Lisa G Smyth
email: lisa.smyth@ucd.ie

M B Bch

Gillian O'hurley

MSc Anthony O'grady

PhD), John M Fitzpatrick

MD Elaine Kay

MD), R William G Watson

Carbonic anhydrase IX expression in prostate cancer

Keywords: hypoxia, prostate cancer, carbonic anhydrase IX

Introduction: Tumour hypoxia is associated with over 70% of solid tumours including prostate and colorectal cancer. Hypoxia promotes tumour progression and resistance to treatment. Carbonic anhydrase IX (CA IX) is an endogenous marker of hypoxia. It is expressed in lung and renal cell carcinomas and is associated with a poor prognosis. CA IX plays an important role in maintaining pH levels in the highly metabolically active cancer cell. The expression of CA IX in prostate cancer has not previously been investigated. Materials & Methods: Immunohistochemistry was used to examine CA IX expression in 59 patients, using tissue microarrays (TMAs) and full sections of benign prostatic hyperplasia, surrounding stroma and prostate adenocarcinoma. Cores reviewed included 189 benign prostatic hyperplasia, 130 Gleason grade 3, 93 Gleason grade 4, 40 Gleason grade 5. CA IX expression in colorectal cancer and HIF 1α in prostate cancer acted as positive controls. Results: There was only occasional cell staining for CA IX expression. Discussion: Although prostate cancer is a hypoxic tumour it does not express CA IX.

This implies it relies on alternative pathways for maintaining pH balance in cancer. These studies would indicate that CA IX is not a suitable marker of hypoxia in prostate cancer.

Introduction

Prostate cancer is the most common solid tumour affecting men. Tumour hypoxia is characteristic of a wide range of solid tumours such as prostate, breast and head and neck tumours [START_REF] Vaupel | Hypoxia in breast cancer: Pathogenesis, characterisation and biological/therapeutic implications[END_REF][START_REF] Marginol | Hypoxia in prostate cancer: a powerful shield against tumour destruction?[END_REF]. Hypoxia promotes tumour progression [START_REF] Hoeckel | Biological consequences of tumour hypoxia[END_REF] and resistance to therapeutic treatment [START_REF] Harris | Hypoxia a key regulatory factor in tumour growth[END_REF] through reduced apoptosis, increased proliferation and angiogenesis.

Tumour hypoxia can be measured by immunohistochemical analysis of endogenous markers, exogenous drugs (2-nitroimidazoles), needle probe estimation and imaging techniques. Endogenous markers commonly used in prostate cancer are HIF 1α and VEGF [START_REF] Vergis | Intrinsic markers of hypoxia and angiogenesis in localised prostate cancer and outcome of radical treatment: a retrospective analysis of two randomised radiotherapy trials and one surgical cohort study[END_REF] . There are methodological difficulties as a result of extended fixation and surgical ischaemia on levels of HIF1α in addition to the dilemma of measuring nuclear or cytoplasm levels. Carbonic anhydrase IX (CA IX) has been used as an endogenous marker of hypoxia in a range of solid tumours including bladder, renal cell, lung and tumours of the head and neck [START_REF] Sherwood | Carbonic anhydrase IX expression and outcome after radiotherapy for muscle-invasive bladder cancer[END_REF][START_REF] Swinson | Carbonic anhydrase IX expression, a novel surrogate marker of tumour hypoxia, is associated with a poor prognosis in non-small-cell lung cancer[END_REF][START_REF] Bui | Carbonic anhydrase IX is an independent predictor of survival in advanced renal clear cell carcinoma: implications for prognosis and therapy[END_REF][START_REF] Schrijvers | Overexpression of intrinsic hypoxic markers HIF1 alpha and CA IX predict for local recurrence in stage T1-T2 glottic laryngeal carcinoma treated with radiotherapy[END_REF]. CA IX expression is associated with a more aggressive phenotype and resistance to treatment.

Hypoxia occurs in the prostate as a result of inflammation, cell remodelling, proliferating tumour cells and abnormal tumour vasculature. As a result of hypoxia cell metabolism switches to anaerobic glycolysis leading to the production of acidic metabolites.

Adaptation of cells to hypoxia and acidosis is vital for cell survival and tumourigenesis.

The pH of solid tumours is significantly more acidic than that of normal tissues and impairs the uptake of weakly basic chemotherapeutic drugs thus reducing their anti cancer effect on the tumours [START_REF] Sennoune | Plasma-lemmal vacuolar-type H+-ATPase in cancer biology[END_REF][START_REF] Nishi | The vacuolar (H+)-ATPases-nature's most versatile proton pumps[END_REF][START_REF] Sennoune | Vacuolar H+-ATPase in human breast cancer cells with distinct metastatic potential: distribution and functional activity[END_REF]. Carbonic anhydrases are a group of zinc containing metalloenymes that are involved in pH balance and the reversible conversion of carbon dioxide to bicarbonate and protons [START_REF] Potter | Hypoxia inducible carbonic anhydrase IX, marker of tumour hypoxia, survival pathway and therapy target[END_REF]. They facilitate diffusion and active transport with membrane associated ion transport systems such as sodium-hydrogen exchanger and chloride-bicarbonate anion exchanger. The CAs are located in the normal mucosa of the intestinal tract, gallbladder and seminal ducts. CA IX is found in high concentrations in the rapidly dividing Krypts of Luberkuhn [START_REF] Saarnio | Immunohistochemistry of carbonic anhydrase isozyme in human gut reveals polarised expression in the epithelial cells with the highest proliferative capacity[END_REF]. CA IX is up regulated in hypoxia in response to HIF 1 alpha binding to the hypoxia responsive element of CA IX promoter [START_REF] Potter | Hypoxia inducible carbonic anhydrase IX, marker of tumour hypoxia, survival pathway and therapy target[END_REF][START_REF] Zavada | Human tumour-associated cell adhesion protein MN/CA IX: identification of M75 epitope and of the region mediating cell adhesion[END_REF][START_REF] Svastova | Carbonic anhydrase IX reduces E-cadherin-mediated adhesion of MDCk cells via interaction with beta-catenin[END_REF][START_REF] Robertson | Role of carbonic anhydrase IX in human tumour cell growth, survival and invasion[END_REF]. They have a pro-survival function maintaining intra-cellular pH (pHi) high preventing cell death and extracellular pH (pHe) low (6.9-7.0) [START_REF] Parkkila | Significance of pH regulation and carbonic anhydrases in tumour progression and implications for diagnostic and therapeutic approaches[END_REF] ensuring cell growth and invasion through activation of proteolytic and signal transduction pathways.

Research in CA IX has led to the development of specific inhibitors [START_REF] Winum | Carbonic anhydrase inhibitors. Inhibition of the human cytosolic isoforms I and II and transmembrane, tumor-associated isoforms IX and XII with boronic acids[END_REF]. The objective of this study was to investigate if CA IX is upregulated in prostate cancer. Representative full sections from 5 cases used in the TMAs were also examined for CA IX. These full sections consisted of histologically benign glands and prostate adenocarcinoma.

Materials and Methods

Patients

Immunohistochemistry: Tissue microarray sections (4μm) and full sections underwent deparaffinization, antigen retrieval and immunohistochemistry on an automated immunohistochemistry (ICH) platform (Bond Max TM -Leica Microsystems). 3'3 Daiminobenzidine (DAB) was used as a chromagen with a polymer detection system, resulting in a brown end colour. Table 1 shows the optimal antigen retrieval and optimal concentrations of primary antibodies determined for immunohistochemistry. Sections were counterstained with haematoxylin. The immunohistochemical reactivity of the proteins analysed were scored in a blinded fashion with regard to histological diagnosis by a single observer (GOH), and 10% were randomly spot checked by a pathologist (EK) .

Results

Immunohistochemical analysis of CA IX expression on TMAs:

Overall histologically benign glands and all grades of prostate cancer had negative immunoexpression for CA IX. However, positivity was noted in the nuclei of two epithelial cells in a Gleason grade 3 tumour from one case (Fig. 1K, see arrows).

Immunohistochemical analysis of CA IX expression on full sections:

There was no CA IX expression in the prostate full sections analysed. The findings of the full sections reflected those of the TMAs

Discussion

CA IX usually stains heterogeneously with the highest intensity adjacent to areas of necrosis or on luminal surfaces or papillary structures [START_REF] Klatte | The role of carbonic anhydrase IX as a molecular maker for transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder[END_REF]. Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is an exception; it demonstrates a uniform staining pattern. This is thought to be as a result of constitutively up-regulated HIF 1α pathway secondary to the inactivity of the von Hippel Lindau (VHL) gene [START_REF] Potter | Hypoxia inducible carbonic anhydrase IX, marker of tumour hypoxia, survival pathway and therapy target[END_REF]. CA IX is now the best and most powerful diagnostic and predictive marker of clear cell RCC [START_REF] Belldegrun | Carbonic anhydrase IX: role in the diagnosis and cancer therapy[END_REF]. RCC stain positively for CA IX in 94% of cases [START_REF] Said | Biomarker discovery in urogenital cancer[END_REF] and this is associated with poor prognosis [START_REF] Bui | Carbonic anhydrase IX is an independent predictor of survival in advanced renal clear cell carcinoma: implications for prognosis and therapy[END_REF].

In colon cancer CA IX tends to stain the epithelial cell membrane. One large study demonstrated that it tends to stain early Dukes' stage and lymph node negative rectal cancer [START_REF] Rasheed | Assessment of microvessel denisty and carbonic anhydrase-9 (CA-9) expression in rectal cancer[END_REF]. In transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder CA IX expression is also predominantly membranous and occurs in luminal, peri-necrotic areas or infrequently nuclear staining has been demonstrated [START_REF] Sherwood | Carbonic anhydrase IX expression and outcome after radiotherapy for muscle-invasive bladder cancer[END_REF].

Prostate cancer is associated with hypoxia as shown on needle electrode studies [START_REF] Parker | Polargraphic electrode study of tumour oxygenation in clinically localised prostate cancer[END_REF] and up regulation of endogenous markers of hypoxia, HIF 1 alpha and VEGF [START_REF] Lekas | The expression of hypoxia-inducible factor-1alpha and angiogenesis in hyperplastic and malignant prostate tissue[END_REF]. However we have shown only scattered cells staining for CA IX. To ensure that hypoxic areas were not missed on TMA we also stained full sections and the results reflected that of the The V-ATPases are proton pumps composed of 14 subunits. They are organized into 2 domains (V 1 and V 0 ). The V 1 domains carries out hydrolysis of ATP while V 0 domain carries out proton transport. They are involved in pH regulation, renal tubule acidification, and bone resorption [START_REF] Forgac | Vacuolar ATPases: rotary proton pumps in physiology and pathophysiology[END_REF]. They are regulated by several mechanisms including glucose dependent V 1 and V 0 dissociation and by their cellular localization [START_REF] Jefferies | Function, structure and regulation of the vacuolar (H+)-ATPases[END_REF]. They have been demonstrated on the apical surface of human prostate epithelial cells [START_REF] Herak-Kramberger | Distribution of the vacuolar H+ ATPase along the rat and human male reproductive tract[END_REF]. They are up regulated in certain cancers and their metastases.

Immunocytochemical and confocal microscopy studies have demonstrated the presence of the V-ATPases on the cell surface of breast cancer cells [START_REF] Sennoune | Vacuolar H+-ATPase in human breast cancer cells with distinct metastatic potential: distribution and functional activity[END_REF].

Monocarboxylate transporters (MCTs) are involved in the efflux of lactic acid, pyruvate, acetate and butyrate from the cell [START_REF] Stock | Protons make tumour cells move like clockwork[END_REF]. This is carried out through the co-transport of H + with the above monocarboxylate anions [START_REF] Halestrap | The SLC16 gene family-from monocarboxylate transporters (MCTs) to aromatic amino acid transporters and beyond[END_REF]. There are four known members (MCT1-4).

MCT 4 is the most common in cells with a high glycolytic rate such as tumor cells [START_REF] Halestrap | The proton linked monocarboxylate transporter (MCT) family: structure, function and regulation[END_REF] and is shown to accumulate on the migrating surface of cells [START_REF] Stock | Protons make tumour cells move like clockwork[END_REF]. It is known to be inducible by hypoxia in bladder cancer cells [START_REF] Ord | Comparison of hypoxia in vitro with in vivo gene expression in human bladder cancer[END_REF]. They may have a role in the acidification of the pHe in prostate cancer. Although further studies are required to elucidate the exact pH regulation mechanism involved in prostate cancer we have given new insight into prostate cancer cell physiology and clearly demonstrated that CA IX is not expressed in cancer of the prostate.

Although prostate cancer is a hypoxic tumour it does not express CA IX and cannot be used as an endogenous marker of hypoxia. We hypothesise that the prostate depends on alternative mechanisms for pH regulation.

:

  This study included 59 patients with a wide range of Gleason scores (5-10) who underwent radical retropubic prostatectomy (RRP) in the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital and St James's Hospital between 2002-2008 for prostate adenocarcinoma. These samples were collected as part of the Prostate Cancer Research Consortium with ethical approval. Pathological specimens: TMAs and full sections were examined for CA IX expression. TMAs were constructed from 59 RRP specimens using the Beecher Instruments Tissue-Arrayer TM (Beecher Instruments, Silver Spring, MD). Suitable formalin fixed paraffin embedded blocks of each case representing as many Gleason grades as possible were selected. The corresponding Haematoxylin and Eosin (H&E) stained sections were reviewed by a Pathologist (EK). One to three cores from histologically benign glands and from each grade of prostate cancer were sampled from each case where available. A total of 189 areas of histologically benign glands, 130 areas of Gleason grade 3, 93 areas of Gleason grade 4 and 40 areas of Gleason grade 5 were present on the TMAs.

  TMAs. Cells use different mechanisms for pH regulation in addition to the carbonic anhydrases there are the proton extruders; Na + /H + exchanger (NHE), HCO 3 --based H +transporting mechanisms, monocarboxylate transporters (MCT1 & MCT4) and Vacuolar--type H + ATPases (V-ATPases).

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig.1. Immunohistochemistry results for CA IX and HIF 1α in corresponding

Table 1 . Summary of antibodies used for immunohistochemistry staining

 1

						Optimal	Epitope
	Protein Antibody		Antibody Company	Optimal Dilution	Reteival for Max TM -	Bond Leica
						Microsystems
		anti-CA	IX
	CA IX	monoclonal		(Research Gift) 1\100	No Epitope Retrieval
		M75 antibody
		anti-HIF-1
	HIF-1	Polyclonal, mono-specific	Atlas Antibodies 1\200	ER 2 for 20 mins
		HPA001275

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by individual grants from the British Urological Foundation and the Joint RCSI/UCD Surgical Research Grant Incorporating the Gussie Mehigan Scholarship. We thank Professor Adrian Harris, Molecular Oncology laboratories, University of Oxford for the gift of the M75 antibody.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing financial interests.


Romeo Said

Yves Mahéo Valoria

Toward a Platform for Service Discovery and Invocation in Disconnected Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Keywords: Disconnected Mobile Ad Hoc Networks, Serviceoriented Computing, Service Platform, Content-based Communication, Opportunistic Networking

This paper presents a middleware platform that supports the provision of services in disconnected MANETs. This kind of MANET shows specific mobility, volatility and density characteristics that lead to the absence of end-to-end connectivity and thus to the fragmentation of the network. The presented platform exploits content-based communications (through a publish/subscribe paradigm) and follows a store-carry-and-forward approach for the network-wide opportunistic dissemination of messages. Service discovery and invocation are implemented on top of these communication features. The paper first describes the two layers of the platform and then gives simulation results obtained when evaluating the discovery and invocation satisfactions as well as the network load in a realistic scenario.

Introduction

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are formed spontaneously by a number of mobile devices that communicate thanks to short-range wireless communication capabilities, using for example Wi-Fi or Bluetooth interfaces. A main advantage of this kind of network is that it can be used without deploying a specific -and sometimes costly-infrastructure (such as an interconnected set of Wi-Fi base stations). MANETs actually cover a wide variety of situations depending to the density of nodes in the network, their volatility -that is the fact that they may temporarily be switched off-or their mobility scheme. In this paper we address a particular class of MANETs we will refer to as disconnected MANETs. Disconnected MANETs show a low density and/or a high mobility of nodes. As a consequence, a temporaneous path cannot always be established between any pair of nodes in the network: end-to-end connectivity is thus not guaranteed. Figure 1 shows an example of such a disconnected MANET, in which some laptops and handheld devices with Wi-Fi interfaces are scattered in several buildings. Because of their mobility, their limited radiorange and their volatility, the devices in this network form so-called "islands" whose topology evolves continuously. The lower part of Figure 1 highlights the fragmentation of the network into communication islands at a given time. Temporaneous communication between two islands is not possible. As a consequence, network-wide communication itself in such a network is still a challenge, namely because routing techniques designed for fully connected MANETs cannot be applied.

There is however a need for building applications that target disconnected MANETS. Some examples of application domains include information sharing during disaster relief interventions, tourist services in infrastructure-less sites or traffic information in town centers. Service-oriented applications seem well suited for this purpose. Building applications based on software services is now well mastered and supported by many techniques and tools, among which the most popular Web Services [START_REF] Group | Web services architecture[END_REF]. Moreover this approach fosters decoupling between interacting applicative entities. It should therefore accommodate well with the connectivity constraints of disconnected MANETs.

Service-oriented applications involve distributed components that can either play the role of service providers or service clients. Service provision is generally performed in two main steps: service discovery, during which services advertised by providers can be discovered by potential clients, and service invocation, during which a given client actually interacts with the provider of a previously discovered service. A selection phase may precede the invocation, when the opportunity is given to the service client to choose among several providers.

Although the service-oriented approach seems relevant for disconnected MANETS, implementing distributed services for such networks still poses several challenges. Not only network-wide communication features must be provided, in spite of constant network fragmentation, but aspects such as the unpredictable reachability of the providers or potential communication delays must be taken into account at the service level. Our overall objective is to build a service platform that will support the execution of serviceoriented applications in disconnected MANETs. We describe in this paper the main features of this platform, focusing on service discovery and service invocation.

As far as communication is concerned, the absence of end-to-end connectivity precludes traditional routing techniques that strive to identify a succession of nodes that forms a path between a sender and a receiver, in order to be able to transmit a message temporaneously along this path. In our platform, we will rather apply a store-carry-andforward approach, in which each node maintains a cache of messages. Hence, a message can be stored temporarily on a node, in order to be forwarded later by this node when circumstances permit, that is, when one or several devices susceptible of being appropriate carriers of the message pass in the neighborhood. Moreover, mobility can facilitate message propagation, as devices can carry a message when moving from an island to another. Another important impact of the fragmentation of the network is that the reachability of hosts is very fluctuating. So relying on destination-based communication (e.g. by manipulating addresses of service providers) for delivering requests and replies is likely to be inappropriate. A more suitable communication model is content-based communication. In content-based communication, the flow of information is interest-driven rather than destination-driven [START_REF] Carzaniga | Content-based Networking: A New Communication Infrastructure[END_REF]. Receivers specify the kind of information they are interested in, without regard to any specific source. Senders simply send information in the network without addressing it to any specific destination. It is noteworthy that content-based communication does not preclude destination-based communications which can be simply implemented thanks to a destination attribute included in the content of the messages and serving as a key-interest by the receivers. Our platform includes an implementation of this content-based communication paradigm based upon message dissemination. Both service discovery and service invocation exploit this dissemination through a publish/subscribe API.

At the service level, disconnected networks are challenged environments as far as interaction opportunities between clients and providers are concerned. A centralization of service descriptor management is therefore not applicable. On the contrary, our platform includes fully distributed descriptor repositories. Moreover we enrich these descriptors with semantic attributes to facilitate the selection of a service provider. Finally, as service clients have no guarantee about the immediate availability of -even already known-service providers at a given time, it is desirable that a client be able to invoke more than one specific provider when possible. We address this aspect by implementing a form of grouping of providers that can be invoked interchangeably.

The remaining of this paper is organized as follows. The different features of our service platform for disconnected MANETs is detailed in Section 2. We namely detail in this section the lower layer of the platform that serves as a communication support and the upper layer that focuses on service level aspects. Section 3 presents simulation results. The paper ends with some related works listed in Section 4 and a conclusion in Section 5.

Service platform

The service platform we designed is structured in two layers. Figure 2 gives an overview of its architecture. The first layer is a high-level service layer that is in charge of all service oriented processing, enabling discovery and invocation interactions between clients and providers. The second layer is a communication layer taking care of all data level exchanges, resulting in a communication system fully adapted to disconnected network environments. From the service layer point of view, a message is sent from a source node in the network using a message publication. The message is disseminated in the network according to its content; it is received at a node that has previously provided a pattern matching this message, via a subscription operation.

Figure 2. Architecture of the service platform

One service platform is operational on each network node. It enables a node to act as a provider and/or a client. The service platform can host several providers: each provider module exposes an installed business service, acting as a container for installed business classes. Likewise the service platform can host several clients. Each client module needs to consume an exposed service corresponding to a defined service pattern. The repository module acts as a decentralized storage of local and collected descriptions of services, and it applies global discovery and advertising policies. The communication layer implements a publish/subscribe module over a store-carry-and-forward module in order to enable content-based message dissemination. The node controller manages the lifecycles of the previously mentioned modules and applies node-wide preferences.

The service delivery is carried out in two phases of client-provider interactions. The first phase is the service discovery during which a provider should advertise each of its service in the network for potential clients. The second phase is the service invocation during which a client can invoke a previously discovered provider.

Communication layer

The lower part of our service platform consists in a communication support adapted to disconnected MANETs. This layer, called DoDWAN (Document Dissemination in Wireless Ad Hoc Network), ensures the content-driven dissemination of information network-wide, despite the fragmentation of the network into isolated communication islands. It implements a model that manipulates structured pieces of information we referred to as "documents". A document is composed of two parts: its header, and its content. The header can be perceived as a collection of attributes, which can provide any kind of information about the corresponding document, such as its origin, its topic, a list of keywords, the type of its content, etc. Some storage capacity in each node is dedicated to a local cache of documents, so this node can serve as a mobile carrier (thus it can be seen as a memorizing relay) for these documents while moving in the network. The dissemination model implemented in DoDWAN is not mere flooding. Indeed, each node in the network is associated an "interest profile", that determines the kind of information it is interested in, and thus implicitly the kinds of documents for which it is willing to serve as a mobile carrier. Therefore, uninterested nodes do not participate in the dissemination.

A gossip-like communication protocol orchestrates interactions between neighboring nodes, allowing them to exchange documents according to their respective interest profiles. Interaction between mobile nodes relies on a simple scheme, whereby each node periodically broadcasts its own interest profile and a catalog of the document headers that are currently available in its local cache. When a node discovers that one of its neighbors can provide a document it is interested in (that is, a document header that matches its own interest profile and that is not already available in its own cache), it can request a copy of this document from this neighbor. Upon receiving one or several requests for a particular document from its neighbors, the owner of this document broadcasts it on the wireless medium, so it can be received by all requesters simultaneously. Transient contacts between mobile nodes are thus exploited opportunistically for exchanging documents between these nodes, based on their respective interest profiles, and based on the documents they can provide each other on demand. DoDWAN provides a publish/subscribe API we used to construct our service layer. With this API the programmer is provided a number of interfaces for publishing documents and for subscribing for documents. Publishing a document comes down to depositing this document in the local cache so that it can automatically disseminate in the network, following the protocol described above. The subscription method takes two parameters: first a document pattern must be given for selecting a particular kind of documents (documents that match this pattern will be deposited in the local cache). The second parameter is a handler that will be called when the selected documents arrive in the cache. Specifying a null handler is a means to make the node behave as a simple relay for the selected documents, without actually consuming these documents (i.e. passing them to the upper layer via the handler). DoDWAN is designed so as to maximize the document delivery ratio while remaining very frugal as far as the number and the volume of messages are concerned. Further information about DoDWAN and about the content-based dissemination protocol it implements can be found in [START_REF] Haillot | A Protocol for Content-Based Communication in Disconnected Mobile Ad Hoc Networks[END_REF].

Service discovery

Service description. The service discovery process begins with the description of services by the provider, using all the information needed by potential clients to select the appropriate service and to invoke its provider. The provider creates and advertises its service descriptors by publishing them in the network. A descriptor is disseminated by network nodes until it eventually reaches a client node. The descriptor is an XML document whose main components are depicted in Figure 3. Three mandatory components form a minimal descriptor: identifier, semantic property, and functional property (starred components in Figure 3). Functional properties (written in WSDL [START_REF] Chinnici | Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 2.0[END_REF]) describe the programming interface used by clients to formulate invocation requests. Though, these functional properties may not be expressive enough for clients to choose the right service. Therefore, a set of semantic properties are included in the descriptor, that form a contract proposition of offers and requirements. An offer represents what the service proposes to its clients. A requirement represents what the service needs as input from the client in order to do its job. Providers can also add non-functional properties to enhance the description (e.g. author, version, language, cost, etc.).

Service selection. On the client side, another XML document called service pattern must be created to convey the wishes of a client hoping to discover a suitable service. The service pattern contains components similar to those of the service descriptor. A service pattern passes from the client module to the repository. The repository may itself append non functional properties to the pattern in order to take into account node-wide discovery preferences (e.g. a required security level). Finally the repository submits the resulting pattern for subscription in the publish/subscribe module.

The pattern subscription in the publish/subscribe module enables a content-based matching process between the client's preferences expressed in the pattern against the descriptors that are disseminated in the network. If a match is made by the publish/subscribe module, the received descriptor is passed up to the repository module for servicelevel caching. The client can now select the descriptor cached in the repository and formulate its requests accordingly. In case the repository stores several matching descriptors for the same pattern, it is up to a higher application level to decide which one to select.

In the current implementation of the platform, we use simple property-value elements with regular expressions in the pattern to be matched against corresponding propertyvalue elements of the descriptor. In order to enhance the discovery, we intend in future works to use and evaluate semantic ontologies for the description of services, taking advantage of the work done in the domain of semantic web services [START_REF] Owl-S | Semantic Markup for Web Services[END_REF].

Service invocation.

The service layer is tolerant to communication delays induced by the very nature of disconnected network environments. The amount of delay that a client can tolerate depends on the interactivity level needed (at business level) for it to operate in reasonably good conditions.

After the selection process, the selected provider is invoked using request and response messages (currently implemented using SOAP [START_REF] Gudgin | SOAP version 1.2[END_REF]). The client formulates a request according to the functional properties of the descriptor; it publishes its request in the network to the attention of the provider (using the provider's ID) and then subscribes to the corresponding responses so he can be notified when they are received.

Service group. With the procedure described above, the final destination of an invocation request is restricted to the selected provider node. Yet, several compatible providers could be found in the network, all exposing the same business service. These compatible providers can therefore substitute each other when it comes to responding to a request, hence providing sometimes faster responses (if the originally intended provider has become distant or even unreachable). The choice of actually using this invocation mode depends on the client needs and on the service application scenarios (state-less or state-full service invocations). The multiplicity of providers could be the result of different providers hosting the same service implementation, or different providers hosting different service implementations with the same declared invocation interface.

We call a service group the set of these compatible service providers. In order for a client to benefit from a group of compatible providers, this client should use the contentbased dissemination of the request message more effectively. We made this possible by appending a reduced version of the service descriptor to the header of the request in order to let other providers decide whether or not they can answer. Hence, as illustrated in Figure 3, a client formulates its request not only with the SOAP part and the primary intended destination (i.e. the provider ID) but also with a description of the invoked service (i.e. some semantic and functional properties). Symmetrically, providers do not receive only the requests for which they are the primary destination. Instead, they use the publish/subscribe module so that they receive all the requests containing a reduceddescriptor part matching one of the descriptors of the services they provide. This use of groups may yield multiple response messages for the same client request. We identified two possible policies that can be applied locally by the providers for managing these responses. The first one is an isolation policy: when a request is received, the provider simply replies to this request. The other one is a competition policy: providers attempt to reduce the replication of responses. When a provider receives a request, it replies and publishes an exclusivity control message for the other compatible providers in an effort to prevent them from replying to the same request. A provider makes sure that it has not already received any exclusivity message before replying to a received request. Notice that this policy is a post-response coordination attempt, because compatible providers do not rely on any form of a priori group affiliation and therefore the exclusivity does not need to be guaranteed. It is an attempt to reduce the extra load created by multiple responses that are sent in the network.

This describes a service group scenario where the compatible providers are acting rather independently. More advanced inter-provider coordinations and cooperations are envisaged in future works.

Simulation Results

We conducted a number of simulations in order to evaluate our service platform. The main objective is to assess the performance of service discovery and invocation (in terms of response time and network load) in as realistic as possible conditions.

Environment. The environment we used for our simulations is an area of 500×900 meters populated with network nodes (see Figure 1). It represents a tourist site with 4 buildings where pedestrians equipped with laptops or hand-held devices can wander. Nodes can be stationary in buildings temporarily or move from one building to another through pre-defined footpaths, at a speed of 0.5 to 2 meters per second. A node can choose to pause for a period of time of 1 to 6 minutes. A node spends 50% of the time indoor and the rest of the time moving between buildings. A node represents a laptop, a PDA, or a smart-phone equipped with a Wi-Fi interface and capable of interacting with its neighbors in ad hoc mode. We assume that nodes have a wireless coverage radius ranging from 20 to 30 meters. The simulations were performed with the MADHOC network simulator [START_REF] Hogie | The MADHOC simulator[END_REF], which allows us to run the actual implementation code of the service platform.

We populated the simulation environment with 80 network nodes, among which 8 play the role of service providers and 32 act as service clients. The remaining 40 nodes are neither providers nor clients but are used as simple message relays in some simulation runs. Four different business services are deployed on the providers; each service is actually deployed twice in order to obtain 8 provider nodes. Four different types of clients are present, forming four sets of eight clients targeting the same service.

Scenarios. Globally, at the start of a simulation run, providers and clients are distributed in the 4 buildings, each building containing 2 service providers (one fixed provider and one mobile provider) and 8 mobile service clients.

The experiment consists in running three simulation scenarios, all with the same node mobility model but with various behaviors with respect to message dissemination:

1. In the first simulation scenario, only the 8 providers and 32 clients participate selectively in the message dissemination performed by the communication layer.

The remaining 40 nodes are passive and do not even relay messages.

2. The second simulation scenario is similar to the first, but now, the 40 nodes that are neither providers nor clients become interested in relaying messages. So we obtain 40 provider and client nodes that relay the messages and effectively consume the messages relative to service discovery and invocation they are concerned with, and 40 additional nodes just helping in the message dissemination process, regardless of the type of service involved.

3. In the third simulation scenario, we consider that all 80 nodes have disabled their store-carry-and-forward module of the communication layer. As a consequence, no network-wide dissemination is possible. In this "proximity" scheme, providers and clients must be in wireless range to interact. This scenario is intended to model an approach that gives results very similar to what could be obtained with more classical one-hop broadcast-based discovery methods (e.g. with UPnP).

As far as the service layer is concerned, the behavior of the providers and the clients is defined for a discovery phase followed by a single invocation. At time zero, all the service providers publish their service descriptor and wait for incoming service invocations. Publication is made only once except in the third scenario in which it is repeated regularly because network-wide dissemination is not performed. Every client's objective is to invoke a desired service once. For this purpose, a client defines a service pattern and waits until it discovers an adequate service descriptor. It then makes its invocation to the provider specified in the discovered descriptor.

Satisfaction ratios. We evaluated the satisfaction of clients for the discovery phase as well as for the complete discovery-invocation cycle. The discovery satisfaction ratio is defined as the percentage of clients that have discovered the service they targeted at a given time. Figure 4 presents the results obtained for the three simulation scenarios described above. It shows that the use of network-wide dissemination has a drastic impact on the speed of discovery: after 1600 seconds, 90% of the clients have discovered the service they wanted when only half of the nodes (that is the providers and the clients) participate in the dissemination (scenario 1 with 40 relays). This percentage reaches 100% when all the nodes are ready to play the role of relay (scenario 2 with 80 relays). After the same period of time, only 30% of the clients are satisfied when communications are restricted to one-hop transmissions (scenario 3: proximity).

The satisfaction ratio is calculated in a similar way for service invocations: it is the percentage of clients that have received a reply from the provider (after the discovery phase and after having sent their invocation request). Figure 5 plots this ratio against time for the three scenarios considered. Scenario 3 shows an invocation curve that is almost identical to the discovery one. This is because the invocation request and response can almost always be transmitted immediately after the client has discovered the service, as in such cases the provider is a close neighbor (the slight loss is due to the fact that sometimes a client and a provider do not stay close to each other long enough to complete the invocation process). The performance in scenarios 1 and 2 -that exploit our network-wide dissemination modelremains significantly higher, in spite of the fact that pointto-point requests and replies are performed via publish/subscribe methods.

Network load. Resorting to network-wide dissemination for service advertisement yields a higher number of messages when compared to a one-hop broadcast-based method. Moreover, the fact that we exploit a publish/subscribe for point-to-point invocation requests and replies is likely to burden the network with an extra load. However, the gossiping protocol implemented in DoDWAN has been designed so as to minimize the number and the size of the exchanged messages, thus reducing the actual load. Figure 6 plots the measured load of the network over time in the three considered scenarios. This load is expressed as the cumulative amount of data (in kB) sent by all nodes in the wireless medium. The figure confirms that the load in the "proximity" scenario increases linearly, because of the periodic advertisements of service descriptors. The curves for the scenarios involving network-wide dissemination have a higher slope but tends to flatten after a while. It can be noticed that the number of relays can be chosen to obtain a good compromise between the client satisfaction and the network load. In this example, fixing the number of relays to 40 induced a still reasonable load while offering a fairly good satisfaction ratio (as shown in figure 4 and5).

Impact of groups of services. We evaluated the use of service groups in the first and second simulation scenarios. In these scenarios, each business service is deployed in the network in two providers. Therefore, the use of groups consists in letting a service provider respond to a request that was initially sent to the other provider hosting the same Figure 7 shows a comparison of the satisfaction ratios for the invocation, obtained while enabling and disabling the service groups. We can observe an increase in satisfaction because a client request is not send to a specific provider but rather addressed to the business service, so the response coming from the closest provider will arrive faster to the client. This preliminary experiment considered only groups of two providers. Nevertheless, the impact of provider replication is significant. It can be noticed that the two middle curves are pretty close: service groups can save us the use of extra relay nodes.

We used the exclusivity policy described in Section 2.3 for managing the multiple providers' responses: when a provider answers to a request it also sends a control message to try to prevent other compatible providers from answering. The load measurements we have conducted do not show a significant overhead related to these messages in the scenarios considered.

Related Work

A number of research works are concerned with communication in disconnected MANETs, mainly with the objective of providing destination-based communication [START_REF] Zhang | Routing in Intermittently Connected Mobile Ad Hoc Networks and Delay Tolerant Networks: Overview and Challenges[END_REF][START_REF] Pelusi | Opportunistic Networking: Data Forwarding in Disconnected Mobile Ad Hoc Networks[END_REF] and sometimes proposing content-based approaches [START_REF] Baldoni | Content-Based Routing in Highly Dynamic Mobile Ad Hoc Networks[END_REF][START_REF] Costa | Adaptive Content-based Routing for Delay-tolerant Mobile Ad Hoc Networks[END_REF]. A noticeable contribution in this area has been made in the European Haggle project [START_REF]Haggle Project[END_REF]. All of these works however focus on communication issues and do not address the problems of the design and the implementation of a service platform targeting disconnected MANETs.

On the other hand service-oriented programming in pervasive environments has been the object of many research activities. Most of them primarily focus on service discovery protocols using traditional centralized service directories over infrastructure-based (LAN) or single-hop wireless Recently, the characteristics of MANETs (dynamicity, low resources, unreliable transmissions) have been taken into account, With the development of specific discovery protocols, as part of the routing layer [START_REF] Chakraborty | Integrating service discovery with routing and session management for ad-hoc networks[END_REF][START_REF] Engelstad | Service Discovery Architectures for On-Demand Ad Hoc Networks[END_REF][START_REF] Lenders | Service Discovery in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks: A Field Theoretic Approach[END_REF][START_REF] Varshavsky | A cross-layer approach to service discovery and selection in MANETs[END_REF] or as part of the service layer with no dependency on routing [START_REF] Helal | Konark : Service Discovery and Delivery Protocol for Ad-hoc Networks[END_REF]. In these protocols, communications are still considered achievable and to some extent sustainable (routes between hosts can always be established). GSR [START_REF] Chakraborty | Integrating service discovery with routing and session management for ad-hoc networks[END_REF] enables group-based service discovery using discovery requests and advertisements, and reuses the paths of discovery to also handle data transmission for routing invocations (with session failure management). Konark [START_REF] Helal | Konark : Service Discovery and Delivery Protocol for Ad-hoc Networks[END_REF] uses a distributed multi-hop advertisement/discovery scheme but relies on a local multicast and implements connected invocations that are not suitable for disconnected environments.

Other efforts try to create a virtual higher-level network in MANETs where some selected nodes are assigned special functionalities. Some of them implement semicentralized directories for discovery [START_REF] Sailhan | Scalable Service Discovery for MANET[END_REF] where each interconnected network (small connected network island) has one directory, while others assign network service brokers [START_REF] Nedos | Service*: Distributed Service Advertisement for Multi-Service, Multi-Hop MANET Environments[END_REF] or create network backbones [START_REF] Kozat | Network Layer Support for Service Discovery in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks[END_REF]. Our prototype does not assume any viable interconnections so each host is responsible for its own service repository. In addition, we do not use overlay network structures nor maintain discovery routes.

Conclusion

We presented in this paper the design and the main implementation features of a service platform that specifically targets disconnected MANETs, in which no end-toend connectivity can be guaranteed.

Our service platform is structured in two distinct layers. The lower layer, called DoDWAN, is a communication middleware dedicated to the content-based dissemination of documents. It leverages on the store-carry-and-forward approach so as to free itself of the presence of independent communication islands when transmitting documents. DoDWAN offers a publish/subscribe API that is used in the service layer of the platform for exchanging service advertisements and discovery messages as well as for invocation requests and responses. A number of features are included in this service layer in order to improve the opportunities of interaction between service providers and service clients: service descriptors are enriched with semantic information, and a form of grouping of service providers is implemented so as to exploit possible redundant service provisions.

Simulation results demonstrate the feasibility of service provision in disconnected MANETs built upon a contentbased dissemination middleware like DoDWAN and confirm the positive impact of the features we implemented at the service level.

  Figure 1. Disconnected MANET

Figure 4 .

 4 Figure 4. Discovery satisfaction

Figure 5 .

 5 Figure 5. Invocation satisfaction

Figure 6 .

 6 Figure 6. Cumulative network load

7 .

 7 Invocation satisfaction using service provider groupsnetworks ([START_REF] Zhu | Service Discovery in Pervasive Computing Environments[END_REF] presents a survey of the main protocols).

Components of a service descriptor and of a client request

	Service Descriptor	Client Request
	Provider ID	Client ID
	Semantic Property	SOAP Request
	Functional Property
		Reduced Descriptor
	Non Functional Property
	Figure 3.

Acknowledgements. This work is supported by the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche under contract ANR-05-SSIA-0002-01.


TOURISM EDUCATION IN FRANCE AND CANADA: ARE UNIVERSITIES INCORPORATING ICT?

The field of tourism was noted at the 2005 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) conference to be global and growing [START_REF] Keler | Global tourism growth: A challenge for SME's. A few thoughts by way of an introduction[END_REF]. That growth has continued today, with no signs of abatement [START_REF] Todd | Tourism in OECD countries 2008: Trends and policies[END_REF]. Globally, international tourists numbered 900 million in 2007 (UNWTO, 2008). This figure is estimated to grow to 1.6 billion by 2020 (World Tourism Organization, 2005) and 1.9 billion by 2030 [START_REF] Yeoman | Tomorrow's tourist: Scenarios &trends[END_REF]. In the two countries (Canada and France) examined in this paper, the tourism industry is important within the economy. Tourism contributes $28.6 billion (CDN) or 9.7 percent of Canada's gross domestic product in 2007 [START_REF] Hernandez | Fewer Americans visit Canada, tourism revenues show sharp decline[END_REF] and 36.9 million euros or 6.3 percent to France's gross domestic product in 2007 (Ministère de l'Economie des Finances et de l 'Emploi, 2008).

The tourism industry in Canada provided over 1.8 million jobs in 2006 or 11 percent of the national economy (Tourism Satellite Account, 2008). Despite France being the number one tourist destination in the world, it represents only six percent of its national income (Tourisme Infos Stat, 2008) and two million jobs (French-Property.com, 2008). It must be noted that these figures are based on different components and therefore may not be comparable.

In both of these countries, as well as globally, the growth in the tourism industry is facilitated by information and communication technologies (ICT), including the Internet [START_REF] Bloch | The impact of electronic commerce on the travel industry[END_REF]. It is estimated that half the global B2C e-commerce turnover is in the travel and tourism sector (Fodor andWerthner, 2004-2005). With increasing time and economic pressures, ICT is an increasingly important component of tourism today. ICT facilitates travellers who do not have time to visit travel agencies or are looking to save money and travellers who are looking to design their own travel itinerary.

Further, ICT provides an equalizing platform for increasing numbers of tourist destinations, many in developing countries (About UNWTO, n.d.) broadening the competition internationally. This inclusivity is incorporated into the practical environment [START_REF] Cunliffe | Orientations to social constructionism: Relationally responsive social constructionism and its implications for knowledge and learning[END_REF] as discussed by the World Tourism Organization (Tourism 2020 Vision, n.d.).

Given that both private and pubic post-secondary educational institutions are the training ground that readies the graduate for the field of practice; these institutions have the opportunity to connect anticipated actions within society [START_REF] Gherardi | Introduction: The critical power of the 'Practice Lens[END_REF]. In using mock real-life situations, it is found that student professionals are capable of learning at a new level with enhanced understanding [START_REF] Gold | Continuing professional development in the legal profession: A practice-based learning perspective[END_REF]. With the emergence of ICT and virtual learning communities [START_REF] Allan | Time to learn? E-Learners' experiences of time in virtual learning communities[END_REF], the question of the inclusion of ICT in the curriculum of tourism programs is raised.

Education performs two functions. One is the provision of specific, structured skill development that is based on behavioural modification such that the graduate 'fits' into the workplace. Although beginning in technical and apprentice programs, many university programs, specifically those training individuals for the professional workplace, have answered industry's call to make higher education relevant to the workplace. The other function is the traditional purview of universities: training students to think independently, analyze, conceptualize, and innovate. Today, the traditional function to prepare them for the evolution occurring in practice has become blurred with institutions of higher education focusing on the established employment needs of their graduates [START_REF] Gunn | The need for multidisciplinary tourism education[END_REF] and the industry (Bount, Castleman, and Swatman, 2005).

Recognizing the dichotomy of training for an industry that is becoming more reliant on ICT while individual operators often do not recognize the need for ICT, we examine the educational training in etourism and ICT of graduates from public and private institutions of higher education in France and Canada. We find that the training provided reflects the status of the industry that has few standards. Thus different institutions interpret the industries needs uniquely. Following this discussion, we present recommendations for the industry and the trainers to establish a minimum standard for employability. We begin with a review of the literature that examines the training available for e-tourism.

Literature review

This paper examines the educational training in e-tourism in France and Canada. Both France and Canada are highly developed nations that attract a significant number of tourists. Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2008 indicates that Canada ranks as 9 and France ranks as 10 in competitiveness (World Economic Forum, 2009). However in the United Nations World Tourism Organization 2007 ranking, France ranks as number one in the number of visitors, with Canada ranking as 14 (World Tourism Rankings, 2008).

The linkage between the countries comes from the historical migration and ownership of part of Canada by France as well as by the many bilateral relations in trade, arts and the media, science and technology, justice and homeland security, defence, regional cooperation, and institutional cooperation (France in Canada, 2009). Migration continues between the two countries as do friendly and institutional ties. Although there are a number of similarities, there are a number of differences between the countries.

The educational system in much of Canada differs considerably from the educational system in France.

Global differences are noted in Hofstede's typologies: Canada ranks far lower on Power distance (35) than France (68) and uncertainty avoidance (20 to France 80); scorings on masculinity are higher in Canada (almost 50) compared to France (40) and individuality (80 to France 65) (ITIM International, 2009). Some differences between the countries directly pertain to the tourism industry. Canada is a much larger country than France, necessitating the use of private vehicles for much of the travel in the destination area. France has a well developed railway system that facilitates tourist travel. France is a much older country than Canada, creating very different tourist attractions. Canada has a more diverse population than France, but France's population is approximately double that of Canada. Thus, these two countries, although sharing much, are very different. Their competition in the tourism industry, although not necessarily direct, still exists because of the physical distance between them. It is not likely that a tourist would choose to visit Canada and France on one holiday. Instead, if visiting France, a tourist might choose to visit neighbouring European countries. If visiting Canada, they may choose to visit the United States if the sheer size of Canada is insufficient. Despite their differences, the tourism industry in both countries is well developed and global in reach. Part of this global reach is through the e-environment. Although e-commerce is defined as a process entailing the purchase and sale or exchange of goods, services, and/or information using computer networks (Turban et al, 2000), e-tourism does not have an agreed upon definition, except for its use of the Internet [START_REF] Kim | E-Tourism: An innovative approach for the smal and medium sized tourism enterprises (smites) in Korea[END_REF]. It is generally agreed, however, that e-tourism bridges the e-commerce and tourism environments. However, small and medium enterprises, which comprise the bulk of the tourism industry, have been slow to either adopt or utilize this tool [START_REF] Braun | Networking tourism SME's: E-commerce and e-marketing issues in regional Australia[END_REF][START_REF] Buhalis | E-Tourism: information technology for strategic tourism management[END_REF][START_REF] Main | The expansion of technology in smal and medium hospitality enterprises with a focus on new technology[END_REF] despite the demonstrable strength of ICT on tourism [START_REF] Kuom | Virtual travel agencies[END_REF][START_REF] Lashley | Getting IT right: Exploring information technology in the hospitality curriculum[END_REF]. The reasons for this may lie in the failure of core preparation of its employees [START_REF] Colins | Enhancing SMTEs' business performance through the Internet and e-learning platforms[END_REF] to work in an electronic environment [START_REF] Braun | Regional innovation and tourism networks: The nexus between ICT diffusion and change in Australia[END_REF][START_REF] Buhalis | E-Tourism: information technology for strategic tourism management[END_REF][START_REF] Evans | Small is beautiful: ICT and tourism SME's -a comparative European study[END_REF]. This is compounded by the employers' perception that training is a cost, not an investment [START_REF] Colins | Enhancing SMTEs' business performance through the Internet and e-learning platforms[END_REF], resulting in employers either not providing adequate or any time for training.

In true "trickle down" fashion, this results in few websites and ones that are not optimally designed to attract or satisfy consumers' needs and wants. Other tools within the e-environment are similarly neglected, including poor website upkeep and inadequate positioning with search engines. Because many of the operations in this industry are small businesses, these costs are not calculated in the decision of whether or not to train the staff. The result is little demand for ICT training, and a continuing cycle of inadequate ICT usage.

To facilitate training outside educational institutions, Canada has a number of organizations that offer a broad range of training for the tourism industry including Ontario Tourism Education Corporation (http://www.otec.org/site/hosp/index.asp), International Holistic Tourism Education Center (http://www.ihtec.org), and a number of specific college, university, and college programs. France has the French Tourist Office (http://www.francetourism.com/practicalinfo/travelfrancebyboat.htm), a number of rural tourism associations (http://en.toprural.com/asoc.cfm), a national association of tourism offices (http://www.tourisme.fr/), Fédération Nationale des Comités Départementaux du Tourisme (http://www.fncdt.net/), La Fédéeration Nationale des Comités Régionaux de Tourisme (http://www.fncrt.com/index.php?op=edito), Maison de la France (http://us.franceguide.com/), and a number of private and public universities and grande écoles.

Education within the field of tourism has produced relatively few articles [START_REF] Hyland | Vocationalism, work, and the future of higher education[END_REF][START_REF] Tribe | Demand for higher education for the supply of graduates[END_REF] and fewer theories. These include a call for higher education to provide students with sufficient flexibility for them to accept, encourage, and explore new areas of study, including collaborative transdisciplinary subjects, that move marginal or unexplored areas to the focus of discovery [START_REF] Airey | Education for hospitality[END_REF][START_REF] Beardsworth | Sociology on the Menu[END_REF][START_REF] Lashley | Escaping the Tyranny of Relevance: Some Reflections on Hospitality Management Education[END_REF]. But despite these calls, tourism remains an immature subject area with few applicable or comprehensive educational theories [START_REF] Holden | Citizens of the world' or 'Management Puppet[END_REF][START_REF] Morrison | Hospitality studies and hospitality management: A symbiotic relationship[END_REF]. Many of the topics within the tourism literature are similar; simply revising and rehashing these topics (Stergio, [START_REF] Stergiou | The development of constructs for the evaluation of academics teaching tourism: An exploratory study using Q-methodology[END_REF]. The focus of this literature rarely includes the extensive education literature [START_REF] Airey | Journal of teaching in travel and tourism[END_REF], making any analysis incomplete. Thus, when exploring the topic of general tourism education, it is not surprising to find no core curriculum and no uniform body of knowledge [START_REF] Scott | An analysis of curriculum requirements among hospitality and tourism management programs in AACSB colleges of business in the United States[END_REF]. Thus, with no recognized core of knowledge, ICT may not be included.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Tourism

Relationships and traditional knowledge are insufficient in and by themselves. An Australian study indicated that without external planning and intervention, specifically regarding ICT, the tourism industry is incapable of capacity building [START_REF] Holick | No barriers to failure: Rethinking tourism business entry[END_REF]. Capacity building is developed in online environments wherein the development of e-commerce opportunities and skills can be developed and enriched [START_REF] Mitchel | E-business and Online Learning: Connections and Opportunities for Vocational Education and Training[END_REF]. Thus, ICT education in tourism enhances the development and building of the practice [START_REF] Colins | Enhancing SMTEs' business performance through the Internet and e-learning platforms[END_REF]. Although not generally recognized, the failure of tourism operators to have good web presence and e-commerce capabilities creates a cost (United Nations, 2001).

Unfortunately, this cost is not recognized by many of the small and medium sized businesses in the tourism and hospitality industry. In a recent study, many small tourism businesses continued to rely on manual processes despite the rise of ICT (Lourvieris and Lockwood, 2002) despite the growing body of evidence that e-commerce decreases costs by improving cost-effectiveness (World Tourism Organization, 2001), improving communication, and broadening the customer base if appropriately used (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2000).

Despite the reluctance to embrace ICT, the field of tourism is not immune from the growth of the e-environment, and, in fact, is being revolutionized both in Internet sales and distribution [START_REF] Kim | E-Tourism: An innovative approach for the smal and medium sized tourism enterprises (smites) in Korea[END_REF]. This endorses the global communication capabilities of Internet [START_REF] Lehu | Internet comme outil de yield management dans le tourisme[END_REF] enabling and facilitating immediate and easy accessibility [START_REF] Desmet | Politique de prix sur Internet[END_REF]. This builds on the research finding that the majority of consumers access e-commerce to lower costs in terns of both cash and energy (Bakos, 1991). The increasing Internet familiarity of consumers facilitates price comparisons and purchasing of tickets airplanes, hotel rooms, vacation packages, destination tickets, among other activities. The Internet offers consumers many benefits, including: the easy and simple transactions that are immediate and quickly completed; as well as a wide range of destination and activity options and the ability to compare prices and services. With the increasing competition of tourism organizations, the e-environment is a major marketplace.

To achieve the ease of access, the lowering of costs for the consumer, the immediacy of the results, and the global reach of the Internet [START_REF] Quelch | The Internet and international marketing[END_REF], companies in the tourism sector are advised to construct easy to use and attractive web sites. These web sites ease the distribution of many of products in tourism such as travel tickets, hotel and activity reservations, among others. This e-distribution via the Internet reduces the costs of physical distribution by 50 to 90 percent [START_REF] Geyskens | Comment le marché évalue-t-il l'ajout d'un canal de distribution sur Internet[END_REF]. The websites also facilitate the collection of information and consumer data, communications, and transactions [START_REF] Raffour | L'impact des nouvelles technologies de l'information et de la communication dans le secteur du tourisme[END_REF] if appropriately structured. Academics could facilitate by researching into the needs and desires of the public to reveal the effectiveness of tourism web pages and advertising continues to lag on the Internet [START_REF] Fang | Assessment of Internet marketing and competitive strategies for leisure farming industry in Taiwan[END_REF].

Online access is utilized by a number of larger tourism operators in Europe and North America (Müller-Lankenau, [START_REF] Müller-Lankenau | Multi-channel strategies: Capturing and exploring diversity in the European retail grocery industry[END_REF]. Other studies indicate the use of ICT in the tourism industry, particularly the hotel industry, is inevitable (MacVicar and Rodger, 1995). Overall, ICT can perform multiple tasks that are not currently done or that are time consuming. These include, linking the reservation system with management system for more complete and comprehensive data reports [START_REF] Gamble | Building a yield management system -the flip side[END_REF]; linking the communication system with services (such as room service, ground shuttles, wake-up calls, among others); facilitating the ordering of operational supplies with electronic inventory systems; and, scheduling staff according to the usage rate. In looking specifically at the global hospitality industry, ICT is noted as crucial to individual hotel's success as witnessed in the growing consumer demands for technology supported services [START_REF] Lee | Technology, service quality, and customer loyalty in hotels: Australian managerial perspectives[END_REF] such as Internet connection, access to information, and automated services. But the benefits of ICT extend to the staff's perception of the hotel's employee support system [START_REF] Lee | Technology, service quality, and customer loyalty in hotels: Australian managerial perspectives[END_REF]. ICT also interacts with staff to improve efficiencies, which then produces competitive advantages leading to increased profitability [START_REF] Lee | Technology, service quality, and customer loyalty in hotels: Australian managerial perspectives[END_REF]. Other areas that are within the scope of ICT include the cross-industry communication and cooperation that is necessary for effective operation throughout the interdependent tourism industry [START_REF] Palmer | The role of electronic commerce in creating virtual tourism destination marketing organizations[END_REF]Yilmaz and Bititici, 2006). Thus, the use of ICT is extensive within tourism, leading to the question of what is happening in the educational arena.

Information and Communication Technology and Tourism Education

Both the European Union and Canada has recognized the e-environment as important within tourism, a new subject in higher education [START_REF] Hsu | Global Tourism Higher Education Past, Present and Future[END_REF]. Because of this newness, the social constructionist will find the absence of ICT in tourism curriculum is reflective of the academics planning it [START_REF] Cunliffe | Orientations to social constructionism: Relationally responsive social constructionism and its implications for knowledge and learning[END_REF]. Perhaps because it is a discipline that is struggling for acceptance within academia or perhaps because tourism resists change as reflected by much of the literature, the needs of the industry are not met by the in-coming students' training [START_REF] Hsu | Global Tourism Higher Education Past, Present and Future[END_REF], leaving a gap that must be filed. For example, in a study of British business schools, it was found that a course in computers and IT were found in only one of seven schools [START_REF] Coopey | Sustainable development and environmental management : The performance of UK business schools[END_REF]. It is the intent of this paper to examine the ICT component of tourism education of the students graduating from universities in Canada and France. Hereafter we discuss the methodology used in collecting the data for this study.

Methodology

The topic of ICT in tourism education in either France or Canada is not well researched without established prevailing theory. Thus, the ability to triangulate was severely limited [START_REF] Mcgrath | Dilemmatics: The study of research choices and dilemmas[END_REF]. However, the above literature review that calls for the amalgamation of ICT and tourism does emphasize the need found within this study. The methodology chosen, a field study collecting secondary data, reduces the precision of the measurement and the generalizability to the target population but maximizes the degree of realism of the context [START_REF] Jourdan | Business intelligence: An analysis of the Literature[END_REF]. To overcome the low ranking of this methodology for the precision of the measurement, we examined the websites of every university and grande école in Canada and France to determine the course offerings and the linkages between ICT and tourism. Thus, the sample is 100 percent of the population that posts information on the web. When examining the generalizability (external validity) of the data collected, we recognize the limitation of this method as applicable only within the institutions examined in France and Canada during the 2008-2009 academic year [START_REF] Cooke | Quasi-experimental design: Design and analysis issues for field settings[END_REF][START_REF] Sackett | Research strategies and tactics in industrial and organizational psychology[END_REF]. Because this research reports the published courses across Canada and France, the reliability of the findings depends upon the published information on the websites at the time of data collection. It is assured, however, that the web pages examined were linked directly to the website of the educational institution.

We surveyed the websites of every governmentally licensed and accepted University and grande école in Canada and France to determine their offerings. The web pages were examined in July and August, 2008, reflecting the offerings of the 2008/2009 academic year. We chose to examine only those institutions that were able to grant degrees, not two-year diploma colleges. The Canadian universities were selected from the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada website. All have standing with this national body. These universities are selected from the ten provinces and two territories of Canada and have over 1,000 students. This resulted in 73 universities and colleges but only 63 with faculties of business or commerce, 34 of which offered Masters level programs in addition to undergrad. The French institutions of higher education were selected from 77 universities and 33 grande écoles; 110 having faculties of business or commerce. The majority of French institutions offer both undergrad and graduate programs. In all institutions, we searched to determine if tourism was offered either as a specialized degree, a specialization within a degree, and whether tourism offerings were mandatory or optional courses. We also searched to determine if the school had an information technology department and what information technology courses were offered in the program that offered tourism. This was important because the knowledge required for e-tourism is a combination of a minimum of two faculties, business and computer science or information technology. If e-tourism courses were offered, we noted the course content. This information was recorded and analysed to reveal the following results.

Results

Surprisingly there are no mandatory courses in e-tourism in any Canadian university. Having regard to the fact that Canada is a bilingual country of English and French and currently the language of the Internet is English, the lack of e-tourism courses is surprising, especially in relation to the number of e-tourism courses in France, given France's slow adoption of the Internet.

French institutions offer a slightly different style of education. Many grande écoles are specialized in a particular discipline, such as business/commerce or engineering. Thus, although the universities are multidisciplinary, the grande écoles often do not have faculties outside their specialty. There are 63

Universities that have both commerce and ICT faculties and 59 Universities have a specialized ICT course specifically for business. Only 26 of these have tourism courses, with only four of these having specialized mandatory courses in e-tourism. In grande écoles only four have both ICT and commerce faculties, but all 35 have specialized ICT courses. Of the grande écoles, 21 have a specialization in tourism, with only three having specialized mandatory courses in e-tourism.

The following table summarizes the overall information concerning the institutions.

Table 1: here

Many of the mandatory ICT courses offered in both countries' tourism programs are styled as an introduction to computers, technology, and software programs that are used and useful business operations, but there are few other consistencies. The response of higher education to the evolution of ICT as a major component within this industry in both countries, while better in France than Canada, is lacking in its practical aspects. This includes a lack of courses in webpage design, programming, data collection, and the ability to adequately access recommender systems [START_REF] Gretzel | Persuasion in recommender systems[END_REF]. This is not new. Cho, Schmelzer, and McMahon (2002) questioned whether educators were adequately preparing students for the unstable and complex future. This is discussed further in the following section.

In the findings of this study, tourism education is different between these two countries. One of the differences in educational content is the different geographical areas. Tourism in Canada tends to look more toward the open and wilderness areas in Canada whereas in France tourism centres more on the historic sites as well as organized sports and leisure. Both countries have some assistance from national organizations, but France has access to the SMART-UP program that facilitates training and education for SMEs in tourism.

In reviewing the tourism literature, [START_REF] Morgan | From production line to drama school: Higher education for the future of tourism[END_REF] found courses were grouped around the generalized themes of the meaning of tourism, the significance and impact of tourism, the structure and dimensions of the tourism market, marketing, planning and development, and tourism policy. Deviations from this are rare (Morrison and O'Mahony, 2003). This review reveals an absence in ICT training or emphasis. This missing component of this education endorses the lack of ICT in the SMEs that comprise the bulk of employers within the tourism industry. Students and ultimately the tourism industry are limited without the training and education provided by institutions of higher education.

Discussion

The use of ICT in the industry promotes its use in tourism education. The first call for the inclusion of ICT in tourism education appeared in the academic press as early as 1995 with a recommendation for the inclusion of skill development in microcomputer literacy [START_REF] Koh | Designing the four-year tourism management curriculum: A marketing approach[END_REF]. In reviewing all of the secondary data, both literature and website information, it appears that much of the research and literature on the e-environment and tourism focuses on online booking and reservation systems (Buhalis, 1998, Evans and[START_REF] Evans | A comparative study of ICT, tourism and hospitality SME's in Europe[END_REF] or a system through which emails can be forwarded for advertising [START_REF] Buhalis | E-Tourism: information technology for strategic tourism management[END_REF]. This failure to explore beyond easily observable areas indicates the field is immature and poorly developed. The literature rarely provides innovative or cutting edge information on technology such as dynamic packaging that configures and assembles packaged travel products according to individual requests and accessing online communities that would contribute to the visibility and profitability of tourism operators. The limitations of the literature include lack of research into networking, collaboration, information seeking, and other opportunities through which the sector of tourism could benefit. These limitations mean opportunities are lost in many of the current tourism education programs. Without adequate training, entrants into the tourism industry do not introduce new forms of technology and are not prepared to begin to work in the existing and emerging electronic aspects of the tourism industry.

As one of the two aforementioned goals of higher education, it is disconcerting to see this lack.

The literature often cites the content of courses as catering to vocational and managerial objectives [START_REF] Cooper | Stakeholders and tourism education[END_REF][START_REF] Evans | The development and positioning of business related university tourism education: A UK perspective[END_REF][START_REF] Gee | An outlook on the past, present and future of travel education[END_REF][START_REF] Tribe | The indiscipline of tourism[END_REF] that must be tailored to fit the environment. It is recognized that there is a difference in use of ICT among different countries as exemplified in the research of [START_REF] Agourram | The impact of national culture on the meaning of information system success at the user level[END_REF]. Their research reveals that the high scores in power distance and high uncertainty avoidance in France and the low scores on those two aspects in Canada are also extended throughout ICT usage. This means the user independence from ICT professionals, the power over the system, the perceptions of use of ICT, and the impact on individual skills and knowledge, and the impact on the user as a person are very different between France and Canada (Agourran and Ingham, 2007). It is incumbent upon the academics to prepare the tourism graduate for the increasingly global environment of tourism, recognizing and preparing the student to deal with this difference as expressed in the ICT technology.

Another difference between the countries' tourism and e-tourism education lies in the internationalization of the students in part due to the Bologna Process [START_REF] Werner | The Bologna Process: Building bridges for education internationalization and the Bologna Process: What does it mean for European higher education institutions[END_REF]. France is a member of the EU, which allows students unfettered access to educational programs across all member countries. This may be reflective of the fact the year 1998 was the year the government in France implemented policies that would enhance the attractiveness of the country to foreign visitors. Canadian institutions must comply with governmental mandates regarding immigration, decreasing the number of potential foreign students. However, both countries have international students who enhance international education classes, which, together with the globalizing reach of the Internet, facilitate the development of innovative curriculums. The existence of international students and the Internet enhances the inclusive education of students in facilitating the diversity of programs and the diversity of the nation in which they are studying.

Unfortunately, exchange and foreign students occasionally neglect the broadening of their education by not participating in some courses, potentially creating lapses in their education. This is indicated in this study, whereby if a French student were to study for a year in Canada, they would not be obliged to participate in mandatory e-tourism courses.

This would limit the French student who returns to France where others in tourism are more likely to have been required to pass an e-tourism course. The desire of employers to have graduates who have the knowledge necessary to begin work is as well known as the desire of students to get good marks and a good job. Without the requisite knowledge of how to operate in the e-environment, graduates are not ready. This is not unique to Canada and France. [START_REF] Teixeira | Tourism education in the UK: Lesson drawing in educational policy[END_REF] found an excess of graduates of generic undergraduate tourism courses in the UK, which has resulted in themed routes where students were able to specialize. Unfortunately, this specialization may result in students who have an unnecessarily narrow education, especially at the undergraduate level [START_REF] Morgan | From production line to drama school: Higher education for the future of tourism[END_REF]. Further, it may result in a paucity of knowledge for students who avoid some of these courses, such as e-tourism.

To counter the failure of tourism programs to offer e-tourism courses, some research defends the failure to grasp opportunities by finding that small and medium businesses (SMEs) are more vulnerable within the e-environment due to problems with authentication, certification, data security, confidentiality, and legal disputes (Buhalis andSchertler, 1999, OECD, 1999). However, SMEs are global players in the B2B arena of e-commerce (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) (1999), indicating the difficulty may be located in specific industries. With the increasing potential of e-commerce, solutions must be found to enable tourism to continue to grow.

In an attempt to counter the potential negatives for SMEs within the European tourism industry, the European Commission designed SMART-UP to assist small tourism and hospitality firms specifically in the ICT environment. SMART-UP also allows for e-learning [START_REF] Colins | Enhancing SMTEs' business performance through the Internet and e-learning platforms[END_REF] as well as upgrading and maintaining standards, thus providing opportunities for small business to remain current with ICT without the expense of traditional education. Thus, the tools and training are readily available for European firms, partially through SMART-UP, facilitating learning regions to form and competitive advantage to thus arise [START_REF] Florida | The learning region[END_REF]. The application of online and computer assisted instruction also facilitates the educational base needed within this industry [START_REF] Zakrzewski | A new approach to CAI: Online applications for procedural based activities[END_REF] and the population's ready acceptance [START_REF] Mills | Ten information technology trends driving the course of hospitality and tourism higher education[END_REF]. Given the lack of educational opportunities, this may be a template for the Canadian tourism industry.

As the future continues to evolve, the requirements of education must similarly change. To facilitate the incorporation of this process in education, "out of the box" academics and industry practitioners must collaborate on curriculum. Peter Drucker (n.d.) recognized the need for preparing students to enter an evolving world by noting the sole objective of education is to produce a knowledge worker who "needs only one thing only: to learn how to learn."

Conclusion

What is taught in the classroom should be reflective of what is happening in practice. Academics should encouraging the questions, thoughts, and ponderings that will take the industry in new and exciting directions. With the growth of the Internet and the dependence of business on ICT, education today must include courses beyond the core skills, literacy, and numeracy [START_REF] Lashley | Getting IT right: Exploring information technology in the hospitality curriculum[END_REF]. The growth of tourism means graduates must be able successfully operate in the e-environment using ICT.

Although curriculum varies across borders and regions, the importance of training in ICT remains indisputable. This need was identified almost 15 years ago but from the results of this study, the call has not been widely accepted. This may be the result of many factors including the non-use of ICT by many of tourism's SMEs. But regardless of the reasons, ICT is used as a tool in the tourism business environment.

The need for ICT proficiency in tourism education goes beyond email communications and distance education. Users access the Internet daily for tourism purposes with sites such as Expedia and Travel Cuts, blogs, and destination websites. Because tourism is so broad, these sites facilitate and compete with tourism agencies. But the Internet and ICT provide many more opportunities that need exploration. ICT facilitates new concepts that are innovative and creative, potentially moving the industry in new directions with new tools.

A study of Internet usage by American Visitors' Bureaus identifies the managers' education as a crucial differentiator in the adoption of ICT [START_REF] Yuan | Internet technology use by American convention and visitors bureaus[END_REF], emphasizing the importance of the post-secondary education curriculum. Will our esteemed institutions fulfil the needs of the tourism industry and teach the students to look beyond what exists? Even if the industry does not recognize or accept these needs is it not education's function to prepare students and thus potentially encouraging change in the industry?

Further

  , partially because of geographic proximity, many students from other non-European countries go the Europe for their post-secondary education. In the 2006/2007 academic year, Africa, primarily North and Sub-Saharan Africa, sent the largest number of students to France (47.6 percent) with Europe the second largest (25.3 percent) (Etudiants étrangers en France, 2007). The number of foreign students in France has increased by 77 percent in relation to the 1998 figures (Etudiants étrangers en France, 2007).

Table 1 :

 1 Specifics of the Population

		Departments of	Departments	Tourism	Tourism
		Commerce	of ICT	Specialization	Courses
	Canadian Undergrad	63 (86.3%)	52 (71.2%)	11 (15%)	13 (17.8%)
	Institutions (Total 73)
	Canadian Graduate Institutions	34	26 (76.5%)	2 (5.9%)	2 (5.9%)
	(Total 34) French Institutions (Total 110)	110	65 (59.1%)	45 (40.0%)	45 (40.9%)