Japanese investment on the Gold Coast : the interface of globalization and locality

This study explored the interface between the forces of globalization and a given place, at a given time, the Gold Coast during the 1980s. The global economic boom of the 1980s was one in which the role of Japan was particularly important. In less than half a decade capital flows from Japan surged to make it the world's largest investor. Locations in the Pacific Basin were favoured destinations for Japanese investment, one of the most significant was the Gold Coast. Japanese capital and tourism helped transform its urban area from a national resort to an international tourist destination and resort centre, The surge of capital arriving to the Gold Coast was a function of economic conditions in Japan, as was its steep reduction after November 1989, Thus the Gold Coast became integrated into global capital flows and so dependent on decisions made in Tokyo, one of the main financial centres of the world. However this study has also sought to explore a more complex reality; namely, that this place also became the interface of complex cultural forces and perceptions. The wealth of the Japanese investors on the Gold Coast enabled them to realize their dream of developing projects in the most fashionable global styles. These styles were essentially Western, and it was onto these that their Japanese owners ascribed their own meanings; meanings that reflected the cultural baggage that they had brought from Japan, and through which were filtered the economic and environmental realities of the Gold Coast. The Gold Coast as locality also included residents. Hence it became an interface between two different groups of people, the Japanese and the strongly Anglo-Celtic local community. Some in the local community perceived the Japanese presence as a threat to their perception of the Gold Coast, in fact, a threat to their perception of Australia's national identity. A campaign based on the politics of memory of the Japanese developed on the Gold Coast. Within weeks it became a national debate in which isolationalist, if not xenophobic traditionalists, concentrated on the Gold Coast challenged the economic rationalism and multicultural tolerance of the self-interested and ideologically convinced advocates of globalization. Governments at all levels sought to arbitrate, to legitimize standpoints, but more often than not were seen to move into positions of ineffectual flexibility. The forces of globalization on the Gold Coast were catalysts for change that in turn provoked local opposition which rapidly became a debate about national identity and direction. It is in the exploration of the complex and contradictory economic, cultural and political forces engendered by globalization that this study has sought to make a distinctive contribution.

An exploration of motives for attending Australian ecotourism locations and their influence on future intentions

This paper sought to explore the push [internal] motivations of eco-tourists and the influence of these motivational drives on their future ecotourism intentions. Findings from this exploratory study identified five key internal motivations, namely, 'self-esteem', 'relaxation', 'social interaction', 'self-fulfilment' and 'thrill and excitement'. Further analysis identified that 'self-esteem', elaxation' and 'self-fulfilment' motives were significantly related to ecotourist's intention to volunteer as well as their intention to donate money to an eco-tourism destination. Additionally, 'self-fulfilment' and 'thrill and excitement' motives were identified as impacting upon eco-tourists’ future attendance intentions. Consequently, findings from this research provide eco-tourism operators with insight into eco-tourist motivations to inform product and brand development and promotional activities and assist in the ongoing development effective eco-tourist retention strategies.

Scholarly journal output : a regional perspective

This paper presents the findings of an investigation designed to reveal the destination of the refereed journal research output of accounting and finance faculty members across their entire academic careers. A geographic approach was adopted with the intention of providing a historical data-set to inform the development of a region-centric model of academic research productivity. The study focuses on publication careers of accounting and finance academics from one particular geographic region, New Zealand. The data were collected through a detailed examination of electronic databases of journal holdings and research reports of tertiary institutions. The results of this study provide evidence that, across their careers, New Zealand's academics have published a significant number of papers in journals located in two regions, Australia-New Zealand and the United Kingdom, and that this academic community has attained publication success in international journals generally regarded as high quality.

GeoConnect : geographic and connectivity-aware routing protocol for wireless sensor network

Sensor nodes are closely tied with their geographic location and their connectivity. In recent years many routing protocols have been developed to provide efficient strategy. But most of them are either focus on the geographic proximity or on connectivity. However in sparse network, Geographic routing would fail at local dead ends where a node has no neighbour closer to destination. In contrast, connectivity-based routing may result in non-optimal path and overhead management. In this paper we designed a scalable and distributed routing protocol, GeoConnect, which considers geographic proximity and connectivity for choosing next hop. In GeoConnecl, we construct a new naming system that integrates geographic and connectivity information into a node identification. We use dissimilarity function to compute the dissimilarity and apply a distributed routing algorithm to route packets. The experimental results show that GeoConnect routing provides robust and better performance than sole geographic routing or connectivity routing.

