For many EU citizens, working across the border is the only way to make a living in the EU. The battle for cheap labour has now become a well-oiled machine, in which almost all Western European countries participate. Nevertheless, the employment situation of EU Mobile Citizens, workers of low-skilled and -paid jobs, is often substandard. Challenges are housing, health care and working conditions. In addition, due to the lack of registration in municipalities, it is impossible to have an overview of the numbers and to offer effective help. This is a problem in small to medium-sized cities, where many workers live to work in agriculture, transport, construction, meat industry and logistics. For this study, 32 interviews were conducted in eleven small to medium-sized towns (SMSTs) in Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, Poland, and Spain. The study uses three different perspectives: EU representatives of participating regions, municipalities, and employers. The outcomes show that most SMSTs deal with a shortage of housing, and a lack of grip on the registration process of EU citizens. Although there are some success stories, most SMSTs are not in touch with each other to share these. The paper concludes with proposals for further action-research and collaborations to impact local policies.
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Information and communications technologies (ICTs) in human services are on the rise and raise concerns about their place and impact on the daily activities of professionals and clients. This article describes a study in which a social mobile application was developed for job coaches and employees and implemented in a pilot phase. The aim of the mobile application was to provide a better communication between employees and their job coaches and to provide more up-to-date information about the organization. The application consisted of a personal web environment and app with vacancies, personal news, events, tips, and promotions. A qualitative methodology was used in the form of focus groups and in-depth interviews. The results of this study show that the participants are partly positive about the social mobile application. It can be concluded that the use of mobile technologies can be beneficial in a range of human services practice settings for both professionals and clients and, therefore, requires more attention from the academic field to focus on this relatively new but promising theme.
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Als relatief nieuw begrip in de context van e-learning krijgt ‘mobile learning’ steeds meer aandacht, wat ten dele kan worden verklaard door de ontwikkeling en verspreiding van mobiele technologie. Als we de pleitbezorgers van ‘mobile learning’ moeten geloven, dan wordt deze vorm van leren belangrijker en is het denkbaar dat sommige leerprocessen in de toekomst volledig op die wijze vormgegeven zullen worden. Probleem is dat een eenduidige definitie van ‘mobile learning’ nog altijd ontbreekt, dat er meningsverschillen zijn over de technologie die tot het domein van ‘mobile learning’ behoort, en dat er betrekkelijk weinig resultaten zijn van succesvolle inzet van mobiele technologie in leerprocessen. Daarbij wordt onder succesvol verstaan dat het heeft bijgedragen aan de effectiviteit van het leren, en daarmee aan een beter leerresultaat en een efficiënter leerproces, waarbij onder het laatste verstaan wordt dat het maximale leereffect wordt bereikt met een beperkte inzet van mensen en middelen. Deze notitie beoogt enige duidelijkheid te scheppen in de definitiekwestie en in de visies op leren die een rol spelen bij ‘mobile learning’. Vanuit dat perspectief wordt vervolgens ingegaan op kenmerken van mobiele technologie en ontwikkelingen die daarin verwacht worden. Aansluitend wordt er dieper ingegaan op leerprocessen en de rol die mobiele technologie daarin zou kunnen vervullen, waarna de notitie wordt afgesloten met een kijkkader om de mogelijke inzet en betekenis van ‘mobile learning’ in onderwijssituaties te kunnen duiden en beoordelen.
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Drones have been verified as the camera of 2024 due to the enormous exponential growth in terms of the relevant technologies and applications such as smart agriculture, transportation, inspection, logistics, surveillance and interaction. Therefore, the commercial solutions to deploy drones in different working places have become a crucial demand for companies. Warehouses are one of the most promising industrial domains to utilize drones to automate different operations such as inventory scanning, goods transportation to the delivery lines, area monitoring on demand and so on. On the other hands, deploying drones (or even mobile robots) in such challenging environment needs to enable accurate state estimation in terms of position and orientation to allow autonomous navigation. This is because GPS signals are not available in warehouses due to the obstruction by the closed-sky areas and the signal deflection by structures. Vision-based positioning systems are the most promising techniques to achieve reliable position estimation in indoor environments. This is because of using low-cost sensors (cameras), the utilization of dense environmental features and the possibilities to operate in indoor/outdoor areas. Therefore, this proposal aims to address a crucial question for industrial applications with our industrial partners to explore limitations and develop solutions towards robust state estimation of drones in challenging environments such as warehouses and greenhouses. The results of this project will be used as the baseline to develop other navigation technologies towards full autonomous deployment of drones such as mapping, localization, docking and maneuvering to safely deploy drones in GPS-denied areas.
