Domestic tourism, its potential to compensate the outage of international arrivals caused by COVID-19 and the vulnerability of different groups of countries (a cluster analysis)

Tourism is the most affected industry by the pandemic COVID-19 and will be probably also the last one to recover. International organizations UNWTO, WTTC, and others suppose that domestic tourism will play a significant role in 2020 and after. However, domestic tourism is not a universal solution for all destinations. This paper aims to identify the factors that might play a role in the domestic tourism results in 2020 and later and to which extent domestic tourism can compensate the outage of international arrivals in different countries. Two types of factors were analysed: (1) economic factors (GDP, GDP per capita, share of tourism on GDP) and (2) characteristics of tourism (domestic tourism intensity, Travel &Tourism Competitiveness Index, domestic tourism share etc). Based on the data from 2018 and 2019 from 41 countries, the cluster analysis identified six groups of countries with different potential of domestic tourism to support the survival of the tourism businesses and drive recovery in the post-pandemic period.

Image-to-Image Translation as a Pretext for Unsupervised Detection of Cancerous Regions in Histology Imagery

Detection of visual anomalies refers to the problem of finding patterns in different imaging data that do not conform to the expected visual appearance, and is a widely studied problem in different domains. Due to the nature of anomaly occurrences and underlying generating processes, it is hard to characterize them and obtain labelled data. Obtaining labelled data is especially difficult in biomedical applications, where only trained domain experts can provide labels, which are often diverse and complex to a large degree. The recently presented approaches for unsupervised detection of visual anomalies omit the need for labelled data and demonstrate promising results in domains where anomalous samples significantly deviate from the normal appearance. Despite promising results, the performance of such approaches still lags behind supervised approaches and does not provide a universal solution. In this work, we present an image-to-image translation-based framework that significantly surpasses the performance of existing unsupervised methods and approaches the performance of supervised methods in a challenging domain of cancerous region detection in histology imagery.

Vertical Urbanization: The Territorial Crisis of a Universal Model

This research aims to examine, from the perspective of the urban design, the necessity and appropriateness of writing an architectural manifesto that questions, or rethinks, the vertical city model based on the orderly accumulation of slender and free columns – housing towers– where society must fraternize and develop life. The journey through the skyline of the main megalopolitan concentrations in countries such as China, India, Brazil, Mexico or those of the Pacific, shows us a landscape of dense residential conglomerates whose spatial and urban configuration was conceived almost a century ago. Vast extensions of vertical developments conquer, as a final and universal solution, plots without attributes between huge highways, old rice fields, deserts or even impossible topographies. With man's desire to live close to the clouds fulfilled and the technical challenge of rising in a vacuum having been overcome, the challenge should now point to the search for strategies that place the inhabitant again at the centre of the debate. By making the city taller, denser and faster, increases the difficulty of social participation for certain sectors of the population in their environment. Thus, the paper starts analyzing the influence of the precepts of the modern city in the contemporary vertical city. Later, it reflects on the loss of the public space dedicated for people and finally, it will deepen in the experiments of the avant-gardes of the second part of the twentieth-century to find alternatives growth strategies to the city of towers. The results show us that, due to overpopulation and the massive movement towards cities, as well as due to the necessary reduction of our footprint on the planet, is necessary to rethink the urban model of verticalism to get a more human city. As a conclusion, this paper proposes writing an architectural manifesto based on five points to achieve a vertical city for people in our near future.

Analysis of approaches in teaching the introductory programming course in universities

The importance of the effective study of the initial programming course (CS1), on the one hand, and the need to take into account the requirements for IT professionals today, on the other hand, encourage universities to flexibly change educational components, adjust curricula and disciplines. The relevance of finding approaches that positively affect the effectiveness of learning the basics of programming, due to the complexity of this course for students and the high level of dropout in the first session.The paper analyzes the approaches of foreign universities in teaching the CS1 course. The tendencies of the Ukrainian IT labour market concerning the need for adjustment of the content of the Algorithmization and programming course (Ukrainian analogue CS1) are investigated.It is established that there is no universal solution to the problems associated with teaching the initial programming course in the universities. Important factors that positively affect the success of programming training are the motivation of students, a set of didactic processes and methods, as well as good knowledge of the subject by teachers. To increase the effectiveness of training, researchers propose to change the programming language used in the introductory programming course and to introduce new classes of tasks in the curriculum. The effectiveness of the solutions depends on the regional specifics and traditions of IT education.Considering the ranking of programming languages in demand in Ukraine, the need to establish a relationship between disciplines and specifics of courses, the appropriate scheme of using programming languages are C / C ++ in Algorithmization and programming course (CS1) and then Java / C # in Object-oriented programming course (CS2). Another solution is to collaborate with IT companies and to involve students in writing real programs.

