No abstract

No abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to test the relationships between a hotel’s design quality and the property’s business performance. Design/methodology/approach Hotel guests’ assessments of the design quality of hotels that they recently visited are tested using the design quality indicator (DQI). Business performance is measured using indexed values for each property’s occupancy, average daily rate (ADR) and revenue per available room (RevPAR). The data are analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and a variation of a hedonic pricing model. Findings Factor analysis reduced the DQI instrument to 19 measurement items. Factors that measure navigability and signage positively impact occupancy index. Factors that measure flexible space usage negatively impact the RevPAR and ADR indices. Factors that reflect aesthetic constructs, including Urban & Social Integration and Character & Form, positively impact the RevPAR and ADR indices. Research limitations/implications The study examines a nationwide sample of guests from two full-service brands of a single multi-brand hotel company. The study provides a parsimonious, validated design measurement instrument and a revised hedonic pricing analysis. Practical implications Hoteliers can use this technique to assist with resource allocation decisions. Aesthetic elements, including the building’s Urban & Social Integration with its surroundings and its Character & Form, lead to higher ADR and RevPAR performance. Managers should ensure a coherent layout and good signage program to drive occupancy. Originality/value This study offers a technique to measure design quality and a new method of performing a hedonic pricing analysis.

Consumers tend to see themselves in a positive light, yet we present evidence that they are pessimistic about whether they will receive a product’s benefits. In 15 studies (N = 6,547; including nine pre-registered), we found that consumers believe that product efficacy is higher for others than it is for themselves. For example, consumers believe that consuming an adult coloring book (to inspire creativity), a sports drink (to satisfy thirst), medicine (to relieve pain), or an online class (to learn something new) will have a greater effect on others than on themselves. We show that this bias holds across many kinds of products and judgment-targets, and inversely correlates with factors such as product familiarity, product usefulness, and relationship closeness with judgment-targets. Moreover, we find this bias stems from consumers’ beliefs they are more unique and less malleable than others, and that it alters the choices people make for others. We conclude by discussing implications for research on gift-giving, advice-giving, usership, and interpersonal social, health, and financial choices.

Late blight, caused by the oomycete Phytophthora infestans, poses a significant challenge to organic tomato and potato production systems across the globe. To enhance education and outreach programming pertaining to tomato organic late blight management in Wisconsin, we sought to identify grower strategies and needs through an online survey conducted during spring 2018. Our findings demonstrated that organic growers emphasized crop diversity, crop rotation and soil health in their late blight management decisions. Grower concerns about biopesticides were identified and suggest that the use of input-based products within integrated management programs could be enhanced by further research on effectiveness and modes of actions. Additionally, stronger emphasis on oomycete pathogen biology and the significance of late blight as a community disease were identified as important areas of emphasis in the development of organic disease management education programming and resources that promote more effective cultural and chemical disease management strategies that adhere to the regulation and principles underlying the USDA National Organic Program. The integration of a live polling questionnaire conducted in winter 2019 allowed us to corroborate findings from the online survey and underscored the importance of two-way learning to enhance outreach efforts between Extension and organic growers in Wisconsin and the surrounding upper Midwestern states.

It is essential for researchers to have a proper interpretation of remote sensing images (RSIs) and precise semantic labeling of their component parts. Although FCN(Fully Convolutional Networks)-like deep convolutional network architectures have been widely applied in the perception of autonomous cars, there are still two challenges in the semantic segmentation of RSIs. The first is to identify details in high-resolution images with complex scenes and to solve the class-mismatch issues; the second is to capture the edge of objects finely without being confused by the surroundings. HRNET has the characteristics of maintaining high-resolution representation by fusing feature information with parallel multi-resolution convolution branches. We adopt HRNET as a backbone and propose to incorporate the Class-Oriented Region Attention Module (CRAM) and Class-Oriented Context Fusion Module (CCFM) to analyze the relationships between classes and patch regions and between classes and local or global pixels, respectively. Thus, the perception capability of the model for the detailed part in the aerial image can be enhanced. We leverage these modules to develop an end-to-end semantic segmentation model for aerial images and validate it on the ISPRS Potsdam and Vaihingen datasets. The experimental results show that our model improves the baseline accuracy and outperforms some commonly used CNN architectures.

The timing of the Lhasa–Qiangtang collision following the closure of the Bangong–Nujiang Tethys Ocean has not been well constrained. An integrated study of whole-rock geochemistry and zircon U–Pb–Hf isotopes was carried out for Early Cretaceous quartz diorite-porphyrites and granites from the Yilashan and Amdo areas, northern Tibet. LA–ICP–MS zircon U–Pb dating reveal that the Yilashan and Amdo granitoids were emplaced at ~121–110 Ma. These granitic rocks display selective enrichment of light rare earth elements, large ion lithophile elements (e.g., Rb, U) and Th, but depletion of Sr and high field strength elements (e.g., Nb, Ta, Ti) compared to its neighboring elements. These new data, combined with regional geological setting, show that these igneous rocks were formed under a geodynamic setting of the Lhasa and Qiangtang (–Amdo) collision with oceanic slab breakoff and asthenospheric upwelling. The BNTO had been closed at ~121–110 Ma in the study area. Yilashan-Amdo granitoids roughly yield high (87Sr/86Sr)i ratios and obvious negative εNd(t) and zircon εHf(t) values along with old Nd TDM and zircon Hf TDM2 ages. Together with their variable U–Pb ages, these features indicate a Precambrian “hidden” crustal source beneath the northern Lhasa and Amdo terranes. The YLSS S-type granophyres were derived from partial melting of Paleoproterozoic lower crustal metagraywackes, whereas the YLSZ quartz diorite–porphyrites and the Amdo I- and A-type granites were mainly derived from partial melting of Paleo–Mesoproterozoic lower crustal mafic rocks with a certain amount of addition of mantle-derived melts. Minor amounts of the materials originated from the Amdo orthogneisses may also be involved in the formation of the YLSZ quartz diorite–porphyrites and the Amdo I-type granites. In addition, the Yilashan ophiolite was intruded by the ~112–108 Ma granophyric and quartz diorite–porphyritic intrusions before its final emplacement into the surrounding strata.

No abstract