IMPACT OF AGRO-TOURISM ON LOCAL AGRICULTURAL OCCUPATION: A CASE STUDY OF CHANG KLANG DISTRICT, SOUTHERN THAILAND

Agro-tourism has been a priority as a means for improving the livelihood of agriculturist developing countries. Pragmatically, this promotion is associated with multiple functional agriculture in the context of local agricultural occupation. The purpose of this paper is to present the feature of agro-tourism activities and its impacts on local agricultural occupation. A case study of Chang Klang district, a well known community-based agro-tourism in Thailand shown that tourist farms operated agrotourism as the activities of demonstration, giving knowledge, selling local productions, and agri-business guidance. Over the past ten years of such promotions, within farms, local agricultural occupation relies on agricultural incomes from both agro-tourism activities and agricultural productions. During that time, agro-tourism significantly causes local agricultural occupation as agricultural service activities for a part of tourism. Now, according to instability of tourism market, local agricultural occupation within tourist farms is adjusted to serve profits to both agricultural productions and tourism business. These findings can be suggested that existing local agricultural occupations which is a part of processing is demonstrated for tourism, is a form of agrotourism activities towards sustainable local agricultural resources usages

Style and Ascetics: Attractiveness, Power and the Thai Sangha.

The majority of research for this thesis took place during the Thai general election of 1988 when the new religious movements Santi Asoke and Wat Dhammakaya were subject to investigation for political activity despite, respectively, defiance or denial. The relationship between the Thai Sangha and lay devotees is examined in order to discover how it is that Thai monks, whom many researchers find powerless, can be accused of political activity. In the past, monks have been used to legitimate lay political leaders and have taken active roles in local leadership. This thesis aims to determine whether monks in Thailand have power and, if they do, how such power becomes politically threatening to the status quo. As is suggested by the rise of new movements, the Thai Sangha is not an institution of uniform standard and activity; monks often appear different from each other in subtle yet distinctive ways and these differences can be noted by the lay public. Differences in appearance often reflect variations in monks' pastoral involvement in the lay community. In short, there are different styles of Thai monk, each with a lay following which is attracted to his particular style. There are four factors which effect the relationship between the Thai Sangha and the lay public: monks, devotees, temples and day-to-day religious life. Each of these factors - among the mainstream Sangha, Santi Asoke and Wat Dhammakaya - are examined, compared and contrasted in order to determine the nature of monastic powder in Thailand and how that power works in society to allow' the Sangha to act as legitimators and local leaders and, on occasion, to be perceived as a threat. Particular attention is given to the devotees and the style of monk they find attractive. It is this attraction that is the basis of monastic power

Development of Personal Knowledge Management System with Learning Contract and Peer Assisted Learning for Enhance Academic Work of Graduate Students

The purpose of this study was development of personal knowledgemanagement system using learning contract and peer-assisted learning to enhance academic task of graduate students. The research and development (R&D) process was divided into four phases: 1) studied, analyzed and synthesized related documents and interviewed the experts’ opinions concerning components and stepsof personnel knowledge management process, learning contract process and peerassisted learning process 2) developed a prototype of personnel knowledge management system for learning communities using learning contract and peerassisted learning 3) studied the effects of the system for six weeks and 4) proposedthe personnel knowledge management system using learning contract and peerassisted learning. The instruments used in this research consisted of document management system, blog system, rubric for academic writing, a product evaluation form, and an after action review form. The populations of this experiment were graduate students of Department of Education Technology Faculty of EducationChulalongkorn University, who enrolled the course of Research in Educational Technology and Communications. Quantitative statistics used in this study were frequency distributions, percentage, mean, standard deviation and Wilcoxon Matching Pairs Signed-Ranks Test. The research findings indicated that: 1. The developed process composed of three components: 1) people including graduatestudent teacher and peer as experienced student 2) learning contract and 3) technology for personal knowledge management. 2. The developed process composed of four steps: 1) preparation 2) process 3) presentation and 4) evaluation. 3. There were significant differences between pretest and posttest personnel knowledge skill scoring at the .05 level. The overall academic works developed by the samples were evaluated at a good level

Reform Needed for Thailand’s Pension System: A Review of Old Age Social Security in The Context of Insurer Needs in Phuket, Thailand, Using Alderfer's Erg Theory

In 1952, under the administration of Plaek Phibunsongkhram, the Social Security concept was introduced in Thailand. This led to the first enactment of Social Security Act B.E. 2533 (1990) and Social Security Act (No.3), B.E.2542 (1999). As the Thai society at present, is becoming increasingly interacting with the senior community, but hardly any focus has been placed on assisting and understanding their needs. The elderly has Social Security as a guarantee that they won't be abandoned when they get old. Therefore, social security is a measure that is crucial and essential for employees who apply for old age insurance. Furthermore, the Social Security Office has prescribed the old age compensation benefit as part of a program to improve quality of life or as a guarantee of employment security while retiring in order to produce long-term benefits for the insurer. This article concerned and discussed on the needs of the insurer who applied old age social security benefit: ensuring rights, dignity as well as income security in later life by using the Hierarchy of Need theory of Abraham Maslow and Alderfer's ERG Theory of Clayton Alderfer

Safety behavior and incident experience of worker in gas stations of Suratthani Province, Thailand

