In recent years the notion of tourists visiting sites associated with death and destruction has started to receive much attention within the associated literature, with issues coupled with visitor motivations being key to this research. The genre that probably best describes the study of this subject matter (death and destruction) is ‘dark tourism’. Lennon & Foley (1996, p200) describe this as “the phenomenon which encompasses the presentation and consumption (by visitors) of real and commodified death and disaster sites”. The identification of those factors that guide the selection of such dark sites and a review of visitor’s on-site experiences and subsequent post visit behaviour is important and requires further attention. The main aim of this study is to better understand the motivations and on-site activities of visitors to contemporary dark tourism sites. In addition the methods associated with archiving the visit in terms of souvenir hunting, photography and other related actions will be investigated. From what is evidenced in the literature, it is clear to see that many of these dark locations can be broadly classified as ‘dark shrines’ (Stone, 2006); but there has been little empirical investigation relating to visitor motivations and behaviour of visitors whilst at these sites. The empirical data was collected using qualitative methods, primarily Means-End Chain (MEC) analysis was employed. This is a qualitative methodological tool, employing a semi-structured one on one interview style. Fourteen interviews in total were used from individuals who had visited dark sites and the data was analysed using the Rokeach Value Survey (RVS). The results suggest that the main motivations for visiting those sites that are deemed lighter on the dark spectrum were associated with entertainment, family fun and some learning, with much emphasis upon showcasing the experience to peers upon their return home. In contrast the motivations for visiting dark sites such as concentration camps and camps of mass genocide tended to be more empathetic with the victims, with issues associated with education and intellectual enquiry being fundamental to the visit. Issues associated with peer recognition as a result of the visit were not deemed as important for those visiting darker sites. In conclusion the research shows that visitors to the lighter sites tend to be informed by family and loved ones with emphasis upon enjoyment and family kinship. In contract those who visit the darker sites tended to be more interested in the educational and academic overtones associated with the site, with a keen interest in history further facilitating this need. The main contribution of this research relates to the differing needs as identified by light and dark visitors whist at site. Visitors at lighter sites tend to require more operational based information associated with facilities and merchandising provision, whereas visitors to darker sites require information that is geo-political and quasi academic in nature, so as to better understand the magnitude of the atrocities. In terms of the manner by which light and dark visitors go about collecting artefacts / souvenirs this also differs greatly with lighter visitors looking for commercially produced items to take home and take picture of family members in situ. In contrast visitors to darker sites choose to collect souvenirs at site which are often items of nature associated specifically with the sight. Picture taking is limited, but when used is associated with the site and the surroundings.

Memory for crossed and nested classifications was investigated. Two experimental groups were exposed to stimuli which could be organized by both a crossed and nested classification. The stimuli consisted of nine drawings in a 3 x 3 matrix. Each drawing is characterized by attributes on five dimensions. The nested classification requires four dimensions to organize the nine drawings, while the crossed classification requires two dimensions. Of the five dimensions, three are unique to the nested classification, one is unique to the crossed classification, and one is common to both classifications.

Two recent advances are the primary motivating factors for the research in my dissertation. First, virtualization is no longer confined to the powerful server class machines. It has already been introduced into smart-phones and will be a part of other high-end embedded systems like automobiles in the near future. Second, more and more resource intensive and latency sensitive applications are being used in devices which are rather resource constrained and introducing virtualization into the software stack just exacerbates the resource allocation issue. The focus of my research is on memory management in virtualized environments. Existing memory-management mechanisms were designed for server class machines and their implementations are geared towards the applications running primarily on data centers and cloud setups. In these setups, appropriate load balancing and achieving fair division of resources are the goals and over-provisioning may be the norm. Latency involved in resource management mechanisms may not be a big concern. But in case of smart phones and other hand held devices, applications like media streaming, social-networking are prevalent, which are both resource intensive and latency sensitive. Moreover, the bursty nature of their memory requirement results in spikes in memory needs of the virtual machines. As over provisioning is not an option in these domains, fast and effective (memory) resource management mechanisms are necessary. The overall thesis of my dissertation is: with appropriate design and implementation, it is possible to achieve inter-VM memory management with a latency comparable to the latency involved in intra-VM memory management mechanisms like ‘malloc’. Towards realizing and validating this goal, I have made the following research contributions through my dissertation: (1) I analyzed the memory requirement pattern of prevalent applications, which exhibit bursty behavior and showcased the need for fast memory management mechanisms. (2) I designed and implemented a Coordinated Memory Management mechanism in Xen based virtualized setup, based on the split driver principle (3) I analyzed this mechanism and did a comparative evaluation with parallel memory management mechanisms. (4)I analyzed the extent of interference from the schedulers in the operation of the mechanism and implemented constructs that help in reducing the interference and latency. (5) Based on my analysis, I revised the implementation of the mechanism to one in which Xen hypervisor plays a more significant and active role in the coordination of the mechanism and I did a detailed analysis to showcase the latency improvements due to this design change. (6) In order to validate my hypothesis, I did a comparative analysis of inter-vm and intra-vm memory management mechanisms as final part of my dissertation.

