Who visits World Heritage? A comparative analysis of three cultural sites

Heritage tourism is a growing segment of the modern tourism industry, and several studies have been undertaken to identify the individuals who participate in this type of tourism. These have indicated that heritage tourists, generally, are middle class, middle age, and well educated. However, despite their iconic role, there has been relatively little attention paid to profile of visitors to World Heritage Sites. This study aims to better understand the demography of this specific tourism segment through the use of survey-based research at three geographically diverse World Heritage Sites: Independence Hall in the USA, Studenica Monastery in Serbia, and the Archaeological Site of Volubilis in Morocco. Through the use of descriptive statistics, several over-arching trends were noted among the three sites. World Heritage Site visitors were found to be very well educated, but they did not have any similarities in relation to age, income, or residence, which contrasts the “general” heritage tourist typology. However, there were several World Heritage specific trends. While this work is a snapshot of the three sites under study and thus is difficult to generalize, it provides the basis for more comprehensive demographic research on visitors to World Heritage Sites

A Novel Method of Solution for the Fluid Loaded Plate

We study the Cauchy problem associated with the equations governing a fluid loaded plate formulated on either the line or the half-line. We show that in both cases the problem can be solved by employing the unified approach to boundary value problems introduced by on of the authors in the late 1990s. The problem on the full line was analysed by Crighton et. al. using a combination of Laplace and Fourier transforms. The new approach avoids the technical difficulty of the a priori assumption that the amplitude of the plate is in $L^1_{dt}(R^+)$ and furthermore yields a simpler solution representation which immediately implies the problem is well-posed. For the problem on the half-line, a similar analysis yields a solution representation, but this formula involves two unknown functions. The main difficulty with the half-line problem is the characterisation of these two functions. By employing the so-called global relation, we show that the two functions can be obtained via the solution of a complex valued integral equation of the convolution type. This equation can be solved in closed form using the Laplace transform. By prescribing the initial data $\eta_0$ to be in $H^3(R^+)$, we show that the solution depends continuously on the initial data, and hence, the problem is well-posed.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures. Minor adjustments made to the introductio

Sport is king: an investigation into local media coverage of women's sport in the UK East Midlands

There has been a recent interest in research into national media coverage of female sport, particularly single events, but on-going sporting activities by women are rarely reported. This paper attempts to examine this subject at the local level, looking in general at women’s sport and in particular at women’s football in the East Midlands region of the UK. Quantitative methods were used to survey local newspapers and radio stations and interviews were carried out with a range of people relevant to the field of study. The topic of sports media is framed here with reference to research into masculinities and a socialist feminist approach is used to address problems. The data showed there was a significant and on-going imbalance in the amount of coverage and even some signs of a decline in women’s football reporting, in spite of a national resurgence of the sport itself. The authors try to account for this and suggest further areas of future study

The Capacity to Delineate and Interpret Emotion in Text Messages

Research indicates that emotion is not easily expressed or interpreted between senders and receivers who communicate through computer mediated communication methods such as text messaging. This fast paced, inexpensive and technologically advanced communication tool of text messaging has become a socially acceptable and valid form of communication in the twenty first century in many populations, cultures, and regions. Twenty pairs of female friends’ abilities to delineate and interpret accurately the four emotions of: joy, anger, sadness, and guilt in eight different text message scenarios were investigated. The results determined that although the accuracy rate of the sender expressing an emotion and the receiver correctly interpreting the emotion was greater than chance, the accuracy rate was also below one hundred percent. Furthermore, a positive relationship was revealed between the sender’s confidence and the receiver’s accuracy rate of interpreting angry text messages