivative of curcuma, chosen as antioxidant and antimicrobial natural substance, was added into a cellulose matrix (1.5% w/w) and the resulting material was then studied. In addition to this active compound, the paper also contained chitosan and carboxymethylcellulose, to improve the retention of THC and the mechanical properties. Mechanical, chemical and microbiological analyses were done to completely characterize the active papers. Grammage, dry and wet strength were determined. The polyphenol content was determined by the Folin-Ciolcalteu method. Antimicrobial activity of THC, in solution and after its incorporation into the papers, was tested against Gram negative bacteria (Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas putida), Gram positive bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus and Listeria innocua) and moulds (Penicillium chrysogenum and Aspergillus niger). Antioxidant capacity was also tested through the DPPH method. THC solution presented a good antioxidant capacity: it showed an EC50 equal to 4,49 ppm ( EC50 of Trolox was 2,86 ppm). Its minimal inhibitory concentration is 0,4 g/L for Gram positive bacteria, and higher than 0,6 g/L for Gram negative. THC solution was found effective in delaying the development of moulds. THC polyphenols were quantified as 0,8% on paper weight for the paper containing THC and these quantities together with chitosan resulted able to slow down the growth of microorganism. Pseudomonas is inhibited by the presence of chitosan and THC is able to amplify the antimicrobial activity of chitosan, by inhibiting also the growth of Staphylococcus and E. Coli. The presence of THC does neither affect the mechanical properties of papers, nor the color and the odor. Based on these results, it is possible to conclude that THC exhibits good antioxidant and moderate antimicrobial properties. Paper sheets didn’t lose their mechanical properties. These data will pave the way to the use of THC for the production of an active paper-based packaging to improve the shelf life of food items