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

Exploring the relationship between tourism and offshore finance in small island economies: lessons from Jersey

Many islands host tourism and offshore finance but research tends to focus on either industry without examining the nature of the relationship(s) between these two where they co-exist. This paper examines the nature of the relationships using a case study of the British Channel Island of Jersey. Both industries demand labour, land and capital that are frequently scarce in small islands. Given their common characteristics and, drawing lessons from Jersey, the paper then considers the nature and the dynamics of their relationship, and the issue of resource competition between the two sectors. In light of the unusual context of small polities and the political power of external actors, the paper also analyses the dynamics of the central relationship between tourism, offshore finance and the state in islands. Finally, the paper considers the overall impact of the relationship between tourism and offshore finance and how it affects the economic development trajectory of small islands.tax havens, island tourism, island development

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

On the dynamic and thermodynamic structures of marine stratocumulus

Latent heating effects on stratocumulus circulations were studied successfully with a nine-coefficient spectral model of two-dimensional shallow Boussinesq convection (Laufersweiler and Shirer, 1989). Further, more realistic investigations are being performed currently with a larger, 18-coefficient spectral model, in which the effects of cloud top radiational cooling and in-cloud radiational heating are also being represented. Because assuming a rigid lid at the inversion base may have affected previous results significantly, the domain top was raised to include the lower portion of the capping inversion. As in the previous model, a uniform cloud base is assumed and latent heating effects are included implicitly such that the motions in the sub- and above-cloud regions are dry adiabatic and the motions in the cloud region are moist adiabatic. The effects of forcing by radiational heating profiles that are tied to the cloud layer, such as the one used by Nicholls will be investigated, as will profiles measured during the FIRE experiment. One concern of using truncated spectral models is that the phenomena are so poorly represented that they can change dramatically as the number of spectral coefficients is increased. The efficacy of the nine-coefficient model results is checked by examining the steady state solutions of the 18-coefficient model for parameter values used by Laufersweiler and Shirer (1989), which corresponds to the case of a moderately deep cloud and no capping inversion. The horizontally asymmetric circulation patterns that have narrow downdraft areas and broad updraft areas are virtually the same as those found in the smaller spectral model. Also captured in the case of weaker heating is an elevated circulation centered at cloud base. Thus, the results of the smaller model are substantiated. Since one of the goals of studying the new model is to represent a more realistic domain, the second test of the model is to investigate whether the steady solutions are suppressed in the case of an inversion with no cloud

Audit of abdominal vena cava injuries in an urban truama centre

Includes bibliographical references.The aim of this thesis is to present the surgical management of injuries to the abdominal vena cava (AVC) and to identify clinical and physiological factors and management strategies that affect outcome

Comparison of Attitudes on Euthanasia

Students entering full time religious work will tend to disfavor the practice of Euthanasia, whereas students in the area of pre-med will advocate the practice. The aim of this study is to observe the attitudes of persons in different areas of study at Ouachita Baptist University concerning the subject of Euthanasia

The Evolution of Research Methods in Tourism: Personal Reflections

Tourism research has evolved significantly since the phenomenon of tourism started to be studied by academics from the 1930s. Initial work mainly considered domestic tourism but as international tourism expanded rapidly from the 1950s, academic research turned to examine these growing international tourist flows. The paper briefly reviews the location of tourism and tourist academics within universities and the early pioneers’ work on international tourism from the 1970s exemplified by Hills (Geography), Archer (Economics) and Cohen (Sociology). The paper then examines main tourism research trends noting the growth of high level ‘systems’ type work in the 1980s such as Britton’s application of dependency theory to tourism or Leiper’s work on the international tourism system, before noting the continuing rise of managerial/business perspectives from the 1990s and the relative decline of research on geographical/spatial aspects such as resort morphology. This section ends by observing the twin trends in some major tourism journals of either ‘hard’ positivism or ‘fuzzy’ post-modernity (both arguably of little interest to policy-makers) and the relative difficulties of placing applied research with leading journals. The next section discusses applied tourism research and ethnographic type approaches using examples from my own projects in Indonesia and Malaysia and discusses some of the key findings on tourism and local economic development. The paper ends by noting the growing pressures on academics from funding rationing, the growing ‘bureaucratic burden’ including the rise of managerialism, and the challenge stemming from powerful ethics committees and seemingly risk-adverse universities that risk affecting the ability of academics to raise difficult questions

Resourceful responses: the adaptive research university and the drive to market

Journal ArticleA major challenge for contemporary public research universities is the need to affirm to the public and to the political community that the quality of higher education found at these largely autonomous institutions is of such import that it should be sustained by both public and private support. This challenge is made all the more difficult by the growing reluctance expressed by both state and federal policymakers to fund the university's educational mission at anywhere near the level university officials feel is required to sustain that mission. A further complication is the perception within a growing number of politically influential groups that research universities have largely eluded the beneficial effects of market-driven efficiency

Ordinal Probit Functional Regression Models with Application to Computer-Use Behavior in Rhesus Monkeys

Research in functional regression has made great strides in expanding to non-Gaussian functional outcomes, however the exploration of ordinal functional outcomes remains limited. Motivated by a study of computer-use behavior in rhesus macaques (\emph{Macaca mulatta}), we introduce the Ordinal Probit Functional Regression Model or OPFRM to perform ordinal function-on-scalar regression. The OPFRM is flexibly formulated to allow for the choice of different basis functions including penalized B-splines, wavelets, and O'Sullivan splines. We demonstrate the operating characteristics of the model in simulation using a variety of underlying covariance patterns showing the model performs reasonably well in estimation under multiple basis functions. We also present and compare two approaches for conducting posterior inference showing that joint credible intervals tend to out perform point-wise credible. Finally, in application, we determine demographic factors associated with the monkeys' computer use over the course of a year and provide a brief analysis of the findings