Quantifying the Impact of Chikungunya and Dengue on Tourism Revenues

<b>Background</b><br> Health economists have traditionally quantified the burden of vector-borne diseases (such as chikungunya and dengue) as the sum of the cost of illness and the cost of intervention programmes. The objective of this paper is to predict the order of magnitude of possible reduction in tourism revenues if a major epidemic of chikungunya or dengue were to discourage visits by international tourists, and to prove that even a conservative estimate can be comparable to or even greater than the cost of illness and intervention programmes combined, and therefore should not be ignored in the estimation of the overall burden. <b>Methods</b><br> We have chosen three Asian economies where the immediate costs of these diseases have been recently calculated: Gujarat (an economically important state of India), Malaysia, and Thailand. Only international tourists from non-endemic countries have been considered to be discouraged, and a 4% annual decline in their numbers has been assumed. Revenues from these tourists have been calculated assuming that tourists from non-endemic countries would spend, on average, the same amount as all international tourists. These assumptions are conservative and consistent with the recent experience of Mauritius and R�union islands. Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) have been considered half as likely to avoid travel to Gujarat compared to non-Indians. This paper reports inflation-adjusted expenditure figures as 2008 US$, assuming recent market exchange rates of 42.0 INR/US$, 3.22 MYR/US$, 0.68 EUR/US$, and 33.6 THB/US$. <b>Findings</b><br> A 4$ 8 million for Gujarat, US$65 million for Malaysia, and US$ 363 million for Thailand. The estimated immediate annual cost of chikungunya and dengue to these economies is US$90 million, US$ 133 million, and approximately US$127 million respectively, indicating that impact on tourism revenues should not be ignored when calculating the burden of infectious diseases. The impact on Gujarat is relatively less because its share of world tourism receipts is just 0.04$ 9.6 million loss in domestic tourism revenues to Gujarat. <b>Interpretation</b><br> This paper shows that potential loss of tourism revenues due to a severe epidemic outbreak could be substantial. In some cases, ignoring this component could seriously underestimate cost-benefit results, forestalling promising interventions that could benefit the society as a whole or leading to inadequate investment of resources in prevention and public-funded control programmes. This would be to the detriment of especially poorer sections of the society, who may not be able to afford treatment costs. At present data are insufficient for us to make more than a preliminary estimate of the magnitude of the potential loss of revenues from tourism due to a major outbreak of chikungunya or dengue.

Malaysian Y Generation Consumer Research: Does Gender and Technology Literacy affirmative towards E-commerce activities?

The last two decades have experienced rapid expansion of information and communication technology. This wide application of internet stated its influence on attitude and adoption of internet among various generations. The generation Y which is “the millennial generationâ€, are the major one who has connected with the technology, especially with internet usage, and is widely in every aspect of life. They adopt technology application in shopping product and services, moving away from traditional purchasing behavior of consumer. Though various studies have come out in the area of generation Y and technology adoption, very less studies are observed connecting gender, and contextualizing the topic to the Malaysian context, considering the consumer internet usage attitude and e-commerce activities. Hence this particular study, then observed and analyzed generation Y attitude towards internet usage and e-commerce activities with its moderating effect of gender variation

Instrument Development “Intention to Stay Instrument” (ISI)

Quite a few instruments exist in literature to measure the concepts like absenteeism, attrition, organizational member’s intention to leave and retention. While, there is always confusion between the variable’s and its appropriateness when contextualize the topic to various industries, sectors and regional applications. These variances evidently may observe when an instrument developed in the west and apply it in east to get its validity and reliability. In this context, an instrument developed to measure the causative factors of ‘member’s intention to stay’, especially focused on individual and organizational factors in the manufacturing sector. The instrument development process was initially followed the qualitative research method. Techniques like content analysis, personal interviews with the organizational members, focus group discussion and Delphi technique were adopted. After identification of the variables through Delphi, these variables were exposed to validity and reliability test. Further, content, construct and face validity was made on the sub factors and items generated in the instrument. The instrument was finalized with 76 items under 21 sub factors of ‘member’s intention to stay’

Malaysian Consumer Research: Does Computer Literacy Affirmative towards E-commerce Activities?

