The essence of tourism in Istria – so simple, and so ingenious
For the 11th year in a row, the Tourist Board of the City of Pula and the Tourist Board of the Municipality of Fažana have been organizing the summer fair of Istrian souvenirs – Istrian hand made. At the Summer Fair of Craftsmen every week from 15.6.-15.9. artisans will exhibit, sell and produce souvenirs and handicrafts; on Mondays and Tuesdays in Pula, on Wednesdays in Fažana. The working hours of the fair are from 15.6-31.8. from 20-23, and from 1.9.-15.9. from 19-22 hours. 2016 craftsmen will participate in the Istrian hand made fair in 14, and the goal of the event is to enrich the tourist offer of the city and provide tourists with the opportunity to buy handicrafts and indigenous souvenirs.Istra mix, ie the Fair of Istrian gourmet products and souvenirs – Istrian hand made and Istra gourmet, will also be held from 15.06. to 15.09. for the 7th year in a row in Fažana and the 2nd year from 07.07. to 25.08. in Ližnjan. In Fažana, where the event will be held on Wednesday, in addition to souvenir producers), producers of gourmet products participate, while in Ližnjan the event is held every Thursday from 20 to 23 hoursThe interesting thing about this event is that some items are made directly in front of tourists. All exhibitors have T-shirts and bags with the Istrian hand made logo to make the event recognizable. Could this tourist story be better?Kudos to the Tourist Boards of Pula and Fažana, that is what our tourism lacks. This is the foundation of a tourist destination development – respect yourself and you will respect others. Tourists want to get to know, feel, taste indigenous local products, even if you tell them a story that’s it – the essence of tourism. This must be the foundation of tourism of all tourist destinations, and the rest is an upgrade. The Germans don’t want to try German sausages, but our homemade ones. And if they like it, they will buy it and take it home where, in the company of their friends, they will spread the story of a great vacation and taste our home-made and indigenous sausage. Sausage is just a metaphor, we have to sell ourselves, our culture, gastronomy, history and identity. This is what tourists want to experience. This tourist story is so simple, and yet so ingenious. It should be the standard story of each of our tourist destinations.We must finally understand that tourism is not the sun and the sea, and that our greatest advantage is precisely this diversity through history, gastronomy, music, culture, customs and everything else. We have thousands of different indigenous stories, we just have to be who we are and tell those stories. Let us be what we are because tourists want to see, experience and taste just that. We do not need a new big idea of our tourism, but finally we have to be and sell what we are – Istrians, Dalmatians, Slavonians, Međimurje, Zagorje, Ličani…. Croats. Let’s be what we are – indigenous, authentic and credible! That is the story we have to tellTourism consists of emotions, experiences and stories. Tell stories.
In Zlarin, from this Friday 01.07.2016. in the Vesna Parun Homeland Museum, starting at 20:30 pm, an international traveling exhibition of photographs of small sustainable islands around the world is being held.Since 2014, the Small Sustainable Islands initiative, with the support of the Conservatoire du Littoral, has been developed with the aim of encouraging dialogue between participants working on a daily basis to protect the islands and valorise their actions: local associations, authorities, protected area managers, businesses… In this context, the annual CELEBRATE ISLANDS celebration offers an opportunity to express the uniqueness for which they unite people in their environment. This is the first major step towards creating an international solidarity community of small islands oriented towards sustainable development.Ultimately, the Small Sustainable Islands Initiative will help create a broad network of exchange of experiences and good practices, encourage and reward local efforts by its members, including through the Small Sustainable Island label.The small islands are fragile and unique. They are at the forefront of global change, these are the first areas and places of innovation, which are constantly renewed due to their own sustainable development. Recycling waste, conserving water resources, promoting renewable energy, protecting biodiversity, valorizing cultural heritage… more than just a call to travel, this exhibition highlights the concrete actions of more than 30 small islands around the world for the challenges of tomorrow. The traveling exhibition, organized by the Conservatoire du littoral and their partners as part of the third edition of CELEBRATE ISLANDS, has already been presented in France, Spain, Tunisia and Mozambique, and now in Croatia.By organizing this photo exhibition, cooperation was established Zlarin Tourist Board and Kud Koralj and MIC-Vis (international multidisciplinary scientific conference organized jointly by VERN ‘Polytechnic and Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences under the auspices of the City of Vis) with Conservatoire du littoral and laid the foundations for future cooperation which can emphasize the importance of natural and cultural sights , and the need for sustainable management of island areas in order to preserve their heritage.The Conservatory of Littoral Founded 41 years ago, the Conservatoire du littoral (Coastal Protection Agency) is a public institution for the protection of the coastal area through the purchase of land in mainland France and French overseas estates and through technical and institutional cooperation abroad. For more than 10 years, she has led projects specifically dedicated to small islands, monitored and supported local associations, protected areas and governments in their small island planning and management policies and operations. The Conservatoire du littoral provides international support to civil society organizations in the protection of the island’s heritage.
