Measuring the impact of tourism: a 'territorial' approach

The nature of tourism and the spheres of activity relevant to managing it are changing both in character and in scope. Consequently, traditional statistical and management information resources are not adequate for effective tourism planning and for tourism impact evaluation because they are deficient both in scope and focus. To adapt to the evolving nature of tourism and realize the full value creation potential for all stakeholders, planners, managers and operators must adopt a new conceptualization of the “space” over which relevant tourism related activities occur and over which these activities must therefore be comprehended and managed. A “territorial space”, which is not defined simply by geographical boundaries, but also by physical and intangible as well as actual and virtual boundaries is offered as a framework within which to conceptualize and approach planning and managing tourism in the newly evolved reality, and the BSC is as an effective tool for facilitating the implementation of a new approach in evaluating and studying the impacts of tourism as it could be well embedded into the “territory” concept and the Italian experiment on tourism districts will provide a perfect setting for applying the Proactive Balanced Scorecard to tourism

Discrete synaptic events induce global oscillations in balanced neural networks

Neural dynamics is triggered by discrete synaptic inputs of finite amplitude. However, the neural response is usually obtained within the diffusion approximation (DA) representing the synaptic inputs as Gaussian noise. We derive a mean-field formalism encompassing synaptic shot-noise for sparse balanced networks of spiking neurons. For low (high) external drives (synaptic strengths) irregular global oscillations emerge via continuous and hysteretic transitions, correctly predicted by our approach, but not from the DA. These oscillations display frequencies in biologically relevant bands.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

A reduction methodology for fluctuation driven population dynamics

Lorentzian distributions have been largely employed in statistical mechanics to obtain exact results for heterogeneous systems. Analytic continuation of these results is impossible even for slightly deformed Lorentzian distributions, due to the divergence of all the moments (cumulants). We have solved this problem by introducing a `pseudo-cumulants' expansion. This allows us to develop a reduction methodology for heterogeneous spiking neural networks subject to extrinsinc and endogenous noise sources, thus generalizing the mean-field formulation introduced in [E. Montbri\'o et al., Phys. Rev. X 5, 021028 (2015)].Comment: 10 pages (with supplementary materials), 3 figure

Coherent oscillations in balanced neural networks driven by endogenous fluctuations

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We acknowledge extremely useful discussions with L. Klimenko, G. Mongillo, S. Olmi, and E. Shklyaeva. A.T. received financial support by the Excellence Initiative I-Site Paris Seine (Grant No. ANR-16-IDEX-008), by the Labex MME-DII (Grant No. ANR11-LBX-0023-01), and by the ANR Project ERMUNDY (Grant No. ANR-18-CE37-0014) (together with M.d.V.), all part of the French program “Investissements d’Avenir.” The derivation and study of the exact solution for the firing rate were supported by the Russian Science Foundation (Grant No. 19-42-04120).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Mothers of Soldiers in Wartime: A National News Narrative

National news media represent mothers of US combat soldiers in the Iraq War as archetypal good mothers, that is, mothers who continue their maternal work even after their children are deployed. However, not all mothers are depicted as the archetypal patriotic mother, i.e., a good mother who is also stoic and silent about the war and her child\u27s role in it. Mothers of soldiers are portrayed as good mothers who sometimes also voice their attitudes about the war effort. The maternal attitudes ranged from complete support for the war to opposition to the war but support for the soldiers. The findings suggest a picture of wartime motherhood that is more nuanced than the historical image of the patriotic mother suggests

Beak and feather disease virus in wild and captive parrots: an analysis of geographic and taxonomic distribution and methodological trends

Psittacine beak and feather disease (PBFD) has emerged in recent years as a major threat to wild parrot populations and is an increasing concern to aviculturists and managers of captive populations. Pathological and serological tests for screening for the presence of beak and feather disease virus (BFDV) are a critical component of efforts to manage the disease and of epidemiological studies. Since the disease was first reported in the mid-1970s, screening for BFDV has been conducted in numerous wild and captive populations. However, at present, there is no current and readily accessible synthesis of screening efforts and their results. Here, we consolidate information collected from 83 PBFD- and BFDV-based publications on the primary screening methods being used and identify important knowledge gaps regarding potential global disease hotspots. We present trends in research intensity in this field and critically discuss advances in screening techniques and their applications to both aviculture and to the management of threatened wild populations. Finally, we provide an overview of estimates of BFDV prevalence in captive and wild flocks alongside a complete list of all psittacine species in which the virus has been confirmed. Our evaluation highlights the need for standardised diagnostic tests and more emphasis on studies of wild populations, particularly in view of the intrinsic connection between global trade in companion birds and the spread of novel BFDV strains into wild populations. Increased emphasis should be placed on the screening of captive and wild parrot populations within their countries of origin across the Americas, Africa and Asia

The ineffectiveness of entrepreneurship policy:Is policy formulation to blame?

Entrepreneurship policy has been criticised for its lack of effectiveness. Some scholars, such as Scott Shane in this journal, have argued that it is ‘bad’ public policy. But this simply begs the question why the legislative process should generate bad policy? To answer this question this study examines the UK’s enterprise policy process in the 2009–2010 period. It suggests that a key factor for the ineffectiveness of policy is how it is formulated. This stage in the policy process is seldom visible to those outside of government departments and has been largely ignored by prior research. The application of institutional theory provides a detailed theoretical understanding of the actors and the process by which enterprise policy is formulated. We find that by opening up the ‘black box’ of enterprise policy formulation, the process is dominated by powerful actors who govern the process with their interests