This study investigates how tourism affects the quality of life of residents in tourism destinations that vary in the stage of development. The proposed model in this study structurally depicts that satisfaction with life in general derives from the satisfaction with particular life domains. Overall life satisfaction is derived from material well-being, which includes the consumer's sense of well being as it is related to material possessions, community well-being, emotional well-being, and health and safety well-being domains. The model also posits that residents' perception of tourism impacts (economic, social, cultural, and environmental) affects their satisfaction of particular life domains. Lastly, this study investigates that tourism development stages moderate the relationship between residents' perception of tourism impacts and their satisfaction with particular life domains. Accordingly, the study proposed four major hypotheses: (1) residents' perception of tourism impacts affects their QOL in the community, (2) residents' satisfaction with particular life domains is affected by the perception of particular tourism impact dimensions, (3) residents' satisfaction with particular life domains affects residents' life satisfaction in general, and (4) the relationship between residents' perception of tourism impacts and their satisfaction with particulate life domains is moderated by tourism development stages. The sample population consisting of residents residing in Virginia was surveyed. The sample was proportionally stratified on the basis of tourism development stages covering counties and cities in the state. Three hundreds and twenty-one respondents completed the survey. Structural Equation Modeling and Hierarchical Multiple Regression were used to test study hypotheses. The results revealed that the residents' perception of tourism impacts did affect their satisfaction with particular life domains significantly, and their satisfaction with particular life domains influenced their overall life satisfaction. The hypothesized moderating effect of tourism development stages on the relationship between the perception of tourism impacts and the satisfaction with particular life domains was not supported. The results indicated that the relationship between the economic impact of tourism and the satisfaction with material well-being, and the relationship between the social impact of tourism and the satisfaction with community well-being were strongest among residents in communities characterized to be in the maturity stage of tourism development. This finding is consistent with social disruption theory which postulates that boomtown communities initially enter into a period of generalized crisis, resulting from the traditional stress of sudden, dramatic increases in demand for public services and improving community infrastructure (England and Albrecht's (1984). Additionally, residents develop adaptive behaviors that reduce their individual exposure to stressful situations. Through this process, the QOL of residents is expected to initially decline, and then improve as the community and its residents adapt to the new situation (Krannich, Berry & Greider, 1989). However, when a community enters into the decline stage of tourism development, the relationship between the economic impact of tourism and the satisfaction with material well-being, and the relationship between the social impact of tourism and the satisfaction with community well-being may be considered to be the capacity of the destination area to absorb tourists before the host population would feel negative impacts. This is consistent with the theoretical foundation of carrying capacity, suggesting that when tourism reaches its maturity or maximum limit, residents' QOL may start deteriorating. Further, the relationship between the cultural impact of tourism and the satisfaction with emotional well-being, and the relationship between the environmental impact of tourism and the satisfaction with health and safety well-being were strongest in the decline stage of tourism development. Neither the theories of social carrying capacity nor social disruption offered much to explain this result. However, this result is consistent with Butler's (1980) argument that in the decline stage, more tourist facilities disappear as the area becomes less attractive to tourists and the viability of existing tourist facilities becomes more available to residents in the destination community. As residents' perception of negative environmental impacts increases, their satisfaction with health and safety well-being decreases in the decline stage of tourism development unless the area as a destination provides rejuvenating or alternative planning options. It has been well established that residents in certain types of tourism communities might perceive a certain type of tourism impact unacceptable, while in other communities, the same impact type may be more acceptable. Thus, the study suggests that the proposed model should be further tested and verified using longitudinal data. / Ph. D.

No description available.

Effective leadership in healthcare improves the patient experience. Self-awareness drives leadership development, competence, and, in turn, leader effectiveness. The problem addressed by this study was the absence of knowledge regarding how healthcare leaders develop awareness of their leadership strengths and weaknesses: their competence. The purpose of this postintentional phenomenological study was to explore how healthcare leaders develop this awareness. Twelve midlevel nonclinical healthcare leaders from 3 hospitals in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States shared their experiences during semistructured interviews. Participants and their organizations contributed supporting documentation of competence and performance expectations. Following Vagle's postintentional process, data were reviewed holistically and then in detail in multiple iterations. A reflective plan, including a postreflective statement, created prior to data collection and reviewed throughout the study, elevated and abated researcher bias and potential for influence. This plan also served to question the emerging themes and contributed to the trustworthiness of the study. In response to the research question, the necessity of honest and constructive feedback and use of self-reflection to elevate understanding of leadership competence emerged. The shared participant experiences elevated five feedback mechanisms of greatest value: quantifiable results, person-person, recognized capabilities, environmental/relational, and self. Adoption of recommendations for practice, such as an improvement of performance-evaluation processes or the development of a feedback culture, could contribute to social change through the development of effective healthcare leaders. Honest and constructive feedback, with reflection, contributes to gained awareness and identification of developmental needs.

