Search Results (9)

This paper addresses an alternative perspective on tourism success, emphasising sustainability over traditional quantitative metrics such as arrival numbers. It explores the impact of fiction films and TV series on individuals’ mental representations of destinations featured on screen, as well as the capacity of film discourse to construct a brand aligned with local stakeholders’ interests. Qualitative methods have been employed, conducting a literature review on sustainable film tourism and destination branding. Local news and an interview with the head of the Peñíscola Film Office complemented academic insights. The primary goal is to examine the “Peñíscola de Cine” project as a paradigm of success, initiated by the city council of Peñíscola, Spain. This project positions the municipality as a natural film set through productions like Game of Thrones (2011–2019), illustrating how film can contribute to destination branding and community engagement. The study highlights the positive contribution of film tourism to sustainability by diversifying and de-seasonalising a territory’s offerings. It also attracts a more educated and environmentally conscious audience. However, it cautiously discusses the potential risks, as evidenced by misapplications in Goathland, England, and Skellig Michael, Ireland, following their appearances in Heartbeat (1992–2010) and Star Wars (1977–2019), respectively. The paper concludes by suggesting film-friendly measures for destination management organizations (DMOs), emphasising the pivotal role of film commissions and film offices in crafting effective marketing strategies and capturing the interest of audiovisual production companies. Full article

In the last decade, gypsogenin has attracted widespread attention from medicinal chemists by virtue of its prominent anti-cancer potential. Despite its late identification, gypsogenin has proved itself as a new anti-proliferative player battling for a frontline position among other classic pentacyclic triterpenes such as oleanolic acid, glycyrrhetinic acid, ursolic acid, betulinic acid, and celastrol. Herein, we present the most important reactions of gypsogenin via modification of its four functional groups. Furthermore, we demonstrate insights into the anti-cancer activity of gypsogenin and its semisynthetic derivatives and go further by introducing our perspective to judiciously guide the prospective rational design. The present article opens a new venue for a better exploitation of gypsogenin chemical entity as a lead compound in cancer chemotherapy. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first review article exploring the anti-cancer activity of gypsogenin derivatives. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic accounts for more than 500 million confirmed infections and over 6 million deaths worldwide in the last 2 years. SARS-CoV-2 causes a highly complex form of inflammation that affects the human organism both acutely and chronically. In the same line, cancer as an inflammation-induced and immune-editing disease appears to cross-react with immune system at different levels including early interactions during carcinogenesis and later cross-talks within the tumor microenvironment. With all that in mind, a reasonable question one might address is whether the SARS-CoV-2 infection and the derived “long lasting inflammatory status” that is frequently observed in patients, might affect the cancer immunosurveillance mechanisms and consequently their risk of developing cancer, as well as the tumor and immune cell behaviors within the inflamed microenvironment. On this context, this review intends to outline and discuss the existing knowledge on SARS-CoV-2-mediated immunomodulation under the prism of changes that might be able to interfere with cancer cell immunoescape and the overall tumor progression and response to conventional therapeutics. Our goal is to highlight a potential interplay between the COVID-19 immunopathology and cancer immune-microenvironment that may pave the way for thorough investigation in the future. Full article

Competence in “Cultural awareness and expressions” requires very stimulating activities for its development, and cinema can be used as an interesting enhancer of educational action. The educational potential of the so-called movie-induced tourism, which has increased in recent years thanks to the impact of major productions such as The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars or Game of Thrones, could bring extra motivation when developing any competency including the aforementioned one. This article aims to suggest some keys on film tourism as a didactic resource and how destinations might capitalize on it through entrepreneurship. In doing so, educational establishments located within film destinations can carry out projects in this sense to work on the competence of “Cultural awareness and expressions”. Thus, an example of didactic programming will be offered based on the creation of new tourist businesses to take advantage of Lord of the Rings saga filming in San Juan de Gaztelugatxe (Vizcaya, Basque Country, Spain). Full article

