Forecasting overseas visitors into the United Kingdom using continuous time and autoregressive fractional integrated moving average models with discrete data

This paper applies Gaussian estimation methods to continuous time models for modelling overseas visitors into the UK. The use of continuous time modelling is widely used in economics and finance but not in tourism forecasting. Using monthly data for 1986–2010, various continuous time models are estimated and compared to autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average (ARFIMA) models. Dynamic forecasts are obtained over different periods. The empirical results show that the ARIMA model performs very well, but that the constant elasticity of variance (CEV) continuous time model has the lowest root mean squared error (RMSE) over a short period.

Survey forms used in urban freight studies

Report produced as part of the Green Logistics project (EPSRC and Department for Transport funded). This report contains examples of survey forms used in urban freight studies both in the UK and overseas. The studies from which these examples have been drawn range in data from 1970-2008. The purpose of the report is to provide insight into the types of questions used in different survey techniques and also into the design of survey forms. It is hoped that bringing together in a single document these examples of urban freight survey forms will be of use to researchers involved in such studies in future in planning and designing their survey work. Examples of several different types of survey techniques are provided including: Establishment surveys -- Commodity flow surveys -- Freight operator surveys -- Roadside interview surveys -- Driver surveys -- Vehicle observation surveys -- Parking surveys -- Vehicle trip diaries -- Service provider surveys

A quarter century of creative chaos: Xinhua News Agency 1980-2005

Chinese media in the context of China's rise have puzzled many scholars who used to understand media and communications phenomena by employing the theories generated from a few affluent Western democracies, notably the US. As a result, a complex but more accurate picture has been ignored. Under numerous theoretical polarizations, the contemporary social world seems little changed but polarized. This thesis aims to propose a different approach endeavoring to 'de-Westernize' or 'internationalize' media and communications studies. As a starting point, this study focuses on the globalization debate, Chinese media and news agency studies. The thesis has investigated the Chinese news agency, Xinhua, by employing Fuzzy Logic which captures the complexity of the change in the agency's business structure and journalistic practices over last 25 years. The change is also examined by scrutinizing the role of journalists in the interrelations of Xinhua with its news sources, media and nonmedia clients, and other news agencies. A combination of archive study and 94 semistructured interviews conducted in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau and London provides an inclusive account of the Chinese news institution. The key research findings drawn from the empirical research into Xinhua have justified the central argument of this thesis: Crisp Logic or the 'either/or' approach has failed to explain the dynamics of the change to the media system based in a 'non-Western' society. The numerous theoretical polarizations generated by Crisp Logic to a large extent have distorted the understanding of the contemporary social world by polarizing it. Fuzzy Logic serves better(though it is not the only choice)than the traditional approach to reflect on the set of variables existing between the two poles created by Crisp Logic. This thesis is the first doctorate research in the UK and other English-speaking countries to investigate Xinhua by 'going inside' the news institution's headquarters, local branches and overseas bureaus. This is the first comprehensive academic study of the agency, which not only examines the agency's recent change in business structure and journalistic practices, but also provides a historical account of the agency and its relationship with other social institutions. This is the first media study that employs Fuzzy Logic to understand the globalization theory, Chinese media and news agencies.

How does a house remember? heritage-ising return migration in an Indonesian-Chinese house museum in Guangdong, PRC

This paper is an attempt to integrate heritage and museum studies through exploring the complex relationship between the materiality of architecture and social memories with a house museum of return migration in Guangdong, PRC as a case study. It unveils that the ongoing process of memory is intrinsically intertwined with spatial and temporal dimensions of the physical dwelling and built environment and the wider social-historical context and power relations shaping them. I argue that it is the house as ‘object of exhibit’ just as much as the exhibits inside the house that materialises the turbulent and traumatic migratory experience of Returned Overseas Chinese, embodies their memories and exposes the contested nature of museumification. By looking at the socially and geographically marginalised dwelling of return migrants, the house draws people’s attention to the often neglected importance of conceptual periphery in re-theorising what is often assumed to be the core of heritage value. It points to the necessity to integrate displaced, diasporic, transnational subjects to heritage and museum studies that have been traditionally framed within national and territorial boundaries.