Structural colour (SC) is created by light interacting with regular nanostructures in angle-dependent ways resulting in vivid hues. This form of intense colouration offers commercial and industrial benefits over dyes and other pigments. Advantages include durability, efficient use of light, anti-fade properties and the potential to be created from low cost materials (e.g. cellulose fibres). SC is widely found in nature, examples include butterflies, squid, beetles, plants and even bacteria. Flavobacterium IR1 is a Gram-negative, gliding bacterium isolated from Rotterdam harbour. IR1 is able to rapidly self-assemble into a 2D photonic crystal (a form of SC) on hydrated surfaces. Colonies of IR1 are able to display intense, angle-dependent colours when illuminated with white light. The process of assembly from a disordered structure to intense hues, that reflect the ordering of the cells, is possible within 10-20 minutes. This bacterium can be stored long-term by freeze drying and then rapidly activated by hydration. We see these properties as suiting a cellular reporter system quite distinct from those on the market, SC is intended to be “the new Green Fluorescent Protein”. The ability to understand the genomics and genetics of SC is the unique selling point to be exploited in product development. We propose exploiting SC in IR1 to create microbial biosensors to detect, in the first instance, volatile compounds that are damaging to health and the environment over the long term. Examples include petroleum or plastic derivatives that cause cancer, birth defects and allergies, indicate explosives or other insidious hazards. Hoekmine, working with staff and students within the Hogeschool Utrecht and iLab, has developed the tools to do these tasks. We intend to create a freeze-dried disposable product (disposables) that, when rehydrated, allow IR1 strains to sense and report multiple hazardous vapours alerting industries and individuals to threats. The data, visible as brightly coloured patches of bacteria, will be captured and quantified by mobile phone creating a system that can be used in any location by any user without prior training. Access to advice, assay results and other information will be via a custom designed APP. This work will be performed in parallel with the creation of a business plan and market/IP investigation to prepare the ground for seed investment. The vision is to make a widely usable series of tests to allow robust environmental monitoring for all to improve the quality of life. In the future, this technology will be applied to other areas of diagnostics.
A world where technology is ubiquitous and embedded in our daily lives is becoming increasingly likely. To prepare our students to live and work in such a future, we propose to turn Saxion’s Epy-Drost building into a living lab environment. This will entail setting up and drafting the proper infrastructure and agreements to collect people’s location and building data (e.g. temperature, humidity) in Epy-Drost, and making the data appropriately available to student and research projects within Saxion. With regards to this project’s effect on education, we envision the proposal of several derived student projects which will provide students the opportunity to work with huge amounts of data and state-of-the-art natural interaction interfaces. Through these projects, students will acquire skills and knowledge that are necessary in the current and future labor-market, as well as get experience in working with topics of great importance now and in the near future. This is not only aligned with the Creative Media and Game Technologies (CMGT) study program’s new vision and focus on interactive technology, but also with many other education programs within Saxion. In terms of research, the candidate Postdoc will study if and how the data, together with the building’s infrastructure, can be leveraged to promote healthy behavior through playful strategies. In other words, whether we can persuade people in the building to be more physically active and engage more in social interactions through data-based gamification and building actuation. This fits very well with the Ambient Intelligence (AmI) research group’s agenda in Augmented Interaction, and CMGT’s User Experience line. Overall, this project will help spark and solidify lasting collaboration links between AmI and CMGT, give body to AmI’s new Augmented Interaction line, and increase Saxion’s level of education through the dissemination of knowledge between researchers, teachers and students.