Popular media, including films, television, comics, videogames, and books, are an increasingly important aspect of contemporary tourism. This is especially the case in Scotland, where popular culture led to the development of Scotland’s tourism industry. In this article, we will describe the phenomenon of media-related tourism in Scotland with respect to three selected case studies within Scotland: First, Glenfinnan Viaduct, made famous by the Harry Potter film series; Second, Doune Castle, used as a set for Monty Python, Game of Thrones and more recently, Outlander; Third, Abbotsford, home of Sir Walter Scott, a classical novelist now celebrating his 250th Birthday Anniversary. In examining these case studies, the article will consider how sustainable media tourism is. This approached is from the lens of media tourism and its impact on rural communities, concerns over local infrastructure, wider understandings of media tourism as a growing sub-sector, and the sustainability of the wider Scottish tourism industry in relation to the coronavirus pandemic. Full article

The versatility of epithelial cell structure is universally exploited by organisms in multiple contexts. Epithelial cells can establish diverse polarized axes within their tridimensional structure which enables them to flexibly communicate with their neighbors in a 360° range. Hence, these cells are central to multicellularity, and participate in diverse biological processes such as organismal development, growth or immune response and their misfunction ultimately impacts disease. During the development of an organism, the first task epidermal cells must complete is the formation of a continuous sheet, which initiates its own morphogenic process. In this review, we will focus on the C. elegans embryonic epithelial morphogenesis. We will describe how its formation, maturation, and spatial arrangements set the final shape of the nematode C. elegans. Special importance will be given to the tissue-tissue interactions, regulatory tissue-tissue feedback mechanisms and the players orchestrating the process. Full article

The vast popularity of the Game of Thrones franchise has drawn a new and diverse audience to the fantasy genre. Within the pseudo-medieval world created by G.R.R. Martin, a great deal of detail has gone into establishing coats of arms for the characters and families that are depicted. These arms fulfill an extremely important role, both within the arc of the story and as part of the marketing collateral of this very successful series. This article examines the role of arms in the Game of Thrones universe and explores how the heraldic system transcends the usual genealogical display and functions more as a type of familial branding. An exploration of some of the practices and idiosyncrasies of heraldry in the franchise shows that whilst Martin sets his foundation firmly in the traditional, he then extends this into the fanciful; in much the same manner as he does with other faux-historical aspects of his work. This study is valuable because Game of Thrones has brought heraldry from being a niche interest to something that is now consumed by a global audience of hundreds of millions of people. Several of the fantasy blazons in the series are now arguably the most recognisable coats of arms in history. Full article

In this paper, we present an application of the dynamic tracking games framework to a monetary union. We use a small stylized nonlinear three-country macroeconomic model of a monetary union to analyze the interactions between fiscal (governments) and monetary (common central bank) policy makers, assuming different objective functions of these decision makers. Using the OPTGAME algorithm, we calculate solutions for several games: a noncooperative solution where each government and the central bank play against each other (a feedback Nash equilibrium solution), a fully-cooperative solution with all players following a joint course of action (a Pareto optimal solution) and three solutions where various coalitions (subsets of the players) play against coalitions of the other players in a noncooperative way. It turns out that the fully-cooperative solution yields the best results, the noncooperative solution fares worst and the coalition games lie in between, with a broad coalition of the fiscally more responsible countries and the central bank against the less thrifty countries coming closest to the Pareto optimum. Full article

Fan fiction alternate universe stories (AUs) that combine Game of Thrones characters and settings with fairy tale elements construct a dialogue between realism and wonder. Realism performs a number of functions in various genres, but becomes a particularly tricky concept to tie down in fantasy. Deployments of realism in “quality TV” series like Game of Thrones often reinforce social stigmatization of feminine genres like the romance, melodrama, and fairy tale. The happily-ever-after ending receives significant feminist criticism partly because it falls within a larger framework of utopian politics and poetics, which are frequently accused of essentialism and authoritarianism. However, because fan fiction cultures place all stories in dialogue with numerous other equally plausible versions, the fairy tale happy ending can serve unexpected purposes. By examining several case studies in fairy tale AU fan fiction based on Game of Thrones characters, situations, and settings, this paper demonstrates the genre’s ability to construct surprising critiques of real social and historical situations through strategic deployment of impossible wishes made manifest through the magic of fan creativity. Full article