Evidence abounds that visitor attractions are the central element of tourism development. Academics and practitioners have therefore focused much attention on attraction service quality, customer satisfaction and subsequent behavioural intentions. However, there is a dearth of empirical investigations supporting most claims relating to quality and satisfaction in an attractions context. Furthermore, perceived value, which theoretically influences behavioural intentions regarding attractions, has been omitted from models investigating attraction service constructs. Thus, there is a need for empirical investigation of the relationship between the perceived quality of attractions, visitor satisfaction and other service constructs, particularly perceived value. This study explores these service quality issues within the UK visitor attractions industry with particular reference to Alton Towers and Blists Hill Victorian Town. The aim of the research was to gain an understanding of how attraction visitors evaluate quality and to explain the relationship between service quality, value, satisfaction and behavioural intentions. To this end, a sequential, exploratory mixed-methods approach was employed. This included unstructured interviews, content analysis of promotional materials, expert opinion and a questionnaire survey of visitors at the two attractions. The sample for the latter was drawn from individuals who had visited the two attractions within the last 12 months. To identify key quality dimensions in the attractions, principal components analysis (PCA) was employed; the results revealed six underlying factors: ‘activities’, ‘staff’, ‘operation and environment’, ‘retail’, ‘access’ and ‘ease of use’. Ordinary least squares (OLS) multiple regression analysis was used to examine the relationship between the constructs. The factors that most influence quality are ‘activities’ and ‘retail’, and value is primarily determined by ‘activities’, ‘staff’ attributes and ‘retail’. Satisfaction is most influenced by perceived value whereas visitor satisfaction explains most of the variance in behavioural intention. The findings also show that satisfaction partially mediates the relationship between value and behavioural intentions, and that between quality and behavioural intentions. Value was shown to partially mediate the relationship between attraction attributes and satisfaction and between quality and behavioural intentions. The research makes several significant theoretical and managerial contributions. The key finding is that attraction attributes exert more influence on perceived value than on perceived quality. This suggests that the conceptualisation and measurement of value in previous research were possibly inadequate in capturing the dimensions of this construct. The findings also confirm the cognitive-affective-conative order between the service constructs within the context of UK visitor attractions and the important role of perceived value in understanding quality, satisfaction and behavioural intentions. However, the relationship between these constructs cannot be generalised and further research is needed to examine the relevance of the findings to other sectors. The results also indicate that attraction managers need to review their promotional materials, particularly websites, and ensure that the most effective messages are communicated to both existing and potential visitors.

published_or_final_version / Psychology / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts

This thesis is concerned with current debate about alternative 'lexical' and 'episodic' accounts of repetition priming in visual word perception. Like some previous research, the present study investigated effects of 'context congruence' of pre-test and test word presentations. However, modified methods were employed to limit methodoligical problems observed in previous research and to treat the issue of strategic control in repetition priming. The experiments investigated the effect of test orienting tasks which either did or did not require subjects to engage in deliberate remembering of pre-test context. A recognition-memory orienting task was employed to induce deliberate remembering and a letter-judgement orienting task was employed to avert deliberate remembering. Experiment 1 demonstrated a strong effect of orienting tasks in a naming task; repetition priming was reliably greater in the recognition-memory condition. The effect was replicated in a 'restricted' tachistoscopic identification task in Experiment 2, suggesting that the locus of the effect was within processes integral to word identification. Experiment 3 showed that the effect could not be attributed to an inadvertent masking of repetition priming in the letter-judgement conditions, or to be manipulation of subjects' prior knowledge of repetitions. Although these results provide new evidence of episodic memory coding in repetition priming, it can be argued that they do not necessarily imply that all repetition effects depend upon episodic memory coding. The remembering-enhanced repetition effect might reflect the superimposition of an exceptional autobiographical-memory repetition effect upon a normal lexical repetition effect. To test this possibility, Experiments 4 through 7 tested for evidence of dual memory components as a functional dissociation between normal and remembering-enhanced repetition effects. No evidence of a dissociation was found for the following expprimental manipulations: (1) modality of pre-test word presentation, (2) word frequency, (3) subjects' confidence criteria for word naming, (4) 'level of processing' of pre-test words. The discussion considers theoretical and methodological implications, and reviews some related research. The main conclusion suggests that the findings of this thesis are consistent with the assumption of a unitary episodic memory system underlying repetition priming and other phenomena of learning and memory, and that the findings pose some problems for alternative accounts.