Analyzing international travelers' profile with self-organizing maps

It is generally agreed that knowledge is the most valuable asset to an organization. Knowledge enables a business to effectively compete with its competitors. In the tourism context, an in-depth knowledge of the profile of international travelers to a destination has become a crucial factor for decision makers to formulate their business strategies and better serve their customers. In this research, a self-organizing map (SOM) network was used for segmenting international travelers to Hong Kong, a major travel destination in Asia. An association rules discovery algorithm is then utilized to automatically characterize the profile of each segment. The resulting maps serve as a visual analysis tool for tourism managers to better understand the characteristics, motivations, and behaviors of international travelers.

Collapse

Collapse was a visual performance installation presented at the Old Port of Melbourne in 2008. The audience travelled by boat across Port Phillip Bay to witness the performance begins at Sciencework’s Spotswood Jetty, where the audience travelled by ferry across the Port Phillip Bay to a remote location, where society has “collapsed”. The performance then becomes a walking tour around this new location, encountering and experiencing the world that Red Cabbage has created.

“At that point…the collapse of their morale, their will power and their patience was so abrupt that they felt they would never be able to climb back out of their hole…Hence, floundering halfway between the abyss and the peak, they drifted rather than lived, given up to aimless days and sterile memories, wandering shadows who could have only found strength by resigning themselves to taking root in the soil of their distress.”- Albert Camus The Plague

Floundering halfway between the abyss and the peak…exist those that have not yet fallen…in a state of recurring collapse. The girl in the yellow dress, the man in the grey suit, the old man in the brown pants, the woman in the blue shirt and the man in the red hat are suspected carriers of the white sickness. They have been removed from their homes to the edge of the city for standard assessment. Here they meet the others, processed…waiting…isolated. By boat…they travel across the bay to their final destination. Not another Hollywood style apocalyptic melodrama in which our heroes find grace, hope and redemption in the utter destruction of modern civilization…in the collapse of lived time the ruins of humanity are exposed as already existent…the limits of our ability to be graceful were discovered long ago…the trauma of the end of time a given…the plague is now.

Sharable file searching in unstructured peer-to-peer systems

The existing sharable file searching methods have at least one of the following disadvantages: (1) they are applicable only to certain topology patterns, (2) suffer single point failure, or (3) incur prohibitive maintenance cost. These drawbacks prevent their effective application in unstructured Peer-to-peer (P2P) systems (where the system topologies are changed time to time due to peers' frequently entering and leaving the systems), despite the considerable success of sharing file search in conventional peer-to-peer systems. Motivated by this, we develop several fully dynamic algorithms for searching sharing files in unstructured peer to peer systems. Our solutions can handle any topology pattern with small search time and computational overhead. We also present an in-depth analysis that provides valuable insight into the characteristics of alternative effective search strategies and leads to precision guarantees. Extensive experiments validate our theoretical findings and demonstrate the efficiency of our techniques in practice.

Listening to different voices

The paper reports on a larger study carried out in the island state of Tasmania, Australia, between 1996 1998. The research reviewed the impact of the Inclusion of Students with Disabilities Policy (ISDP 1995) within the government school system between 1996-1998.

This Qualitative study interprets and critically analyses the stories of five key informants - a parent, two teachers (a support teacher and a class teacher), a policy maker and a university academic - during the early period of the implementation of the IDSP (1995). The visual and literary 'data stories' produced through the study narrate inclusive schooling in the Tasmanian context as a 'detective story' of the special education knowledge tradition, originating from the policy makers' reality rather than from the transformative experience of developing pedagogical models and processes in classrooms and communities.

The paper presents an argument for a poststructuralist approach to research and policy writing/reading that questions traditionalist theorising in the special education field and populist slogans of 'inclusion'.

