Tourism as a form of social intervention: the Holiday Participation Centre in Flanders

This article presents the concept of social tourism as a form of social intervention. Tourism is seen by the European Economic and Social Committee as an opportunity for relation building, personal development and social integration. Social tourism initiatives offer holiday opportunities for persons who are otherwise prohibited from taking holidays, because of emotional, financial or health reasons. These mostly take the form of domestic breaks or day trips. In several countries of mainland Europe, the public sector supports these initiatives via involvement in public-private partnerships. One of these partnerships is the Holiday Participation Centre in Flanders, Belgium. This article will frame the initiative within social tourism provision in Flanders, Belgium, present the basic principles upon which the system operates, and give an overview of quantitative research findings regarding its outcomes as a form of social intervention

Social tourism and its ethical foundations

Although social tourism has been seen in a number of countries as having potential to counter social exclusion, formulating a definition for the term is difficult. "Social tourism" is used to describe a variety of initiatives for a variety of different social groups. These range from holidays for children from low-income backgrounds, through improving accessibility in hotels, to offering ecological holidays. This article discusses the definitions of "social tourism," distinguishing host-related and visitor-related forms, and aims to clarify its potential value in combating social exclusion. It does so by examining the ethical values underlying the way social tourism is defined and suggesting a theoretical framework for the effects of social tourism. Some ethical views of society place an a priori moral duty on the stronger strata to support the weaker. Others do not judge the support of the weaker strata as an a priori dominant ethical principle, and judge the welfare of the state by the opportunity of all its strata. Ethical positions that see stronger strata as having a moral duty to support the weaker are more likely to be supportive toward both host-related and visitor-related social tourism. Those that do not will probably support host-related social tourism, but will support visitor-related social tourism, if publicly funded, only if it can demonstrate benefits for the whole of society. In Western liberal democracies where this is a prevailing view, visitor-related social tourism might justify public expenditure as a potential tool to combat social exclusion. It can be seen as a merit good if it improves excluded peoples' handicapping characteristics, through, for example, beneficial effects in health, self-esteem, and improvement of family relationships. However, there is little research to test its effectiveness in achieving these outcomes. Further research is required to evaluate whether social tourism can have a significant role in combating social exclusion, and thus justify support from public expenditure

Social Tourism: a potential policy to reduce social exclusion? The effects of visitor-related social tourism for low-income groups on personal and family development

This study discusses the effects of social tourism for low-income groups on personal and family development. it examines whether social tourism has wider benefits than just providing access to holidays to groups who would usually be excluded from tourism, and whether it could be seen as a potential measure against social exclusion. If social tourism can reduce social exclusion, it benefits not only the participants, but also has wider benefits for society. In several countries in mainland Europe, such as France, Belgium and Spain, social tourism for low-income groups is supported by public funding. This investment is usually supported by claims that social tourism can help excluded groups achieve greater inclusion through increased confidence, better family relations, greater independence and wider social networks. At present, these claims are rarely supported by research evidence: in academic tourism literature, social tourism for low-income groups is a little researched field. The aim of this study is thus to investigate whether social tourism can indeed reduce aspects of social exclusion, and have a beneficial effect on the holiday participants themselves, and through them, on society. If this is the case, the study will explore whether social tourism could be justified as a social policy. The study will start by defining the concept of social tourism, and categorise the different forms. Focusing on social tourism for low-income groups, it will then explore the potential ethical foundations of social tourism. It will be shown that for a number of ethical theories, social tourism for low-income groups can only be justified if there are benefits involved not only for the participants, but also wider benefits for society. Because these benefits could present themselves as a reduction of social exclusion, the concept of social exclusion is defined and the different views of the concept are presented. One of these views is potentially compatible with social tourism, on the condition that social holidays can reduce certain characteristics of excluded groups, that form the basis of their exclusion. It will then be argued that if social tourism can reduce these characteristics, it does so via a learning process. Two theories of leaming through experience will be examined, and strategies to maximise learning will be discussed: if social tourism is indeed a form of leaming, the benefits could be increased by maximising learning. These theoretical foundations formed the basis of the fieldwork for this study. In the fieldwork, a group of social tourism participants and their support workers was interviewed in two stages: a first round of interviews and focus groups were conducted in the first month after the holidays; a second round was carried out in the sixth month after the holidays. Participants in individual holidays and support workers were interviewed individually, participants in group holidays were interviewed together in a focus group. The aim of the two rounds was to examine the effects of social tourism in the short term, and in the longer term. The findings of the fieldwork examine the effects of social tourism for low-income groups, and investigate the conditions for successful social tourism provision (meaning holidays that maximise learning opportunities to reduce aspects of social exclusion). The findings indicate that social tourism for low-income groups generally has beneficial effects on the family development of the participants in the short and the long term. They also provide benefits for the personal development of participants, which are present in the short term and can develop further in the long term. In the long term, it is also shown that the holiday can act as a motivational factor in measurable behaviour change, resulting into a reduction of factors of social exclusion. It is found that an adequate level of support both during and after the holiday is an important condition for successful social holidays. This study concludes by exploring if social tourism could be justified as a part of social policy. The costs of social holidays will be compared to other social measures with similar aims and outcomes. Social tourism for low-income groups will be presented as potential cost-effective strategies to counter certain aspects social exclusion

