Financial Assistance And The Spatial Development Of Tourism In Ontario

Tourism and its impacts are characterized by spatial variation. Recognizing this, governments have actively tried to influence the location of tourism development in an attempt to capture perceived benefits associated with tourism. One of the most direct approaches used has been the provision of financial assistance to investors in areas targeted for regional development. Unfortunately, the theoretical understanding of the spatial process associated with tourism development has not kept pace with the practice of intervention into this development process. The intent of this thesis is, therefore, to provide insights into the process of the spatial development of tourism in Ontario with particular attention given to the role of financial assistance.;The first phase of the study examined spatial patterns of development in Ontario from 1974 to 1988. Commercial accommodation capacity in the form of bed space equivalents along with Defert\u27s measure of tourism intensity were described at the county, tourism region and planning region level. The analysis of these data also explored the spatial variation in the rate of change associated with each measure. Metropolitan Toronto was found to be characterized by exceptional increases in accommodation capacity and intensity while the Muskoka area and Southwestern Ontario were characterized by a decline in tourism intensity.;Factors contributing to this pattern of tourism development were identified in the second phase of the study which involved a review of regionally specific literature along with a telephone survey of tourism professionals located throughout the province. Findings from these two sources were compared and classified as being either exogenous or endogenous relative to Ontario\u27s tourism sector. Economic and demographic trends were recognized as being the most influential exogenous factors while marketing and financial assistance programs were generally identified as the most important endogenous factors.;Finally, multiple and bivariate regression analyses were used to empirically test the influence of financial assistance aggregated at a county level on the distribution of accommodation capacity in Ontario during the study period. Financial assistance was not shown to have a statistically significant impact on the change in tourism development under either the multiple or bivariate analyses with the exception of assistance provided between 1980 and 1982 relative to the change in accommodation from 1986 to 1988.;In the concluding chapter, a revised spatial model of tourism development is proposed which incorporates landscape attributes, exogenous factors and endogenous factors. Although it was originally hypothesized that financial assistance programs would act as an endogenous factor, the study results indicate otherwise. While financial assistance may be effective at different scales or when using different evaluative measures, the results of this study suggest that it has not been effective in altering the spatial distribution of accommodation at the county level in Ontario

Dairy Extension Strategies in Australia: Application to the Pakistan Dairy Industry

Extension services in Pakistan focus on the application of technology and practices rather than on farmer needs. This is illustrated by the lack of "dairy-specific" staff employed for dairy extension in Pakistan until the recent introduction of the concept of the 'White Revolution'. Private and public sectors in Pakistan operate "competing and overlapping" agricultural extension programs, and when providing extension information to farmers, they tend to favour those who are educated and own land. Given the large number of poorly educated and tenant farmers in Pakistan, there is a need for reorganisation, redesign and restructuring of dairy extension strategies particularly for the medium size farm sector that contribute some 7 percent of the country's milk production. Extension strategies used in the Australian dairy industry have played an important role in information dissemination of new technologies and have for some time involved participant led and group focused approaches which could possibly be adapted to Pakistan. This thesis investigated strategies employed by extension professionals (government and private) and dairy farmers operating in New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria. The aim was to identify perceptions of the effectiveness of extension strategies; and thereafter determine if these strategies may be appropriate for use with the Pakistani medium-sized dairy sector. The research involved case studies of 18 extension professionals and seven dairy Farmers across the states of NSW and Victoria. These individuals were interviewed using semi-structured interview techniques and responses were transcribed and then thematically analyzed qualitatively using Nvivo version 9. The findings revealed that the participants use at least four extension strategies, namely "group", "one to one", "mass-media" and "web-based" with group extension being the most commonly used in both NSW and Victoria. However "one to one" extension was considered to be the most effective extension strategy by all the participants. Respondents highlighted the importance of "web based" extension and considered it to be an emerging effective strategy for the future. Mass media was also considered as a good supportive extension strategy. These findings suggest that there will be a particular need for development of public-private extension collaboration within the Pakistani industry

Time to Evolve? Potential Evolutionary Responses of Fraser River Sockeye Salmon to Climate Change and Effects on Persistence

