Sports and Cultural Tourism at Vila Real: WTCR Car Racing Case Study

This investigation presents a case study on the influence of the tourist impact that the car race World Touring Car Cup (WTCR), in the Vila Real International Circuit, has on the city, a place traditionally known for its Cultural Tourism. In fact, after the Troika Crisis, and until the COVID pandemic emerged, Portugal was experiencing a boom in Tourism, particularly on the coast and in cities like Porto, Lisbon, Cascais, or Braga. Aware of this situation, the cities of the countryside start defining strategies to take advantage of this favorable wave for tourism, opting for areas where they would have more diversity offer. Given this, it is proposed Cultural and Sport Tourism as the best options for Vila Real city. Thus, it was decided to understand the connection that sport has with tourism and culture. For this purpose, the case study methodology and quantitative technics were used, for a better understanding of the connection of the concepts, in the perception of the public that traveled to the city to watch the races and the event in general, as well as the public that obligatorily attended the races for living in the city and/or on the circuit route and those audiences who watch the event via online transmission. It is intended, therefore, to understand the dimension of the Cultural and Sports Tourism that is experienced in the city, attending its social, cultural, and economic impacts, and if it has been rising according to the growth of the event and its internationality. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Are anxiety and depression related to poor sleep quality in university professors during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Introduction: University professors present several mental health-related symptoms, such as sleep disorders, anxiety and depression. During the COVID-19 pandemic, health practitioners and researchers observed a surge in depressive and anxious symptoms and worse sleep quality. Objective: To analyze factors associated with poor sleep quality among university professors during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A virtual questionnaire via Google Forms® platform was sent to professors via university working groups and e-mail lists. The instrument comprised questions about gender, age, self-isolation and specific questionnaires: Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI);State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI);Mental Health Index (MHI-5);Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ) and International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ). All of the participants signed an Informed Consent Term, and the research was approved by the Ethics Committee in Research (no. 4.036.797). The data were analyzed using IBM Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences® version 26.0 and a descriptive level criterion of 5% (p<0.05) was adopted. Results: A total of 96 participants participated in the study. Half of the participants (n=48) had poor sleep quality in the study. Using bivariate analysis, state-anxiety (p=0.014) and depressive symptoms (p=0.038) were the only factors associated with poor sleep quality. 52.1% of the sample had medium to high anxiety risk (STAI-S), and among them, 62.0% had poor sleep quality. 41.7% of the university professors had depressive symptoms, and from those, 62.5% were not sleeping well. In a binary logistic regression model, professors with depressive symptoms had a 2.39 times higher risk of poor sleep quality (p=0.040/ 95% CI: 1.04-5.50);and those with state-anxiety had a 2.78 times higher risk of poor sleep quality (p=0.015/ 95% CI: 1.22-6.37). Conclusion: In this study, the presence of state-anxiety or depressive symptoms were risk factors associated with the higher incidence of poor sleep quality among university professors.

Policy, regulation, development and future of biodiesel industry in Brazil

This article provides a detailed analysis of the Brazilian biodiesel market and policies over the past 16 years. The biodiesel market faced distinct periods, from the initial non-mandatory 2% to the actual 13% mixture in diesel. The legal and regulatory basis of the Biodiesel Program, as well as the tax benefits to poorer regions and family farmers, was also explained. The biodiesel industry increased from almost no biodiesel production in 2005 to more than 4 billion liters at the end of 2017. Soybean oil is the major raw material in Brazilian biodiesel (around 90%), although fats are also important. Other materials, such as sunflower oil, peanut oil, castor oil, palm oil (mainly in North and Northeast regions) and used oil (especially in the Southeast region) showed increased participation. Biodiesel content could reach 15% in 2023. That increase can lead to an expansion in biodiesel demand to 9 billion liters in 2024, which will need soy processing improvement, in order not to take place at the expense of an increase in deforestation and smallholder agriculture. Some recent events, such as the reduction of oil prices and the pandemic of Covid-19 can diminish the rate of that expansion.

No visit, no interest: How COVID-19 has affected public interest in world's national parks

The use of digital content has become a powerful tool to evaluate and track macro-scale trends in human-nature relations. This is an emerging field of study known as conservation culturomics, that seeks to understand human culture through quantitative analysis in large bodies of digital content. Here, we used relative search volume on Google Search as a culturomic metric of public interest to investigate the global impact of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic on national parks (NPs). Specifically, we focus on the impacts of limiting people's mobility (through social isolation and lock-down measures) on public interest in NPs, since this is likely to have a strong causal relationship with park visitation. We generated public interest data for 2411 NPs from around the world for the period January 2016 to July 2020, to explore the relationship between relative search volume and periods of greater and lesser mobility restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We observed a global trend of declining public interest in national parks during the initial phase of the coronavirus pandemic, although there was considerable variation between both parks and countries. For example, contrary to the global trend public interest in NPs increased in Finland during the first lock-down. Significantly, countries whose national parks are highly dependent on international visitors (e.g., South Africa and India) had very severe declines in public interest. Our study reinforces the key role that visitation plays in driving public interest in national parks and illustrates the utility of culturomic methods for monitoring human-park interactions at scale. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

Pandelivery 1: Reflections on black delivery app workers experiences during COVID-19 in Brazil

This article reflects on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the lives of black men who work as app delivery workers in Brazil. The coronavirus spread affected the demand for delivery services in the last mile delivery without necessarily improving working conditions. We highlight not only how structural racism shapes the daily lives of these workers, revealing experiences of inequality, marginalization, suffering, but also their resistance strategies. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.