A strategic approach to value chain upgrading—adopting innovations and their impacts on farm households in tanzania

The level of agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa remains far below the global average. This is partly due to the scarce use of production-and process-enhancing technologies. This study aims to explore the driving forces and effects of adopting innovative agricultural technologies in food value chains (FVC). These enhancing FVC technologies are referred to as upgrading strategies (UPS) and are designed to improve specific aspects of crop production, postharvest processing, market interaction, and consumption. Based on cross-sectional data collected from 820 Tanzanian farm households, this study utilized the adaptive lasso to analyse the determinants of UPS. To measure the impact of their adoption on well-being, this study applied the propensity score matching approach (PSM). Results from the adaptive lasso suggested that access to credit, experience of environmental shocks and social capital were the main drivers of UPS adoption. In contrast, the engagement in off-farm wage employment impeded adoption. The results from the PSM suggested that UPS adoption has a positive and significant impact on well-being among sampled households, especially with respect to their total value of durable goods and commercialization. The paper suggests that the promotion of social capital and access to financial capital is pivotal in enhancing the adoption of innovative UPS in the farming sector. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerlan

Role mining with ORCA.

ABSTRACT With continuously growing numbers of applications, enterprises face the problem of efficiently managing the assignment of access permissions to their users. On the one hand, security demands a tight regime on permissions; on the other hand, users need permissions to perform their tasks. Rolebased access control (RBAC) has proven to be a solution to this problem but relies on a well-defined set of role definitions, a role concept for the enterprise in question. The definition of a role concept (role engineering) is a difficult task traditionally performed via interviews and workshops. However, often users already have the permissions that they need to do their jobs, and roles can be derived from these permission assignments using data mining technology, thus giving the process of role concept definition a head-start. In this paper, we present the ORCA role mining tool and its algorithm. The algorithm performs a cluster analysis on permission assignments to build a hierarchy of permission clusters and presents the results to the user in graphical form. It allows the user to interactively add expert knowledge to guide the clustering algorithm. The tool provides valuable insights into the permission structures of an enterprise and delivers an initial role hierarchy for the definition of an enterprise role concept using a bottom-up approach

Ökologische Legehennenhaltung in großen Herden: Spezifische Auslaufnutzung und Nährstoffeintrag

The aim of this study was to examine the excrement load in outdoor ranges due to the outdoor run use of free-range laying hens (organic farming system) to quantify the accumulation of nutrients in the soil. The number of hens using the run (flock of 4,500 hens) were recorded (digital photographs; scan sampling interval 10 min, 5 hours/d, 23 d; 7 to 10/2003) and sward protection grids, positioned at different distances (2 , 6, 17 m) from the barn were used to get the amount of excreta (number and weight of droppings). On average 9.8 % of the hens used the range out of which 69 % preferred the area close to the barn (0-17 m). Excretion rates per hen amounted to 12,4 g*hour, thus accounting for a share of 5 % of the total excrements of the flock. The calculated amount of nitrogen in the soil reached a very high level in the area close to the barn, but with regard to the entire outdoor area only usual fertilisation level. Preventive measures to protect the soil close to the barn are recommended

Betrifft Frauengesundheit: Das Kompetenzzentrum Frauen und Gesundheit NRW

Ernst C, Janz U, Möhrke B, et al. Betrifft Frauengesundheit: Das Kompetenzzentrum Frauen und Gesundheit NRW. IFFOnZeit - Onlinezeitschrift des Interdisziplinären Zentrums für Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung (IFF). 2014;4(3):110-115

Using Process Modeling for Well-Directed Distribution of Knowledge Assets

Abstract Knowledge is a very key in nearly every business process. The flow of knowledge in process is supported by various so called knowledge assets which embody either implicit knowledge which is bound to persons or explicit knowledge which is incorporated in organizational documents, handbooks or code artifacts. A large store of knowledge assets, however, is worthless, if these assets stay unused. Thus, the hot-spots of creation and distribution of knowledge have to be identified and assigned to the respective assets. As a consequence, the techniques used to store knowledge assets and to make them available has to go hand in hand with the support for the organizational distribution of knowledge assets in business processes

Digital Enterprise Architectures

Neue Modelle für digitale Unternehmensarchitekturen mit Big Data, Services & Cloud Computing, mobilen Systemen, Internet of Things sowie Industrie 4.0 Ökosystemen machen eine enge Kooperation verschiedener Partner aus Wissenschaft, Anwendungsunternehmen, öffentlichen Organisationen, Softwarehersteller und IT- Dienstleister notwendig. Ziel dieser Zusammenarbeit ist die Zusammenführung neuer Konzepte und Möglichkeiten der Informationstechnologie zur bestmöglichen Unterstützung sich verändernder Unternehmensziele und -strategien. Software- und Unternehmensarchitekturen spielen hierbei eine zentrale Rolle. So werden Anforderungen bezüglich Flexibilität und Agilität in digitalen Unternehmen wesentlich durch serviceorientierte Ansätze unterstützt. Der Ordnungsgrad und die kosteneffiziente Gestaltung komplexer IT-Landschaften soll durch Digital Enterprise Architecture Management deutlich verbessert werden – passend zu neuen Möglichkeiten von Services & Cloud Computing, Big Data, sowie kollaborativen Geschäftsprozessen