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Strain sensing characteristic of carbon nanotubes has been established in the past at nanoscale. In this study, it is shown that the carbon nanotube film sensors, made up of randomly oriented carbon nanotubes, can be used as strain sensors at macro level. A nearly linear trend between the change in voltage, measured using a movable four point probe, and strains, measured using conventional electrical strain gage, indicates the potential of such carbon nanotube films for measuring flexural strains at macro level. Isotropic strain sensing capability of the carbon nanotube film sensors, due to randomly oriented carbon nanotubes, allows multidirectional and multi‐location measurements.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the Festival Internacional Cervantino, which represents one of the major cultural events in Latin America. Based on theoretical propositions regarding tourism as an experience, perception of visitors was studied focussing on emotional factors. Urban perception was also addressed, especially where public service failure affected the experience and therefore, the placemaking.

A mixed methodology was applied. First, the event experience scale (EES) methodology for visitors’ perception was performed in order to collect data directly from tourists. The relationship between the festival and the visit to heritage resources and attractions was especially highlighted and analysed. Urban field work focussed on expressing the location of the most visited areas during festival days. Public services were also assessed where perception was affected negatively. Interviews were applied to public administration officials and public policy-related documents were collected in order to understand the expectation of visitors, previous to the experience itself. Local perception was also contrasted with the rest of the data.

Attracted by information about the historic and colonial nature of the city, tourists gather massively in Guanajuato during the festival. This event in particular yields in some aspects to a transient placemaking, mainly related to inner perception and the event as such is highly appreciated. It was also found that the foreign figure of Cervantes was incorporated into the intangible heritage discourse of the city and linked to the event itself. However, some urban spaces and services need improvement to consolidate a positive experience of visitors who complain about specific factors such as traffic, accessibility, waste disposal and environmental noise.

The fact that the event has caused some problems in a number of urban aspects suggests that new policies might be proposed in order to fill these gaps, especially by the corresponding government agencies. Another issue relates to the concentration of the economic profits and its lack of distribution, which right now does not contribute to social sustainability, yet the event demands high actions and costs to the city and local people.

The research has been useful to give another point of view to existing surveys and conclusions of the impact of the festival. The application of EES has yielded some improvements that could be made in further applications of the same methodology. Application of EES to assess the impact of events in urban spaces and services can be applied to many other cities that host festivals in their city centres.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

The purpose of this article is to summarize the basic literature and concepts of innovation and entrepreneurship, emphasizing the relevant studies for Latin America. The authors aim to assess the role of Latin America in the world innovative activity utilizing the production of USPTO patents.

To achieve the first objective, the authors review and summarize the relevant literature for innovation and entrepreneurship in Latin America. They also introduce each of the papers included in the current special issue of Academia. To achieve the second objective, the authors use the production of USPTO patents by Latin American residents, and examine those levels to the rest of the world.

The authors find Latin America to be a marginal contributor to the world innovative activity. Although the region represented 8.7 per cent of world GDP in 2011, it only generated 0.19 per cent of the world patents registered at the USPTO between 2008 and 2012, and only 0.17 per cent of all patents registered since 1976. However, countries such as Costa Rica and Uruguay have larger levels of patent production by 100,000 inhabitants with 7.05 and 4.72 for 1976-2012.

This introduction introduces work that continues the intense discussion on innovation and entrepreneurship in Latin America. It is to the extent of the authors' knowledge, one of the first attempts to measure the level of innovation at the regional level, and compare the performance of different countries. This special edition has implications for individuals, firms and governments striving to introduce new products, services and processes in a region that has historically confronted important barriers to innovation.

En esta introducción presentamos algunos conceptos básicos sobre innovación y empresariado, y hacemos énfasis en la literatura que ha estudiado estos fenómenos en América Latina. Evaluamos, además, el papel de América Latina en la actividad innovadora mundial, utilizando la producción de patentes registradas en la Oficina de Patentes y Marcas de Estados Unidos (USPTO), y encontramos que América Latina desempeña un papel marginal con relación a otros centros mundiales de innovación. Finalmente, se presentan los artículos de este número de la revista Academia. Esta edición especial tiene implicaciones prácticas para individuos, empresas y gobiernos, que quieran introducir nuevos productos, servicios, y procesos desde una región que históricamente ha tenido que enfrentar barreras a la innovación.

