An empirical investigation of the role of camaraderie, cause, competency, and participation motives in the development of attachment to a charity sport event

This paper examines the factors that contribute to the meaning participants hold for charity sport events. Specifically, the paper investigates the role of three value-laden constructs; along with participation motives, to understand participant attachment to a charity sport event. An online questionnaire was given to participants in the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) LIVESTRONG Challenge (n=568) following the event. Data analysis revealed two recreational event motives, three motives for charitable giving, and three value-laden constructs contribute to attachment to the charity sport event. In addition, the results revealed the value-laden constructs make a stronger contribution to event attachment than the participation motives. Suggestions are made for increasing the meaning held for the event through community building, calls to action, and customization.Griffith Business School, Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel ManagementFull Tex

Robust decision analysis for environmental management of groundwater contamination sites

In contrast to many other engineering fields, the uncertainties in subsurface processes (e.g., fluid flow and contaminant transport in aquifers) and their parameters are notoriously difficult to observe, measure, and characterize. This causes severe uncertainties that need to be addressed in any decision analysis related to optimal management and remediation of groundwater contamination sites. Furthermore, decision analyses typically rely heavily on complex data analyses and/or model predictions, which are often poorly constrained as well. Recently, we have developed a model-driven decision-support framework (called MADS; http://mads.lanl.gov) for the management and remediation of subsurface contamination sites in which severe uncertainties and complex physics-based models are coupled to perform scientifically defensible decision analyses. The decision analyses are based on Information Gap Decision Theory (IGDT). We demonstrate the MADS capabilities by solving a decision problem related to optimal monitoring network design.Comment: This paper has been withdrawn by the author due to a crucial sign error in equations 7 and

Impacto de la actividad turística en la iguana marina (Amblyrhynchus cristatus mertensi) en el sector del Barranco – La Lobería, Islas Galápagos

One of the attractions of La Lobería Beach is the path to El Barranco where we can see the species of marine iguana Amblyrhynchus cristatus mertensi that lives in this area. For this reason is why many people visit this place with or without guides, but some of the tourists are not respecting the Galapagos National Park’s rules, getting closer to the marine iguanas and/or leaving the trail to see them better...Uno de los atractivos de la playa Lobería es el camino hacia el Barranco, en donde se puede ver la especie de iguana marina Amblyrhynchus cristatus mertensi que habita en esta área. Es por esta razón, que hay muchas personas que constantemente visitan este lugar con o sin la presencia de un guía naturalista. Muchos turistas e incluso los locales no respetan las normas del Parque Nacional Galápagos ya que no mantienen una distancia prudente..

Solving the Quadratic Assignment Problem with Cooperative Parallel Extremal Optimization

International audienceSeveral real-life applications can be stated in terms of the Quadratic Assignment Problem. Finding an optimal assignment is com-putationally very difficult, for many useful instances. We address this problem using a local search technique, based on Extremal Optimization and present experimental evidence that this approach is competitive. Moreover, cooperative parallel versions of our solver improve performance so much that large and hard instances can be solved quickly

Towards a Parallel Hierarchical Adaptive Solver Tool

International audienceConstraint satisfaction and combinatorial optimization problems , even when modeled with efficient metaheurisics such as local search remain computationally very intensive. Solvers stand to benefit significantly from execution on parallel systems, which are increasingly available. The architectural diversity and complexity of the latter means that these systems pose ever greater challenges in order to be effectively used, both from the point of view of the modeling effort and from that of the degree of coverage of the available computing resources. In this article we discuss impositions and design issues for a framework to make efficient use of various parallel architectures