Tourism and social policy: the value of social tourism

Social Tourism for low-income groups forms part of social policy in several countries of mainland Europe, but little research evidence of its benefits exists. This study empirically examines these benefits in terms of increases in social and family capital. Interviews and focus groups were conducted with participating families and their support workers, in a semi-longitudinal research design. Social Tourism was found to increase family capital in the short term, and social capital—in terms of social networks, related pro-active behavior and self-esteem—in the medium term. These increases can be seen as beneficial for the participants and to wider society. Consequently it is suggested that Social Tourism may be a cost-effective addition to social policy. Keywords: Social Tourism, low-income, social capital, family capital

Tensor operators and Wigner-Eckart theorem for the quantum superalgebra U_{q}[osp(1\mid 2)]

Tensor operators in graded representations of Z_{2}-graded Hopf algebras are defined and their elementary properties are derived. Wigner-Eckart theorem for irreducible tensor operators for U_{q}[osp(1\mid 2)] is proven. Examples of tensor operators in the irreducible representation space of Hopf algebra U_{q}[osp(1\mid 2)] are considered. The reduced matrix elements for the irreducible tensor operators are calculated. A construction of some elements of the center of U_{q}[osp(1\mid 2)] is given.Comment: 16 pages, Late

Evolving solitons in bubbly flows

At the end of the sixties, it was shown that pressure waves in a bubbly liquid obey the KdV equation, the nonlinear term coming from convective acceleration and the dispersive term from volume oscillations of the bubbles.\ud For a variableu, proportional to –p, wherep denotes pressure, the appropriate KdV equation can be casted in the formu t –6uu x +u xxx =0. The theory of this equation predicts that, under certain conditions, solitons evolve from an initial profileu(x,0). In particular, it can be shown that the numberN of those solitons can be found from solving the eigenvalue problem xx–u(x,0)=0, with(0)=1 and(0)=0.N is found from counting the zeros of the solution of this equation betweenx=0 andx=Q, say,Q being determined by the shape ofu(x,0). We took as an initial pressure profile a Shockwave, followed by an expansion wave. This can be realised in the laboratory and the problem, formulated above, can be solved exactly.\ud In this contribution the solution is outlined and it is shown from the experimental results that from the said initial disturbance, indeed solitons evolve in the predicated quantity.\u

Invisible sunspots and rate of solar magnetic flux emergence

Aims. We study the visibility of sunspots and its influence on observed values of sunspot region parameters. Methods. We use Virtual Observatory tools provided by AstroGrid to analyse a sample of 6862 sunspot regions. By studying the distributions of locations where sunspots were first and last observed on the solar disk, we derive the visibility function of sunspots, the rate of magnetic flux emergence and the ratio between the durations of growth and decay phases of solar active regions. Results. We demonstrate that the visibility of small sunspots has a strong centre-to-limb variation, far larger than would be expected from geometrical (projection) effects. This results in a large number of young spots being invisible: 44% of new regions emerging in the west of the Sun go undetected. For sunspot regions that are detected, large differences exist between actual locations and times of flux emergence, and the apparent ones derived from sunspot data. The duration of the growth phase of solar regions has been, up to now, underestimated

Learning Interpretable Rules for Multi-label Classification

Multi-label classification (MLC) is a supervised learning problem in which, contrary to standard multiclass classification, an instance can be associated with several class labels simultaneously. In this chapter, we advocate a rule-based approach to multi-label classification. Rule learning algorithms are often employed when one is not only interested in accurate predictions, but also requires an interpretable theory that can be understood, analyzed, and qualitatively evaluated by domain experts. Ideally, by revealing patterns and regularities contained in the data, a rule-based theory yields new insights in the application domain. Recently, several authors have started to investigate how rule-based models can be used for modeling multi-label data. Discussing this task in detail, we highlight some of the problems that make rule learning considerably more challenging for MLC than for conventional classification. While mainly focusing on our own previous work, we also provide a short overview of related work in this area.Comment: Preprint version. To appear in: Explainable and Interpretable Models in Computer Vision and Machine Learning. The Springer Series on Challenges in Machine Learning. Springer (2018). See http://www.ke.tu-darmstadt.de/bibtex/publications/show/3077 for further informatio

Interplanetary and Geomagnetic Consequences of Interacting CMEs of 13-14 June 2012

We report on the kinematics of two interacting CMEs observed on 13 and 14 June 2012. Both CMEs originated from the same active region NOAA 11504. After their launches which were separated by several hours, they were observed to interact at a distance of 100 Rs from the Sun. The interaction led to a moderate geomagnetic storm at the Earth with Dst index of approximately, -86 nT. The kinematics of the two CMEs is estimated using data from the Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI) onboard the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO). Assuming a head-on collision scenario, we find that the collision is inelastic in nature. Further, the signatures of their interaction are examined using the in situ observations obtained by Wind and the Advance Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft. It is also found that this interaction event led to the strongest sudden storm commencement (SSC) (approximately 150 nT) of the present Solar Cycle 24. The SSC was of long duration, approximately 20 hours. The role of interacting CMEs in enhancing the geoeffectiveness is examined.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures, Accepted in Solar Physics Journa