Seasonality of Overseas Tourism Demand in Scotland: A Regional Analysis

This paper examines patterns of seasonality in international tourism to the regions of Scotland. Quarterly numbers of overnight stays are disaggregated by trip purpose. Seasonality in vacation tourism to Scotland is shown to be defined by more than a simple rural–urban division. Overseas visiting friends and relatives (VFR) tourism is largely an urban phenomenon and is consequently less seasonal than vacation tourism. Lower seasonal concentration of VFR tourism is not uniform across the regions. Although levels of seasonal intensity of business tourism to the three principal cities of Scotland are approximately the same, there are noticeable variations over time

Learning To Be Affected: Social suffering and total pain at life’s borders.

The practice of Live Sociology in situations of pain and suffering is the author’s focus. An outline of the challenges of understanding pain is followed by a discussion of Bourdieu’s ‘social suffering’ (1999) and the palliative care philosophy of ‘total pain’. Using examples from qualitative research on disadvantaged dying migrants in the UK, attention is given to the methods that are improvised by dying people and care practitioners in attempts to bridge intersubjective divides, where the causes and routes of pain can be ontologically and temporally indeterminate and/or withdrawn. The paper contends that these latter phenomena are the incitement for the inventive bridging and performative work of care and Live Sociological methods, both of which are concerned with opposing suffering. Drawing from the ontology of total pain, I highlight the importance of (i) an engagement with a range of materials out of which attempts at intersubjective bridging can be produced, and which exceed the social, the material, and the temporally linear; and (ii) an empirical sensibility that is hospitable to the inaccessible and non-relational

The four qualities of life: Ordering concepts and measures of the good life

The terms 'quality-of-life', 'wellbeing' and 'happiness' denote different meanings; sometimes they are used as an umbrella term for all of value, and the other times to denote special merits. This paper is about the specific meanings of the terms. It proposes a classification based on two bi-partitions; between life 'chances' and life 'results', and between 'outer' and 'inner' qualities. Together these dichotomies imply four qualities of life: 1) livability of the environment, 2) life-ability of the individual, 3) external utility of life and 4) inner appreciation of life. This fourfold matrix is applied in three ways: firstly to place related notions and alternative classifications, secondly to explore substantive meanings in various measures for quality of life and thirdly to find out whether quality-of-life can be measured comprehensively. This last question is answered in the negative. Current sum-scores make little sense. The most inclusive summary measure is still how long and happily people live

What should deflationism be when it grows up?

http://philpapers.org/rec/HORWSDI argue that a popular brand of deflationism about truth, disquotationalism, does not adequately account for some central varieties of truth ascription. For example, given Boyle's Law is ''The product of pressure and volume is exactly a constant for an ideal gas'', disquotationalism does not explain why the blind ascription ''Boyle's Law is true'' implies that the product of pressure and volume is exactly a constant for an ideal gas, and given Washington said only ''Birds sing'', disquotationalism does not explain why the existentially quantified ascription ''Something Washington said is true'' implies that birds sing. Thus disquotationalism fails to account for all the facts about truth.This project was supported by a grant from the University of Missouri Research Board

The biomechanics of the locust ovipositor valves : a unique digging apparatus

The female locust has a unique mechanism for digging in order to deposit its eggs deep in the ground. It utilizes two pairs of sclerotized valves to displace the granular matter, while extending its abdomen as it propagates underground. This ensures optimal conditions for the eggs to incubate, and provides them with protection from predators. Here, two major axes of operation of the digging valves are identified, one in parallel to the propagation direction of the ovipositor, and one perpendicular to it. The direction-dependent biomechanics of the locust major, dorsal digging valves are quantified and analyzed, under forces in the physiological range and beyond, considering hydration level, as well as the females’ age, or sexual maturation state. Our findings reveal that the responses of the valves to compression forces in the specific directions change upon sexual maturation to follow their function, and depend on environmental conditions. Namely, in the physiological force range, the valves are resistant to mechanical failure. In addition, mature females, which lay eggs, have stiffer valves, up to roughly nineteen times the stiffness of the pre-mature locusts. The valves are stiffer in the major working direction, corresponding to soil shuffling and compression, compared to the direction of propagation. Hydration of the valves reduces their stiffness but increases their resilience against failure. These findings provide mechanical and materials guidelines for the design of novel non-drilling excavating tools, including 3D-printed anisotropic materials based on composites.Statement of significance The female locust lay its eggs underground in order to protect them from predators and to provide them with optimal conditions for hatching. In order to dig into the ground, it uses two pairs of valves: The ventral pair is plugged as a wedge, while the dorsal pair performs the digging of the oviposition tunnel. We study the mechanical response of the digging valves, depending on age, hydration level and direction of operation. Our findings show that during the course of roughly two weeks in the life of the adult female, the digging valves become up to nineteen-fold stiffer against failure, in order to fulfill their function as diggers. While hydration reduces the stiffness, it also increases the resilience against failure and renders the valves unbreakable within the estimated physiological force range and beyond. The digging valves are consistently stiffer in the digging direction than in the perpendicular direction, implying on their form-follows-function design.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest

