Visitors' memories of wildlife tourism: Implications for the design of powerful interpretive experiences

One of the aims of wildlife tourism is to educate visitors about the threats facing wildlife in general, and the actions needed to protect the environment and maintain biodiversity. To identify effective strategies to achieve this aim, this paper examines participants' memories of their wildlife tourism experiences and explores processes through which such experiences can lead to long-term changes in conservation behaviour. Findings are based on 240 visitors' extended open-ended responses to a follow-up web survey administered approximately four months after a visit to one of four marine-based wildlife tourism venues in Southeast Queensland. Qualitative analysis revealed four levels of visitor response to the experience, implying a process involving what visitors actually saw and heard (sensory impressions), what they felt (emotional affinity), thought (reflective response), and finally what they did about it (behavioural response). Recommendations are provided for ways tourism managers and wildlife interpreters can maintain and strengthen these dimensions of memorable experiences in order to enhance visitor satisfaction and encourage visitors' long-term adoption of environmentally sustainable practices. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Harnessing the power of advertising to prevent childhood obesity

Background: Social marketing integrates communication campaigns with behavioural and environmental change strategies. Childhood obesity programs could benefit significantly from social marketing but communication campaigns on this issue tend to be stand-alone. Methods: A large-scale multi-setting child obesity prevention program was implemented in the Hunter New England (HNE) region of New South Wales (NSW), Australia from 2005-2010. The program included a series of communication campaigns promoting the program and its key messages: drinking water; getting physically active and; eating more vegetables and fruit. Pre-post telephone surveys (n = 9) were undertaken to evaluate awareness of the campaigns among parents of children aged 2-15 years using repeat cross-sections of randomly selected cohorts. A total of 1,367 parents (HNE = 748, NSW = 619) participated. Results: At each survey post baseline, HNE parents were significantly more likely to have seen, read or heard about the program and its messages in the media than parents in the remainder of the state (p < 0.001). Further, there was a significant increase in awareness of the program and each of its messages over time in HNE compared to no change over time in NSW (p < 0.001). Awareness was significantly higher (p < 0.05) in HNE compared to NSW after each specific campaign (except the vegetable one) and significantly higher awareness levels were sustained for each campaign until the end of the program. At the end of the program participants without a tertiary education were significantly more likely (p = 0.04) to be aware of the brand campaign (31%) than those with (20%) but there were no other statistically significant socio-demographic differences in awareness. Conclusions: The Good for Kids communication campaigns increased and maintained awareness of childhood obesity prevention messages. Moreover, messages were delivered equitably to diverse socio-demographic groups within the region

Tracking Violent Crime with Ambulance Data: How Much Crime Goes Uncounted?

Abstract Research Question What proportion of ambulance records documenting injuries caused by criminal violence is included in police records for violent crimes occurring in the same area at the same dates and times as incidents found in ambulance records? Data We analysed subsets of three datasets during matched time periods: West Midlands Ambulance Service records of all 36,639 incidents of violent injuries from January 2012 to March 2017; 132,317 West Midlands Police records of violent crimes from January 2012 to December 2015; and 9083 records of treatment of violent injuries as recorded in hospital Emergency Department (ED) records covering September 2013 to March 2016. Methods We compared all incidents in the ambulance dataset and ED data to corresponding locations and times in incidents recorded in police datasets. Findings Approximately 90% of cases in the ambulance dataset did not have a corresponding case in the police dataset. The proportion was even lower in the Emergency Department dataset, where less than 5% of cases were successfully matched to a police record. These data suggest that adding the medical data to the police data could add 15 to 20% more violent offences to the totals recorded by the police. Conclusions Tracking identified ambulance data can add substantial numbers of serious violent crimes, over and above those reported to the police. These added cases can increase the targeting of police and public health resources to prevent harm against victims, at places, and by offenders at highest risk of serious violence. </jats:sec

