Integrating value-adding mobile services into an emergency management system for tourist destinations

Innovations are important for the development of firms and whole economies. Several theoretic approaches are therefore dealing with innovation and the motivation of firms to motivate. The Resource-based View of the Firm views innovations to be motivated by the use of slack resources while the Behavioral Theory of the Firm predicts problemistic search as an important motivation for innovative maneuvers. Recently, Pitelis proposes an integration of both theories to better explaining the motivation for innovation. This paper empirically tests the predictions from these theories using multiple case studies among small and medium enterprises. The results show that firms’ motivation to innovate is best explained using a combination of both theories

Sustainability Of Dual Water Distribution Systems For Fire Flow Condition

The objective of this study is to compare the sustainability of current water systems when a dual water distribution system (WDS) is used for the non-potable water purposes of fire protection, irrigation, and toilet flushing. Sustainability of urban WDS is evaluated in terms of hydraulic efficiency and water quality. The first step is to assess sustainability of an example urban WDS by using sustainability index (SI). The SI is measured by reliability, resiliency, and vulnerability performance indices. Pressure and water age are selected as main parameters to determine sustainability. Once the SIs for pressure and water age are calculated by using the extended period simulation in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency EPANET, these parameters are aggregated into an overall score (SIoverall). The critical areas are identified and improved by either adding network elements (i.e. pumps, valves) or adding a second WDS (i.e. reclaimed WDS) to serve for non-potable water demand. Fire flow is added to the modified WDSs and the SI is calculated again. The proposed methodology and application for SI calculation of WDS proved to be a credible approach in identifying poor performance areas and improving water services. A dual WDS for fire flow, irrigation and toilet flushing can assist in providing sustainable water utilities in urban areas meeting future needs. A linear programming procedure is used to determine the minimum cost of the branched dual WDS

An Optimization And Decision Support Tool For Long-Term Strategies In The Transformation Of Urban Water Infrastructure

Predicted climatic, demographic and socio-economic developments cause major adaptions of urban water infrastructures. The central water supply and wastewater systems in Europe do not meet the increased requirements of resource efficiency and sustainability anymore. Especially in rural areas predicted demographic change and the particular differentiated settlement structure affect the functionality of present water infrastructures. These new challenges require extensive and flexible adaptions or even a long-term and dynamic system change of urban infrastructures. These long-term transformations of infrastructure systems require the design of innovative strategies. In the project presented, environmental engineers together with city planners, mathematicians and computer scientists develop an innovative software-supported optimization and decision support system for the implementation of long-term transformations of existing infrastructures of water supply, wastewater and energy. Special attention is paid to the increasing uncertainty of future factors. Boundary conditions of transformation processes in rural areas as well as the connected political, economic and legal requirements are implied. The planning and decision scope of a cross-sectoral system transformation is focused on the local level under consideration of predicted future regional requirements and the engineering consideration of the supply and disposal system. The optimal solution for adaptation and transformation of systems regarding different objective functions will calculated for selected pilot studies and scenarios. The developed demonstrator of the decision model will be a prototype software solution for interactive process modeling and decision supporting. It will be tested and evaluated in a rural case study region in the Southwest of Germany. The selected municipalities have a wide range of settlement structures and face different challenges for the future design of urban supply and disposal systems

An Optimization And Decision Support Tool For Long-Term Strategies In The Transformation Of Urban Water Infrastructure

Predicted climatic, demographic and socio-economic developments cause major adaptions of urban water infrastructures. The central water supply and wastewater systems in Europe do not meet the increased requirements of resource efficiency and sustainability anymore. Especially in rural areas predicted demographic change and the particular differentiated settlement structure affect the functionality of present water infrastructures. These new challenges require extensive and flexible adaptions or even a long-term and dynamic system change of urban infrastructures. These long-term transformations of infrastructure systems require the design of innovative strategies. In the project presented, environmental engineers together with city planners, mathematicians and computer scientists develop an innovative software-supported optimization and decision support system for the implementation of long-term transformations of existing infrastructures of water supply, wastewater and energy. Special attention is paid to the increasing uncertainty of future factors. Boundary conditions of transformation processes in rural areas as well as the connected political, economic and legal requirements are implied. The planning and decision scope of a cross-sectoral system transformation is focused on the local level under consideration of predicted future regional requirements and the engineering consideration of the supply and disposal system. The optimal solution for adaptation and transformation of systems regarding different objective functions will calculated for selected pilot studies and scenarios. The developed demonstrator of the decision model will be a prototype software solution for interactive process modeling and decision supporting. It will be tested and evaluated in a rural case study region in the Southwest of Germany. The selected municipalities have a wide range of settlement structures and face different challenges for the future design of urban supply and disposal systems

