Influencing the undergraduate built environment curricula through stakeholder understandings of built environment employability skills

The aim of this project is to uncover new insights and understanding of Higher Education (HE) built environment employability skills. To assimilate the project findings within a built environment employability skills compass model developed as a key output of this project and promulgate the findings to enrich current thinking between stakeholders and apply this new knowledge within university pedagogy and across a wider community. In particular, reporting the opinions and interpretations of stakeholders surrounding their understanding of employability skills for a built environment undergraduate. Conduct research and literature review on the subject of employability skills. Disseminate findings within industry and academia at regional, national and transnational levels. The project uses a qualitative dual methodology was adopted; Firstly a phenomenological methodology encapsulating the rich expressive and emotional language. Secondly spirit of action research methodology facilitating numerous access and departure points within the project investigations. Using preliminary research located within various levels and modes of discreet inquiries, incorporating early reconnaissance field work investigations and group forum interventions. At the heart of the project investigation a series of thirty semi-structured interviews undertaken during 2011-2015 with key stakeholders. Contributions are gathered from a range of key stakeholders; academics, employers, policymakers/politicians, professional bodies, career advisors and graduates predominately but not exclusively within the West Midlands conurbation, with the results identified a disparity and gap in knowledge and understanding surrounding built environment employability skills. In particular, the research located and disseminated novel insights and shared agreements behind how HE curricula can be better informed and how shared ownership can contribute to the design of curricula. Pockets of shared understanding were revealed and an inner core of rich employability skills that external stakeholders believe set individuals apart from others were discovered. The findings have encouraged rich exchanges and increased levels of engagement between academics, practitioners and stakeholders; removing the fear behind ownership and shared responsibility of built environment curricula design. A key output of the project was the creation and development of a built environment employability skills compass tool and the findings situated within the compass have assisted with the modification and enrichment of HE teaching within architecture and the built environment curricula and have provided meaningful impact, evidenced by feedback received from employers who have commented on the increased levels of employability skills that graduates of (2013-15) possess as they leave the University of Wolverhampton into the world of work

Coastal tourism and local impact at Ngapali Beach: Initial Findings.

This short report summarises the initial findings of the scoping study carried out in Ngapali Beach, Rakhine State, Myanmar, during November 2014. From this scoping study, a few initial recommendations can be offered. Ngapali beach has – at present – a Unique Selling Point of its unspoilt beautiful beaches and low rise, unobtrusive hotel development with relatively small numbers of hotels and associated tourism infrastructure. At present it seems that the relatively low numbers of higher spending tourist in the area are having minimal negative social impacts, and significant positive impacts on the local host community. Instead of permitting unrestricted mass tourism at Ngapali, our initial findings suggest that lessons can be learnt from the case of the Seychelles and adapted for the context of coastal Myanmar. We suggest a model we call ‘Seychelles Plus’ be explored, that is, an emphasis on an upmarket resort offer of four/five star hotels plus boutique hotels combined with strong and effective economic linkages to the local economy to benefit the host community

Dive tourism, communities and small islands: lessons from Malaysia and Indonesia

Coastal tourism is growing rapidly across South-East Asia, especially in small islands. Islands and coastal areas face significant issues of how to manage the rapid growth of tourism whilst retaining economic benefits for the local host community. First, the paper sets the context and charts the scale and significance of international dive tourism, especially in less developed countries. The paper draws upon extensive fieldwork in small island destinations in Malaysia and Indonesia and explores how to research this area and the particular practicalities of fieldwork. Next the paper analyses the main socio-economic impacts of dive tourism drawing upon findings published in Haddock-Fraser and Hampton (2012); Daldeniz and Hampton (2013) and Hamzah and Hampton (2013) before introducing new analysis that is 'work in progress.' Finally, the paper concludes by considering lessons for other destinations in South-East Asia learning from success, and helping avoid mistakes being repeated

