The impact of security on Philippine tourism : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Development Studies at Massey University

This study investigates the nexus between security and tourism within the development context within political structures and institutions examining specifically the impacts of security issues on the tourism industry of the Philippines. The latest global security events and the country's volatile security situation caused by political instability issues, terrorism and incidence of crime have together posed serious threats to the government's efforts to promote the country as a premiere tourist destination While tourism may be perceived by many social science and development writers as just a western mechanism to propagate capitalism, it has, for most Third World countries like the Philippines, nevertheless contributed significantly to their economies in terms of foreign exchange earnings, taxes and jobs generated. In examining the impact of security events and issues on Philippine tourism, a quantitative analysis which compared arrivals before and after security events led to the finding that terrorism caused the biggest declines. The fieldwork results which were based on surveys of tourists (both foreign and domestic), hotel management staff, and officials from government and the industry itself also led to a similar proposition that terrorism has affected travel decisions more than political instability and crime. However, fieldwork also revealed that internal conflicts caused by clashes between the government and Muslim and communist rebels have influenced tourists' choice of tourist destinations both in the countries they travel to and among the destinations in the Philippines. While political instability and incidents of crime within the Philippines did not seriously concern tourists on the whole, problems of corruption and a perceived weak government system to solve local security incidents have surfaced indicating the need for strategies to address problems within political institutions and structures. There were also differences in perceptions of fear and security between foreign and domestic tourists, and also among foreign tourists of different nationalities. Considering these observed perception levels in promoting tourism to these different groups may be more effective in attracting tourists to the country. This study concludes that Philippine tourism can recover from the consequences of both global and local security events provided that the government imposes stricter and more effective security systems, engages in more effective promotional strategies which target particular nationalities, and continues to cooperate with its ASEAN neighbors and international organizations like the WTO and WTTC to resolve security issues at hand. Utilization of risk management plans and crisis management plans implemented by countries that were affected by security problems in the past should provide some valuable means to the Philippines, and any other country with security problems. Overall, a combination of factors such as the active involvement of the Philippines in regional activities, constant dialogues with rebel forces and other insurgent groups, prosecution of perpetuators of terrorist acts and crimes, and a government of good integrity will enable tourism to lead to development

Self-adaptation of Genetic Operators Through Genetic Programming Techniques

Here we propose an evolutionary algorithm that self modifies its operators at the same time that candidate solutions are evolved. This tackles convergence and lack of diversity issues, leading to better solutions. Operators are represented as trees and are evolved using genetic programming (GP) techniques. The proposed approach is tested with real benchmark functions and an analysis of operator evolution is provided.Comment: Presented in GECCO 201

