Search results

Anthony Edwards' recent study “The Reliability of Tourism Statistics ”in Travel & Tourism Analyst [Edwards 1991 in References below] is timely, coming before the WTO International Conference on Travel and Tourism Statistics (Ottawa, June 25–28, 1991) and the Meeting on Tourism Statistics at the International Statistical Institute's 38th Session (together with the International Association for Official Statistics, Cairo, September 1991). He is one of the most expert users and analysts of these problematic data. Both WTO [1985] and OECD [1982, 1984] published methodological reports on the main national statistics they publish. A recent book [Bar‐On 1989a], three articles in The Tourist Review [Bar‐On 1983, 1988] and in International Tourism Quarterly [Withyman 1985] and a paper at the Beijing Conference of IAOS [Bar‐On 1990] discussed many of the problems and solutions, and they were covered at the Crete Europa Conference [Schmidhauser 1991]. The following should interest readers producing or analysing tourism data:

The increased awareness of the need to preserve and improve the natural and social environment has given rise to many studies and international conferences. Coast cities are especially vulnerable, since many have to cope with industrial and other pollution from inland as well as their own (which may include smog, e.g. Los Angeles), while their tourism depends on the attractiveness of their beaches (which may be restricted in length and area), water quality etc. Their urban and tourism development may have detracted from their attractiveness. Tourism movement to, in and from them may be highly seasonal, causing congestion and accidents, and entailing the building of accommodation and other services for peak demand. Many once popular resorts have lost much of their past tourism. The urban coastal population is over 800 million, and is forecasted to reach one billion about the year 2000, about 16% of the world's population: over 6 million tons of litter reach the sea each year [Time Magazine June 1, 1992 — based on UNEP and World Resources Inc.].

Economic studies of tourism are usually concerned with the cost to the tourist and the receipts of the tourism industry and destination. The benefits to the tourist in terms of his health and cultural enrichment and working capacity are usually considered important, but not quantified. Assistance with the cost of some holidays may be provided as Social Tourism in Welfare States, usually without evaluating their benefits.

The insufficient attention given up to now by Spanish academic researchers to quality in tourism, does not by any means invalidate the generalised conviction that the subject has a basic influence on the competitive future of Spanish tourism. Quality has become a key dimension of the tourist product and of tourist enterprise. For this reason a profile of the lines of research developed by Spanish experts on the subject has been undertaken in the article, in order to provide a retrospective overview. This effort remains limited, though we are beginning to see the creation of research centres which will, in the forseeable future, set the pace in this area of specialisation.

The automation of complex handling and assembly operations can be achieved by the introduction of industrial robots, computer‐controlled and equipped with simple tactic sensors. A difficult problem in such robots are emergency situations when a defective component part is encountered. The lack of the capability for an automatic emergency recovery is a serious limitation of the present industrial robots. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and illustrate these emergency situations and the problem of emergency recovery, and to propose a solution by suitable software. It is also pointed out that some features of Artificial Intelligence programming languages are suitable for solving this problem in an industrial robot. The problem of suitable software for such robots is then approached on the basis of the obtained results implemented on a UNIVAC 1108 computer, by simulating the behaviour of a SIGMA robot.

This paper presents a finite element model for analysis of damaged RC beams strengthened or repaired by externally bonding glass fibre reinforced plastics (GFRP) on the tension side of the beams. The salient features include: (i) the introduction of a thin, six—noded element to simulate behaviour of the concrete/epoxy glue/GFRP interface and )ii( a scheme of loading a virgin RC beam to a prescribed displacement to simulate damage, unloading and then reloading the damaged RC beam fortified by an externally bonded GFRP plate. Results are presented for RC beams repaired by plates of varying thickness and a transmutation of failure mode is noted from classical flexure for the case of external reinforcement in the form of thin GFRP plates to a unique concrete cover rip off failure for thicker GFRP plates and not predicted by the ACI shear strength formula for diagonal tension failure of unplated RC beams of similar geometry.

Clinical governance effectiveness is built on the responsibility of clinical members towards other stakeholders inside and outside the hospital. Through the testing of the hypotheses on the relationships between clinical governance and its antecedents, this paper aims to corroborate that emotional intelligence is the first layer of bricks, ethics and trust the second layer, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) the third layer of the entire architecture of clinical governance.

A total of 409 responses in completed form returned from self-administered structured questionnaires dispatched to 705 clinical staff members underwent the structural equation modeling (SEM)-based analysis.

Emotional intelligence among clinicians, as the data reveals, is the lever for ethics of care and knowledge-based or identity-based trust to thrive in hospitals, which in turn activate ethical CSR in clinical activities. Ethical CSR in clinical deeds will heighten clinical governance effectiveness in hospitals.

The journey to test research hypotheses has built layer-by-layer of CSR-based model of clinical governance in which high concentration of emotional intelligence among clinical members in the hospital catalyzes ethics of care and knowledge-based or identity-based trust, without which, CSR initiatives to cultivate ethical values cannot be successfully implemented to optimize clinical governance effectiveness in Vietnam-based hospitals.