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Optimising growth and survival in Irish aquaculture of abalone and sea urchins
Full text linkIncreased demand for abalone and sea urchins globally has resulted in increased production of these commercially important invertebrates in aquaculture. Transfer of aquaculture technology from established producing countries to Europe has resulted in the application and implementation of new technologies by farm operators in Ireland. \ud
The industry-based research presented in this thesis addresses key industry barriers in invertebrate aquaculture, focusing on production and on-growing methods for the European abalone Haliotis tuberculata and the commercially important native sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus. To resolve knowledge gaps in the production of algivorous invertebrates in Ireland four main issues were investigated:\ud
1- Industry, market and production constraints for the non-endemic species of abalone H. tuberculata and H. discus hannai were reviewed and evaluated. Findings indicated the current status and direction of the culture of abalone in Europe.\ud
2- New culture methods were developed for the green encrusting macroalgae Ulvella lens as it is known to increase settlement rates of swimming abalone and sea urchin larvae. Both abalone and sea urchins have similar preferences to settlement cues and the technology for settlement is common to both industries. Ulvella lens has been used and implemented successfully into the abalone industry in producing countries such as Japan and Australia.\ud
3- Culture methods developed for U. lens were applied to the P. lividus culture with the aim of implementing this developed technology into sea urchin aquaculture in Ireland. Due to the decline of the commercial P. lividus fishery in Ireland, increased interest has developed in the commercial culture of this species. The findings of this industry-based research indicate the need for increased commercial scale research addressing the production constraints that hamper the industry as a whole.\ud
4- Novel mixed macroalgal-meal diets enriched with bioavailable phosphorus were investigated for increased growth in the diet of H. tuberculata, and compared against Palmaria palmata. Weaning diets for juvenile abalone normally incorporate some form of animal protein, which does not belong in the natural diet of juvenile abalone as they are algivorous by nature. Phosphorus is limiting in the diets of abalone, and may not be available as it is bound in an indigestible form such as phytate
An exploration of attainment in leaving cert mathematics, and correlation, if any, with progression from first year civil engineering in GMIT
Full text linkThe ‘Mathematical Problem’ has been reported and discussed extensively in Ireland and internationally for the last twenty years. This problem relates to students entering numerate disciplines, such as Engineering, and the decline in basic mathematical skills and level of preparation on entry into Higher Education. This decline presents a major challenge for mathematical based degree courses.\ud
This paper reports on a case study of progression in first year of the Bachelor of Engineering in Civil Engineering Ordinary degree programme (Level 7) in Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT). This study analysed progression for the three previous academic years (2009-12) to determine if there was any correlation between progression and prior attainment in the Leaving Certificate Mathematics. Interview records of students who registered for the programme, conducted annually during induction, formed the basis for the study. The students who progressed from first year were also surveyed to determine their opinions on progression and measures to improve non-progression in first year. A review of strategies related to mathematics, adopted by other Engineering programmes, to improve progression is also considered.\ud
The analysis of progression, for this case study, suggests a strong correlation between attainment in mathematics in the Leaving Certificate and progression in first year of the Civil Engineering programme in GMIT. Furthermore, the research suggests that students with low attainment (less than B in Ordinary Level) are unlikely to progress beyond first year. The survey of the students, who did progress, indicated that they are acutely aware of the importance of mathematical competency in engineering. The results of this study make a compelling case for the introduction of a minimum entry requirement for LC mathematics for admission to the Civil Engineering programme in GMIT
Insights into the trophic ecology of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) in Irish waters
Full text linkThe stomach contents of 12 bottlenose dolphins were examined. Ten of the 11 samples originated from dolphins that stranded on the west coast of Ireland between 1999 and 2011, while the remaining dolphin was bycaught. Ten of the stomachs contained food remains, mainly fish bones and otoliths; two stomachs were empty. A total of 37 prey taxa were identified, suggesting that they have a broad diet. The main prey items identified were five gadoid fish. Also, four species were only identified from non-otolith skeletal material, highlighting the importance of including all skeletal material in dietary studies. Three distinct populations of bottlenose dolphins have been identified in Irish waters using genetic markers. Differences in diet were found among these populations, where their stomach contents suggest that these animals might be foraging in different habitats. Significant differences were found between dolphins stranded alive and those that were found dead where the former appeared to have been feeding more on pelagic species. Significant differences were also found between male and female dolphin diet: males had eaten a wider variety of prey items than females. Annual consumption rates for the coastal bottlenose dolphin population in Irish Atlantic coastal waters are estimated to be around 1,193.8 tonnes
Future developments of revenue management - perspectives of revenue management practitioners.