Parallélisation massive des algorithmes de branchement

Les problèmes d'optimisation et de recherche sont souvent NP-complets et des techniques de force brute doivent généralement être mises en œuvre pour trouver des solutions exactes. Des problèmes tels que le regroupement de gènes en bio-informatique ou la recherche de routes optimales dans les réseaux de distribution peuvent être résolus en temps exponentiel à l'aide de stratégies de branchement récursif. Néanmoins, ces algorithmes deviennent peu pratiques au-delà de certaines tailles d'instances en raison du grand nombre de scénarios à explorer, pour lesquels des techniques de parallélisation sont nécessaires pour améliorer les performances. Dans des travaux antérieurs, des techniques centralisées et décentralisées ont été mises en œuvre afin d'augmenter le parallélisme des algorithmes de branchement tout en essayant de réduire les coûts de communication, qui jouent un rôle important dans les implémentations massivement parallèles en raison des messages passant entre les processus. Ainsi, notre travail consiste à développer une bibliothèque entièrement générique en C++, nommée GemPBA, pour accélérer presque tous les algorithmes de branchement avec une parallélisation massive, ainsi que le développement d'un outil novateur et simpliste d'équilibrage de charge dynamique pour réduire le nombre de messages transmis en envoyant les tâches prioritaires en premier. Notre approche utilise une stratégie hybride centralisée-décentralisée, qui fait appel à un processus central chargé d'attribuer les rôles des travailleurs par des messages de quelques bits, telles que les tâches n'ont pas besoin de passer par un processeur central. De plus, un processeur en fonctionnement génère de nouvelles tâches si et seulement s'il y a des processeurs disponibles pour les recevoir, garantissant ainsi leur transfert, ce qui réduit considérablement les coûts de communication. Nous avons réalisé nos expériences sur le problème de la couverture minimale de sommets, qui a montré des résultats remarquables, étant capable de résoudre même les graphes DIMACS les plus difficiles avec un simple algorithme MVC.Abstract: Optimization and search problems are often NP-complete, and brute-force techniques must typically be implemented to find exact solutions. Problems such as clustering genes in bioinformatics or finding optimal routes in delivery networks can be solved in exponential-time using recursive branching strategies. Nevertheless, these algorithms become impractical above certain instance sizes due to the large number of scenarios that need to be explored, for which parallelization techniques are necessary to improve the performance. In previous works, centralized and decentralized techniques have been implemented aiming to scale up parallelism on branching algorithms whilst attempting to reduce communication overhead, which plays a significant role in massively parallel implementations due to the messages passing across processes. Thus, our work consists of the development of a fully generic library in C++, named GemPBA, to speed up almost any branching algorithms with massive parallelization, along with the development of a novel and simplistic Dynamic Load Balancing tool to reduce the number of passed messages by sending high priority tasks first. Our approach uses a hybrid centralized-decentralized strategy, which makes use of a center process in charge of assigning worker roles by messages of a few bits of size, such that tasks do not need to pass through a center processor. Also, a working processor will spawn new tasks if and only if there are available processors to receive them, thus, guaranteeing its transfer, and thereby the communication overhead is notably decreased. We performed our experiments on the Minimum Vertex Cover problem, which showed remarkable results, being capable of solving even the toughest DIMACS graphs with a simple MVC algorithm

High-frequency frontal displacements south of san jorge gulf during a tidal cycle near spring and neap phases biological implications between tidal states

San Jorge Gulf (SJG) is a region of high biological productivity that supports important shrimp (Pleoticus muelleri) and hake (Merluccius hubbsi) fisheries, as well as high marine biodiversity associated, in part, with a tidal front located in the southern part of the gulf. In situ high-resolution cross-frontal measurements were collected using a remotely operated towed vehicle to characterize the three-dimensional structure of the tidal front and to investigate how its position varies during the semidiurnal tidal cycle (high/low) and the spring to neap transition, together with its impact on the distribution of nutrients and chlorophyll-a. Estimates of tidal height and flow velocity derived from a numerical model support the conclusion that frontal displacements mostly result from advec-tion by cross-frontal tidal currents. The frontal position was also modified by baroclinic instabilities that significantly distort the front. Measurements reveal intrusions of low-salinity, nutrient-rich waters from the mixed side into the pycnocline on the stratified side cause a subsurface chlorophyll-a peak near the neap phase. Most prior studies of fronts in the SJG have been limited to their surface manifestations because they were conducted using satellite images. This article aims to contribute to the understanding of the complex southern tidal front dynamics, highlighting that maximum primary productivity occurs in a subsurface layer that is not visible by satellite sensors.Fil: Carbajal, Juan Cruz. Centro Para El Estudio de Sistemas Marinos (cesimar), Conicet-cenpat; ArgentinaFil: Rivas, Andres Lujan. Centro Para El Estudio de Sistemas Marinos (cesimar), Conicet-cenpat; ArgentinaFil: Chavanne, Cédric. Institut Des Sciences de la Mer de Rimouski; Canad

High-frequency frontal displacements south of san jorge gulf during a tidal cycle near spring and neap phases biological implications between tidal states