Penning Pigs: Pig Rearing Practices, Biosecurity Measures, and Outbreaks of African Swine Fever in Central Uganda

In this article, I explore why a number of smallholder pig farmers in central Uganda decided not to implement the biosecurity measures advocated by veterinarians. I focus on the infectious disease, African swine fever, to illustrate how the biosecurity measures intended to limit the risk of disease, inadvertently constrained the future returns on pigs for farmers and their families. I draw on ethnographic research from Mukono, a district in central Uganda, to show how farmers considered pigs to be “quick money”—a type of household wealth that could be rapidly generated and liquidated with ease. I suggest that farmers’ conceptualization of their pigs as a specific type of wealth influenced the ways in which they integrated pigs into their lives and homes. Based on smallholder farmers’ accounts, I conclude this article by calling for a reconsideration of biosecurity measures as a universal solution for controlling diseases on farms. I argue that instead of designing protocols that separate species, disease prevention strategies need to recognize the ways in which different livestock animals become part of farmers’ lives and acknowledge how this influences farmers’ disease management practices.

Location-Specific Adjustments in Population and Employment across Metropolitan America

This paper examines the joint adjustment of population and employment numbers across America’s metropolitan areas during the period 1990–2015. Current levels of both are estimated, for 10 year periods, using their lagged (own and cross) levels and eight other lagged variables. Population is affected by both human and natural amenities and employment by wages, patents, and other attributes of the workforce. This paper questions the conventional interpretation of the adjustment process by using geographically weighted regression (GWR) instead of standard linear (OLS, 2GLS) regression. Here the various estimates are all local, so the long-run equilibrium solutions for the adjustment process vary over space. Convergence no longer indicates a stable universal solution but instead involves a mix of stable and unstable local solutions. Local sustainability becomes an issue when making projections because employment can quickly lead or lag population in some metropolitan labor markets.

Traffic loads for the assessment of existing bridges

<p>IABSE TG 1.3 aims to identify appropriate approaches for applications of the partial factor format in assessment of existing bridges. A sub-group was formed to investigate and provide recommendations on updating road traffic loads. Commonly, these are assessed by complex numerical simulations. While this study does not provide a universal solution, it demonstrates by a case study a simple and reasonably conservative way of using simulations to update traffic load effects, meanwhile continuously highlighting the objectives, potential alternatives or pitfalls of simulations. The results indicate that, for the short, single span bridge under consideration, the characteristic values given in Eurocodes provide conservative estimates. The probabilistic model for traffic loading obtained by bridge- and route-specific simulations will yield substantially more favourable reliability levels in comparison to the general model in fib Bulletin 80.</p>

Theoretical prerequisites for improving the body low loader granular fertilizer spreader

It is known that the use of granular forms of fertilizers is a universal solution for plant growing enterprises using organic, mineral, organomineral fertilizers in their activities. For crop farming enterprises, the application of granular fertilizers is the most convenient way to enrich the soil with nutrients. For the surface main application and top dressing, spreaders of different designs are used, distributing fertilizers in a continuous layer with different indicators of uniformity. At present, the development of machines of various designs is underway to operate applying solid fertilizers. The main tasks of research by various authors in the field of mechanization of the distribution of fertilizers over the surface of the field are to reduce the uneven distribution of fertilizers across the width, increase the sowing width, as well as reduce the changeover time for the fertilization operation. The article presents studies related to the improvement of the design of the working bodies of the machine for applying granular fertilizers, installed on the horizontal axis of rotation. To achieve the goal of increasing the working width of the unit without reducing the quality of the sifting, an option was proposed to supplement the design of a low-frame body spreader for solid fertilizers.