Despite the significant impact of environment on the attractiveness of tourist destination, environmental stewardship is not always the top priority in the hotel industry as one of the most energy-intensive sectors of the tourism industry which contributes to the increasing quantity of air pollutants. Therefore, this study investigates the impact of ecological pull motives and service quality o...

Imported malaria is a preventable disease, yet it is responsible for several thousand cases and a substantial number of deaths every year. There has been a pronounced rise in the incidence of imported malaria in most developed countries over the past three decades and, more concerning, Plasmodium falciparum, which is responsible for almost all cases of severe malaria, is now the most prevalent ...

This study explores to what extent varying levels of host national day participation among immigrants can be explained by previous participatory experiences related to their country of origin, in addition to socio-cultural factors related to the current country of residence. Utilising data from a large online immigrant panel, we concentrate on two prominent national days in the Netherlands: Rem...

Campylobacteriosis has been the most common food-associated notifiable infectious disease in Switzerland since 1995. Contact with and ingestion of raw or undercooked broilers are considered the dominant risk factors for infection. In this study, we investigated the temporal relationship between the disease incidence in humans and the prevalence of Campylobacter in broilers in Switzerland from 2...

Obtaining a quantitative understanding of the transmission dynamics of influenza A is important for predicting healthcare demand and assessing the likely impact of intervention measures. The pandemic of 2009 provides an ideal platform for developing integrative analyses as it has been studied intensively, and a wealth of data sources is available. Here, we analyse two complementary datasets in ...

Pandemic influenza A (H1N1) 2009 virus spread rapidly around the world in 2009. We used multiple data sources from surveillance systems and specific investigations to characterize the transmission patterns of this virus in China during May-November 2009 and analyze the effectiveness of border entry screening and holiday-related school closures on transmission. In China, age distribution and tra...

Infectious diseases remain a significant health concern around the world. Mathematical modeling of these diseases can help us understand their dynamics and develop more effective control strategies. In this work, we show the capabilities of interior-point methods and nonlinear programming (NLP) formulations to efficiently estimate parameters in multiple discrete-time disease models using measle...

Motor vehicle crashes during the statutory holiday festive periods are on the rise in Alberta, Canada. For example, in the year 2004 a total of 6706 collisions occurred during the holidays and long weekends which killed 33 people and injured more than 1500 people. Whereas in 2007, the total number of crashes increased to 11639 in which 48 people were killed and more than 2000 people were injure...

Just before the Christmas holidays, Iris was standing at the reception desk waiting to book a continuing-care appointment with Dr. Smith. In walked a deliveryman carrying 2 beautiful gift baskets. While the receptionist was signing for the basket, Iris asked the FedEx man if the gift was from a happy patient. “No,” he replied, “they’re both from the orthodontist down the road. I was told not to...

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to calculate injury rates and describe the epidemiology of holiday-related injuries among children who were aged < or =19 years and presented to US emergency departments (EDs) from 1997 through 2006. METHODS Data on holiday-related injuries obtained from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission's National Electronic Injury Surveillance System were an...