Film tourism impacts: A multi-stakeholder longitudinal approach

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This study examines multiple local stakeholders’ perceptions of film tourism impacts to shed light on the complexities of film tourism planning and development, using a longitudinal exploratory research approach. The Japanese TV series Mare (2015) was chosen as the case study. Qualitative interviews with various local stakeholders were conducted over a 21-month-long period of a film tourism development project in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan. The study found that this film tourism project was initiated with high expectations. However, due to several incidents, such as the controversial rebuilding of a local highway road for promotional purposes, the audience’s mixed reception of the series’ storyline, and a sexual harassment scandal involving one of the main actors, the film tourism development did not progress as planned. The study also revealed that consultation which included a diverse range of local stakeholders and long-term planning embedded into a larger regional development strategy were key factors for successful film tourism planning and development. We contribute that an investigation of local stakeholders’ consultation, diversity, inclusion and long-term embedding is reflected in perceptions across the pre-, during- and post-production stages. These four complexities provide valuable insights and even explanations for local’s dynamic perceptions of film tourism impacts

Teil 2: Handlungsoptionen entwickeln und Entscheidungen treffen

Technologieentwicklungen frühzeitig und richtig einzuschätzen ist ausschlaggebend für den nachhaltigen Erfolg von Technologieunternehmen. Durch die weltweite Zunahme und Beschleunigung der Forschungs- und Entwicklungsaktivitäten sowie steigende Verflechtung von Wertschöpfungsketten wird dies zunehmend schwieriger. In Teil eins dieses Praxisleitfadens wurde ein Überblick über unterschiedliche Indikatoren zur Bewertung und Einstufung von Technologien geschaffen. Ziel dieses Leitfadens ist es, eine Anleitung zu geben, um mit Hilfe der Indikatoren die Entwicklungsaktivitäten technologischer Innovationen abbilden zu können. Unter Berücksichtigung unternehmensspezifischer Stärken und Schwächen, dient dies als Entscheidungshilfe zur Wahl der passenden Timing- und Technologiestrategie

Comparative Bioinformatics and Experimental Analysis of the Intergenic Regulatory Regions of Bacillus cereus hbl and nhe Enterotoxin Operons and the Impact of CodY on Virulence Heterogeneity

Bacillus cereus is a food contaminant with greatly varying enteropathogenic potential. Almost all known strains harbor the genes for at least one of the three enterotoxins Nhe, Hbl, and CytK. While some strains show no cytotoxicity, others have caused outbreaks, in rare cases even with lethal outcome. The reason for these differences in cytotoxicity is unknown. To gain insight into the origin of enterotoxin expression heterogeneity in different strains, the architecture and role of 5' intergenic regions (5' IGRs) upstream of the nhe and hbl operons was investigated. In silico comparison of 142 strains of all seven phylogenetic groups of B. cereus sensu lato proved the presence of long 5' IGRs upstream of the nheABC and hblCDAB operons, which harbor recognition sites for several transcriptional regulators, including the virulence regulator PIcR, redox regulators ResD and Fnr, the nutrient-sensitive regulator CodY as well as the master regulator for biofilm formation SinR. By determining transcription start sites, unusually long 5' untranslated regions (5' UTRs) upstream of the nhe and hbl start codons were identified, which are not present upstream of cytK-1 and cytK-2. Promoter fusions lacking various parts of the nhe and hbl 5' UTR in B. cereus INRA C3 showed that the entire 331 bp 5' UTR of nhe is necessary for full promoter activity, while the presence of the complete 606 bp hbl 5' UTR lowers promoter activity. Repression was caused by a 268 bp sequence directly upstream of the hbl transcription start. Luciferase activity of reporter strains containing nhe and hbl 5' IGR lux fusions provided evidence that toxin gene transcription is upregulated by the depletion of free amino acids. Electrophoretic mobility shift assays showed that the branched-chain amino acid sensing regulator CodY binds to both nhe and hbl 5' UTR downstream of the promoter, potentially acting as a nutrient responsive roadblock repressor of toxin gene transcription. PIcR binding sites are highly conserved among all B. cereus sensu lato strains, indicating that this regulator does not significantly contribute to the heterogeneity in virulence potentials. The CodY recognition sites are far less conserved, perhaps conferring varying strengths of CodY binding, which might modulate toxin synthesis in a strain-specific manner