Inclusive schooling : representation and textual practice

This paper reports on a larger study carried out in the island state of Tasmania, Australia, between 1996 and 1998. The research reviewed the impact of the Inclusion of Students with Disabilities Policy (ISDP) within the government school system. The qualitative study describes the interpretations of five key informants: a parent; two teachers—a support teacher and a class teacher—a policy-maker and a university academic, during the early period of the implementation of the ISDP. The visual and literary ‘data stories’ of the research are woven together to narrate inclusive schooling in the Tasmanian context as a ‘detective story’ of the special education knowledge tradition. Drawing from poststructuralist methodology and narrative theory the multi-voiced text is a deliberate attempt to enter into conversations with the reader rather than tell the story. Researching inclusive schooling policy through representation and textual practice, I question dominant research practices in the special education field and populist slogans of ‘inclusion’.

Many routes lead to Rome : potential causes for the multi-route migration system of Red Knots, Calidris canutus islandica

Migrants, such as birds or representatives of other taxa, usually make use of several stopover sites to cover the distance between their site of origin and destination. Potentially, multiple routes exist, but often little is known about the causes and consequences of alternative migration routes. Apart from their geographical distribution, the suitability of potential sites might play an important role in the animals’ decisions for a particular itinerary. We used an optimal-migration model to test three nonmutually exclusive hypotheses leading to variations in the spring migration routes of a subspecies of Red Knot, Calidris canutus islandica, which migrates from wintering grounds in Western Europe to breeding grounds in Greenland and the Canadian Arctic: the breeding location hypothesis, the energy budget hypothesis, and the predation risk hypothesis. Varying only breeding location, the model predicted that birds breeding in the Canadian Arctic and on West Greenland stop over on Iceland, whereas birds breeding in East and Northeast Greenland migrate via northern Norway, a prediction that is supported by empirical findings. Energy budgets on stopover sites had a strong influence on the choice of route and staging times. Varying foraging-intensity and mass-dependent predation risk prompted the birds to use less risky sites, if possible. The effect of simultaneous changes in the energy budget and predation risk strongly depended on the site where these occurred. Our findings provide potential explanations for the observations that C. canutus islandica uses a diverse array of migration routes. Scrutinizing the three alternative driving forces for the choice of migratory routes awaits further, specific data collection in rapidly developing fields of research (e.g., predation risk assessment, GPS tracking). Generally, the type of modeling presented here may not only highlight alternative explanations, but also direct follow-up empirical research.

Future research directions in tourism marketing

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to formulate and discuss future research avenues for the marketing of tourism services.

Design/methodology/approach – The approach taken in the paper is to review the relevant literature and focus on the key themes most important for future research on tourism marketing.

Findings – The paper finds that there are a number of research avenues for tourism marketing researchers and marketing practitioners to conduct investigations on but the most important areas are consumer behavior, branding, e-marketing and strategic marketing.

Practical implications – The paper is relevant to tourism firms and destination management organizations in the development of marketing activities/capabilities to increase their customer base. In addition, as this paper takes a global perspective it is also helpful to compare different international research directions.

Social implications – Changing demographics and the aging of the global population mean different marketing approaches will be needed to market tourism services to older consumers and also consumers from developing countries such as China and India.

Originality/value – This paper is a key resource for marketing practitioners wanting to focus on future growth areas and also marketing academics interested in tourism marketing that want to stay at the forefront of their research area of expertise.

Implementation and applications of the distortion operator

The distortion operator transforms 2D images in a manner similar to image warping or morphing, allowing source pixels to be mapped to any destination pixel. This operator can be implemented on current hardware, allowing at least one distortion per frame at interactive frame rates. Potential applications are numerous, but those described include re-mapping images for correct projection onto curved screens, correcting camera distortion from multiple sources simultaneously, and allowing constant time dynamic texturing and lighting of a static scene which is independent of geometric complexity.

All-female travel : what do women really want?