Given the increased tourist traffic in the category of taxpayers of owners of holiday homes or apartments (weekenders) and the frequent inquiries of tourist boards as well as weekenders themselves, the General Office of the Croatian Tourist Board has prepared additional clarifications that will help in the coming months. all with the aim of reducing the workload of tourist offices, staff of tourist boards and weekenders themselves. The instructions were published on the eVisitor website and were also submitted to the tourist board system.It is possible to register weekenders in the eVisitor system without a personal visit to the tourist board in such a way that taxpayers can submit to the tourist board all the necessary documents by mail, email or fax. We repeat, for the registration of the taxpayer in the system, an OIB and an identification document are required, and for the registration of the associated facility, the taxpayer is obliged to enclose one of the following documents: purchase contract, excerpt from the land register, decision on inheritance, decision on determining special tax on houses for a holiday, decision on legalization of an illegally constructed building, excerpt from the cadastre, proof that a request for legalization of an illegally constructed building has been submitted, collective records of competent authorities (eg records of taxpayers, records of taxpayers on holiday homes and apartments, etc. .).In addition to the mentioned possibility of submitting data by mail, email or fax, weekenders can register in person at the tourist board or they can do it for family members, friends, etc., with a certified power of attorney signed by the owner and notarized. Please note that the certification of the power of attorney is required solely to prevent misuse of access to personal data of taxpayers, or to prevent possible theft of personal identities of taxpayers by third parties.It is also possible to create user sub-accounts within the eVisitor system, so we recommend that weekenders, instead of handing over their access data for use to other persons, open sub-accounts for such persons. In this case, the person who has an open sub-account receives his access data that are different from the access data of the taxpayer, and it can be determined at any time who has undertaken what activity in the system.Additionally, all users of the eVisitor system are enabled to log in via the e-Citizens system (ie NIAS). The advantages of applying through the e-Citizens system are that the taxpayer does not need to come to the tourist board in person or use a username, password and TAN list, but accesses the system in the same way as the e-Citizens system.The instructions are published on the eVisitor website and are also submitted to the system of tourist boards, and are available at link
Based on the decision of the Ministry of Tourism related to the Public Invitation for the development of public tourism infrastructure for 2016 with an emphasis on cycling infrastructure, the City of Čakovec was approved 102.900,00 kuna for a project called ‘SMART cycling rest areas’, which provides for the installation of three’ smart ‘rest areas for cyclists in the area of Čakovec, he writes Lovely MeđimurjeRest areas will be set up near sports facilities, SRC ‘Mladost’ in Čakovec, on a green area near Bike Park in Preloška Street in Čakovec and the sports zone in Kuršanec, and all three locations are along the international R1 cycling route.Rest areas consist of a canopy, rest benches, info panels, so-called. ‘smart benches’ with the possibility of charging mobile phones and tablets via a solar panel or battery, a box with a safety lock and bicycle repair tool, spare tubes and a first aid kit, a service stand with integrated pump and five bicycle parking racks. This project enriches the tourist infrastructure of the city and the county, and an increasing number of cyclists are provided with places for rest and repair in attractive locations that attract a large number of visitors.Innovative solutionsAs these rest areas are treated as urban equipment, their construction does not require a location or building permit. It should be emphasized that these are innovative solutions because they represent a step forward in the use of solar energy that is sufficient to power the screen, LED lighting of the resort and free charging of electronic devices that tourists use on their travels.It is planned that the Ministry of Tourism will provide 80 percent of the funds with the approved amount, while the City of Čakovec will provide the rest in its budget. SMART bike rests will be set up by the end of the year. For more information on bike paths in Međimurje County, see hereSource: Lovely Međimurje
