Tourist attractions as a moderating element in explanatory models for loyalty development

Many studies have analysed the impact of destination image on tourist satisfaction and loyalty, including different mediating variables, both affective and cognitive. This article will attempt to determine whether the representative model of visitors' future behaviour (satisfaction and loyalty) – viewed in terms of destination image, quality, value, disconfirmation, and emotions – follows a common, universal pattern or whether that behaviour actually differs when the model is applied to destinations offering different attractions.The paper below analyses disparate emotional behaviour in relation to destinations mentioned in the literature, when value does not play a mediating role between perception of quality and satisfaction with coastal destinations. This study concludes that there is a common pattern for purely urban cultural destinations while a different pattern exists for urban cultural destinations that include beaches among their attractions.Múltiples estudios han analizado el impacto de la imagen de los destinos en la satisfacción y lealtad de los turistas, incluyendo diversas variables mediadoras tanto afectivas como cognitivas. Este artículo intentará determinar si el modelo de comportamiento futuro del visitante (satisfacción y lealtad), analizado en términos de imagen del destino, calidad, valor, disconfirmación y emociones, sigue un modelo común y universal, o si por el contrario difiere entre destinos que ofrecen diferente tipo de atracciones al visitante.El trabajo contrasta la existencia de un comportamiento dispar de las emociones en relación con lo expuesto en la literatura, al tiempo que se señala que el valor no juega un rol mediador entre la calidad y la satisfacción para los destinos costeros. Como conclusión se extrae que hay un modelo de comportamiento común entre destinos puramente urbanos, mientras que existe otro diferente para destinos culturales urbanos que cuentan con playa entre sus atractivos turísticos

Human oocytes and zygotes are ready for ultra-fast vitrification after 2 minutes of exposure to standard CPA solutions

Vitrification of human oocytes and embryos in different stages of development is a key element of daily clinical practice of in vitro fertilization treatments. Despite the cooling and warming of the cells is ultra-fast, the procedure as a whole is time consuming. Most of the duration is employed in a long (8–15 minutes), gradual or direct exposure to a non-vitrifying cryoprotectant solution, which is followed by a short exposure to a more concentrated vitrifying solution. A reduction in the duration of the protocols is desirable to improve the workflow in the IVF setting and reduce the time of exposure to suboptimal temperature and osmolarity, as well as potentially toxic cryoprotectants. In this work it is shown that this reduction is feasible. In silico (MatLab program using two-parameter permeability model) and in vitro observations of the oocytes’ osmotic behaviour indicate that the dehydration upon exposure to standard cryoprotectant solutions occurs very fast: the point of minimum volume of the shrink-swell curve is reached within 60 seconds. At that point, intracellular water ejection is complete, which coupled with the permeation of low molecular weight cryoprotectants results in similar intracellular and extracellular solute concentrations. This shows that prolonging the exposure to the cryoprotectant solutions does not improve the cytosolic glass forming tendency and could be avoided. To test this finding, human oocytes and zygotes that were donated for research were subjected to a shortened, dehydration-based protocol, consisting of two consecutive exposures of one-minute to two standard cryoprotectant solutions, containing ethylene glycol, dimethyl sulfoxide and sucrose. At the end of this two-minute dehydration protocol, the critical intracellular solute concentration necessary for successful vitrification was attained, confirmed by the post-warming survival and ability to resume cytokinesis of the cells. Further studies of the developmental competency of oocytes and embryos would be necessary to determine the suitability of this specific dehydration protocol for clinical practice, but based on our results, short times of exposure to increasingly hypertonic solutions could be a more time-efficient strategy to prepare human oocytes and embryos for vitrification

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus: understanding and managing persistent infection