Full text linkThe purpose of this study was to explore revenue management practitioners’ view on future developments of revenue management (RM) with a focus on the hotel industry. While revenue management continues to evolve, there is a significant interest from academics and practitioners to explore future developments as this area is still under researched.\ud
In the presence of continuous evolving revenue management, criticisms on hotel revenue management practices have divulged and further developments are to be expected. The authors investigated prevailing literature on hotel revenue management to investigate a link between current criticisms on revenue management and possible developments by gathering practitioners’ perspectives on identified critics and new developments. The objectives involved a review of prevailing literature on hotel RM to investigate a link between criticisms on RM and new developments and thus gathering practitioners’ perspectives on identified critics and possible developments.\ud
The authors conducted an interpretive research philosophy, using a qualitative data collection process through semi-structured interviews with industry experts. Moreover, to ensure qualified participants a purpose full sampling was conducted and included seven RM practitioners. The foundations of the interviews were retrieved through the literature identifying several pattern codes. Findings obtained from the interviews were linked and compared to previous research identifying whether the results offered new insights or if they were in agreement with previous studies.\ud
The findings revealed that revenue management should focus on managing revenue from all revenue generating departments in order to optimize profitability. Also, a more technologically advanced and analytically tool focusing on customer behaviour and preferences through a combination of CCRM and CRM is to be expected. Thus, this should build up long-term customer relationships by communicating pricing practices to customers. It is very important to ensure that pricing practices are communicated to customers through clear, transparent and consistent RM
Literary Tourism and Yeats' Legacy - What can we learn from Shakespeare's birthplace?
Full text linkThis year 2015 celebrates the birth of the distinguished poet and Nobel Laureate William Butler Yeats. For visitors interested in Yeats and his contemporaries as well as modern day writers and poets, literary tourism offers an opportunity to capitalise on Ireland’s literary production, stretching beyond cultural stereotypes to tell an authentic story of Ireland’s cultural identity on a world stage. The literary tourism sector has evolved from people’s interest in literature, places that inspired the writing, formed the setting of the literary work or those linked to the writer’s birthplace, home or death.\ud
This study seeks to explore the concept of the literary place and the literary tourist incorporating themes of authenticity and commodification within the context of literary tourism. It explains how a place’s connections to an author or literary locations are increasingly being used to promote tourist destinations. The research will consider best practice and challenges as identified through a series of eleven qualitative interviews with key managers of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and the Royal Shakespeare Company based in Stratford-upon-Avon, an international literary tourism destination visited by up to 5 million tourists each year. The primary research explores the strategies used to preserve and promote the ‘lives, loves and legacy’ of Shakespeare. To conclude, the study recommends showcasing Ireland’s literary tourism offerings in a collaborative and sustainable way and it reflects on how insights from the Stratford experience could influence key stakeholders focused on preserving Yeats’ legacy whilst making it accessible to a wider audience
Investigating the use of social media tools by destination marketing organisations.
Full text linkThe objective of this study is to ascertain the extent to which Destination Marketing Organisations (DMOs) utilise social media tools in a bid to promote their tourism destinations to the world. In a tourism sense in particular, social media provide the ideal platforms for individuals to connect and share travel experiences with friends and family (Munar & Jacobsen 2013). Howison et al. (2014) illustrate the experiential, intangible nature of the tourism product in exploring the pivotal role that social media can have in the decision-making process of prospective travellers. Destination marketers must, therefore, embed a structure which looks to harness and nourish the online conversation focused around their destination via engaging with users of these social media platforms in a way which is not seen as intrusive or dominated by corporate themes.\ud
This study employs a mixed-methods approach. An online survey was conducted in the summer of 2014, whereby 63 national and state-level (USA) DMOs were surveyed on their current social media activities and internal structure. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted (face-to-face and via Skype) in order to further probe the users’ perceptions of social media and to gauge its usefulness within their organisation’s marketing activities. \ud
Usage of social media among DMOs varies a great deal. While all DMOs surveyed have an official presence on Facebook, usage of the many other networks remains sporadic. Increased worldwide usage of social media along with the growing trend of prospective travellers conducting research on potential holiday destinations online were the two most prevalent motivations behind DMOs venturing into social media; 72% and 58% (respectively) of those surveyed gave a rating of five out of five in terms of their importance behind their decision to engage with social media. The majority of survey respondents (84%) allocate between just one and five individuals to maintain their social media presences, while 36% say that they have no single person in the organisation specifically allocated to social media, instead social media is seen as supplementary to their main role in the organisation. A total of 38% stated that they expect their social media team to expand over the next 12 months, while 67% of those surveyed claim building ‘Brand Awareness’ to be the most important aspect of engaging in social media, ahead of the more finance-focused metrics, such as ‘Sales/Increase Visitor Numbers’ (7%) and ‘Cost Reduction’ (2%).\ud
In terms of social media’s potential impact on tourism numbers, the interviewee from Tourism Ireland explained the positive impact that social media has had on Ireland’s tourism brand exposure worldwide. He explained how Tourism Ireland can definitively say that 174,314 people travelled to Ireland in 2013 (during The Gathering initiative) after viewing one or more of Tourism Ireland’s promotional ads on social media. He did add, however, that while it’s certainly correlation, it is not necessarily causality. Such difficulty in attributing social media activities to growth in tourism numbers, therefore, remains a stiff challenge for all DMOs.\ud
Academic research in social media remains in its infancy, with the current fleet of platforms in a constant state of change and mutation. In a world whereby consumers are turning to peer reviews and the persuasive power of corporate marketing initiatives continue to decline, DMOs have now been charged with the task of building and maintaining an online community of brand advocates who will endeavour to bolster the destination’s image in online forums. While some are still getting to grips with social media, it remains a pivotal platform for self-promotion, community engagement, and market analysis, and will continue to be long into the future
Stakeholder engagement in destination management: Exploring key success factors.