Transportation development in Thailand has grown at a rapid pace. LPG is a relatively popular automotive fuel in Thailand. The public have more interest in accident, prevention and reduce incidents in the workplace. Therefore, the aims of this research is to study safety behaviors, incident experience (IE) and investigate the safety behavior among worker who have never had incident experience (IE1) and worker who have had incident experiences (IE2) in gas stations. There were 76 respondents. We carried out an exploratory and descriptive study with respondents 19 LPG stations in Suratthani province, Thailand. The majority of workers have had incident experience in LPG stations. The biggest characteristic of these incidents were in process of filling LPG from the disperser to the customer’s car. There were leakage from the customer’s car and leakage from the equipment in the LPG station. The majority of consequences were the release of gas and collisions resulting in minor, major injury and other results. Besides that, the overall safety behavior of workers was very good. There were some behaviors where the level was moderate and poor. The results showed overall that (IE2) workers had better safety behavior than (IE1) workers. Hence, the companies have to maintain or promote good behaviors. Companies need to provide proper safety training, continually monitor and check to ensure good standards are maintained

Development of comprehensive safety management assessment of liquefied petroleum gas stations in Suratthani, Thailand

Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) is a relatively popular automotive fuel in Thailand. Gas stations are hazardous workplaces. There have been incidents of leakage, fire and explosions. There are all enormous potential hazards to the people, communities, assets, the environment, and reputation of an operating company, for this reason there is a need to investigate the causes of incidents and assessment of emergency management in the LPG stations, to assess the risks for accidents of LPG station using accident modeling and analyzing consequences of hazards and emergencies based on the worst case scenario in a LPG station. The study revealed that most incidents in LPG stations were LPG releases and car collisions. There were some significant processes in which incidents occurred in LPG stations such as filling LPG from dispenser to customer car and loading from LPG road tanker to tank. The characteristics of incidents were equipment leakage from the customers and the equipment leakage from the station. The parts of equipment which failed or incidents occurred were the valves of customer equipment, the dispensers and the valves in the stations. Those incidents in LPG stations were caused by training, safety inspection, safety behavior of workers and customers, safety knowledge of customers and workers and safety management in LPG stations. Besides, accident modeling and risk analysis in LPG station calculated the probability of different occurrences and outcomes. The consequences of abnormal events including incidents, near misses their future probability of prevention barriers and consequences of each event were analyzed into the release prevention barrier (RPB), damage control and emergency management barrier (DC&EMB), dispersion prevention barrier (DPB), ignition prevention barrier (IPB) and fire escalation prevention barrier (FEPB) respectively. The probabilities of the consequences were included in the event sequence diagram occurrence: safe, near miss, minor accident, major accident, serious accident and catastrophic accident or disaster. Moreover, release prevention barrier (RPB) was a medium risk level. It was a significant risk that needs to be improved and controlled effectively. Furthermore, consequence analysis was based on the worst case in the LPG station, and the consequence that would occur in different scenarios would be the gas dispersion, flash fire, jet fire, fireball and overpressure or explosion. The worst case of the consequence was the LPG road tanker rupture. There were damage distances of 1,059.26 meters from the overpressure or explosion and concentration radius of which the hazard distance was 1,258.41 meters. Therefore, the longest distance or radius to impact people, assets and communities was more than 1,300 meters (1.3 km). It means that the hazard radius or hazard distance would damage the LPG station, hotels, shops, stores, companies, garages, residences, home centers, home goods stores, restaurants, cafes, automax, car shops and car centers around station inescapably

Interpretation of Quartz Crystal Microbalance Behavior with Viscous Film Using a Mason Equivalent Circuit

In odor sensing based on Quartz Crystal Microbalances (QCMs), the sensing film is crucial for both sensor sensitivity and selectivity. The typical response of the QCM due to sorption is a negative frequency shift. However, in some cases, the sorption causes a positive frequency shift, and then, Sauerbrey’s equation and Kanazawa’s equation cannot be applied to this situation. We model the QCM response with a Mason equivalent circuit. The model approximates a single layer of a uniform viscous coating on the QCM. The simulation of the equation circuit shows the possibility of the positive frequency change when the sorption occurs, which is the situation we find in some of the odor sensing applications. We measured the QCM frequency and resistance using the Vector Network Analyzer (VNWA). The QCMs were coated with glycerol, PEG2000, and PEG20M. To simulate odor exposure, a microdispenser was used to deposit the water. A positive frequency shift was observed in the case of PEG2000, and a negative frequency change was obtained for PEG20M. These results can be explained by the Mason equivalent circuit, with the assumption that when the film is exposed to water, its thickness increases and its viscosity decreases

Overview of Quartz Crystal Microbalance Behavior Analysis and Measurement

Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) is one of the many acoustic transducers. It is the most popular and widely used acoustic transducer for sensor applications. It has found wide applications in chemical and biosensing fields owing to its high sensitivity, robustness, small sized-design, and ease of integration with electronic measurement systems. However, it is necessary to coat QCM with a sensing film. Without coating materials, its selectivity and sensitivity are not obtained. At present, this is not an issue, mainly due to the advancement of oscillator circuits and dedicated measurement circuits. Since a new researcher may seek to understand QCM sensors, we provide an overview of QCM from its fundamental knowledge. Then, we explain some of the recent QCM applications both in gas-phase and liquid-phase. Next, the theory of QCM is introduced by using piezoelectric stress equations and the Mason equivalent circuit, which explains how the QCM behavior is obtained. Then, the conventional equations that govern QCM behaviors in terms of resonant frequency and resistance are described. We show the behavior of QCM with a viscous film based on the acoustic wave equation and Mason equivalent circuit. Then, we present various existing QCM electronic measurement methods. Furthermore, we describe the experiment on QCM with viscous loading and its interpretation based on the Mason equivalent circuit. Lastly, we review some theoretical models to describe QCM behavior with various models