Rapid expansion of technology application, especially in the field of information technology, with the support of fine tune infrastructure, further correlated with severely with the ecommerce activities. This scenario is not much different in developed as well as developing countries. It is a placid trend nowadays that the customers are moving from traditional direct shopping practices to online shopping. In this scenario it is observed that the generations Y is more contented with online purchasing and adoption of e-commerce practices compare to generation X. It is hypothesized in this research that higher the computer literacy people have with higher the attitude in favor for technology adoption and ecommerce activities. Contextualizing this assumption to Malaysian scenario, fewer studies have been conducted so far and seldom any information that has shared across to the research world. Hence, a study was conducted to analyze the effect of computer literacy on internet usages and ecommerce activities among generation Y in the Malaysian context. This study provides interesting insights into the technology adoption aptitude of generation Y

Interface induced perpendicular magnetic anisotropy in Co/CoO/Co thin film structure: An in-situ MOKE investigation

Co /CoO/Co polycrystalline film was grown on Si (001) substrate and magnetic properties have been investigated using in-situ magneto-optic Kerr effect during growth of the sample. Magnetic anisotropy with easy axis perpendicular to the film surface has been observed in top Co layer, whereas bottom layer was found to be soft with in-plane magnetization without any influence of top layer. Ex-situ in-plane and out-of-plane diffraction measurements revealed that the growth of Co on oxidized interface takes place with preferential orientation of c-axis perpendicular to the film plane, which results in the observed perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. Texturing of the c-axis is expected to be a result of minimization of the interface energy due to hybridization between Co and oxygen at the interface.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, under review in IOP journa

Influence of New Media on Travel Decision Making

Tourism, one of the largest industries in the world, has recorded&nbsp; consistent&nbsp; growth&nbsp; since&nbsp; the&nbsp; end&nbsp; of&nbsp; Second World&nbsp; War.&nbsp; Travel&nbsp; is&nbsp; a&nbsp; key&nbsp; factor&nbsp; in&nbsp; the&nbsp; process&nbsp; of tourism, where the tourist is the main player as well as the&nbsp; ultimate&nbsp; consumer&nbsp; of&nbsp; the&nbsp; products&nbsp; and&nbsp; services offered to him/her. A tourist‟s decision to travel is&nbsp; by itself a complex process because there are many factors that influence the decision. The New media, which has emerged&nbsp; in&nbsp; the&nbsp; wake&nbsp; of&nbsp; tremendous&nbsp; advancements&nbsp; in information&nbsp; and&nbsp; communication&nbsp; technologies&nbsp; is also influencing the decision making process in modern times. Here, an attempt has been done to examine the influence of new media in the various stages of decision making process and the role played by it. A questionnaire based survey was&nbsp; undertaken&nbsp; to&nbsp; conduct&nbsp; the&nbsp; study&nbsp; and&nbsp; the analysis reveals various kinds of influences of new media

Controls of dimethyl sulphide in the Bay of Bengal during BOBMEX-Pilot cruise 1998

The air-sea exchange is one of the main mechanisms maintaining the abundances of trace gases in the atmosphere. Some of these, such as carbon dioxide and dimethyl sulphide (DMS), will have a bearing on the atmospheric heat budget. While the former facilitates the trapping of radiation (greenhouse effect) the latter works in the opposite direction through reflectance of radiation back into space by sulphate aerosols that form from oxidation of DMS in atmosphere. Here we report on the first measurements made on DMS in the Bay of Bengal and the factors regulating its abundance in seawater. Phytoplankton alone does not seem to control the extent of DMS concentrations. We find that changes in salinity could effectively regulate the extent of DMSP production by marine phytoplankton. In addition, we provide the first ever evidence to the occurrence of DMS precursor, DMSP, in marine aerosols collected in the boundary layer. This suggests that the marine aerosol transport of DMSP will supplement DMS gaseous evasion in maintaining the atmospheric non-sea salt sulphur budget