Full text linkThe development of sustainable tourism destinations that can produce the requisite social, cultural, economic and environmental impacts requires high levels of interconnectedness between all stakeholders (Timur & Getz, 2008), however it is widely acknowledged that managing effective stakeholder interactions within tourism destinations is a task which is both complex and challenging. The objective of this research is to explore the strategies, activities and structuring of collaborative initiatives within tourism destinations in order to explicate best practice and elucidate the antecedents of effective stakeholder engagement at destination level.\ud
This research paper presents the findings of a study of stakeholder engagement practices within tourism destinations, namely Waterford, Ennis and Carlow. The first stage of the project involved a critical review of extant literature so as to clearly establish the characteristics and antecedents of successful inter-organisational collaboration, the factors that impact upon levels of stakeholder engagement and the range of potential impacts that effective stakeholder engagement can provide to tourism organisations, destinations and regions. A case approach was then utilised so as to allow for the dynamics of stakeholder engagement to be studied through understanding, observation and engagement with actual practice. The case studies were chosen to reflect stakeholder engagement structures of varying age, size, governance and location. A number of data collection methods (incl. interviews, direct-observation and documentary analysis) are used at each case location in order to build a holistic picture of the stakeholder engagement initiatives and their destination management impacts.\ud
The study allowed for the identification of a number of key success factors for harnessing the collective potential of destination stakeholders and led to the development of a number of recommendations to promote effective stakeholder engagement across the sector. By bringing together extant knowledge and case evidence in the area of stakeholder engagement, it is proposed that this paper will inform dialogue and practice in engaging stakeholders within tourism destinations
An implementation and evaluation of PCI DSS 3.0 for E-Commerce in a testing environment
Full text linkThreats to personal payment card information are continually on the rise. To implement a formal process for protecting this information PCI DSS was created. However credit card fraud is still rising. This leads to the question of whether or not PCI DSS is effective in protecting this data. This dissertation implements the 12 PCI DSS 3.0 requirements and tests the effectiveness in regard to the complexity of implementation.\ud
While there are clearly issues within the standard: existing ambiguities, speed of adapting to industry findings: the main issue with the standard is not with the standard itself but with a failure to comply and still accepting electronic payments. The self-assessment options as found in testing would have left many network vulnerabilities that would remain undiscovered without full standard implementation
Searchable symmetric encryption (sse): a mechanism for searching symmetrically encrypted data stored in the Cloud
Full text linkAquatic invasive alien species : top issues for their management
Full text linkIn November 2014, the European Union (Member Organization) (EU) published a new Regulation\ud
to address invasive alien species (IAS) and protect biodiversity. This Regulation entered into force\ud
across the EU in January 2015. Its aim is to “prevent the introduction of, control or eradicate alien\ud
species which threaten ecosystems, habitats or species”. In an effort to provide focus to the\ud
Regulation prior to its publishing and to identify the major issues relating to IAS in Europe (28\ud
countries of the EU and other European countries), the views of invasive species experts from\ud
around the world were sought. These were consolidated at an international conference (Freshwater\ud
Invasives – Networking for Strategy [FINS]) that was held in Ireland in April 2013. A major\ud
outcome from this meeting of experts was the production of the “Top 20” IAS issues that relate\ud
primarily to freshwater habitats but are also directly relevant to marine and terrestrial ecosystems.\ud
This list will support policy-makers throughout the EU as preparations are made to implement this\ud
important piece of legislation. A further outcome from the conference was the formation of an\ud
expert IAS advisory group to support EIFAAC in its work on invasive species