This thesis addresses the problem of achieving better convergence between different phases (here design and manufacturing) of the product development cycle. The use of liaison has been proposed to better integrate the product and assembly process. Two facets of integration have been addressed in this thesis. One is concurrent evolution of the process model with the product model and the second is associativity between product model and process model. A liaison data structure has been proposed, which is set of geometric entities, associated with one or more assembly process that acts as an interface between the product model and process model. As the liaison data is not available explicitly in the product model, a set of algorithms have been developed and implemented to identify and extract the geometric entities defined in the liaison data structure from assembly model. The proposed algorithms can identify and extract liaisons for riveting, welding, bolt fastening, screw fastening, adhesive bonding (gluing) and blind fastening. The developed algorithms have been implemented and tested. The process model needs to evolve with the product model concurrently so that any mistakes or infeasibility in the process model can be flagged right away. The use of liaison enables the construction of process model as the product model is fleshed out. A framework based on liaison has been proposed and implemented to demonstrate the concurrent evolution of product and process model. Linking the changes in the product model to flag the changes (or at least identify the need for changes) in the process model forms the associativity problem. The liaison has been used for maintaining associativity between the product and process model. A framework has been proposed for maintaining associativity between product model and process model that makes use of expert knowledge or tribal knowledge to track impact of changes in product model or process model. An aircraft wing box has been used as an example to illustrate and validate the proposed approaches. Finally the thesis concludes by summarizing contributions of the research and outlining future work.

No description available.

Considerando a necessidade de adaptar, para mão de obra local e não especializada, os dos ciclos de desenvolvimento de projeto baseado em desempenho do material, objetiva-se comparar processos de projeto de modelos form-making, algorítmico e formfinding, e assim avaliar seus desempenhos estruturais; produzir um material compósito polimérico com fibra natural e, por último, generalizar um ciclo de desenvolvimento de projeto que englobe fabricação com materiais compósitos de morfologias oriundas de processos digitais de projeto. Deste modo, a hipótese avaliada pela tese, e que trata tanto as discussões sobre processo de projeto bem como a adaptação da fabricação para a mão de obra local é: o processo digital performático deve definir o material, além de aferir seu desempenho, já nas fases iniciais do ciclo de desenvolvimento do projeto. Para tanto, procede-se à uma abordagem de pesquisa orientada por projeto conhecida como design research, além metodologia exploratória, experimental, descritiva e de aplicação. Desse modo observou-se que os modelos de formação baseada em desempenho simulados apresentaram resultados menores na deformação máxima e energia elástica de deformação que resultam em estruturas otimizadas que necessitam de menos material para serem produzidas. Isto permitiu concluir que o ciclo de desenvolvimento de projeto proposto pela pesquisa é capaz de viabilizar formas não convencionais geradas por processos digitais de projeto e fabricadas com materiais compósitos poliméricos. / Considering the need to adapt, for local and non-specialized hand labor, the design development cycle based on material performance, this thesis aims to compare design methods through form-making, algorithmic and form-finding models, and thus to evaluate their structural performances; to produce a polymeric composite material with natural fiber and; at last, to generalize a design development cycle that encompasses fabrication with composite materials of morphologies originated by digital design. Thus, the hypothesis evaluated by this thesis, which addresses both the discussions about the design process as well as the adaptation of the manufacturing to the local workforce, is: the digital performative design must define the material, as well as measure its performance, already in the early stages of the design development cycle. In this sense, the study relied on a design driven research approach, known as design research, in addition to an exploratory, application, descriptive and experimental methodology. In this way, it was observed that, the simulated performance-based models presented lower results in the maximum deformation and elastic energy of deformation that resulted in optimized structures that requires less material to be produced. This allowed to conclude, that the design development cycle proposed by this research is capable of enabling non-conventional forms generated by digital design and fabricated with polymer composites.

