This article reviews direct freshwater consumption in tourism from both quantitative and qualitative viewpoints to assess the current water demand of the tourism sector and to identify current and future management challenges. The article concludes that even though tourism increases global water consumption, direct tourism-related water use is considerably less than 1% of global consumption, and will not become significant even if the sector continues to grow at anticipated rates of around 4% per year (international tourist arrivals). The situation differs at the regional level because tourism concentrates traveller flows in time and space, and often-in dry destinations where water resources are limited. Furthermore, the understanding of tourism's indirect water requirements, including the production of food, building materials and energy, remains inadequately understood, but is likely to be more substantial than direct water use. The article concludes that with expected changes in global precipitation patterns due to climate change, it is advisable in particular for already water scarce destinations to engage in proactive water management. Recommendations for managing tourism's water footprint are made.
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Smart glasses were perceived to be potentially revolutionary for healthcare, however, there is only limited research on the acceptance and social implications of smart glasses in healthcare. This study aims to get a better insight into the theoretical foundations and the purpose was to identify themes regarding adoption, mediation, and the use of smart glasses from the perspective of healthcare professionals. A qualitative research design with focus groups was used to collect data. Three focus groups with 22 participants were conducted. Data were analyzed using content analysis. Our analysis revealed six overarching themes related to the anticipated adoption of smart glasses: knowledge, innovativeness, use cases, ethical issues, persuasion, and attitude. Nine themes were found related to anticipated mediation and use of smart glasses: attention, emotions, social influences, design, context, camera use, risks, comparisons to known products, and expected reaction and might influence the acceptance of smart glasses.
Home telehealth (HT) refers to the use of videoconferencing to provide care to patients remotely and can help older adults age in place. However, these technologies are unlikely to impact care unless health care providers are motivated to use them. Education may play a key role in increasing motivation to use and competence regarding HT. To help guide the development of nursing education to facilitate adoption and use, the current study examined predictors of Dutch nurses’ willingness to use HT, based on a survey of 67 Dutch nurses with and 126 without HT experience. Nurses’ willingness to use this technology was predicted by HT’s (a) perceived usefulness to the client, (b) effort expectancy, (c) social influence, and (d) cost expectations. These observed relationships are anticipated to help with the development of effective educational programs to increase HT use and, therefore, improve older adults’ quality of life.
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Buildings are responsible for approximately 40% of energy consumption and 36% of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the EU, and the largest energy consumer in Europe (https://ec.europa.eu/energy). Recent research shows that more than 2/3 of all CO2 is emitted during the building process whereas less than 1/3 is emitted during use. Cement is the source of about 8% of the world's CO2 emissions and innovation to create a distributive change in building practices is urgently needed, according to Chatham House report (Lehne et al 2018). Therefore new sustainable materials must be developed to replace concrete and fossil based building materials. Lightweight biobased biocomposites are good candidates for claddings and many other non-bearing building structures. Biocarbon, also commonly known as Biochar, is a high-carbon, fine-grained solid that is produced through pyrolysis processes and currently mainly used for energy. Recently biocarbon has also gained attention for its potential value with in industrial applications such as composites (Giorcellia et al, 2018; Piri et.al, 2018). Addition of biocarbon in the biocomposites is likely to increase the UV-resistance and fire resistance of the materials and decrease hydrophilic nature of composites. Using biocarbon in polymer composites is also interesting because of its relatively low specific weight that will result to lighter composite materials. In this Building Light project the SMEs Torrgas and NPSP will collaborate with and Avans/CoE BBE in a feasibility study on the use of biocarbon in a NPSP biocomposite. The physicochemical properties and moisture absorption of the composites with biocarbon filler will be compared to the biocomposite obtained with the currently used calcium carbonate filler. These novel biocarbon-biocomposites are anticipated to have higher stability and lighter weight, hence resulting to a new, exciting building materials that will create new business opportunities for both of the SME partners.
Climate change and the depletion of resources in the world are widely recognized as the greatest societal challenges. The building sector is responsible for 40% of the raw material consumption globally. The emissions related to construction materials are anticipated to double by 2050, if no new technologies are adopted (EC, 2021). Based on the environmental cost indicator, isolation has the second largest (after concrete) impact to the environment. In Mythic - Myterials for THermal Insulation in Construction goal is to develop (in co-creation with the work field) the best available mycelium biocomposite, which can be used as a circular, biodegradable insulation material for construction in the building sector. In recent research projects partners concluded that Mycelium biocomposites have a high potential to replace traditional fossil-based isolation materials, but further research on the thermal insulation and moisture absorption is needed to convince the construction market. In the project various partners will cooperate, both from the production side of mycelium composites, as well as from the application side. Some partners originate from previous projects, but others contacted Centre of Expertise for the Biobased Economy (CoEBBE) to build further on the existing network. There are several SME’s from the Netherlands, but also from abroad (Nylausn from Iceland, Mogu Srl from Italy and Corstyrene form France), as well as Branche organizations and knowledge institutes. Avans works together with HZ in CoEBBE and for the microbiological knowledge we cooperate with the University of Utrecht. For the market research CoEBBE cooperates with the lectorate New Marketing within Avans, focussing on sustainability via biomimicry. Mycelium composites and natural products for the building industry is the theme that binds all partners.
Rotating machinery, such as centrifugal pumps, turbines, bearings, and other critical systems, is the backbone of various industrial processes. Their failures can lead to significant maintenance costs and downtime. To ensure their continuous operation, we propose a fault diagnosis and monitoring framework that leverages the innovative use of acoustic sensors for early fault detection, especially in components less accessible for traditional vibration-based monitoring strategies. The main objective of the proposed project is to develop a fault diagnosis and monitoring framework for rotating machinery, including the fusion of acoustic sensors and physics-based models. By combining real-time monitoring data from acoustic sensors with an understanding of first principles, the framework will enable maintenance practitioners to identify and categorize different failure modes such as wear, fatigue, cavitation, reduced flow, bearing damage, impeller damage, misalignment, etc. In the initial phase, the focus will be on centrifugal pumps using the existing test set-up at the University of Twente. Sorama specializes in acoustic sensors to locate noise sources and will provide acoustic cameras to capture sound patterns related to pump deterioration during various operating conditions. These acoustic signals will then be correlated with the different failure modes and mechanisms that will be described by physics-based models, such as wear, fatigue, cavitation, corrosion, etc. Furthermore, a recently published data set by the Dynamics Based Maintenance research group that includes vibration analysis data and motor current analysis data of various fault scenarios, such as mentioned above, will be used as validation. The anticipated outcome of this project is a versatile framework for a physics-informed acoustic monitoring system. This system is designed to enhance early fault detection significantly, reducing maintenance costs and downtime across a broad spectrum of industrial applications, from centrifugal pumps to turbines, bearings, and beyond.
