The implementation of the Ment4EU curriculum on social mentoring (Ciff & Brady, 2025) marked a historic milestone in the advancement of mentorship practices within Europe. Held in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, from 3 to 7 February 2025 as a blended intensive program, this initiative stands as the first known enterprise of its kind in the region. It successfully brought together approximately 250 participants from 29 countries, uniting academics, researchers, practitioners, and students who shared a passion for fostering social mentoring as a transformative tool for inclusion, education, and personal and professional development. This evaluation report serves as a comprehensive reflection on the outcomes of the program, assessing its methodologies, impact, and the exchanges that took place among participants. Through a detailed examination, I aimed to highlight the strengths of this pioneering initiative, identify areas for refinement, and explore pathways for broader implementation across Europe. The discussions, collaborations, and insights generated during this event have laid the groundwork for future advancements in structured mentoring, emphasizing its essential role in social cohesion and knowledge-sharing. Through this comprehensive exploration, the report aims to contribute to the ongoing discourse on social mentoring, offering insights into best practices, challenges, and opportunities for expanding mentorship frameworks in European academic institutions. This evaluation report is part of the Erasmus Plus Cooperation Partnership in Higher Education “Mentoring forSocial Inclusion in Europe: Sharing Knowledge and Building Capacity” (Ment4EU), project number 2023-1-AT01-KA220-HED-000158214
In this presented study, we measured in situ the uplink duty cycles of a smartphone for 5G NR and 4G LTE for a total of six use cases covering voice, video, and data applications. The duty cycles were assessed at ten positions near a 4G and 5G base-station site in Belgium. For Twitch, VoLTE, and WhatsApp, the duty cycles ranged between 4% and 22% in time, both for 4G and 5G. For 5G NR, these duty cycles resulted in a higher UL-allotted time due to time division duplexing at the 3.7 GHz frequency band. Ping showed median duty cycles of 2% for 5G NR and 50% for 4G LTE. FTP upload and iPerf resulted in duty cycles close to 100%.
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Rembang Regency is one of the regencies in Central Java that often experiences drought. Based on the results of the mapping of drought-prone areas for 2020 carried out by the Rembang Regency government, there are 63 villages spread across 14 sub-districts, 18,885 families are recorded as experiencing drought. Kaliori District is one of the sub-districts in Rembang Regency that is affected by drought, this sub-district consists of 23 villages and is directly adjacent to the north of Java Sea. The purpose of this research is to be able to do a mapping for planning sustainable drought solutions, obtain quantitative data on drought and stages of drought management. The stages of the research carried out were site surveys and interviews related to drought in the Kaliori area. Prior to the Focus Group Discussion (FGD), a questionnaire was prepared. This research was conducted through joint FGD with all village heads in Kaliori District regarding water drought in Rembang. Based on the FGD and the statistical analysis results, it was found that 70% of Kaliori District experienced drought. When there is a drought, generally villages in Kaliori sub-district use water from water tanks and some use wells of poor quality and having a salty taste. The majority of villages in Kaliori Sub-district experienced a drought that lasted for 4-5 months of a year. Several parties involved in dealing with drought in Kaliori Sub-district included PAMSIMAS, Karang Taruna, Banser, Paguyuban, and P3A. Some solutions proposed are river connection, estuary river gate, and reservoir optimation.