Motivations, substance use and other correlates amongst property and violent offenders who regularly inject drugs

Objective: To examine the prevalence, correlates and motivations for the commission of property and violent crime amongst a sample of people who inject drugs (PWID)

AMRA: An Adaptive Mesh Refinement Hydrodynamic Code for Astrophysics

Implementation details and test cases of a newly developed hydrodynamic code, AMRA, are presented. The numerical scheme exploits the adaptive mesh refinement technique coupled to modern high-resolution schemes which are suitable for relativistic and non-relativistic flows. Various physical processes are incorporated using the operator splitting approach, and include self-gravity, nuclear burning, physical viscosity, implicit and explicit schemes for conductive transport, simplified photoionization, and radiative losses from an optically thin plasma. Several aspects related to the accuracy and stability of the scheme are discussed in the context of hydrodynamic and astrophysical flows.Comment: 41 pages, 21 figures (9 low-resolution), LaTeX, requires elsart.cls, submitted to Comp. Phys. Comm.; additional documentation and high-resolution figures available from http://www.camk.edu.pl/~tomek/AMRA/index.htm

Feedback and metal enrichment in cosmological SPH simulations I. A model for chemical enrichment

We discuss a model for treating chemical enrichment by SNII and SNIa explosions in simulations of cosmological structure formation. Our model includes metal-dependent radiative cooling and star formation in dense collapsed gas clumps. Metals are returned into the diffuse interstellar medium by star particles using a local SPH smoothing kernel. A variety of chemical abundance patterns in enriched gas arise in our treatment owing to the different yields and lifetimes of SNII and SNIa progenitor stars. In the case of SNII chemical production, we adopt metal-dependent yields. Because of the sensitive dependence of cooling rates on metallicity, enrichment of galactic haloes with metals can in principle significantly alter subsequent gas infall and the build up of the stellar components. Indeed, in simulations of isolated galaxies we find that a consistent treatment of metal-dependent cooling produces 25% more stars outside the central region than simulations with a primordial cooling function. In the highly-enriched central regions, the evolution of baryons is however not affected by metal cooling, because here the gas is always dense enough to cool. A similar situation is found in cosmological simulations because we include no strong feedback processes which could spread metals over large distances and mix them into unenriched diffuse gas. We demonstrate this explicitly with test simulations which adopt super-solar cooling functions leading to large changes both in the stellar mass and in the metal distributions. We also find that the impact of metallicity on the star formation histories of galaxies may depend on their particular evolutionary history. Our results hence emphasise the importance of feedback processes for interpreting the cosmic metal enrichment.Comment: 15 pages, 15 figures, MNRAS, modified to match published versio

The Angular Momentum Problem in Cosmological Simulations of Disk Galaxy Formation

We conduct a systematic study of the angular momentum problem in numerical simulations of disk galaxy formation. We investigate the role of numerical resolution using a semi-cosmological setup which combines an efficient use of the number of particles in an isolated halo while preserving the hierarchical build-up of the disk through the merging of clumps. We perform the same simulation varying the resolution over 4 orders of magnitude. Independent on the level of resolution, the loss of angular momentum stays the same and can be tied to dynamical friction during the build-up phase. This is confirmed in a cosmological simulation. We also perform simulations including star formation and star formation and supernova feedback. While the former has no influence on the angular momentum problem, the latter reduces the loss to a level potentially in agreement with observations. This is achieved through a suppression of early star formation and therefore the formation of a large, slowly rotating bulge. We conclude that feedback is a critical component to achieve realistic disk galaxies in cosmological simulations. Numerical resolution is important, but by itself not capable of solving the angular momentum problem.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, submitted to MNRA

Residual Plasmodium falciparum parasitemia in Kenyan children after artemisinin-combination therapy is associated with increased transmission to mosquitoes and parasite recurrence.

