二十四岁，不谈恋爱谈理财

PART124岁的理财故事 毕业后,林琳进了一家杂志社,从助理编辑做起,转眼3年过去了,她不仅完成了一次完美的跳槽,同时也获得了丰厚的薪水,月薪达6000元,跟男友王小伟的3500元相比,林琳的薪水算是比较高了。     

Further participatory adaptation is required for community leaders to champion conservation agriculture in Africa

There is a recognized need for the participation of local communities in designing and implementing agricultural interventions for the sustainable intensification in smallholder systems. This study examines the perspectives of local community leaders towards the widely promoted, but not widely adopted, practice of Conservation Agriculture (CA) in African smallholder systems. Perceptions from 47 community leaders (both from traditional local authorities and farmer organizations) across six African countries are documented regarding how CA matches the wants, needs and capabilities of farmers in their communities. While community leaders generally perceived CA as potentially beneficial, they also indicated that CA is not currently perceived as feasible within their communities and hence has limited relevance. Three key themes were identified that limit both CA use and sustainable intensification more generally: [1] a perceived reluctance of farmers to engage with the community platform as part of a higher input, market-oriented production system; [2] informational constraints due to non-functional exchange mechanisms; and [3] a lack of local adaptation of CA underscored by the persistence of top-down, linear research and extension approaches. Through greater understanding of local perspectives, a clearer picture emerges of the need for greater participatory engagement and local adaptation if sustainable intensification of African smallholder agricultural systems is to be achieved.     

Proximity and animal welfare in the context of tourist interactions with habituated dolphins

The long-term sustainability of wildlife tourism depends on integrating visitor demands with resource management, requiring an understanding of tourist motivation. Managing the conflict between access to the animals and welfare, however, may diminish the experience for tourists. This paper identifies trade-offs tourists are willing to make between access and animal welfare, associated with feeding habituated bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops sp.) in Monkey Mia, Western Australia. Using a choice modelling technique, we were able to determine monetary values of visitor experiences. Compared to the current guaranteed interaction with dolphins (and a daily resort entrance fee), respondents were willing to pay significantly higher hypothetical entrance fees to avoid a decrease in proximity to, or probability of, the dolphin interaction. However, negative impacts on dolphin welfare had a negative impact on visitor utility. Over 80% of visitors (n = 244) accepted management regulations resulting in decreased time with and proximity to dolphins, if those addressed welfare concerns and were communicated clearly. Thus, while visitors placed the greatest value on the proximity and predictability, they were willing to trade off these aspects if they improved dolphin welfare. We provide management suggestions based on these results.     

The contribution of vacations to quality of life

The contribution of vacations to people’s life satisfaction and Quality of Life (QOL) has recently attracted substantial attention among tourism researchers. Yet, most QOL scales do not include vacations: 7% explicitly measure vacations whereas 42% only include items relating to vacations within the broader Leisure domain. Leisure and vacations, however, differ substantially in nature with leisure referring to regular home-based activities and vacations being infrequent leisure activities away from home. As a consequence of the common amalgamation of vacations with leisure, there is limited knowledge about the specific contribution of vacations to people’s QOL. The present study (1) presents empirical evidence for the contribution of vacations to QOL, (2) determines the extent of this contribution, and (3) investigates variation in the extent to which vacations contribute to the QOL of different people. Results indicate that vacations contribute to the QOL of the majority of people, are as important a QOL domain as Leisure and People, and that QOL means different things to different people at different points in their life, representing an individual and dynamic concept.     

A preliminary study on customer expectations of hotel hospitality: Influences of personal and hotel factors

This study attempts to explain the influence of personal and hotel factors on the expectation level of hotel hospitality as well as to propose a scale to measure commercial hospitality for hotel services. A total of 101 local and international hotel guests were involved in the study. The results revealed that the expectations of hotel hospitality are influenced by personal factors such as gender, purpose of stay, nationality, and private domain of hospitality. The hotel's star rating is the only hotel factor that might have strong association with hotel hospitality.     

A review of experience curve analyses for energy demand technologies

Transitioning towards a sustainable energy system requires the large-scale introduction of novel energy demand and supply technologies. Such novel technologies are often expensive at the point of their market introduction but eventually become cheaper due to technological learning. In order to quantify potentials for price and cost decline, the experience curve approach has been extensively applied to renewable and non-renewable energy supply technologies. However, its application to energy demand technologies is far less frequent. Here, we provide the first comprehensive review of experience curve analyses for energy demand technologies. We find a widespread trend towards declining prices and costs at an average learning rate of 18 ± 9%. This finding is consistent with the results for energy supply technologies and for manufacturing in general. Learning rates for individual energy demand technologies are symmetrically distributed around the arithmetic mean of the data sample. Absolute variation of learning rates within individual technology clusters of 7 ± 4%-points and between technology clusters of 7 ± 5%-points both contribute to the overall variability of learning rates. Our results show that technological learning is as important for energy demand technologies as it is for energy supply technologies. Applying the experience curve approach to forecast technology costs involves, however, unresolved uncertainties, as we demonstrate in a case study for the micro-cogeneration technology.     

Tourism theory and the earth

Given that tourism is an “earthly business”, why is it that the Earth rarely explicitly appears in tourism studies and tourism theory? In an attempt to grapple with this paradox, this paper seeks to contribute to a conceptual re-cognition of the Earth in tourism theory by probing some theoretical obstacles and possibilities. The paper demonstrates how the Earth has been conceptually erased in tourism theory by a privileging of the mapping of tourism and tourists onto the reference plane of the social. As an alternative the paper seeks to provide a geo-philosophically informed conceptualisation of the Earth as a primary plane of reference of which tourism is a particular form of de/re-territorialisation.