San Jorge Gulf (SJG) is a region of high biological productivity that supports important shrimp (Pleoticus muelleri) and hake (Merluccius hubbsi) fisheries, as well as high marine biodiversity associated, in part, with a tidal front located in the southern part of the gulf. In situ high-resolution cross-frontal measurements were collected using a remotely operated towed vehicle to characterize the three-dimensional structure of the tidal front and to investigate how its position varies during the semidiurnal tidal cycle (high/low) and the spring to neap transition, together with its impact on the distribution of nutrients and chlorophyll-a. Estimates of tidal height and flow velocity derived from a numerical model support the conclusion that frontal displacements mostly result from advec-tion by cross-frontal tidal currents. The frontal position was also modified by baroclinic instabilities that significantly distort the front. Measurements reveal intrusions of low-salinity, nutrient-rich waters from the mixed side into the pycnocline on the stratified side cause a subsurface chlorophyll-a peak near the neap phase. Most prior studies of fronts in the SJG have been limited to their surface manifestations because they were conducted using satellite images. This article aims to contribute to the understanding of the complex southern tidal front dynamics, highlighting that maximum primary productivity occurs in a subsurface layer that is not visible by satellite sensors.Fil: Carbajal, Juan Cruz. Centro Para El Estudio de Sistemas Marinos (cesimar), Conicet-cenpat; ArgentinaFil: Rivas, Andres Lujan. Centro Para El Estudio de Sistemas Marinos (cesimar), Conicet-cenpat; ArgentinaFil: Chavanne, Cédric. Institut Des Sciences de la Mer de Rimouski; Canad

Automatic Discovery of Heterogeneous Machine Learning Pipelines: An Application to Natural Language Processing

This paper presents AutoGOAL, a system for automatic machine learning (AutoML) that uses heterogeneous techniques. In contrast with existing AutoML approaches, our contribution can automatically build machine learning pipelines that combine techniques and algorithms from different frameworks, including shallow classifiers, natural language processing tools, and neural networks. We define the heterogeneous AutoML optimization problem as the search for the best sequence of algorithms that transforms specific input data into the desired output. This provides a novel theoretical and practical approach to AutoML. Our proposal is experimentally evaluated in diverse machine learning problems and compared with alternative approaches, showing that it is competitive with other AutoML alternatives in standard benchmarks. Furthermore, it can be applied to novel scenarios, such as several NLP tasks, where existing alternatives cannot be directly deployed. The system is freely available and includes in-built compatibility with a large number of popular machine learning frameworks, which makes our approach useful for solving practical problems with relative ease and effort.This research has been supported by a Carolina Foundation grant in agreement with University of Alicante and University of Havana. Moreover, it has also been partially funded by both aforementioned universities, the Generalitat Valenciana (Conselleria d’Educació, Investigació, Cultura i Esport) and the Spanish Government through the projects LIVING-LANG (RTI2018-094653-B-C22) and SIIA (PROMETEO/2018/089, PROMETEU/2018/089)

Proyecto de ganadería intensiva doble propósito en la finca San Felipe en el municipio San Martin, Meta

Este artículo demuestra de forma cualitativa, la viabilidad de implementar un proyecto de ganadería intensiva de doble propósito, en la finca San Felipe, ubicada en el municipio de San Martin, Meta, demostrando las ventajas de este sistema, ante la ganadería tradicional, por medio de un modelo de matrices, que evalúa las fortalezas, debilidades, amenazas y oportunidades; desarrollando y mostrando un plan de acción, para aprovechar al máximo las oportunidades y fortalezas, así como para bloquear o eliminar, las debilidades y amenazas. La actividad ganadera, debe mejorar cada día, para ofrecer a los consumidores de carne y productos lácteos, la mejor calidad, satisfaciendo las necesidades individuales de cada persona, y creando un buen nombre antes los clientes; así mismo cada día generar ideas nuevas que ayuden a mejorar los sistemas de ganadería, mejorando los resultados en la producción de leche, aumentando el peso que gane un novillo mensualmente, lo cual genera un incremento en los ingresos derivados de esta actividad.This article prove of qualitative form, the viability of implement a project of ranching intensive of double purpose, in San Felipe Farm, located in San Martin, Meta, prove the advantages of this system, faced the traditional ranching, by means of matrix model. That evaluate the strength, weakness, threat, opportunity; showing an action planto take advantage of opportunity and strength, aswell asblock or eliminate the weakness and threat. The ranching, must improve more every day, satisfying the individual necessities of every person, and creating a good will face the clients; in the same way every day generate ideas that help improve the ranching systems, improving the results of the milk production, growing the weight of a heifer monthly, which generates an increase of income of the ranching activity.Profesional en Finanzas y Comercio Exterio