Screening love: Relational practices in Japanese TV dramas produced during the COVID-19 pandemic

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on love, marriage and family life. Employing both social science and cultural studies perspectives, this article discusses romantic and familial relationships and their respective depictions in four Japanese romantic dramas (ren’ai dorama) produced under pandemic conditions. It touches upon the COVID-19 pandemic and related policies in Japan, elaborates on conditions of TV production during the pandemic, and asks: How have TV series addressed love, dating and (marital) relationships during the pandemic? How did the pandemic and concomitant policies impact depictions of these topics? Finally, what do these dramas reveal about the state of domestic gender relations and gender equality in the context of changing working conditions and stay-at-home policies implemented during the pandemic? The article identifies a trend consistent with ‘re-traditionalization’ on the one hand, and depictions of diverse, unconventional relational practices that are critical of the marital institution on the other. While the dramas touch on the impact of the pandemic on women’s livelihoods and gender equality, more serious consequences remain unexplored

From genome to toxicity: a combinatory approach highlights the complexity of enterotoxin production in Bacillus cereus

In recent years Bacillus cereus has gained increasing importance as a food poisoning pathogen. It is the eponymous member of the Bacillus cereus sensu lato group that consists of eight closely related species showing impressive diversity of their pathogenicity. The high variability of cytotoxicity and the complex regulatory network of enterotoxin expression have complicated efforts to predict the toxic potential of new Bacillus cereus isolates. In this study, comprehensive analyses of enterotoxin gene sequences, transcription, toxin secretion and cytotoxicity were performed. For the first time, these parameters were compared in a whole set of Bacillus cereus strains representing isolates of different origin (food or food poisoning outbreaks) and of different toxic potential (enteropathogenic and apathogenic) to elucidate potential starting points of strain-specific differential toxicity. While toxin gene sequences were highly conserved and did not allow for differentiation between high and low toxicity strains, comparison of nheB and hblD enterotoxin gene transcription and Nhe and Hbl protein titers revealed not only strain-specific differences but also incongruence between toxin gene transcripts and toxin protein levels. With one exception all strains showed comparable capability of protein secretion and so far, no secretion patterns specific for high and low toxicity strains were identified. These results indicate that enterotoxin expression is more complex than expected, possibly involving the orchestrated interplay of different transcriptional regulator proteins, as well as posttranscriptional and posttranslational regulatory mechanisms plus additional influences of environmental conditions

The Geneva Minimalistic Acoustic Parameter Set (GeMAPS) for Voice Research and Affective Computing

Work on voice sciences over recent decades has led to a proliferation of acoustic parameters that are used quite selectively and are not always extracted in a similar fashion. With many independent teams working in different research areas, shared standards become an essential safeguard to ensure compliance with state-of-the-art methods allowing appropriate comparison of results across studies and potential integration and combination of extraction and recognition systems. In this paper we propose a basic standard acoustic parameter set for various areas of automatic voice analysis, such as paralinguistic or clinical speech analysis. In contrast to a large brute-force parameter set, we present a minimalistic set of voice parameters here. These were selected based on a) their potential to index affective physiological changes in voice production, b) their proven value in former studies as well as their automatic extractability, and c) their theoretical significance. The set is intended to provide a common baseline for evaluation of future research and eliminate differences caused by varying parameter sets or even different implementations of the same parameters. Our implementation is publicly available with the openSMILE toolkit. Comparative evaluations of the proposed feature set and large baseline feature sets of INTERSPEECH challenges show a high performance of the proposed set in relation to its size