Photography and travel brochures: The circle of representation

The power of the visual image to inspire travel to distant places is well exploited by the myth-makers in tourism marketing and is important for understanding tourist behaviour. This paper explores the relevance of the 'circle of representation' concept to understanding one particular group of tourists: backpackers. First it reviews previous research on visual images and tourist photography, then it presents findings of research investigating the visual images of Australia promoted to and perceived by backpacker travellers. Specifically, the paper investigates evidence for the 'hermeneutic circle' whereby tourists (backpackers) reproduce the iconic images of destinations in their personal photographs. Brochure photographs projected to backpacker tourists and their own photography choices during travel are found to be part of a cultural 'circle of representation' or perhaps a 'spiral of representation' through which the iconic images of Australia are perpetuated

The Aquila comparison project : the effects of feedback and numerical methods on simulations of galaxy formation

We compare the results of various cosmological gas-dynamical codes used to simulate the formation of a galaxy in the Λ cold dark matter structure formation paradigm. The various runs (13 in total) differ in their numerical hydrodynamical treatment [smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), moving mesh and adaptive mesh refinement] but share the same initial conditions and adopt in each case their latest published model of gas cooling, star formation and feedback. Despite the common halo assembly history, we find large code-to-code variations in the stellar mass, size, morphology and gas content of the galaxy at z= 0, due mainly to the different implementations of star formation and feedback. Compared with observation, most codes tend to produce an overly massive galaxy, smaller and less gas rich than typical spirals, with a massive bulge and a declining rotation curve. A stellar disc is discernible in most simulations, although its prominence varies widely from code to code. There is a well-defined trend between the effects of feedback and the severity of the disagreement with observed spirals. In general, models that are more effective at limiting the baryonic mass of the galaxy come closer to matching observed galaxy scaling laws, but often to the detriment of the disc component. Although numerical convergence is not particularly good for any of the codes, our conclusions hold at two different numerical resolutions. Some differences can also be traced to the different numerical techniques; for example, more gas seems able to cool and become available for star formation in grid-based codes than in SPH. However, this effect is small compared to the variations induced by different feedback prescriptions. We conclude that state-of-the-art simulations cannot yet uniquely predict the properties of the baryonic component of a galaxy, even when the assembly history of its host halo is fully specified. Developing feedback algorithms that can effectively regulate the mass of a galaxy without hindering the formation of high angular momentum stellar discs remains a challenge