BACKGROUND: Parasite clearance time after artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) may be increasing in Asian and African settings. The association between parasite clearance following ACT and transmissibility is currently unknown. METHODS: We determined parasite clearance dynamics by duplex quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) in samples collected in the first 3 days after treatment of uncomplicated malaria with ACT. Gametocyte carriage was determined by Pfs25 quantitative nucleic acid sequence-based amplification assays; infectiousness to mosquitoes by membrane-feeding assays on day 7 after treatment. RESULTS: Residual parasitemia was detected by qPCR in 31.8% (95% confidence interval [CI], 24.6-39.8) of the children on day 3 after initiation of treatment. Residual parasitemia was associated with a 2-fold longer duration of gametocyte carriage (P = .0007), a higher likelihood of infecting mosquitoes (relative risk, 1.95; 95% CI, 1.17-3.24; P = .015), and a higher parasite burden in mosquitoes (incidence rate ratio, 2.92; 95% CI, 1.61-5.31; P < .001). Children with residual parasitemia were also significantly more likely to experience microscopically detectable parasitemia during follow-up (relative risk, 11.25; 95% CI, 4.08-31.01; P < .001). CONCLUSIONS: Residual submicroscopic parasitemia is common after ACT and is associated with a higher transmission potential. Residual parasitemia may also have consequences for individual patients because of its higher risk of recurrent parasitemia

Local amplifiers of IL-4Rα-mediated macrophage activation promote repair in lung and liver

The type 2 immune response controls helminth infection and maintains tissue homeostasis but can lead to allergy and fibrosis if not adequately regulated. We have discovered local tissue-specific amplifiers of type 2-mediated macrophage activation. In the lung, surfactant protein A (SP-A) enhanced interleukin-4 (IL-4)-dependent macrophage proliferation and activation, accelerating parasite clearance and reducing pulmonary injury after infection with a lung-migrating helminth. In the peritoneal cavity and liver, C1q enhancement of type 2 macrophage activation was required for liver repair after bacterial infection, but resulted in fibrosis after peritoneal dialysis. IL-4 drives production of these structurally related defense collagens, SP-A and C1q, and the expression of their receptor, myosin 18A. These findings reveal the existence within different tissues of an amplification system needed for local type 2 responses

Power Spectrum Analysis of the ESP Galaxy Redshift Survey

We measure the power spectrum of the galaxy distribution in the ESO Slice Project (ESP) galaxy redshift survey. We develope a technique to describe the survey window function analytically, and then deconvolve it from the measured power spectrum using a variant of the Lucy method. We test the whole deconvolution procedure on ESP mock catalogues drawn from large N-body simulations, and find that it is reliable for recovering the correct amplitude and shape of $P(k)$ at $k> 0.065 h$ Mpc$^{-1}$. In general, the technique is applicable to any survey composed by a collection of circular fields with arbitrary pattern on the sky, as typical of surveys based on fibre spectrographs. The estimated power spectrum has a well-defined power-law shape $k^n$ with $n\simeq -2.2$ for $k\ge 0.2 h$ Mpc$^{-1}$, and a smooth bend to a flatter shape ($n\simeq -1.6$) for smaller $k$'s. The smallest wavenumber, where a meaningful reconstruction can be performed ($k\sim 0.06 h$ Mpc$^{-1}$), does not allow us to explore the range of scales where other power spectra seem to show a flattening and hints for a turnover. We also find, by direct comparison of the Fourier transforms, that the estimate of the two-point correlation function $\xi(s)$ is much less sensitive to the effect of a problematic window function as that of the ESP, than the power spectrum. Comparison to other surveys shows an excellent agreement with estimates from blue-selected surveys. In particular, the ESP power spectrum is virtually indistinguishable from that of the Durham-UKST survey over the common range of $k$'s, an indirect confirmation of the quality of the deconvolution technique applied.Comment: 15 pages, 11 postscript figures. Version accepted for publication in MNRAS. Complete description of window function computation, 1 additional figur