Volunteer tourism : the new ecotourism?

One of the more recent forms of tourism to emerge is what has become known as Volunteer Tourism, the practice of individuals going on a working holiday, volunteering their labour for worthy causes. While volunteering is a well-established activity, the combination with tourism is relatively new and has already changed considerably over a very short period. This paper reviews the process by which volunteer tourism has developed, focusing on its transformation from an individual altruistic endeavour to a more commercial form of conventional tourism. The paper reviews the growth in number of websites devoted to volunteer tourism, and discusses the changes that have taken place in the content and focus of these websites, the locations used as destinations and the organisations they represent over the last two decades. It is apparent that over the last two decades the organisations offering volunteer tourist vacations have increasingly focused their attention on conventional commercial tourism markets which is a similar pattern of evolution to that of ecotourism. The paper concludes that volunteer tourism is likely to become increasingly diverse in scale, distribution and focus in the future, in the same way as ecotourism has broadened its market and appeal, but in so doing, will lose more of the distinctive features that characterized its initial form

Microscopes and computers combined for analysis of chromosomes

Scanning machine CHLOE, developed for photographic use, is combined with a digital computer to obtain quantitative and statistically significant data on chromosome shapes, distribution, density, and pairing. CHLOE permits data acquisition about a chromosome complement to be obtained two times faster than by manual pairing

Regaining Motor Control in Musician's Dystonia by Restoring Sensorimotor Organization

Professional musicians are an excellent human model of long term effects of skilled motor training on the structure and function of the motor system. However, such effects are accompanied by an increased risk of developing motor abnormalities, in particular musician's dystonia. Previously we found that there was an expanded spatial integration of proprioceptive input into the hand area of motor cortex (sensorimotor organisation, SMO) in healthy musicians as tested with a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) paradigm. In musician's dystonia, this expansion was even larger, resulting in a complete lack of somatotopic organisation. We hypothesised that the disordered motor control in musician's dystonia is a consequence of the disordered SMO. In the present paper we test this idea by giving pianists with musician's dystonia 15 min experience of a modified proprioceptive training task. This restored SMO towards that seen in healthy pianists. Crucially, motor control of the affected task improved significantly and objectively as measured with a MIDI piano, and the amount of behavioural improvement was significantly correlated to the degree of sensorimotor re-organisation. In healthy pianists and non-musicians, the SMO and motor performance remained essentially unchanged. These findings suggest a link between the differentiation of SMO in the hand motor cortex and the degree of motor control of intensively practiced tasks in highly skilled individuals

Comparison of Feed in Tariff, Quota and Auction Mechanisms to Support Wind Power Development

A comparison of policy instruments employed to support onshore wind projects suggests that in terms of capacity installed, policies adopted in Germany have been more effective than those adopted in the UK. Price comparisons have frequently neglected differences in resource base: once accounted for we find the cost of policies to be similar. A developer survey identifies planning constraints as only one reason why installed capacity is greater in Germany, and indicates that price support is also important. Information provided by developers also suggests that although the tendering process adopted in the UK is highly competitive in terms of price paid for energy delivered, competition in other areas of the market is significantly lower than in Germany.Wind Generation, Renewable Energy, Subsidy, Policy

The Technology of Terror: Accounting for the Strategic Use of Terrorism

To comprehend why a group would intentionally target civilians, we need to understand why other groups do not. In this chapter, we argue that disgruntled groups face three main choices when addressing their dissatisfaction: suffering a disadvantageous peace, engaging in unconventional warfare, or engaging in conventional warfare. We further disaggregate the choice of unconventional warfare into terrorism and guerrilla warfare. By focusing on asymmetrical aspects of the problem and the strategic interactions between the insurgent group, its complicit public, and the superior force of the state, we disentangle the technology of terror.

ScotPID - a model of collaboration

ScotPID is a national personal development initiative in Scotland, with thirteen higher education institutions taking part in the development of case studies which enhance personal development planning for students. As a model of collaboration, ScotPID involves all stakeholders: each core project group is composed of an academic, IT support manager, careers service adviser and undergraduate student, with support from QAA Scotland. The case study is developed by the contribution of all of the members of the team. The strength of the ScotPID collaboration is the varied background of the team members. However, collaboration between the ScotPID teams should also be encouraged, to strengthen the inter-institutional approach further

A fibre optic sensor for the measurement of surface roughness and displacement using artificial neural networks

This paper presents a fiber optic sensor system, artificial neural networks (fast back-propagation) are employed for the data processing. The use of the neural networks makes it possible for the sensor to be used both for surface roughness and displacement measurement at the same time. The results indicate 100% correct surface classification for ten different surfaces (different materials, different manufacturing methods, and different surface roughnesses) and displacement errors less then ±5 μm. The actual accuracy was restricted by the calibration machine. A measuring range of ±0.8 mm for the displacement measurement was achieved