This work is concerned with an implementation of a software framework for usability testing. This extensive network framework and its protocol allow for integration of libraries for data collection from the basic peripherals like mouse, keyboard, camera, etc. If the protocol rules are implemented, these libraries can be platform independent. The client-server architecture allows for management of all collected data in a central database. The data in this database can be queried for evaluating the usability of applications.

In this study the role of the educational publisher as an information intermediary is considered. The focus is on the developmental role of the publisher, against the background of the information age the world is entering today. The publishing industry is regarded as both a vehicle for and the product of development, which entails a twofold responsibility: the development of society in general and the development of the industry in particular. This study highlights the role of the publisher in the development of society, and it is argued that the recent changes in the education system and the language policy potentially offer a great challenge to educational publishers in South Africa to help create suitable educational material in order to facilitate the successful implementation of the new curriculum, thereby contributing to the development of South African society as a whole. However, developments since 1994, when the new political dispensation came into effect, have practically halted the development input of publishers in the new education system and created a severe crisis for the educational publishing industry. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Information Science / unrestricted

Semantic interoperability (SI) of a product model refers to automatic exchange of meaning associated with the product data, among applications/domains throughout the product development cycle. In the product development cycle, several applications (engineering design, industrial design, manufacturing, supply chain, marketing, maintenance etc.) and different engineering domains (mechanical, electrical, electronic etc.) come into play making the ability to exchange product data with semantics very significant. With product development happening in multiple locations with multiple tools/systems, SI between these systems/domains becomes important. The thesis presents a feature-based framework for shape model to address these SI issues when exchanging shape models. Problem of exchanging semantics associated with shape model to support the product lifecycle has been identified and explained. Different types of semantic interoperability issues pertaining to the shape model have been identified and classified. Features in a shape model can be associated with volume addition/subtraction to/from base-solid, deformation/modification of base-sheet/base surface, forming of material of constant thickness. The DIFF model has been extended to represent, classify and extract Free-Form Surface Features (FFSFs) and deformation features in a part model. FFSFs refer to features that modify a free-form surface. Deformation features are created in constant thickness part models, for example, deformation of material (as in sheet-metal parts) or forming of material (as in injection molded parts with constant thickness), also referred to as constant thickness features. Volumetric features covered in the DIFF model have been extended to classify and represent volumetric features based on relative variations of cross-section and PathCurve. Shape feature ontology is described based on unified feature taxonomy with definitions and labels of features as defined in the extended DIFF model. Features definitions are used as intermediate and unambiguous representation for shape features. The feature ontology is used to capture semantics of shape features. The proposed ontology enables reasoning to handle semantic equivalences between feature labels, and is used to map shape features from a source to target applications. Reasoning framework for identification of semantically equivalent feature labels and representations for the feature being exchanged across multiple applications is presented and discussed. This reasoning framework is used to associate multiple construction paths for a feature and associate applicable meanings from the ontology. Interface is provided to select feature label for a target application from the list of labels which are semantically equivalent for the feature being exchanged/mapped. Parameters for the selected feature label can be mapped from the DIFF representation; the feature can then be represented/constructed in the target application using the feature label and mapped parameters. This work shows that product model with feature information (feature labels and representations), as understood by the target application, can be exchanged and maintained in such a way that multiple applications can use the product information as their understandable labels and representations. Finally, the thesis concludes by summarizing the main contributions and outlining the scope for future work.

There is a noticeable lack of production of indigenously engineered and manufactured products in Less Developed Countries (LDC's). Few products developed in these LDC's could be viable in competitive markets or even sold as components and supplies to other manufacturers of competitive goods. Assumintg that these less developed countries do not innovate and manufacture because they cannot, the next logical question to ask is why can they not? This thesis looks at the problems of manufacture and design in LDC's from the standpoint of Product Development. It begins by looking at development theories, namely top down and bottom up and assessing the difficulties encountered with either approach. It then looks at literature on product development, covering four areas: appropriate technolotgy, Product Development Cycle, QFD, and finally Design for X. These areas are analyzed for their usefulness in solving the development problem. The environment is considered and a linkage is developed between the Product Development Cycle and the environment. This is found to happen by way of Enterprise Needs which are needs that a product must fulfill to make it a viable option for manufacture. Finally, a process is outlined and demonstrated to form Enterprise Needs and take them into account within a traditional concept selection process. Environment was found to play a part in the Product Development Cycle. By clarifying Enterprise Needs as well as Customer Needs or Functional Needs, a more balanced approach can be taken to the concept selection process choosing the best concept, not only for the customer, but for the company as well.