The "universal" characteristics of creative industries revisited: The case of Riga

__Abstract__ "Creative industries" has emerged as a universal research and policy concept exploited for the advocacy of economic development of cities, regions and countries. Existent literature implies assumptions characterising the nature of the set of activities that constitute creative industries. While studies have shown the place-specificity of the conditions relative to the development of these industries, there is little acknowledgment of the potential place-specificity of their characteristics. This article combines statistical data with the results of a survey of creative firms in Riga (Latvia) to explore the extent to which the common assumptions about the features of creative industries expressed in the literature correspond to reality in less economically developed urban settings. The results show that creative industries in Riga display only some of the assumed characteristics, while assumptions such as high levels of innovation and growth used to advocate their importance could not be confirmed

Daily deal shoppers: What drives social couponing?

This paper contributes to the service marketing literature with a focus on deal-of-the-day (DoD) website shopping. The work explores drivers of adoption of DoD shopping among young consumers. We show that value conscious consumers are less oriented towards DoD while deal-prone consumers are more likely to purchase DoD. In contrast to previous research, which found that price savings are the main reason for coupon use, our study finds that Enjoyment plays a major role in young consumers\u2019 DoD shopping behaviour. DoD platforms could leverage Enjoyment to create a compelling value proposition for both consumer and merchant attraction and retention

The time course of ongoing activity during neuritis and following axonal transport disruption

Local nerve inflammation (neuritis) leads to ongoing activity and axonal mechanical sensitivity (AMS) along intact nociceptor axons, and disrupts axonal transport. This phenomenon forms the most feasible cause of radiating pain, such as sciatica. We have previously shown that axonal transport disruption without inflammation or degeneration also leads to AMS, but does not cause ongoing activity at the time point when AMS occurs, despite causing cutaneous hypersensitivity. However, there have been no systematic studies of ongoing activity during neuritis or non-inflammatory axonal transport disruption. In this study, we present the time course of ongoing activity from primary sensory neurons following neuritis and vinblastine-induced axonal transport disruption. Whereas 24% of C/slow Aδ-fiber neurons had ongoing activity during neuritis, few (<10%) A- and C-fiber neurons showed ongoing activity 1-15 days following vinblastine treatment. In contrast, AMS increased transiently at the vinblastine treatment site, peaking on day 4-5 (28% of C/slow Aδ-fiber neurons) and resolved by day 15. Conduction velocities were slowed in all groups. In summary, the disruption of axonal transport without inflammation does not lead to ongoing activity in sensory neurons, including nociceptors, but does cause a rapid and transient development of AMS. Since it is proposed that AMS underlies mechanically-induced radiating pain, and a transient disruption of axonal transport (as previously reported) leads to transient AMS, it follows that processes that disrupt axonal transport, such as neuritis, must persist to maintain AMS and the associated symptoms

Low delta-V near-Earth asteroids: A survey of suitable targets for space missions

In the last decades Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) have become very important targets to study, since they can give us clues to the formation, evolution and composition of the Solar System. In addition, they may represent either a threat to humankind, or a repository of extraterrestrial resources for suitable space-borne missions. Within this framework, the choice of next-generation mission targets and the characterisation of a potential threat to our planet deserve special attention. To date, only a small part of the 11,000 discovered NEOs have been physically characterised. From ground and space-based observations one can determine some basic physical properties of these objects using visible and infrared spectroscopy. We present data for 13 objects observed with different telescopes around the world (NASA-IRTF, ESO-NTT, TNG) in the 0.4 - 2.5 um spectral range, within the NEOSURFACE survey (http://www.oa-roma.inaf.it/planet/NEOSurface.html). Objects are chosen from among the more accessible for a rendez-vous mission. All of them are characterised by a delta-V (the change in velocity needed for transferring a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit to rendez-vous with NEOs) lower than 10.5 km/s, well below the Solar System escape velocity (12.3 km/s). We taxonomically classify 9 of these objects for the first time. 11 objects belong to the S-complex taxonomy; the other 2 belong to the C-complex. We constrain the surface composition of these objects by comparing their spectra with meteorites from the RELAB database. We also compute olivine and pyroxene mineralogy for asteroids with a clear evidence of pyroxene bands. Mineralogy confirms the similarity with the already found H, L or LL ordinary chondrite analogues.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, to be published in A&A Minor changes by language edito

Clustering Italian medical texts: a case study on referrals

In the medical domain, there is a large amount of valuable information that is stored in textual format. These unstructured data have long been ignored, due to the difficulties of introducing them in statistical models, but in the last years, the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) has seen relevant improvements, with models capable of achieving relevant results in various tasks, including information extraction, classification and clustering. NLP models are typically language-specific and often domain-specific, but most of the work to date has been focused on the English language, especially in the medical domain. In this work, we propose a pipeline for clustering Italian medical texts, with a case study on clinical questions reported in referral

Long-term treatment with high-dose of sildenafil in a thalassemic patient with pulmonary hypertension

We report a case of a 37-years-old man, affected by thalassemia major, hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, chronic HCV-hepatitis, diabetes mellitus, severe osteoporosis, prior septic pulmonary embolism and pulmonary artery hypertension was performed a long-term treatment with highdose of sildenafil (120 mg/die) with reduction of pulmonary arterial systolic pressure and of the dyspnea

Collaborative development of an online pharmacy experiential learning database

Academics preparing students for experiential placements within professional programs require considerable curriculum planning and pedagogical expertise. Communities of practice involving workshops and online processes provide opportunities for collaborative work in developing quality curriculum materials and also in supporting widespread dissemination. The aim of an Australian Learning and Teaching Council funded project was to collaboratively establish an online repository of tasks and other associated resources. These tasks were intended for potential inclusion in the suite of activities that could be required to be completed in a pharmacy experiential clinical placement. An educational template and website were initially created, with over 90 academics and other industry partners subsequently attending a series of workshops to share ideas and develop the online materials. Online surveys regarding the tasks, written feedback concerning workshop processes and interviews were conducted as part of the ongoing evaluation processes to ascertain the effectiveness of the tasks and processes and to inform future directions. Workshops and follow up processes resulted in publication of twenty eight tasks, positive responses to the materials and to the collaborative processes

Imaging-based representation and stratification of intra-tumor heterogeneity via tree-edit distance

Personalized medicine is the future of medical practice. In oncology, tumor heterogeneity assessment represents a pivotal step for effective treatment planning and prognosis prediction. Despite new procedures for DNA sequencing and analysis, non-invasive methods for tumor characterization are needed to impact on daily routine. On purpose, imaging texture analysis is rapidly scaling, holding the promise to surrogate histopathological assessment of tumor lesions. In this work, we propose a tree-based representation strategy for describing intra-tumor heterogeneity of patients affected by metastatic cancer. We leverage radiomics information extracted from PET/CT imaging and we provide an exhaustive and easily readable summary of the disease spreading. We exploit this novel patient representation to perform cancer subtyping according to hierarchical clustering technique. To this purpose, a new heterogeneity-based distance between trees is defined and applied to a case study of prostate cancer. Clusters interpretation is explored in terms of concordance with severity status, tumor burden and biological characteristics. Results are promising, as the proposed method outperforms current literature approaches. Ultimately, the proposed method draws a general analysis framework that would allow to extract knowledge from daily acquired imaging data of patients and provide insights for effective treatment planning