A great tourist story that definitely restores faith in people. Namely, the group “Renters with a heart” was founded on Facebook, in which members give their accommodation free of charge to families of children with disabilities.The story began when Vjera Matulić from Postira on Brač founded a FB group with the aim of encouraging private accommodation renters across Croatia to offer their apartments for free to children with developmental problems for a few days, and in just a few days the group gathered over 2.000 members.The main goal of the group is to motivate the hosts in the family accommodation to set aside a few days to help children with developmental problems. “A few days in the summer we can all do it, no one will be impoverished, and we can afford a moment of peace and rest from worries for a needy family with sick children. The only rule is tolerance and a peaceful agreement, belittling anyone, will not be tolerated. Let’s show and prove that not everything is in sholds ” writes in the description of the group Renters with a heart.Each of the hosts in the family accommodation has a hole of a few days in the season, and we hereby invite you to join this commendable action to provide free accommodation to families with children with disabilities and provide them with free holidays.It costs you nothing, and you get a lot. Rather, not in money, but in love, and that is the most valuable thing. Good always comes back to good.You can join the Landlord Group with a heart here
Email LinkedIn Share on Facebook A new study of freelance workers has discovered key factors that affect their well-being – either making them happier or increasing anxiety and risking depression.The six-month study to be published in the journal Human Relations was conducted by Professor Stephen Wood from the University of Leicester’s School of Management and George Michaelides from Birkbeck, University of London.A key finding is that as the hours of freelance workers fluctuate so does the well-being of freelance or portfolio workers, such as copy editors, web designers, coaches, translators, personal trainers. Share
Pinterest Share on Twitter Professor Wood said: “Freelance workers are calmer and more enthusiastic when their hours are higher than their normal pattern of working.“In contrast when the demands they face are difficult – for example, they experience conflicting or difficult requirements – their anxiety increases and their enthusiasm declines and they may even become depressed.“Demands adversely affect people’s work–life balance, in particular work interferes with fulfilling family and other non-work commitments or pursuits. But so does the enthusiasm generated by longer hours. The enthusiasm may be at the expense of non-work activities, as, for example, people may not readily leave tasks uncompleted to be finished another time.”Dr Michaelides added: “Demands thus generate what has long been called stress-based work–family/non-work interference but hours generate a largely unrecognised phenomenon, enthusiasm-based work–family/non-work interference.“The calmness associated with long hours has, though, the opposite effect – it decreases work–family/non-work interference.”The study is based on a diary study involving 47 freelance workers completing an identical survey every week for six months.The study shows that freelance workers are subject to the same pressures as other workers, and thus conflicting demands that constrain and hinder people from smoothly fulfilling their tasks and achieving their potential adversely affect their work–life balance and well-being. In addition when they have control over and variety in their work they are happier, which is also true for most workers.But the enthusiasm-based interference may be more limited to people whose opportunities for work and income associated with it fluctuate. For example people on piecework or commission may appreciate more hours. Zero-hour workers might be the extreme of this. The long hours needed to fulfil tasks may be seen as challenge and not a hindrance as conflicting demands may be.Freelance workers, portfolio workers or independent contractors are self-employed individuals who do assignments, either in series or in parallel, for a number of different organisations or clients, on a (typically short-term) commercial rather than employment contract basis.The research is reported in a paper to be published later this year: S. Wood and G. Michaelides, Hindrance and challenge stressors and well-being based work–non-work interference: A diary study of portfolio workers, Human Relations, in press.