An exploratory qualitative assessment of factors influencing childhood vaccine providers' intention to recommend immunization in the Netherlands

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Under the Dutch national immunization program (NIP), childhood vaccination is not mandatory, but its recommendation by childhood vaccine providers (CVP) is important for maintaining high vaccination coverage. We therefore examined factors related to providers' intentions to recommend vaccinations to parents of young children.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We conducted four focus group discussions with nurses and physicians who provide vaccines to children 0-4 years old in diverse regions of the Netherlands. Three groups represented CVPs at child welfare centers (CWCs) serving the general population, with the fourth representing anthroposophical CWCs. Elements of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) were used to design the groups; thematic analysis was used to structure and analyze the dataset.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Four main themes emerged, including 1) perceived responsibility: to promote vaccines and discuss pros and cons with parents (although this was usually not done if parents readily accepted the vaccination); 2) attitudes toward the NIP: mainly positive, but doubts as to NIP plans to vaccinate against diseases with a low perceived burden; 3) organizational factors: limited time and information can hamper discussions with parents; 4) relationship with parents: crucial and based mainly on communication to establish trust. Compared to CVPs at standard CWCs, the anthroposophical CWCs spent more time communicating and were more willing to adapt the NIP to individual cases.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our qualitative assessment provides an overview of beliefs associated with providers' intention to recommend vaccinations. They were motivated to support the NIP, but their intentions to recommend vaccinations were affected by the perceived relevance of the vaccines, practical issues like limited time and by certain types of resistant parents. These results will inform future studies to test the magnitude and relative impact of these factors.</p

Occupational exposure to hepatitis C virus: early T-cell responses in the absence of seroconversion in a longitudinal cohort study.

BACKGROUND: T-cell responses have been described in seronegative patients who test negative for hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA despite frequent HCV exposure. However, the cross-sectional design of those studies did not clarify whether T cells were indeed induced by low-level HCV exposure without seroconversion or whether they resulted from regular acute infection with subsequent antibody loss. METHODS: Over a 10-year period, our longitudinal study recruited 72 healthcare workers with documented HCV exposure. We studied viremia and antibody and T-cell responses longitudinally for 6 months. RESULTS: All healthcare workers remained negative for HCV RNA and antibodies. However, 48% developed proliferative T-cell response and 42% developed responses in interferon-gamma enzyme-linked immunosorbent spot assays, with 29 healthy HCV-unexposed controls used to define assay cutoffs. The response prevalence was associated with the transmission risk score. T-cell responses peaked at week 4 and returned to baseline by week 12 after exposure. They predominantly targeted nonstructural HCV proteins, which are not part of the HCV particle and thus must have been synthesized in infected cells. CONCLUSIONS: Subclinical transmission of HCV occurs frequently, resulting in infection and synthesis of nonstructural proteins despite undetectable systemic viremia. T-cell responses are more sensitive indicators of this low-level HCV exposure than antibodies

Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

Pseudorapidity distributions of charged hadrons in proton-lead collisions at root s(NN)=5:02 and 8.16 TeV

The pseudorapidity distributions of charged hadrons in proton-lead collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energies root s(NN) = 5.02 and 8.16 TeV are presented. The measurements are based on data samples collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. The number of primary charged hadrons produced in non-single-diffractive proton-lead collisions is determined in the pseudorapidity range vertical bar eta(lab)vertical bar vertical bar(vertical bar eta cm vertical bar) <0.5 are 17.1 +/- 0.01 (stat) +/- 0.59 (syst) and 20.10 +/- 0.01 (stat) +/- 0.5(syst) at root s(NN) = 5.02 and 8.16 TeV, respectively. The particle densities per participant nucleon are compared to similar measurements in proton-proton, proton-nucleus, and nucleus-nucleus collisions.Peer reviewe