Gender comparisons in non-acute cardiac symptom recognition and subsequent help-seeking decisions: a mixed methods study protocol

Introduction: Coronary heart disease (CHD) is one of the leading causes of death in both men and women worldwide. Despite the common misconception that CHD is a ‘man's disease’, it is now well accepted that women endure worse clinical outcomes than men following CHD-related events. A number of studies have explored whether or not gender differences exist in patients presenting with CHD, and specifically whether women delay seeking help for cardiac conditions. UK and overseas studies on help-seeking for emergency cardiac events are contradictory, yet suggest that women often delay help-seeking. In addition, no studies have looked at presumed cardiac symptoms outside an emergency situation. Given the lack of understanding in this area, an explorative qualitative study on the gender differences in help-seeking for a non-emergency cardiac events is needed. Methods and analysis: A purposive sample of 20–30 participants of different ethnic backgrounds and ages attending a rapid access chest pain clinic will be recruited to achieve saturation. Semistructured interviews focusing on help-seeking decision-making for apparent cardiac symptoms will be undertaken. Interview data will be analysed thematically using qualitative software (NVivo) to understand any similarities and differences between the way men and women construct help-seeking. Findings will also be used to inform the preliminary development of a cardiac help-seeking intentions questionnaire. Ethics and dissemination: Ethical approvals were sought and granted. Namely, the University of Westminster (sponsor) and St Georges NHS Trust REC, and the Trust Research and Development Office granted approval to host the study on the Queen Mary's Roehampton site. The study is low risk, with interviews being conducted on hospital premises during working hours. Investigators will disseminate findings via presentations and publications. Participants will receive a written summary of the key findings.

The Turtle Garden: Tan Kah Kee’s last spiritual world

This paper explores the role of diasporic subjects in China’s heritage-making through a case study of the Turtle Garden built by Tan Kah Kee in Xiamen, China. Tan is the first person with Overseas Chinese background who built museums in the P.R. China and has been regarded as a symbol of Overseas Chinese patriotism. This paper argues that the Turtle Garden, conceptualised as a postcolonial ‘carnivalesque’ space, is more than a civic museum for public education. It reflects the owner’s highly complex and sometimes conflicting museum outlook embedded in his life experience as a migrant, his encounter with (British) colonialism in Malaya, and integrated with his desire and despair about the Chinese Communist Party’s nation-building project in the 1950s. Rather than a sign of devotion to the socialist motherland as simplistically depicted in China’s discourse, the garden symbolises Tan’s last ‘spiritual world’ where he simultaneously engaged with soul-searching as a returned Overseas Chinese and alternative diasporic imagining of Chinese identities and nation. It brings to light the value of heritage-making outside centralised heritage discourses, and offers an invaluable analytical lens to disentangle the contested and ever shifting relationship between diasporic subjects, cultural heritage and nation-(re)building in the Chinese context and beyond.

The stamp of identities: negotiating diasporic Chinese subjectivity in philatelic spaces

This paper examines the politics and poetics of identity construction and articulation among guiqiao (Returned Overseas Chinese) through a case study of a postage stamp exhibition put up jointly by an ordinary guiqiao and an official huaqiao (Overseas Chinese) museum in Quanzhou, China. Two conflicting meaning systems are identified in this exhibition. On the surface and mainly through words, it promulgates a highly clichéd China-centred discourse of huaqiao as patriotic subjects, legitimated by the authority of an official museum. Simultaneously, it articulates implicitly a “trans-local diasporic subjectivity” conveyed by the imagery of stamps and constituted by constant interactions between the materiality of stamps and the bodily experience of stamp collectors beyond the museum. This study contributes to the study of guiqiao, and of Chinese diaspora in general, in two ways. First, it complicates the conventional understanding of guiqiao identity by pinpointing contested negotiations between the state from above and guiqiao from below, involving simultaneously conflicts and compromises. Secondly, it brings to light the important role of body, affect and materiality in the construction and articulation of guiqiao identities, paving the way for integrating museum and migration studies with the potential to re-conceptualize transnational mobilities in the Chinese context and beyond.