This paper examines the importance of the all-female element to women travellers and the possible benefits that can be gained from this type of travel. A self-administered mail survey questionnaire was completed by past clients of an Australian all-female travel company, to measure their satisfaction with previous travel and to find out perceived benefits of all-female travel, personal plans for future travel and demographic information. Both quantitative and qualitative information was collected. The participants in the study were women over the age of 40, predominantly in the 50-69 age group. They were experienced travellers as 89% had travelled previously and 64% had travelled four or more times. The information collected allowed a comparison of the importance of certain criteria pre and post the tour. Confidence in tour leader, destination and its culture and not being a 'mass tourist' were seen as important both before and after the tour. Travelling with 'all female company', ' being cared for and pampered', and the 'sharing accommodation' increased in importance after the tour. There were a number of benefits identified in all-female travel. These included a more relaxed, congenial and intimate atmosphere in the group, sharing similar interests and absence of competition and tensions.

The use of public transport in coastal Australia : modes of travel to work and greenhouse emissions

Commuting to work is one of the most important and regular routines of transportation in towns and cities. From a geographic perspective, the length of people’s commute is influenced, to some degree, by the spatial separation of their home and workplace and the transport infrastructure. The rise of car ownership in Australia from the 1950s to the present was accompanied by a considerable decrease of public transport use. Currently there is an average of 1.4 persons per car in Australia, and private cars are involved in approximately 90% of the trips, and public transportation in only 10%. Increased personal mobility has fuelled the trend of decentralised housing development, mostly without a clear planning for local employment, or alternative means of transportation. Transport sector accounts for 14% of Australia’s net greenhouse gas emissions. Without further policy action, Australia’s emissions are projected to continue to increase. The Australian Federal Government and the new Department of Climate Change have recently published a set of maps showing that rising seas would submerge large parts of Victoria coastal region. Such event would lead to major disruption in planned urban growth areas in the next 50 years with broad scale inundation of dwellings, facilities and road networks. The Greater Geelong Region has well established infrastructure as a major urban centre and tourist destination and hence attracted the attention of federal and state governments in their quest for further development and population growth. As a result of its natural beauty and ecological sensitivity, scenarios for growth in the region are currently under scrutiny from local government as well as development agencies, scientists, and planners. This paper is part of a broad research in the relationship between transportation system, urban form, trip demand, and emissions, as a paramount in addressing the challenges presented by urban growth. Progressing from previous work focused on private cars, this present paper investigates the use of public transport as a mode for commuting in the Greater Geelong Region. Using a GIS based interaction model, it characterises the current use of the existing public transportation system, and also builds a scenario of increased use of the existing public transportation system, estimating potencial reductions in CO2 emissions. This study provides an improved understanding of the extent to which choices of transport mode and travel activity patterns, affect emissions in the context of regional networks. The results indicate that emissions from commuting by public transportation are significantly lower than those from commuting by private car, and emphasise that there are opportunities for large abatment in the greenhouse emissions from the transportation sector related to efforts in increasing the use of existing public transportation system.

Socio-scientific issues in education : innovative practices and contending epistemologies

In the past decade, we have seen the well-established discourse of environmental education (EE) supplanted by that of education for sustainability (EfS). In some ways this change in terminology has been no more than a slogan change, with the actual educational practices associated with EfS little changed from those qualified by EE (Campbell and Robottom 2008). Environment-related education activities under both terms frequently focus on socio-scientific issues – which serve as the chief organising principle for a range of related curriculum activities – and are shaped by the particular characteristics of these issues. Socio-scientific issues are essentially constituted of questions that are philosophical as well as empirical in nature. Socio-scientific issues consist in contests among dissenting social, economic and environmental perspectives that rarely all align, giving rise to debates whose resolution is not amenable to solely scientific approaches. Socio-scientific issues, then, exist at the intersection of differing human interests, values and motivations and are therefore necessarily socially-constructed. An adequate educational exploration of these issues requires a recognition of their constructedness within particular communities of interest and of the limitation of purely applied science perspectives, and, in turn, requires the adoption of curricular and pedagogical approaches that are in fundamental ways informed by constructivist educational assumptions – at least to the extent that community constructions of socio-scientific issues are recognised as being shaped by human interests and social and environmental context. This article considers these matters within the context of examples of environment-related practice drawn from two geographical regions. The article will argue that a serious scientific element is both necessary and insufficient for a rigorous educational exploration of socio-scientific issues within either the EE or EfS discourses, and will consider some implications for professional development and research in this field.