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In a stunning discovery that overturns decades of textbook teaching, researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have determined that the brain is directly connected to the immune system by vessels previously thought not to exist. That such vessels could have escaped detection when the lymphatic system has been so thoroughly mapped throughout the body is surprising on its own, but the true significance of the discovery lies in the effects it could have on the study and treatment of neurological diseases ranging from autism to Alzheimer’s disease to multiple sclerosis.“Instead of asking, ‘How do we study the immune response of the brain?’ ‘Why do multiple sclerosis patients have the immune attacks?’ now we can approach this mechanistically. Because the brain is like every other tissue connected to the peripheral immune system through meningeal lymphatic vessels,” said Jonathan Kipnis, PhD, professor in the UVA Department of Neuroscience and director of UVA’s Center for Brain Immunology and Glia (BIG). “It changes entirely the way we perceive the neuro-immune interaction. We always perceived it before as something esoteric that can’t be studied. But now we can ask mechanistic questions.”“We believe that for every neurological disease that has an immune component to it, these vessels may play a major role,” Kipnis said. “Hard to imagine that these vessels would not be involved in a [neurological] disease with an immune component.” Email New Discovery in Human BodyKevin Lee, PhD, chairman of the UVA Department of Neuroscience, described his reaction to the discovery by Kipnis’ lab: “The first time these guys showed me the basic result, I just said one sentence: ‘They’ll have to change the textbooks.’ There has never been a lymphatic system for the central nervous system, and it was very clear from that first singular observation – and they’ve done many studies since then to bolster the finding – that it will fundamentally change the way people look at the central nervous system’s relationship with the immune system.”Even Kipnis was skeptical initially. “I really did not believe there are structures in the body that we are not aware of. I thought the body was mapped,” he said. “I thought that these discoveries ended somewhere around the middle of the last century. But apparently they have not.”‘Very Well Hidden’The discovery was made possible by the work of Antoine Louveau, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Kipnis’ lab. The vessels were detected after Louveau developed a method to mount a mouse’s meninges – the membranes covering the brain – on a single slide so that they could be examined as a whole. “It was fairly easy, actually,” he said. “There was one trick: We fixed the meninges within the skullcap, so that the tissue is secured in its physiological condition, and then we dissected it. If we had done it the other way around, it wouldn’t have worked.”After noticing vessel-like patterns in the distribution of immune cells on his slides, he tested for lymphatic vessels and there they were. The impossible existed. The soft-spoken Louveau recalled the moment: “I called Jony [Kipnis] to the microscope and I said, ‘I think we have something.’”As to how the brain’s lymphatic vessels managed to escape notice all this time, Kipnis described them as “very well hidden” and noted that they follow a major blood vessel down into the sinuses, an area difficult to image. “It’s so close to the blood vessel, you just miss it,” he said. “If you don’t know what you’re after, you just miss it.”“Live imaging of these vessels was crucial to demonstrate their function, and it would not be possible without collaboration with Tajie Harris,” Kipnis noted. Harris, a PhD, is an assistant professor of neuroscience and a member of the BIG center. Kipnis also saluted the “phenomenal” surgical skills of Igor Smirnov, a research associate in the Kipnis lab whose work was critical to the imaging success of the study.Alzheimer’s, Autism, MS and BeyondThe unexpected presence of the lymphatic vessels raises a tremendous number of questions that now need answers, both about the workings of the brain and the diseases that plague it. For example, take Alzheimer’s disease. “In Alzheimer’s, there are accumulations of big protein chunks in the brain,” Kipnis said. “We think they may be accumulating in the brain because they’re not being efficiently removed by these vessels.” He noted that the vessels look different with age, so the role they play in aging is another avenue to explore. And there’s an enormous array of other neurological diseases, from autism to multiple sclerosis, that must be reconsidered in light of the presence of something science insisted did not exist.The findings were published in the journal Nature.
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In a recent study, nearly half of all veterans who died from drug overdoses while prescribed opioids for pain were also receiving benzodiazepines, or benzos, which are common medications for the treatment of anxiety, insomnia and alcohol withdrawal. Veterans prescribed higher doses of benzodiazepines while concurrently receiving opioids were at greater risk of overdose death than those on lower doses of benzodiazepines.The results of the study by researchers from Rhode Island Hospital, Boston Medical Center, and the Veteran Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System were published online in the BMJ today.“The risk of receiving both opioids and benzodiazepines during this six-year period was approximately four times higher than in those who received opioids alone,” said Tae Woo Park, M.D., attending physician at Rhode Island Hospital. “From a public health perspective, this is deeply troubling, because drug overdoses are a leading cause of death in the U.S. and prescribing benzodiazepines to patients taking opioids for pain is quite common. In 2010, 75 percent of pharmaceutical-related drug-overdose deaths involved opioids. As we learn more about pharmaceuticals and how they interact with each other, we can try to reduce the risk of harm to patients.” Pinterest The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is the largest integrated health care system in the U.S., serving nearly nine million former military personnel across 150 hospitals and 800 outpatient centers. Patient records of veterans who died from drug overdoses while receiving medical services as an outpatient at the VHA between October 2004 and September 2009 were examined for the relationship between the opioids and benzodiazepines when prescribed concurrently.Common opioids include the well-known brands Vicodin, Percocet and OxyContin; and the generic formularies are morphine, codeine, oxycodone, hydrocodone, fentanyl and methadone. The most common brands of benzodiazepines are Xanax, Valium and Klonopin, and common generic forms are alprozolam, chlordiazepoxide, clonazepam, diazepam, lorazepam and temazepam. The drugs are often used for treating anxiety disorders, insomnia and alcohol withdrawal.