This experiment was designed as a longitudinal study in which pigs were followed for up to 202 days post inoculation (DPI). On day 0, 109 3-week-old pigs were intramuscularly inoculated with PRRSV strain VR-2332. Negative control pigs (n = 56) were sham inoculated with MEM by the intramuscular route. Thereafter, at approximately 2-week intervals, samples were collected from all animals and a subset of randomly selected animals was euthanized and tissues collected. The presence and amount of virus was assessed using qRT-PCR, standard virus isolation, and bioassay. Detection of PRRSV in serum by qRT-PCR showed that most pigs cleared the viremia by 42 DPI, but some pigs continued to test positive up to 154 DPI. Lymphoid tissue was qRT-PCR positive through 202 DPI in one or more pigs at each sampling point. Infectious virus was recovered from serum and lymphoid tissue by virus isolation on MARC-145 cell culture in a few pigs up to 28 DPI. Swine bioassays based on lymphoid tissue homogenate showed that infectious virus was present in these tissues up to 175 DPI. These results suggest that infectious virus is able to persist in populations for a longer period of time than previously thought. RT-PCR was the most sensitive assay for detecting PRRSV, but the discrepancy between PCR and bioassay results indicated that PCR is detecting non-infectious virus.;A subset of 89 PRRSV-inoculated pigs (donor pigs) and 46 negative control pigs were selected to estimate the risk of PRRSV transmission via ingestion of muscle. Beginning on DPI 28, serum, lymphoid tissues, and muscle ( M. longissimus dorsi) samples were collected from euthanized pigs. A total of 7 of 89 (7.7%) serum samples, 62 of 89 (69.6%) lymphoid tissues samples, and 13 of 89 (14.6%) muscle samples were positive by qRT-PCR. Swine transmissibility studies were performed by feeding thirteen 3-week-old PRRSV-naive pigs (recipient pigs) qRT-PCR-positive muscle, and monitored by qRT-PCR for evidence of PRRSV viremia. No transmission of PRRSV to recipient pigs via consumption of muscle samples was observed.;To explore possible prognostic combinations of cell-mediated and humoral immune responses, 3-week-old pigs (n = 10) were intramuscularly (IM) inoculated with PRRSV isolate VR-2332 and followed for 193 days post inoculation (DPI). Negative control pigs (n = 10) were IM inoculated with minimum essential medium (MEM). At ∼2-week intervals, blood samples were collected from all animals and tested for the number of interferon (IFN)-gamma-secreting peripheral blood mononuclear cells (Elispot), PRRSV viremia (qRT-PCR), and serum antibodies using PRRSV protein ELISAs (N, GP5 3\u27, GP5 5\u27, M 5\u27, M 3\u27, GP5-M, and nsp2p) and a commercial PRRSV ELISA (IDEXX Laboratories, Inc.). All pigs were viremic by 7 days post inoculation (DPI), with 50% of the pigs resolving viremia by 56 DPI. A PRRSV-specific IFN-gamma response was detected at DPI 28, reached a plateau at 42 DPI, declined slightly, and remained relatively stable from 56 to 193 DPI. On the basis of ROC area under the curve (AUC) analysis, the ELISAs that most reliably differentiated PRRSV-inoculated pigs from negative control pigs were the commercial ELISA (AUC = 0.97), the N ELISA (AUC = 0.96), and the M 3\u27 ELISA (AUC = 0.93). Multivariate analyses were performed to evaluate the relationship between the immune response and the duration and level of viremia. With all antibody assays and Elispot included in the models, the analysis determined that the serum-virus neutralizing antibody response was the best predictor of both level and duration of viremia. It may be concluded that humoral antibody responses, particularly the commercial ELISA, N ELISA, and M 3\u27 ELISA are the good predictors of prior exposure to PRRSV, but provide little information regarding the ontogeny of the protective immune response. Likewise, cell-mediated immunity based on the number of IFN-gamma-secreting lymphocytes appears to be a poor prognosticator of PRRSV infection status.;In addition, three assays were evaluated for their ability to detect antibodies against porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) in porcine muscle transudate ( meat juice ) samples. Serum samples were assayed at a dilution of 1:40, and muscle transudate samples were assayed at 5 dilutions (1:2, 1:5, 1:10, 1:20, 1:40) using a commercial PRRSV antibody enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Additionally, muscle transudate samples were tested using an indirect fluorescent antibody test (IFAT) at 5 dilutions (1:2, 1:5, 1:10, 1:20, 1:40). Attempts to assay muscle transudate samples for neutralizing antibodies using a modified fluorescent focus neutralization assay were unsuccessful

Cálculo de elementos estructurales

Descripció del recurs: el 21 de setembre de 2011El presente libro ha sido concebido como una introducción al cálculo de estructuras complejas y se dirige a estudiantes que ya han superado un primer curso de resistencia de materiales. Los capítulos 1 y 2 explican el cálculo de estructuras modelizables como elementos estructurales 1D (barras esbeltas). El capítulo 3 explica el cálculo de elementos estructurales bidimensionales (2D), como placas y paredes delgadas de depósitos para fluidos a presión. Los capítulos 4 y 5 estudian los elementos de cimentación que han de ser tratados como elementos estructurales 3D. Finalmente, en el capítulo 6 se introduce el cálculo dinámico aplicado al cálculo sísmico de edificios simples

