7,795 research outputs found
Symptoms of complexity in a tourism system
Tourism destinations behave as dynamic evolving complex systems, encompassing
numerous factors and activities which are interdependent and whose
relationships might be highly nonlinear. Traditional research in this field has
looked after a linear approach: variables and relationships are monitored in
order to forecast future outcomes with simplified models and to derive
implications for management organisations. The limitations of this approach
have become apparent in many cases, and several authors claim for a new and
different attitude.
While complex systems ideas are amongst the most promising interdisciplinary
research themes emerged in the last few decades, very little has been done so
far in the field of tourism. This paper presents a brief overview of the
complexity framework as a means to understand structures, characteristics,
relationships, and explores the implications and contributions of the
complexity literature on tourism systems. The objective is to allow the reader
to gain a deeper appreciation of this point of view.Comment: 32 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; accepted in Tourism Analysi
Developmental constraints on learning artificial grammars with fixed, flexible and free word order
Human learning, although highly flexible and efficient, is constrained in ways that facilitate or impede the acquisition of certain systems of information. Some such constraints, active during infancy and childhood, have been proposed to account for the apparent ease with which typically developing children acquire language. In a series of experiments, we investigated the role of developmental constraints on learning artificial grammars with a distinction between shorter and relatively frequent words (‘function words,’ F-words) and longer and less frequent words (‘content words,’ C-words). We constructed 4 finite-state grammars, in which the order of F-words, relative to C-words, was either fixed (F-words always occupied the same positions in a string), flexible (every F-word always followed a C-word), or free. We exposed adults (N = 84) and kindergarten children (N = 100) to strings from each of these artificial grammars, and we assessed their ability to recognize strings with the same structure, but a different vocabulary. Adults were better at recognizing strings when regularities were available (i.e., fixed and flexible order grammars), while children were better at recognizing strings from the grammars consistent with the attested distribution of function and content words in natural languages (i.e., flexible and free order grammars). These results provide evidence for a link between developmental constraints on learning and linguistic typology
On Minimal Spectral Factors with Zeroes and Poles lying on Prescribed Region
In this paper, we consider a general discrete-time spectral factorization
problem for rational matrix-valued functions. We build on a recent result
establishing existence of a spectral factor whose zeroes and poles lie in any
pair of prescribed regions of the complex plane featuring a geometry compatible
with symplectic symmetry. In this general setting, uniqueness of the spectral
factor is not guaranteed. It was, however, conjectured that if we further
impose stochastic minimality, uniqueness can be recovered. The main result of
his paper is a proof of this conjecture.Comment: 14 pages, no figures. Revised version with minor modifications. To
appear in IEEE Transactions of Automatic Contro
Knowledge transfer in a tourism destination: the effects of a network structure
Tourism destinations have a necessity to innovate to remain competitive in an
increasingly global environment. A pre-requisite for innovation is the
understanding of how destinations source, share and use knowledge. This
conceptual paper examines the nature of networks and how their analysis can
shed light upon the processes of knowledge sharing in destinations as they
strive to innovate. The paper conceptualizes destinations as networks of
connected organizations, both public and private, each of which can be
considered as a destination stakeholder. In network theory they represent the
nodes within the system. The paper shows how epidemic diffusion models can act
as an analogy for knowledge communication and transfer within a destination
network. These models can be combined with other approaches to network analysis
to shed light on how destination networks operate, and how they can be
optimized with policy intervention to deliver innovative and competitive
destinations. The paper closes with a practical tourism example taken from the
Italian destination of Elba. Using numerical simulations the case demonstrates
how the Elba network can be optimized. Overall this paper demonstrates the
considerable utility of network analysis for tourism in delivering destination
competitiveness.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables. Forthcoming in: The Service Industries
Journal, vol. 30, n. 8, 2010. Special Issue on: Advances in service network
analysis v2: addeded and corrected reference
On the existence of a solution to a spectral estimation problem \emph{\`a la} Byrnes-Georgiou-Lindquist
A parametric spectral estimation problem in the style of Byrnes, Georgiou,
and Lindquist was posed in \cite{FPZ-10}, but the existence of a solution was
only proved in a special case. Based on their results, we show that a solution
indeed exists given an arbitrary matrix-valued prior density. The main tool in
our proof is the topological degree theory.Comment: 6 pages of two-column draft, accepted for publication in IEEE-TA
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