Digital Gifts and Tourism Mementos: A Sustainable Approach

Touristic destinations all around the world are struggling to digitally transform the touristic experience and the touristic products they offer and to capitalize a good experience with new tourists and returning ones. There is a lot of research on digital solutions assisting tourism, but it does not provide a follow-up digital product, therefore depending only on physical gifts, postcards and mementos. In this work, we propose a novel platform that can provide a personalized digital memento or digital gift for every route or tourist destination that can become the digital point of reference of visitors’ experience giving new dimensions for commercialization to the existing physical mementos at the gift shops. The purpose of this study is to analyze what comprises a memorable touristic experience and to design and, finally, present a total solution that builds and offers a personal e-souvenir of a touristic experience to the tourist for him to hold, sport and share just using his mobile phone. We propose a digital memento-building platform that includes the personalized experience in visits taking place while in vacations. The visitors are usually taking pictures along routes they follow that later need further organization and processing and that in no way substitutes the physical mementos. In our approach, we propose a solution that generates a unique and personalized e-souvenir through a collage of the selfies and photos creating the digital equivalent of the touristic postcards but in our case personalized with the visitor photos with minimum amount of effort and produced real-time. Our approach is also providing a platform to the photographers and designers of touristic destinations to build and graphically generated memento artifacts—templates specific for one or more destinations or routes. In this way, the approach serves the tourism industry vertically, covering all aspects, i.e., the tourist-visitor, the tourism professional players such as photographers, designers of physical mementos and, of course, the touristic destination providing a digital footprint to server marketing of the destination through sharing on social media and word-of-mouth, of course. To support our approach, we have built and run a fully working prototype in the touristic center of Athens, Greece, with real users and designers for several weeks during summer vacations. The results have been greatly encouraging from end-users and professionals. The study shows that it is possible for various lines of business to come together and work along one another for an improve touristic experience using mobile technologies in a personalized, targeted approach. The touristic destination, graphic designers, photographers, tourist agent specialists, software developers and visitors can all now have a digital personalized memorable gift from the visit.

A variety of highly divergent eukaryotic ssDNA viruses in sera of pigs

Over the last decade, viral metagenomics has been established as a non-targeted approach for identifying viruses in stock animals, including pigs. This has led to the identification of a vast diversity of small circular ssDNA viruses. The present study focuses on the investigation of eukaryotic circular Rep-encoding single-stranded (CRESS) DNA viral genomes present in serum of commercially reared pigs from southern Brazil. Several CRESS DNA viral genomes were detected, including representatives of the families Smacoviridae (n=5), Genomoviridae (n=3), Redondoviridae (n=1), Nenyaviridae (n=1) and other yet unclassified genomes (n=9), plus a circular DNA molecule, which probably belongs to the phylum Cressdnaviricota. A novel genus within the family Smacoviridae, tentatively named ‘Suismacovirus’, comprising 21 potential new species, is proposed. Although the reported genomes were recovered from pigs with clinical signs of respiratory disease, further studies should examine their potential role as pathogens. Nonetheless, these findings highlight the diversity of circular ssDNA viruses in serum of domestic pigs, expand the knowledge on CRESS DNA viruses’ genetic diversity and distribution and contribute to the global picture of the virome of commercially reared pigs.

Psychiatrists should investigate their patients less

Summary Psychiatrists often order investigations such as blood tests, neuroimaging and electroencephalograms for their patients. Rationales include ruling out ‘organic’ causes of psychiatric presentations, providing baseline parameters before starting psychotropic medications, and screening for general cardiometabolic health. Hospital protocols often recommend an extensive panel of blood tests on admission to a psychiatric ward. In this Against the Stream article, we argue that many of these investigations are at best useless and at worst harmful: the yield of positive findings that change clinical management is extremely low; special investigations are a poor substitute for a targeted history and examination; and incidental findings may cause anxiety and further unwarranted investigation. Cognitive and cultural reasons why over-investigation continues are discussed. We conclude by encouraging a more targeted approach guided by a thorough bedside clinical assessment.

