Background: Everyday exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) emitted from wireless devices such as mobile phones and base stations, radio and television transmitters is ubiquitous. Some people attribute non-specific physical symptoms (NSPS) such as headache and fatigue to exposure to RF-EMF. Most previous laboratory studies or studies that analyzed populations at a group level did not find evidence of an association between RF-EMF exposure and NSPS. Objectives: We explored the association between exposure to RF-EMF in daily life and the occurrence of NSPS in individual self-declared electro hypersensitive persons using body worn exposimeters and electronic diaries. Methods: We selected seven individuals who attributed their NSPS to RF-EMF exposure. The level of and variability in personal RF-EMF exposure and NSPS were determined during a three-week period. Data were analyzed using timeseries analysis in which exposure as measured and recorded in the diary was correlated with NSPS. Results: We found statistically significant correlations between perceived and actual exposure to wireless internet (WiFi - rate of change and number of peaks above threshold) and base stations for mobile telecommunications (GSM+UMTS downlink, rate of change) and NSPS scores in four of the seven participants. In two persons a higher EMF exposure was associated with higher symptom scores, and in two other persons it was associated with lower scores. Remarkably, we found no significant correlations between NSPS and timeweighted average power density, the most commonly used exposure metric. Conclusions: RF-EMFexposure was associated either positively or negatively with NSP Sinsome but not all of the selected self-declared electro hypersensitive persons. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2018.08.064
MULTIFILE
These are hard days for companies: they have to survive in a market that has been hit by a financial crisis. Many countries in Europe have severe problems trying to overcome this financial crisis. The main remedy applied by governments is to cut back on expenditure, but on the other hand it is said that it is important for a country, and especially for companies, to invest in innovation. These innovations should lead to innovative products that will lead to profitability turnovers for these companies and, as a consequence, improve the economic conditions in a country. Universities provide students with engineering competences, like develop innovation, with which they can show a higher degree of ability to answer complex questions such as how to become players in the market again. Teaching students to become more innovative engineers, Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Department of Engineering, has designed a curriculum in which students are educated in the competence innovation. An important element in the process of teaching innovation to students is the approach of inquiring into possibilities of patents. In the second semester of the first year, students can decide to join an innovative project called: ‘The invention project’. The basis of this project is that students are given the opportunity to create their own invention and with their previously acquired knowledge and skills they design, calculate, prototype and present their invention. In a research project, the experiences of students in this Invention Project have been analysed. The goal of this study was to understand what the success factors are for such a project. The basis of this inquiry is a questionnaire to identify the opinions of students. The research was carried out in the spring semester of 2012. In total 31 students were involved in this research. The results show that there was a high degree of student satisfaction about the Invention Project focused on innovation development. Success factors for this project in the first year of the curriculum were seen: 1 to work on own inventions, 2 development of student’s perception of the total product creation process and 3 to make students see the relevance of contacts with real professionals from industry and from the patent office in their own project. Improvements can be made by: 1 helping students more during the creativity stage in the project and 2 to coach them more on the aspect of engineering a successful invention of which they can be proud. This Invention project is a interesting with which collaborations with other universities can be set up.
From the article: "Most technical studies require and assume from the students a certain knowledge of mathematics. In this paper an experiment is described where students, starting with a study of ICT at a bachelor level, are performing a very short test in mathematics to measure their knowledge. The results of this test are compared with the results students are having with the real exams at the end of the rst quarter of the rst year."
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The climate change and depletion of the world’s raw materials are commonly acknowledged as the biggest societal challenges. Decreasing the energy use and the related use of fossil fuels and fossil based materials is imperative for the future. Currently 40% of the total European energy consumption and about 45% of the CO2 emissions are related to building construction and utilization (EC, 2015). Almost half of this energy is embodied in materials. Developing sustainable materials to find replacement for traditional building materials is therefore an increasingly important issue. Mycelium biocomposites have a high potential to replace the traditional fossil based building materials. Mycelium is the ‘root network’ of mushrooms, which acts as a natural glue to bind biomass. Mycelium grows through the biomass, which functions simultaneously as a growth substrate and a biocomposite matrix. Different organic residual streams such as straw, sawdust or other agricultural waste can be used as substrate, therefore mycelium biocomposites are totally natural, non-toxic, biological materials which can be grown locally and can be composted after usage (Jones et al., 2018). In the “Building On Mycelium” project Avans University of Applied Sciences, HZ University of Applied Sciences, University of Utrecht and the industrial partners will investigate how the locally available organic waste streams can be used to produce mycelium biocomposites with properties, which make them suitable for the building industry. In this project the focus will be on studying the use of the biocomposite as raw materials for the manufacturing of furniture or interior panels (insulation or acoustic).
