Al Araf, Harbor Beach

verso: "Al Araf", Harbor Beach (from the Koran meaning that region between heaven and hell, abode of the half-good). About 1910-changed a number of times from original 1896 cabin

Eclectic blend somehow makes sense at Cable Beach Resort in Broome

A travel article about Cable Beach, Broome. A DAY of flights, confined spaces and queues comes to an end. I'm more tired than when my kids were infants. I've lost all sensation in my knees. And I'm thinking that perhaps I should have taken my wallet out my back pocket. In the course of a day's sitting, it seems to have indented a deep square into my right buttock...

Análisis del entorno y del mercado para la puesta en marcha del plan de rebranding de un hotel de playa en Panamá: caso Sheraton Bijao Beach Resort

La cadena hotelera colombiana GHL Hoteles Ltda., obtuvo el manejo operacional de un hotel existente en Santa Clara – Panamá, para que de ésta manera soportara un cambio de marca, convirtiéndose así en un Sheraton. Con la ayuda de un gran equipo de trabajo fue posible ésta transición y actualmente se perfeccionan los detalles para cumplir con los estándares dictados y exigidos por la marca. Contando con el soporte de una oficina de mercadeo y ventas ubicada en la ciudad de Panamá, es menester respaldar todos los logros en estrategias de mercadeo y ventas para el éxito y la rentabilidad del negocio.

Relatório de estágio no Praia D’El Rey Marriott Golf & Beach Resort: Melhoria das operações através dos recursos existentes

Durante o período de estágio curricular, no âmbito do Mestrado em Gestão e Direção Hoteleira, que decorreu de 1 de Novembro de 2013 a 31 de Julho de 2014, nos departamentos de Direção de F&B, At Your Service e Relações Públicas e Eventos do Praia D’El Rey Marriott Golf & Beach Resort, verificou-se que, em algumas e diferentes situações, não existia uma gestão eficaz entre os recursos existentes e a própria operação. O objetivo do presente trabalho pretende mostrar como, muitas vezes, através dos próprios recursos se consegue melhorar a operação e, consequentemente, os resultados. Efetuou-se uma análise de observação à operação e, ao mesmo tempo, interagiu-se diretamente com os recursos humanos, no intuito de se detetarem falhas que se consigam evitar através dos próprios recursos, ou seja, sem custos para a empresa. Na Direção de F&B pôs-se em prática um dos standards exigidos pela cadeia Marriott, o Art of Host. Este standard será abordado ao longo do presente trabalho, contudo, a sua principal vantagem é, sem dúvida, a melhoria da comunicação entre equipas e a partilha de ideias e conhecimentos. Ainda na área do F&B, mas já a nível de compras e fornecedores, também se realizaram estudos e análises que se revelaram importantes para uma melhor gestão da operação. No departamento de At Your Service, verificou-se uma falha no conhecimento da carta de room-service, por parte dos PBX Operators. Assim, realizou-se um taste panel para todos os colaboradores deste departamento e os resultados foram bastante positivos. Já na área das Relações Públicas e Eventos, projetou-se e criou-se um espaço que funciona como um Resort Information Office, ou seja, um ponto de informação do resort onde, ao mesmo tempo, se promovem eventos. Um projeto dinâmico e eficaz. As ações implementadas, no geral, demonstraram que, de facto, conseguem-se melhorias na operação, muitas vezes, através dos recursos existentes. Recomenda-se a adoção futura e contínua deste tipo de iniciativas e ações para que se obtenham resultados cada vez melhores.

Niagara Resort and Tourist Association Records, 1975-1976, 1978-1983, 1985, 1987-1989, n.d.

Ontario Editorial Bureau (O.E.B.)

Humanistic science education : moves from within and challenges from without

For a number of years now it has been evident that the major issue facing science educators in the more developed countries of the world is the quantitative decline in enrolments in the senior secondary sciences, particularly the physical sciences, and in the number of higher achieving students applying for places in universities to undertake further studies in science. The deep malaise in school science to which these quantitative measures point has been elucidated by more qualitative studies of the students’ experience of studying science in secondary school in several of these countries (Sweden, Lindahl (2003); England, Simon and Osborne (2002); and Australia, Lyons (2005)). Remarkably concordant descriptions of these experiences can be summarized as: School science is: • transmission of knowledge from the teacher or the textbook to the students. • about content that is irrelevant and boring to our lives. • difficult to learn in comparison with other subjects Incidentally, the Australian study only involved consistently high achieving students; but even so, most of them found science more difficult than other more interesting subjects, and concluded that further science studies should be avoided unless they were needed for some career purpose. Other more representative confirmations of negative evaluations of the science curricula across Australia (and in particular states) are now available in Australia, from the large scale reviews of Goodrum, Hackling and Rennie (2001) and from the TIMSS (2002). The former reported that well under half of secondary students find the science at school relevant to my future, useful ion everyday life, deals with things I am concerned with and helps me make decisions about my health.. TIMSS found that 62 and 65 % of females and males in Year 4 agree with I like learning science, but by Year 8 only 26 and 33 % still agree. Students in Japan have been doubly notably because of (a) their high performance in international measures of science achievement like TIMSS and PISA and (b) their very low response to items in these studies which relate to interest in science. Ogura (2003) reported an intra-national study of students across Years 6-9 (upper primary through Junior High); interest in a range of their subjects (including science) that make up that country’s national curriculum. There was a steady decline in interest in all these subjects which might have indicated an adolescent reaction against schooling generally. However, this study went on to ask the students a further question that is very meaningful in the Japanese context, If you discount the importance of this subject for university entrance, is it worth studying? Science and mathematics remained in decline while all the other subjects were seen more positively. It is thus ironic, at a time when some innovations in curriculum and other research-based findings are suggesting ways that these failures of school science might be corrected, to find school science under a new demands that come from quite outside science education, and which certainly do not have the correction of this malaise as a priority. The positive curricular and research findings can be characterized as moves from within science education, whereas the new demands are moves that come from without science education. In this paper I set out these two rather contrary challenges to the teaching of science as it is currently practised, and go on to suggest a way forward that could fruitfully combine the two.