Using POI Data to Identify the Demand for Pedestrian Crossing Facilities at Mid-Block

In Chinese cities, the widespread problem of the low density of the road network has seriously damaged the convenience of pedestrian crossing, resulting in an unfriendly pedestrian experience and restricted development of non-motorized traffic within the city. Only by accurately capturing the crossing needs of pedestrians can we adopt a targeted approach to improve the pedestrian crossing experience. In this paper, the demand and supply are considered synthetically, and a method of using point of interest (POI) data to analyze the demand for pedestrian crossing facilities at the mid-block is proposed. First, we developed the method of calculating the pedestrian crossing demand intensity based on POI data. Secondly, based on the appropriate length threshold and pedestrian crossing demand intensity threshold, a series of road sections with strong demand for pedestrian crossing facilities are identified in the study area. Finally, we use mobile phone data to obtain the intensity of residents’ activity in different areas, and find that the distribution of the areas with more activity is basically the same as that of the target road sections. The result shows that the method proposed in this paper can effectively identify the road sections with strong demand for crossing facilities at mid-block, and can provide support for the improvement of urban non-motorized traffic.

Speficic Moral and Psychological Characteristics of Criminals Convicted for Crimes of Terrorism and Extremism

The authors continued their research of the personalities of terrorists and extremists and studied characteristics of 700 persons convicted for crimes of terrorism and extremism who served their sentences in penitentiary institutions of all territorial divisions of the Russian Federation. They studied indicators of additional scales of MMPI test, questionnaires, interviews, materials of personal files, court decisions (verdicts), disciplinary practice, penitentiary and criminal law characteristics, and made a number of conclusions. First, the results allowed the authors to verify a number of hypotheses on personal characteristics of terrorists and extremists analyzed by psychologists and criminologists. Second, generalized characteristics of persons convicted for terrorism and extremism crimes acquired through the use of additional MMPI scales proved and supplemented similar results from the basic scales of this methodology. Specifically, the authors found proof of a prominent conversion type of the personality profile of examined individuals manifested in a number of ambivalent conditions and aspirations. Third, the results also allowed to define key characteristics of the substructure of personality orientation of convicts of this category: amorality in their value system; following their own convictions, personal norms and principles; immunity against any moral authority; conviction that only their actions, deeds and life in general are the right ones, disregard for social values. Fourth, field data showed that it is necessary to single out one more (a third) subcategory of convicts who committed combined extremism-terrorism crimes. Based on the definition of this subcategory, such convicts committed several (two or more) crimes of both extremism and terrorism nature as part of one criminal case and, correspondingly, one court decision (verdict). A targeted approach to the correction and prevention work with this category of criminals convicted for terrorism and extremism crimes makes it necessary to examine the characteristics of each subcategory of convicts included in this category.

Retinoic Acid-Containing Liposomes for the Induction of Antigen-Specific Regulatory T Cells as a Treatment for Autoimmune Diseases

The current treatment of autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases entails systemic immune suppression, which is associated with increased susceptibility to infections. To restore immune tolerance and reduce systemic side effects, a targeted approach using tolerogenic dendritic cells (tolDCs) is being explored. TolDCs are characterized by the expression of CD11c, the major histocompatibility complex (MHC)II and low levels of co-stimulatory molecules CD40 and CD86. In this study, tolDCs were generated using a human-proteoglycan-derived peptide (hPG) and all-trans retinoic acid (RA). RA-tolDCs not only display a tolerogenic phenotype but also can induce an antigen-specific regulatory T cell (Treg) response in vitro. However, further analysis showed that RA-tolDCs make up a heterogeneous population of DCs, with only a small proportion being antigen-associated tolDCs. To increase the homogeneity of this population, 1,2-distearoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphoglycerol (DSPG)-containing liposomes were used to encapsulate the relevant antigen together with RA. These liposomes greatly enhanced the proportion of antigen-associated tolDCs in culture. In addition, in mice, we showed that the liposomal co-delivery of antigen and RA can be a more targeted approach to induce antigen-specific tolerance compared to the injection of RA-tolDCs, and that these liposomes can stimulate the generation of antigen-specific Tregs. This work highlights the importance of the co-delivery of an antigen and immunomodulator to minimize off-target effects and systemic side effects and provides new insights in the use of RA for antigen-specific immunotherapy for autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases.