Towards sustainable management of rodents in organic animal husbandry

From 26 to 28 May 2004 an international seminar was held in Wageningen, the Netherlands, about current knowledge and advice on rodent management on organic pig and poultry farms in Western Europe. This paper summarizes the discussions. Rodent management is necessary to protect the food production chain from health hazards to livestock and humans. Some organic farmers prefer biological rodent control, but since rodents can also transmit diseases this bears certain risks for the production of healthy livestock and safe food. Effective rodent management requires a thorough understanding of the biology of the pest species concerned. These can be divided into two groups: field rodents, such as voles, and commensal rodents like house mice and rats. The objective of managing field rodents is to minimize livestock exposure to these vectors, and to regulate their populations in case their density is expected to grow dramatically. Infestation of livestock facilities with commensal rodents can be prevented, but once they are present, their eradication must be aimed for. General elements of rodent management are (1) the prevention of rodent infestations through strategic actions such as modifying the habitat or rodent proofing of the buildings, (2) monitoring their appearance and population density, and (3) rodent control measures. A number of possible management actions is described to provide a basis for examining the measures’ social acceptability, their economic and environmental impacts, and their efficacy

Living labs as a driver for change in regional television

Traditional television production and distribution organizations are increasingly being challenged by a rapidly changing technological environment. These evolutions force the television industry to leave their comfort zone. This context in mind, regional television broadcasters often lack the resources, knowledge and organizational flexibility to cope with this external pressure. In this paper, we discuss the use of Living Labs as ‘innovation intermediaries’ and ‘change facilitators’ that foster and enable user-centric innovation development processes, both inside and outside the organization. This phenomenon is approached from both an open innovation and a user innovation point of view. This paper considers Living Labs as open innovation ecosystems, enabling organizations to reach out and collaborate with their (potential) audience and other external actors, but also as an open ‘battle arena’ for the organization itself. The Living Lab process governs different expectations and enables conflicting opinions to come together and to steadily grow towards a mutual solution. Moreover, the innovation development process in the Living Lab seems to have innovation spill-over effects on the organizational level, catalyzing a broader organizational change

An exploratory model of the willingness of end-users to participate in field tests: a living lab case-study analysis

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Connecting with citizen journalists: an exploratory Living lab study on motivations for using mobile reporting applications

In the context of user generated content in the newsroom, mobile reporting applications are seen as a facilitator of citizen journalism, bringing news items from the user to the newsroom and vice versa. In this paper, we describe a Living Lab project aimed at developing a mobile reporting application for a regional television broadcaster that struggles reaching a young audience. Data were collected through an online survey (n:500), one focus group (n:9), a field trial (n:35) and in-depth interviews (n:10). Besides user motivations for using mobile reporting applications, we provide three user profiles and give insights in citizen journalism projects. A mobile reporting application could provide a solution for regional news stations to reach more youngsters, however, reasonable efforts should be taken to make such a project succeed

Living Labs as a navigation system for innovative business models in the music industry

Media industries and other rapidly evolving, complex, uncertain markets have a hard time to survive if they do not optimize or radically change their business models. This paper analyses the potential of involving all relevant stakeholders of the value network in the development of a business model by means of a panel based multi-method Living Lab approach. Using an in-depth case study analysis, a critical analysis of both the potential value and the weaknesses of such an approach are being assessed. Although some difficulties exist, opening this innovation process and involving external actors in a structural way has the potential to increase the value creation and sustainability of the business model. This paper also stresses the importance of multidisciplinary research on multi-stakeholder involvement in business model innovation

Increasing the Interest of Elementary School Girls in STEM Fields Through Outreach Activities

Despite the known value of a diverse Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) workforce, women and minorities continue to be under-represented in these fields. Engineering undergraduate degrees, in particular, are awarded to women engineering students in the United States and Canada at a lower rate compared to their male counterparts. For the past 20 years, less than 20% of engineering degrees have been awarded to women students, and this stubborn trend is not changing much. The outcome is worse for black and Hispanic students, who usually comprise less than 10% of engineering graduates. Research has shown that low self-confidence in learning math and science subjects starts at a young age in girls and minority students, often in the early years of elementary school, and this ultimately leads to low interest and enrolment in STEM undergraduate programs. In an attempt to combat negative stereotypes about the capabilities of girls and minorities in STEM studies, which undermine the confidence of these groups, the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) has instituted the Girls’ Engineering Exploration (GEE) day. This is an annual STEM outreach event for girls in the Detroit Public School (DPS) system, which is 95% black and Hispanic. GEE is an all-day event for 4th to 6th grade female DPS students. Groups of girls participate in the event with volunteer mentors who are female engineers working in local industry, thus providing the girls with role models. The groups of girls and their mentors cycle through a series of STEM activities that are meant to be engaging, and to increase their interest in STEM careers. In this work, two GEE activities recently created and presented are described in detail. The first activity is a traditional engineering exercise involving physical creation and observation of electrical circuits. The second activity is a novel exercise focused on the new discipline of autonomous vehicle design. The girls experiment with “doodle track cars”, which are inexpensive toy cars that stand in for self-driving vehicles. The toy cars are equipped with optical sensors which enable them to follow hand-drawn lines that represent the roadway. This activity allows the girls to investigate the limitations of real sensors. All of the materials for both activities are provided as educational resources, including science sheets and worksheets, such that pre-college educators can take advantage of these activities in their own classrooms and outreach events with little to no modification. Detailed information about the design and deployment of these activities is reported, including cost of materials and opportunity cost, in terms of time invested in preparing the activities for students. Furthermore, the results of student surveys from GEE, in the form of questionnaires for each activity, are analyzed and presented. The conclusion is that modern topics such as autonomous vehicles are well worth the activity development effort, as students are more engaged in these activities than in derivative exercises such as the circuits activity, which they may have been exposed to previously