Visitor preferences in rural gastronomic tourism environment and the related design implications.

Since COVID-19, people have suffered tremendous impacts in all aspects of their lives and work, with subtle changes in their environment preferences. The rural areas, with their natural green space, low density, and leisurely habitat, have played an important role after the pandemic and are widely favored by people. Research on rural environments after COVID-19 has received much attention. In the wake of the pandemic, people's needs for the environment have changed not only in terms of physical space, but also in terms of psychological needs. To address the issue of adaptability and resiliency of the future tourism development of the rural areas, this study takes the real subjective feelings of rural visitors as the evaluation standard, and takes the rural gastronomic tourism environment as the research object. We analyzed a sample of 14,373 images and 324,676 comments in Chinese posted by 3484 visitors on social media to explore whether and how people's preferences for rural environments have changed since the pandemic. Findings revealed significant differences in preference for the rural gastronomic tourism environment factors before and after the pandemic. There is variability in environment preferences depending on different gender, environment flexibility and the region. From the perspective of the rural gastronomic tourism environment, the research results provide suggestions for rural planning and rural tourism sustainability, and provide feasible paths for sustainable development and conservation of rural landscapes oriented to human needs, to enhance the resilience and sustainability of rural environments in the future.

Modeling the Visual Landscape: A Review on Approaches, Methods and Techniques.

Modeling the perception and evaluation of landscapes from the human perspective is a desirable goal for several scientific domains and applications. Human vision is the dominant sense, and human eyes are the sensors for apperceiving the environmental stimuli of our surroundings. Therefore, exploring the experimental recording and measurement of the visual landscape can reveal crucial aspects about human visual perception responses while viewing the natural or man-made landscapes. Landscape evaluation (or assessment) is another dimension that refers mainly to preferences of the visual landscape, involving human cognition as well, in ways that are often unpredictable. Yet, landscape can be approached by both egocentric (i.e., human view) and exocentric (i.e., bird's eye view) perspectives. The overarching approach of this review article lies in systematically presenting the different ways for modeling and quantifying the two 'modalities' of human perception and evaluation, under the two geometric perspectives, suggesting integrative approaches on these two 'diverging' dualities. To this end, several pertinent traditions/approaches, sensor-based experimental methods and techniques (e.g., eye tracking, fMRI, and EEG), and metrics are adduced and described. Essentially, this review article acts as a 'guide-map' for the delineation of the different activities related to landscape experience and/or management and to the valid or potentially suitable types of stimuli, sensors techniques, and metrics for each activity. Throughout our work, two main research directions are identified: (1) one that attempts to transfer the visual landscape experience/management from the one perspective to the other (and vice versa); (2) another one that aims to anticipate the visual perception of different landscapes and establish connections between perceptual processes and landscape preferences. As it appears, the research in the field is rapidly growing. In our opinion, it can be greatly advanced and enriched using integrative, interdisciplinary approaches in order to better understand the concepts and the mechanisms by which the visual landscape, as a complex set of stimuli, influences visual perception, potentially leading to more elaborate outcomes such as the anticipation of landscape preferences. As an effect, such approaches can support a rigorous, evidence-based, and socially just framework towards landscape management, protection, and decision making, based on a wide spectrum of well-suited and advanced sensor-based technologies.

Evaluation and Optimization of Cultural Perception of Coastal Greenway Landscape Based on Structural Equation Model.

The island-type greenway should emphasize the role of maintaining and promoting the island cultural landscape as it serves the function of a general greenway green infrastructure while also having a unique landscape appearance. The northern greenway of Pingtan is used as an example in the paper to illustrate how regional culture is perceived. The first part of the analysis looks at how demographic factors affect the quality of cultural perception. The study reveals that: from a gender perspective, women are more likely than men to perceive regional culture; from an age perspective, people between the ages of 18 and 40 are more likely to perceive regional culture; older people and children are less likely to perceive regional culture; and from a level of education perspective, the higher the education, the stronger the perception. The relationship between tourists' perceived quality, cognitive image, perceived value, satisfaction, and loyalty to the cultural expression of the greenway landscape is then analyzed by building a structural equation model. According to the findings, visitors' perceptions of the island's cultural quality have a positive impact on their cognitive images and perceptions of value, while their satisfaction with the cultural expressions along the coastal greenway has a positive impact on their loyalty.

Effects of visual landscape on subjective environmental evaluations in the open spaces of a severe cold city.

The environmental quality and subjective environmental evaluations in urban open spaces are essential. In this study, the effects of building, green, and water landscapes, which are typical visual landscapes, on the subjective environmental evaluations (including thermal sensation and comfort, and overall comfort) in different seasons were analyzed by conducting questionnaire surveys and field measurements in a severely cold city. It was found that the visual landscapes significantly affected subjective environmental evaluations in winter and summer, but there were no effects in the transitional season. In summer, compared with the building and green landscape, the thermal sensation vote in the water landscape was the lowest at 0.4, and the differences were 0.3∼1.0. However, the thermal comfort vote in the water landscape was found to be 0.6 times higher. In winter, the thermal sensation and comfort votes in the water landscape were the lowest, the average evaluation under different UTCI was -2.2, and the results were similar for the overall comfort evaluation. In addition, the subjects believed that green and water landscapes improved thermal comfort and had more significant effects on improving the environmental temperature in the three seasons. Additionally, visual landscape evaluations significantly affect subjective environmental evaluations in summer than in the winter and transitional season; the higher the visual landscape evaluation, the better the thermal and overall comfort.