The political economy of precarious work in the tourism industry in small island developing states

International tourism is now the predominant industry driving growth in many small island developing states (SIDS). Governments of small islands in the Indian Ocean, Caribbean and Pacific have seemingly put most of their eggs into one development basket – the all-inclusive holiday in a luxury hotel, resort or cruise ship. While this industry generates employment, foreign direct investment, and income for island governments and the private sector, it also brings with it dependencies which are borne from the transnational ownership of these all-inclusive accommodations, the risks from exogenous factors - many of which are tied to the wider security of the global system - as well as the domestic economies in the source markets in Europe and North America. We reflect upon these dependencies and risks through a case study of the Seychelles based on fieldwork research conducted in 2012. Our findings highlight that the international tourism industry in the Seychelles – even in a situation of high or growing demand – creates structurally driven precarity for tourism workers who are predominantly low paid, low-skilled, and increasingly recruited from overseas. These findings provide new evidence that contributes to the growing research into tourism in IPE. Our findings highlights the precarious condition of labour in this fast growing service sector of the world economy and in so doing also adds much needed empirical insights from the South to recent debates about an emerging precariat in contemporary capitalism

Space shuttle main engine hardware simulation

The Huntsville Simulation Laboratory (HSL) provides a simulation facility to test and verify the space shuttle main engine (SSME) avionics and software system using a maximum complement of flight type hardware. The HSL permits evaluations and analyses of the SSME avionics hardware, software, control system, and mathematical models. The laboratory has performed a wide spectrum of tests and verified operational procedures to ensure system component compatibility under all operating conditions. It is a test bed for integration of hardware/software/hydraulics. The HSL is and has been an invaluable tool in the design and development of the SSME

Physical and Electrochemical Area Determination of Electrodeposited Ni, Co, and NiCo Thin Films

The surface area of electrodeposited thin films of Ni, Co, and NiCo was evaluated using electrochemical double-layer capacitance, electrochemical area measurements using the [Ru(NH$_3$)$_6$]$^{3+}$/[Ru(NH$_3$)$_6$]$^{2+}$ redox couple, and topographic atomic force microscopy (AFM) imaging. These three methods were compared to each other for each composition separately and for the entire set of samples regardless of composition. Double-layer capacitance measurements were found to be positively correlated to the roughness factors determined by AFM topography. Electrochemical area measurements were found to be less correlated with measured roughness factors as well as applicable only to two of the three compositions studied. The results indicate that in situ double-layer capacitance measurements are a practical, versatile technique for estimating the accessible surface area of a metal sample.Comment: Accepted for publication in Nano Convergence, 6 figure

Using Contaminated Garbage Collection and Reference Counting Garbage Collection to Provide Automatic Storage Reclamation for Real-Time Systems

Language support of dynamic storage management simplifies the application programming task immensely. As a result, dynamic storage allocation and garbage collection have become common in general purpose computing. Garbage collection research has led to the development of algorithms for locating program memory that is no longer in use and returning the unused memory to the run-time system for late use by the program. While many programming languages have adopted automatic memory reclamation features, this has not been the trend in Real-Time systems. Many garbage collection methods involve some form of marking the objects in memory. This marking requires time proportional to the size of the head to complete. As a result, the predictability constraints of Real-Time are often not satisfied by such approaches. In this thesis, we present an analysis of several approaches for program garbage collection. We examine two approximate collection strategies (Reference Counting and Contamination Garbage Collection) and one complete collection approach (Mark and Sweep Garbage Collection). Additionally, we analyze the relative success of each approach for meeting the demands of Real-Time computing. In addition, we present an algorithm that attempts to classify object types as good candidates for reference counting. Our approach is conservative and uses static analysis of an application\u27s type system. Our analysis of these three collection strategies leads to the observation that there could be benefits to using multiple garbage collectors in parallel. Consequently we address challenges associated with using multiple garbage collectors in one application