This project aims to develop a measurement tool to assess the inclusivity of experiences for people with varying challenges and capabilities on the auditory spectrum. In doing so, we performed an in-depth exploration of scientific literature and findings from previous projects by Joint Projects. Based on this, we developed an initial conceptual model that focuses on sensory perception, emotion, cognition, and e[ort in relation to hearing and fatigue. Within, this model a visitor attraction is seen as an “experienscape” with four key elements: content, medium, context, and individual. In co-creative interviews with experts by experience with varying challenges on the auditory spectrum, they provided valuable insights that led to a significant expansion of this initial model. This was a relevant step, as in the scientific and professional literature, little is known about the leisure experiences of people with troubled hearing. For example, personal factors such as a person’s attitude toward their own hearing loss and the social dynamics within their group turned out to greatly influence the experience. The revised model was then applied in a case study at Apenheul, focusing on studying differences in experience of their gorilla presentation amongst people with varying challenges on the auditory spectrum.Societal issueThe Netherlands is one of the countries in Europe with the highest density of visitor attractions. Despite this abundance, many visitor attractions are not fully accessible to everyone, particularly to visitors with disabilities who sometimes are not eligible to ride due to safety concerns, yet when eligible generally still encounter numerous barriers. Accessibility of visitor attractions can be approached in various ways. However, because the focus often lies on operational and technical aspects (e.g., reducing stimuli at certain times of the day by turning o[ music, o[ering alternative wheelchair entrances), strategic and community-focused approaches are often overlooked. More importantly, there is also a lack of attention to the experience of visitors with disabilities. This becomes apparent from several studies from Joint Projects, where visitor attractions are being visited together with experts by experience with various disabilities. Nevertheless, experience is often being regarded as the 'core product' of the leisure sector. The right to meet, discover, develop, relax and thus enjoy this core product is hindered for many people with disabilities due to a lack of knowledge, inaccessibility (physical, digital, social, communicative as well as financial) and discrimination in society. Additionally, recreation entrepreneurs still face a significant gap in reaching the potential market of guests with disabilities and their networks. Thus, despite the numerous initiatives in the leisure sector aimed at improving accessibility on technical and operational fronts, often people with disabilities are still not being able to experience the same kind of enjoyment as those without. These observations form the pressing impetus for initiating the current research project, tapping into the numerous opportunities for learning, development and growth on making leisure offer more inclusive.Benefit to societyIn total, the current project approach comes with a number of enrichments in terms of both knowledge and methodology: a mixed-methods approach that allows for comparing data from different sources to obtain a more complete picture of the experience; a methodological co-design process that honours the 'nothing about us without us' principle; and benchmarking for a group (i.e., people with challenges on the auditory spectrum) that despite the size of its population has thus far mostly been overlooked.
This proposal originates from a pilot of the ‘Frontrunners coalition’ on initiatives for the Circular Economy at the city level. This spin off project studies strategizing in hotels, to find innovative solutions how to manage the integration of circularity in the overall business strategy. The theoretical innovation is to better understand the strategizing process by using the theoretical framework of “strategy-as-practices (S-as-P)”. Exploring in two cases the daily challenges of implementing principles of the circular economy at a luxury and a budget hotel (group). The “strategy-as-practices (S-as-P) framework will be used, emphasizing that strategizing is a joint process of (higher) management and other practitioners (within and outside of the company). The data collection and analysis will be executed by Bachelor and Master students of Hotelschool the Hague and faculty of the research centre. The stages of the Design Oriented Research Approach will be used in this project, with a focus on the stages of Analysis & Diagnoses and Solution Design. The hotels will facilitate this research by giving access and support to the operations and (formal) meetings and additional primary data collection. (Small teams of) Student researchers collect qualitative data based on interviews and observations: they will ‘blend’ in during a 10-week period. Faculty of Hotelschool The Hague will safeguard the continuity and alignment in the project in the several rounds in which these steps are executed. The finding will be presented to the participating companies, the coalition in Amsterdam and the Hospitality industry. Direct societal impact is the showcasing of potential initiative and the responsibility of organizations towards circularity in their environment. Another result is the proposal for a larger follow-up project. This larger project will continue this study within a broader set of hotels but will also be studying and developing potential interventions for improvement the strategizing process.