Service driven asset management

Local governments are service driven rather than asset driven. Understanding this distinction is critical to ensuring that community needs are appropriately addressed. Translating community needs and desires into infrastructure is a complex yet little understood process. In this paper, we look at two case studies that explore the interface between service outcomes and the specification of performance requirements for the assets. The two case studies we look at are: a public health issue resulting from inadequate public amenities in a beach resort and the prioritisation of maintenance work in a world of increasing service demands and declining funding. The case studies all use the same investment logic mapping framework to establish clear drivers as to the problem that councils are responding to in delivering their services. The key to the framework is the separation of concern between service management and asset management.

One approach to finding evidence for the effectiveness of scientific visualisations in high school physics and chemistry education

Enormous amounts of money and energy are being devoted to the development, use and organisation of computer-based scientific visualisations (e.g. animations and simulations) in science education. It seems plausible that visualisations that enable students to gain visual access to scientific phenomena that are too large, too small or occur too quickly or too slowly to be seen by the naked eye, or to scientific concepts and models, would yield enhanced conceptual learning. When the literature is searched, however, it quickly becomes apparent that there is a dearth of quantitative evidence for the effectiveness of scientific visualisations in enhancing students’ learning of science concepts. This paper outlines an Australian project that is using innovative research methodology to gather evidence on this question in physics and chemistry classrooms.

A microscopic simulation model to estimate Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) station service capacity with mixed stopping and non-stopping bus operation

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) station is the interface between passenger and service. The station is crucial to line operation as it is typically the only location where buses can pass each other. Congestion may occur here when buses maneuvering into and out of the platform lane interfere with bus flow, or when a queue of buses forms upstream of the platform lane blocking the passing lane. However, some systems include operation where express buses pass the critical station, resulting in a proportion of non stopping buses. It is important to understand the operation of the critical busway station under this type of operation, as it affects busway line capacity. This study uses micro simulation to treat the BRT station operation and to analyze the relationship between station Limit state bus capacity (B_ls), Total Bus Capacity (B_ttl). First, the simulation model is developed for Limit state scenario and then a mathematical model is defined, calibrated for a specified range of controlled scenarios of mean and coefficient of variation of dwell time. Thereafter, the proposed B_ls model is extended to consider non stopping buses and B_ttlmodel is defined. The proposed models provides better understanding to the BRT line capacity and is useful for transit authorities for designing better BRT operation.

Simulation architecture for cooperative ITS applications and augmented perception

Cooperative Systems provide, through the multiplication of information sources over the road, a lot of potential to improve the safety of road users, especially drivers. However, developing cooperative ITS applications requires additional resources compared to non-cooperative applications which are both time consuming and expensive. In this paper, we present a simulation architecture aimed at prototyping cooperative ITS applications in an accurate and detailed, close-to-reality environment; the architecture is designed to be modular and generalist. It can be used to simulate any type of CS applications as well as augmented perception. Then, we discuss the results of two applications deployed with our architecture, using a common freeway emergency braking scenario. The first application is Emergency Electronic Brake Light (EEBL); we discuss improvements in safety in terms of the number of crashes and the severity of crashes. The second application compares the performance of a cooperative risk assessment using an augmented map against a non-cooperative approach based on local-perception only. Our results show a systematic improvement of forward warning time for most vehicles in the string when using the augmented-map-based risk assessment.

Pre-crash traffic flow trend analysis on motorways

Crashes on motorway contribute to a significant proportion (40-50%) of non-recurrent motorway congestions. Hence reduce crashes will help address congestion issues (Meyer, 2008). Crash likelihood estimation studies commonly focus on traffic conditions in a Short time window around the time of crash while longer-term pre-crash traffic flow trends are neglected. In this paper we will show, through data mining techniques, that a relationship between pre-crash traffic flow patterns and crash occurrence on motorways exists, and that this knowledge has the potential to improve the accuracy of existing models and opens the path for new development approaches. The data for the analysis was extracted from records collected between 2007 and 2009 on the Shibuya and Shinjuku lines of the Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway in Japan. The dataset includes a total of 824 rear-end and sideswipe crashes that have been matched with traffic flow data of one hour prior to the crash using an incident detection algorithm. Traffic flow trends (traffic speed/occupancy time series) revealed that crashes could be clustered with regards of the dominant traffic flow pattern prior to the crash. Using the k-means clustering method allowed the crashes to be clustered based on their flow trends rather than their distance. Four major trends have been found in the clustering results. Based on these findings, crash likelihood estimation algorithms can be fine-tuned based on the monitored traffic flow conditions with a sliding window of 60 minutes to increase accuracy of the results and minimize false alarms.