Pyramidal values

We propose a new type of values for cooperative TU-games, which we call pyramidal values. Assuming that the grand coalition is sequentially formed, and all orderings are equally likely, we define a pyramidal value to be any expected payoff in which the entrant player receives a salary and the right to get part of the benefits derived from subsequent incorporations to the just formed coalition, whereas the remaining benefit is distributed among the incumbent players. To be specific, we consider some parametric families of pyramidal values: the egalitarian pyramidal family, which coincides with the a-consensus value family introduced by Ju et al. in (2007), the proportional pyramidal family, and the weighted pyramidal family, which in turn includes the other two families as special cases. We also analyze the properties of these families, as well as their relationships with other previously defined values.This research has been supported by I+D+i research project MTM2011-27892 from the Government of Spain

Analysis of data fusion architectures and techniques in the development of an A-SMGCS Surveillance prototype

8 pages, 16 figures.-- Contributed to: 7th International Conference on Information Fusion (Stockholm, Sweden, Jun 28-Jul 1, 2004).The work presented here addresses a key aspect of the data fusion process carried out by A-SMGCS Surveillance, needed to take maximum advantage from the simultaneous use of diverse detection and measurement technologies with complementary characteristics. The core function, Surveillance, must collect and fuse information from available sensors and information systems. The accuracy, coverage and refreshment rate in all-weather conditions must be high enough to satisfy the requirements. In a real application, this function will be constrained to deal with the specifications of output sensor data, formats, accuracies, etc. for the available sensors in the airport. In this work, we present a comparative analysis of data fusion architectures and some alternative algorithms to develop a real system deployed in Spanish airports, analyzing the capabilities and problems of different types of solutions.This work has been funded by the Spanish CICYT contracts: TIC2002-04491-C01/02 and CAM (07T/0034/2003 1).Publicad

The Shapley group value

Following the original interpretation of the Shapley value (Shapley, 1953a) as a priori evaluation of the prospects of a player in a multi-person iteraction situation, we propose a group value, which we call the Shapley group value, as a priori evaluation of the prospects of a group of players in a coalitional game when acting as a unit. We study its properties and we give an axiomatic characterization. We motivate our proposal by means of some relevant applications of the Shapley group value, when it is used as an objective function by a decision maker who is trying to identify an optimal group of agents in a framework in which agents interact and the attained benefit can be modeled by means of a transferable utility game. As an illustrative example we analyze the problem of identifying the set of key agents in a terrorist network.This research has been supported by I+D+i research project MTM2011-27892 from the Government of Spai

Pyramidal values

We propose and analyze a new type of values for cooperative TU-games, which we call pyramidal values. Assuming that the grand coalition is sequentially formed, and all orderings are equally likely, we define a pyramidal value to be any expected payoff in which the entrant player receives a salary, and the rest of his marginal contribution to the just formed coalition is distributed among the incumbent players. We relate the pyramidal-type sharing scheme we propose with other sharing schemes, and we also obtain some known values by means of this kind of pyramidal procedures. In particular, we show that the Shapley value can be obtained by means of an interesting pyramidal procedure that distributes nonzero dividends among the incumbents. As a result, we obtain an alternative formulation of the Shapley value based on a measure of complementarity between two players. Finally, we introduce the family of proportional pyramidal values, in which an incumbent receives a dividend in proportion to his initial investment, measured by means of his marginal contribution

¡Vaya valla! El yeísmo en el español de Valencia

In the last few years, the notion of yeismo has been approached from different perspectives; one of them is Sociolinguistics, the field in which the contribution of the present work is embedded. The aim of this article is to present the evolution of the phonetic process of delateralization of the phoneme /ʎ/ in favour of /ʝ/ in the use of Spanish by speakers in the bilingual speech community in Valencia and the sorrounding areas. From a traditional perspective, it was claimed that speakers in Valencia maintained the differentiation between the lateral and fricative palatals. However, more recent studies focus on the introduction and expansion of yeismo in particular areas in the Valencian region. For this sociolinguistic study a series of linguistic, stylistic and social factors have been established as independent factors. The study has been complemented with an analysis of perceptual phonetics. The results obtained in the study allow us to specify the stage at which this phenomenon is found in our region (phonematic distinction, yeismo with variation, consolidated yeismo or yeismo rehilado), who the speakers that act as leaders in the process of delateralization are and what the subjective perception speakers have of this phenomenon is. Keywords: Phonetic variation, yeismo, subjective perception, bilingual speech communit