Evolutionary adaptation affects demographic resilience to climate change but few studies have attempted to project changes in selective pressures or quantify impacts of trait responses on population dynamics and extinction risk. We used a novel individual-based model to explore potential evolutionary changes in migration timing and the consequences for population persistence in sockeye salmon Oncorhynchus nerka in the Fraser River, Canada, under scenarios of future climate warming. Adult sockeye salmon are highly sensitive to increases in water temperature during their arduous upriver migration, raising concerns about the fate of these ecologically, culturally, and commercially important fish in a warmer future. Our results suggest that evolution of upriver migration timing could allow these salmon to avoid increasingly frequent stressful temperatures, with the odds of population persistence increasing in proportion to the trait heritability and phenotypic variance. With a simulated 2°C increase in average summer river temperatures by 2100, adult migration timing from the ocean to the river advanced by ∼10 days when the heritability was 0.5, while the risk of quasi-extinction was only 17% of that faced by populations with zero evolutionary potential (i.e., heritability fixed at zero). The rates of evolution required to maintain persistence under simulated scenarios of moderate to rapid warming are plausible based on estimated heritabilities and rates of microevolution of timing traits in salmon and related species, although further empirical work is required to assess potential genetic and ecophysiological constraints on phenological adaptation. These results highlight the benefits to salmon management of maintaining evolutionary potential within populations, in addition to conserving key habitats and minimizing additional stressors where possible, as a means to build resilience to ongoing climate change. More generally, they demonstrate the importance and feasibility of considering evolutionary processes, in addition to ecology and demography, when projecting population responses to environmental change

Brownian motion in a Maxwell fluid.

The equilibrium dynamics of a spherical particle immersed in a complex Maxwell fluid is analyzed in terms of velocity autocorrelation function (VACF), mean-square displacement (MSD), and power spectral density (PSD). We elucidate the role of hydrodynamic memory and its interplay with medium viscoelasticity for a free and a harmonically confined particle. The elastic response at high frequencies introduces oscillations in the VACF, which are found to be strongly damped by the coupling to the fluid. We show that in all Maxwell fluids hydrodynamic memory eventually leads to a power-law decay in the VACF as is already known for Newtonian fluids. The MSD displays asymptotically an intermediate plateau reflecting the elastic restoring forces of the medium. In the frequency domain, the PSD exhibits at high frequencies a step due to the trapping, whereas the low-frequency decay reflects the viscoelastic relaxation. Our results suggest that high-frequency microrheology is well-suited to infer the elastic modulus, which is sensitive over a wide range of Maxwell times

Dynamics of filaments and membranes in a viscous fluid

Motivated by the motion of biopolymers and membranes in solution, this article presents a formulation of the equations of motion for curves and surfaces in a viscous fluid. We focus on geometrical aspects and simple variational methods for calculating internal stresses and forces, and we derive the full nonlinear equations of motion. In the case of membranes, we pay particular attention to the formulation of the equations of hydrodynamics on a curved, deforming surface. The formalism is illustrated by two simple case studies: (1) the twirling instability of straight elastic rod rotating in a viscous fluid, and (2) the pearling and buckling instabilities of a tubular liposome or polymersome.Comment: 26 pages, 12 figures, to be published in Reviews of Modern Physic

Consequences of high temperatures and premature mortality on the transcriptome and blood physiology of wild adult sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka)

Elevated river water temperature in the Fraser River, British Columbia, Canada, hasbeen associated with enhanced mortality of adult sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchusnerka) during their upriver migration to spawning grounds.We undertook a studyto assess the effects of elevated water temperatures on the gill transcriptome andblood plasma variables in wild-caught sockeye salmon. Naturally migrating sockeyesalmon returning to the Fraser River were collected and held at ecologicallyrelevant temperatures of 14◦C and 19◦C for seven days, a period representing asignificant portion of their upstream migration. After seven days, sockeye salmonheld at 19◦C stimulated heat shock response genes as well as many genes associated with an immune response when compared with fish held at 14◦C. Additionally, fish at 19◦C had elevated plasma chloride and lactate, suggestive of a disturbance in osmoregulatory homeostasis and a stress response detectable in the blood plasma. Fish that died prematurely over the course of the holding study were compared with time-matched surviving fish; the former fish were characterized by an upregulation of several transcription factors associated with apoptosis and downregulation of genes involved in immune function and antioxidant activity. Ornithine decarboxylase(ODC1) was the most significantly upregulated gene in dying salmon, which suggests an association with cellular apoptosis. We hypothesize that the observed decrease in plasma ions and increases in plasma cortisol that occur in dying fish may be linked to the increase in ODC1. By highlighting these underlyingphysiological mechanisms, this study enhances our understanding of the processesinvolved in premature mortality and temperature stress in Pacific salmon duringmigration to spawning grounds.<br /

Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in the presence of variable viscosity for mudflow resuspension in estuaries

The temporal stability of a parallel shear flow of miscible fluid layers of dif- ferent density and viscosity is investigated through a linear stability analysis and direct numerical simulations. The geometry and rheology of this Newto- nian fluid mixing can be viewed as a simplified model of the behavior of mud- flow at the bottom of estuaries for suspension studies. In this study, focus is on the stability and transition to turbulence of an initially laminar configuration. A parametric analysis is performed by varying the values of three control pa- rameters, namely the viscosity ratio, the Richardson and Reynolds numbers, in the case of initially identical thickness of the velocity, density and viscosity profiles. The range of parameters has been chosen so as to mimic a wide variety of real configurations. This study shows that the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability is controlled by the local Reynolds and Richardson numbers of the inflection point. In addition, at moderate Reynolds number, viscosity strat- ification has a strong influence on the onset of instability, the latter being enhanced at high viscosity ratio, while at high Reynolds number, the influ- ence is less pronounced. In all cases, we show that the thickness of the mixing layer (and thus resuspension) is increased by high viscosity stratification, in particular during the non-linear development of the instability and especially pairing processes. This study suggests that mud viscosity has to be taken into account for resuspension parameterizations because of its impact on the inflec- tion point Reynolds number and the viscosity ratio, which are key parameters for shear instabilities

High Diversity at PRDM9 in Chimpanzees and Bonobos

BACKGROUND: The PRDM9 locus in mammals has increasingly attracted research attention due to its role in mediating chromosomal recombination and possible involvement in hybrid sterility and hence speciation processes. The aim of this study was to characterize sequence variation at the PRDM9 locus in a sample of our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees and bonobos. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: PRDM9 contains a highly variable and repetitive zinc finger array. We amplified this domain using long-range PCR and determined the DNA sequences using conventional Sanger sequencing. From 17 chimpanzees representing three subspecies and five bonobos we obtained a total of 12 alleles differing at the nucleotide level. Based on a data set consisting of our data and recently published Pan PRDM9 sequences, we found that at the subspecies level, diversity levels did not differ among chimpanzee subspecies or between chimpanzee subspecies and bonobos. In contrast, the sample of chimpanzees harbors significantly more diversity at PRDM9 than samples of humans. Pan PRDM9 shows signs of rapid evolution including no alleles or ZnFs in common with humans as well as signals of positive selection in the residues responsible for DNA binding. CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE: The high number of alleles specific to the genus Pan, signs of positive selection in the DNA binding residues, and reported lack of conservation of recombination hotspots between chimpanzees and humans suggest that PRDM9 could be active in hotspot recruitment in the genus Pan. Chimpanzees and bonobos are considered separate species and do not have overlapping ranges in the wild, making the presence of shared alleles at the amino acid level between the chimpanzee and bonobo species interesting in view of the hypothesis that PRDM9 plays a universal role in interspecific hybrid sterility

Rheological and flow birefringence studies of rod-shaped pigment nanoparticle dispersions

We study rheological and rheo-optical properties of suspensions of anisometric pigment particles in a non-polar fluid. Different rheological regimes from the dilute regime to an orientationally arrested gel state were characterized and compared with existing theoretical models. We demonstrate the intricate flow behaviour in a wide range of volume fractions. A unique combination of the optical properties of the particles results in a giant rheo-optical effect: an unprecedentedly large shear stress-induced birefringence was found in the isotropic range, exhibiting a sharp pre-transitional behaviour