Share Share on Twitter LinkedIn Mapping the human brain’s network of interconnections, known as the connectome is typically done with help from computational tools because recreating interconnections between different brain regions has been challenging in the lab. Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) have developed a method to recreate connections between neurons from two different brain areas in a dish. Their findings were published in Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience.Researchers from OIST’s Brain Mechanism for Behaviour Unit, Neurobiology Research Unit, and Physics and Biology Unit collaborated on this study. The study used neurons from embryos of mice. The first connections between different brain compartments develop at the embryonic stage.The OIST researchers cultured neurons from the cortex, located at the front of the brain and a structure under it known as the striatum in separate compartments. The OIST researchers had previously shown that culturing cortical and striatal cells within the same compartment resulted in an artificial connectomic system as these cortical and striatal neurons grew connections in all directions in a disorganized manner. Pinterest
Inside a living brain, neurons within the cortex and striatum form dense interconnections with neurons within their respective brain compartments. There is only one-way electrophysiological traffic, from cortical cells to striatal cells via the formers’ axons. This one way street had been difficult to recreate in culture because striatal cells tend to die out when they do not receive electrophysiological impulses from cortical cells.The OIST researchers paired cortical and striatal compartments on the surface of multiple multi-electrode arrays (MEAs) and kept the cultures alive for three weeks.MEAs are tiny rectangular devices that consist of evenly spaced metal bumps arranged in a grid, all of which serve as electrodes. Each metal bump can transmit the measure of the electrical activity over it. Because many neurons talk to each other simultaneously, mathematical techniques are used to sort the signals from all active electrodes on a MEA, in order to determine which groups are sending and receiving feedback from other groups.After three weeks, enough axons had grown between the cortical and striatal compartments. The MEAs were then hooked up to a system to measure the bursts of electrical activity occurring at the different electrodes. While this system was recording, a knife cut was performed between the cortical and striatal compartments, severing the axons that had grown between them.When this was done, electrical activity was snuffed out almost completely around the electrodes within the striatal compartment. The pattern of electrical activity between electrodes inside the cortical compartment was relatively unaffected, suggesting the interconnectivity between the cortical neurons was unchanged. This demonstrated that there were negligible upstream connections forming between striatal and cortical cells, and a working corticostriatal network had been recreated.“We can also introduce a third compartment into this setup, possibly more. This would allow connections to grow between multiple types of neurons found in distant parts of the brain,” said Dr. Marianela Garcia Munoz, Group Leader of the Brain Mechanism for Behaviour Unit. Email Share on Facebook
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Email A new imaging technique found that some people with high blood pressure also have damage to nerve tracts connecting different parts of the brain, according to a study presented at the American Heart Association’s 2015 High Blood Pressure Conference.The area of brain damage detected is linked to difficulties in certain cognitive skills, decision-making, and the ability to regulate emotions.“We already have clear ways to explore the damage high blood pressure can cause to the kidneys, eyes, and heart. We wanted to find a way to assess brain damage that could predict the development of dementia associated with vascular diseases,” said Daniela Carnevale, Ph.D., the study’s senior author and assistant professor at Sapienza University of Rome, based in Neuromed Institute. While there has been a lot of research on hypertension-related brain changes in the grey matter, Carnevale proposed that a look into the brain’s white matter could tell if high blood pressure was having an effect even earlier than what is known.Researchers used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), an enhancement of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), to evaluate and compare the structural and functional properties of the main connections between different brain regions. Fifteen participants were on medication for moderate to severe high blood pressure and 15 participants had normal blood pressure. Participants were also given a cognitive assessment.The brain imaging found that, while none of the participants showed abnormalities on a standard MRI, the more advanced DTI revealed that participants with high blood pressure had damage to:brain fibers that affect non-verbal functions;nerve fibers that affect executive functioning and emotional regulation; andlimbic system fibers, which are involved in attention tasks.In addition, imaging and laboratory tests indicated damage to the heart and kidneys from high blood pressure.Researchers also found those with high blood pressure performed significantly worse on two different assessments of cognitive function and memory. However, there were no differences in tests evaluating verbal function or ability to perform daily activities.“DTI provides a way to evaluate pre-symptomatic brain damage in people with high blood pressure in order to identify possible therapies to help control brain damage and reduce the eventual development of dementia. It is generally accepted that not all available medications have the same impact on different kinds of organ damage,” Carnevale said.DTI, also called tractography, is not performed in routine medical practice, but the researchers suggest that physicians should start to consider potential brain damage as they treat patients with high blood pressure.