One Specialty’s Collaborative Approach to Competency-Based Curriculum Development

The authors describe a seven-step consensus development process used to create the two most recent editions of the Academic Pediatric Association’s (APA’s) educational guidelines for pediatric residency. The 1996 (printed) and 2004 (online) editions of the guidelines were designed as flexible tools to help residency programs meet changing accreditation requirements by providing lists of goals and objectives and objective-based evaluation tools. The guidelines were developed in seven steps: (1) centralized national leadership combined with coordinated, disseminated authorship, (2) clear definition of targeted users and repeated assessment of their needs, (3) incorporation of up-to-date information from the literature and national experts, (4) responsive consultation with the national Pediatric Residency Review Committee on the latest accreditation requirements, (5) wide distribution for prepublication review, to obtain broad organizational buy-in and end-user acceptance, (6) intensive dissemination and faculty development through multiple national workshops over several years, and (7) careful evaluation of utilization and user feedback. Representatives of all major organizations involved in pediatric education helped to refine the guidelines. User surveys conducted for the 1996 edition, and Web site user data collected for the 2004 edition, demonstrate that both editions have been used by most residency programs throughout the country. The authors believe that the multifaceted approach to consensus development and the customizable design of the curricular tools in the APA’s guidelines are directly associated with their broad national use. These methods may help to guide educators in other disciplines who are interested in developing and implementing educational products for national dissemination and use

Feminist phenomenology and the woman in the running body

Modern phenomenology, with its roots in Husserlian philosophy, has been taken up and utilised in a myriad of ways within different disciplines, but until recently has remained relatively under-used within sports studies. A corpus of sociological-phenomenological work is now beginning to develop in this domain, alongside a longer standing literature in feminist phenomenology. These specific social-phenomenological forms explore the situatedness of lived-body experience within a particular social structure. After providing a brief overview of key strands of phenomenology, this article considers some of the ways in which sociological, and particularly feminist phenomenology, might be used to analyse female sporting embodiment. For illustrative purposes, data from an autophenomenographic project on female distance running are also included, in order briefly to demonstrate the application of phenomenology within sociology, as both theoretical framework and methodological approach

Draft Genome Sequence of the Redox-Active Enteric Bacterium Citrobacter portucalensis Strain MBL

We grew a soil enrichment culture to identify organisms that anaerobically oxidize phenazine-1-carboxylic acid. A strain of Citrobacter portucalensis was isolated from this enrichment and sequenced by both Illumina and PacBio technologies. It has a genome with a length of 5.3 Mb, a G+C content of 51.8%, and at least one plasmid

Criminal and Noncriminal Psychopathy: The Devil is in the Detail

Brooks, NS ORCiD: 0000-0003-1784-099XPsychopathy is prevalent and problematic in criminal populations, but is also found to be present in noncriminal populations. In 1992, Robert Hare declared that psychopaths may also “be found in the boardroom”, which has since been followed by an interest in the issue of noncriminal, or even successful, psychopathy. In this chapter, the paradox of criminal and noncriminal psychopathy is discussed with specific attention given to the similarities and differences that account for psychopathic personality across contexts. That psychopathy is a condition typified by a constellation of traits and behaviours requires wider research across diverse populations, and thus the streams of research related to criminal and noncriminal psychopathy are presented and the implications of these contrasting streams are explored