Landscape evaluation and plant allocation research of petroleum polluted coastal plant communities in Jiaozhou Bay of China.

The plant community is the basic landscape unit of the coastal green space. The study of the oil-contaminated coastal green space plant community has an important role in improving the landscape quality and aesthetics of the coastal green space. This article takes the oil pollution shoreline of Jiaozhou Bay as an entry point to build a plant community landscape evaluation model, analyzes and evaluates the most scenic plant community types in the coastal area of Qingdao Jiaozhou Bay in order to provide scientific basis for the plant community landscape configuration along the oil polluted coastline of Jiaozhou Bay, and provide reference for the evaluation and construction of plant community landscape in other cities.

Quantitative evaluation and reversion analysis of the attractor landscapes of an intracellular regulatory network for colorectal cancer.

BACKGROUND: Cancer reversion, converting the phenotypes of a cancer cell into those of a normal cell, has been sporadically observed throughout history. However, no systematic analysis has been attempted so far. RESULTS: To investigate this from a systems biological perspective, we have constructed a logical network model of colorectal tumorigenesis by integrating key regulatory molecules and their interactions from previous experimental data. We identified molecular targets that can reverse cancerous cellular states to a normal state by systematically perturbing each molecular activity in the network and evaluating the resulting changes of the attractor landscape with respect to uncontrolled proliferation, EMT, and stemness. Intriguingly, many of the identified targets were well in accord with previous studies. We further revealed that the identified targets constitute stable network motifs that contribute to enhancing the robustness of attractors in cancerous cellular states against diverse regulatory signals. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed framework for systems analysis is applicable to the study of tumorigenesis and reversion of other types of cancer.

Multifuncionalidade da paisagem como subsídio às políticas públicas para o desenvolvimento rural sustentável / Landscape multifuncionality evaluation as a subsidy to public policies for sustainable rural development

O conceito de multifuncionalidade propõe que a agricultura oferece à sociedade funções produtivas, ecológicas e culturais. Políticas públicas que promovam a combinação de diferentes funções podem melhorar o desempenho multifuncional da paisagem rural. O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar um método de avaliação da multifuncionalidade baseado no sistema de valores dos atores sociais locais que possa ser utilizado para embasar a elaboração de políticas públicas de desenvolvimento rural. Este método utilizou um sistema de informações geográficas para identificar os elementos presentes na área de estudo, localizada no município de Joinville, Santa Catarina, entre 2010 e 2012. A partir de entrevistas com 53 pessoas, foram atribuídos valores para 15 descritores que representam as funções produtivas, ecológicas e culturais de cada elemento identificado. Estes valores foram ponderados considerando a porcentagem da área ocupada por cada elemento e seu índice de forma. Os resultados ponderados apresentaram os Cursos d'Água com o melhor desempenho multifuncional em oposição aos Agroecossistemas com o pior desempenho. O método proposto apresenta vantagens, porque permite: a) a quantificação de percepções intuitivas facilitando a interpretação de situações complexas; b) avaliar paisagens rurais em diferentes escalas; c) compreender o desempenho de cada função e o equilíbrio entre as funções da paisagem. Mas, também apresenta fragilidades: a) não é objetivo, uma vez que deriva de pontos de vista; b) as respostas podem sofrer interferências relacionadas com a atitude do pesquisador; c) os resultados apresentam validade temporal e espacial restrita; d) o comprometimento dos entrevistados define a validade dos resultados.

The concept of multifunctionality suggests that agriculture provides to society productive, ecological, and cultural functions. Public policies that promote a combination of different functions can improve multifunctional landscape performance. The objective of this paper is to present an evaluation method of multifunctional landscapes based on values systems of local stakeholders that can be used to support the development of public policies for rural development. This method used a geographic information system to identify the elements present in the study area located in the city of Joinville, Santa Catarina, between 2010 and 2012. From interviews with 53 people were assigned values for 15 descriptors representing the productive, ecological and cultural features of each element identified. These values were weighted considering the percentage of area occupied by each element and its form index. The weighted results showed the best multifunctional performance with the Water Resources opposed to Agroecosystems. The proposed method has advantages because it allows: a) quantifying the intuitive perceptions facilitating the interpretation of complex situations, b) assess rural landscapes at different scales, c) understand the performance of each function and the balance between the functions of the landscape. But, it also has weaknesses: a) is not objective, since it derives from viewpoints b) responses may get interference related to the attitude of the researcher c) the results have limited validity in time and space, d) commitment of respondents define the validity of the results.

Animals as an indicator of carbon sequestration and valuable landscapes.

Possibilities of the assessment of a landscape with the use of succession development stages, monitored with the value of the Mean Individual Biomass (MIB) of carabid beetles and the occurrence of bird species are discussed on the basis of an example from Poland. Higher variability of the MIB value in space signifies a greater biodiversity. Apart from the variability of MIB, it is suggested to adopt the occurrence of the following animals as indicators, (in the order of importance), representing underlying valuable landscapes: black stork, lesser spotted eagle, white-tailed eagle, wolf, crane and white stork. The higher number of these species and their greater density indicate a higher value of the landscape for biodiversity and ecosystem services, especially carbon sequestration. All these indicators may be useful to assess measures for sustainable land use.