Way to measure the concept precarious working conditions in oil palm plantations

Oil palm plantations are the backbone of the Malaysian economy, since day immemorial. When you look into the past, the workers in the oil palm plantations were dominated by Indian and Chinese communities.Later due to the sigma associate with oil palm plantations jobs viz., dirty, dangerous and distance, the Indians and Chinese workers moved away from the oil palm work and they were replaced by Indonesians and Philippines.These foreign workers whom having the legal and illegal status under enforcement in Malaysia, have been living in remotely located inhabitations engaging in ‘dirty, dangerous and distance’ wise oil palm plantations.Though the larger oil palm plantation companies ensure minimum living and working conditions for the foreign workers, vastly located small holding plantations never follow such minimum and fair working environment. These conditions to be correlated with the term “precarious working conditions’ in small holding oil palm plantations.Due to lack of availability of the locals to engage in oil palm work, the plantations have to depend on foreign workers do all these ‘dirty, dangerous and distance’ workers in oil palm plantations.Except a few literature available from Amnesty international and local NGOs, there is less evidence to prove the existence of such exploitative working conditions in oil palm plantations. In order to explore precarious working conditions in oil palm plantations thus a qualitative research study is conducted in the Sabah region of the Eastern Part of Malaysia.The study followed, triangulation method through interviews with the migrated foreign workers, (legal and illegal), focus group discussions and Delphi technique with the identification of experts in the field to arrive at the factors and categories related to the theme ‘precarious working conditions’ in oil palm plantations.The outcome of the study fixes the variables that need to be concentrated for a higher level research through quantitative research

Why workers disengage? Factors from “Head” or “Heart” to be tagged on?

Oil palm plantations are decisively situated in the various regions of Malaysia where the climatic conditions are appropriate for planting oil palm. One cannot compare the work environment of such plantations with normal office settings.The workers in those plantations are working in remote locations, totally cut off from the other part of the world. Majority workers are from Indonesia, Philippines like low income countries.The work environment is physically demanding and challenging to the workers due to many factors. An exploratory study has conducted on employee disengagement in the oil palm plantations in the Sabah region of Malaysia.The study has taken up employee disengagement factors due to the lack of interest among the local people to engage themselves in the oil palm plantations work and the plantation industry in Malaysia is facing an acute labor shortage to carry forwards the oil palm business.The study follows, field visits, interviews with the workers, focus group discussions and specifically Delphi.The findings supported to identify the 7 factors coming under the theme employee disengagement as Wage and Welfare, Work Environment, Lack of Safety and security, Poor Organizational Support, Rigid Rules and regulations, and Lack of individual motivation.The study paves better insight to lead this qualitative research in an organized quantitative research

Abundance and relationship of bacteria with transparent exopolymer particles during the 1996 summer monsoon in the Arabian Sea

Bacterial abundance and production, numbers, sizes and concentrations of transparent exopolymer particles (TEP) and total organic carbon (TOC) were measured during the 1996 summer monsoon to understand the relationship between TEP, the most labile particulate organic carbon, and bacteria. While high regional variability in the vertical distribution of TOC was discernible, TEP concentrations were high in surface waters at 18-20&#176;N along 64&#176;E with concentrations well over 25 mg alginic acid equivalents I-1 due to upwelling induced productivity. Their concentrations decreased with depth and were lower between 200 and 500 m. Bacterial concentrations were up to 1.99 &#215; 108 I-1 in the surface waters and decreased by an order of magnitude or more at depths below 500 m. A better relationship has been found between bacterial abundance and concentrations of TEP than between bacteria and TOC, indicating that bacterial metabolism is fueled by availability of TEP in the Arabian Sea. Assuming a carbon assimilation of 33%, bacterial carbon demand (BCD) is estimated to be 1.017 to 4.035 gCm-2 d-1 in the surface waters. The observed TEP concentrations appear to be sufficient in meeting the surface and subsurface BCD in the northern Arabian Sea