This chapter reflects on the construction of transnational marital bonds over time. First, based on multi-site fieldwork carried out in 2011 and 2012 in two regions of Mexico and one of the United States, an extensive discussion on the transnational family and the construction of conjugality is presented from the point of view of two dimensions: intimacy and domestic organization in heterosexual couples with young children and conjugal unions recognized as successful. The second part discusses the same results of the study after a decade, based on contact with the same participants and an exploration of their trajectories of intimacy and family organization. The notion of life cycle and family trajectory is introduced into the discussion, arriving at paths in the definition of intimacy that discuss the romantic component initially identified and add the confessional and post-romantic components as part of the experience of geographical distance for prolonged periods of migration, in addition to aging processes.

The notion that the family have a profound effect on human behavior is indisputable and has been studied extensively, including business administration. However, these studies have focused on developed countries. So, it can be identifying a research gap related to understand these countries, especially from a contextual perspective, which is the one that has received less attention from the academy.

This paper presents a theoretical review of the contextual perspective of the study of family businesses that concludes with the proposal of a model that integrates the structural barriers to contextualize the analysis family businesses in emerging economies, especially in rural zones.

Three case studies of companies located in the Puuc biocultural region in Yucatan, México, are presented and discussed.

The cases presented are family businesses: “Vida Vida,” “La Vaquita,” and “Lool-Beek” in which similarities were found in the way they face the particularities of their environment and how the integration of family members responds to uncertainty due to the precarious legal framework and the scant economic development they face.

This paper proposes that the structural barriers faced by emerging countries should be integrated as a differentiated variable, especially those located in rural areas since there imply greater challenges than urban areas. Likewise, it highlights that the emotional connections of family businesses with their territory give them roots, and this contributes to the continuity of their businesses and empowers them to face challenges such as natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the effect of the chosen search engine results page (SERP) on the website-specific hit count estimation indicator.

A sample of 100 Spanish rare disease association websites is analysed, obtaining the website-specific hit count estimation for the first and last SERPs in two search engines (Google and Bing) at two different periods in time (2016 and 2017).

It has been empirically demonstrated that there are differences between the number of hits returned on the first and last SERP in both Google and Bing. These differences are significant when they exceed a threshold value on the first SERP.

Future studies considering other samples, more SERPs and generating different queries other than website page count (<site>) would be desirable to draw more general conclusions on the nature of quantitative data provided by general search engines.

Selecting a wrong SERP to calculate some metrics (in this case, website-specific hit count estimation) might provide misleading results, comparisons and performance rankings. The empirical data suggest that the first SERP captures the differences between websites better because it has a greater discriminating power and is more appropriate for webometric longitudinal studies.

The findings allow improving future quantitative webometric analyses based on website-specific hit count estimation metrics in general search engines.

The website-specific hit count estimation variability between SERPs has been empirically analysed, considering two different search engines (Google and Bing), a set of 100 websites focussed on a similar market (Spanish rare diseases associations), and two annual samples, making this study the most exhaustive on this issue to date.

Since first small personal exposimeters became available, some studies have characterized personal exposition to radio frequency electromagnetic fields. The effect of body and relative position of the exposimeter have been also analyzed but some questions are still unanswered. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Using three personal exposimeters in four different subjects, the authors characterized and compared measurements in a controlled experiment.

The authors found statistically significance differences between exposimeters and subjects due to relative position (right and left) and a control position far from the body (center). It should indicate that body and relative position of the exposimeter affect directly to the measurement, conditioning final and average results.

Measurements using personal exposimeters have to be reconsidered and controlled.

The authors test personal exposimeters limitations in real conditions.