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Wat kunnen we doen om de culturele en creatieve sector op langere termijnwendbaarder en weerbaarder te maken? Makers, culturele instellingen enandere creatieve partijen gingen met die vraag aan de slag binnen het pro-gramma Innovatielabs. Tijdens twee edities onderzochten zij hoe innovatie-projecten een verschil kunnen maken bij actuele én toekomstige opgavenin de sector. Van een fundamentele heroverweging van de eigen rol in hetculturele landschap tot de ontwikkeling van innovatieve, sectoroverstijgendesamenwerkingsplatforms. Er is nagedacht hoe instellingen publieksdata kunnendelen om hun doelgroepen beter te bereiken, hoe technologie kan wordeningezet om andere, nieuwe doelgroepen te bereiken en hoe samengewerktkan worden met niet-menselijke actoren voor een duurzamere toekomst.Het zijn natuurlijk mooie uitkomsten, maar met de afzonderlijke resultaten vandeze projecten alleen komen we er niet. Willen we de sector echt beter uit-rusten voor de toekomst, dan moeten we ook aandacht besteden aan deborging en inbedding van de opgedane kennis en ervaringen, op zo’n manierdat anderen erop kunnen voortbouwen. Met dat doel voor ogen, hebbenwe onderzoekers van verschillende kennisinstellingen gevraagd om de 33Innovatielabs-projecten te volgen. Aan de hand van thema’s brachten zijdwarsverbanden tussen de doelen en de gehanteerde methoden van dezeinitiatieven in kaart. Het onderzoek, dat is gefinancierd door Regieorgaan SIA,bleek op zichzelf ook een experiment en leertraject. Want hoe organiseerje kennisontwikkeling en -uitwisseling door en tussen al deze verschillendebetrokkenen en hoe zorg je ervoor dat de belangrijkste opbrengsten sector-breed kunnen worden gedeeld?In dit onderzoeksrapport delen de onderzoekers hun bevindingen. Hierinis niet alleen aandacht voor de resultaten, maar vooral ook voor de inno-vatieprocessen die tot deze resultaten hebben geleid. Daarmee biedt hetrapport inzichten en handvatten om op voort te bouwen. Want als we iets vanInnovatielabs hebben geleerd, dan is het wel dat we alleen door gezamenlijkekennisontwikkeling en -uitwisseling de uitdagingen die voor ons liggen hethoofd kunnen bieden. Dit rapport markeert dan ook niet alleen het einde van Innovatielabs, maar ook een nieuw begin.
This curriculum on social mentoring is the result of a collaboration of a diverse group of academics, practitioners and students from around the world and was developed and facilitated as part of the Erasmus Plus Project “Mentoring for Social Inclusion in Europe: Sharing Knowledge and Building Capacity” (Ment4EU). It was implemented for the first time in Europe as a cross-organisational effort with a transdisciplinary approach as a blended intensive program with 30 participants from the partner countries joined by a further 220 students, practitioners and academics from NHL Stenden and the Netherlands for plenary sessions. The intended group of learners for this course are students, lecturers, researchers, academics and practitioners (mentors and program managers/coordinators of mentoring programs) interested in learning about mentoring for social inclusion and who are active in the fields of social work, youth work, sociology, health care, community work, management and organization, and related fields of practice and study programs. The weight of the program is 5 ECTS. This curriculum was developed as part of the Erasmus Plus Cooperation Partnership in Higher Educatoin “Mentoring for Social Inclusion in Europe: Sharing Knowledge and Building Capacity” (Ment4EU), as part of WP3_A2 Training Capacity in higher education institutions, project number 2023-1-AT01-KA220-HED-000158214
Conferentieboek van de Vlaams-Nederlandse PlanDag, georganiseerd op woensdag 21 en donderdafg 22 mei 2025.
Caribbean coral reefs are in rapid decline and artificial reefs are increasingly often deployed to restore lost three-dimensional structure. The majority of artificial reefs and other marine infrastructure is built from concrete, with Ordinary Portland Cement (CEM I) as the most important ingredient. However, the production of CEM I results in substantial CO2 emissions. In addition, there are indications that the material is colonized by different benthic assemblages compared to natural reefs. To make artificial reefs more sustainable and ecologically optimal, research into alternative materials is required. For this study, CEM I was compared with five alternative substrates: a mixture of CEM III cement with recycled CEM I fines (CEM III), Calcium Sulfoaluminate cement (CSA), geopolymer-sediment tiles (GS), lime-sediment tiles (LS), and Xiriton (E0). Settlement of the long-spined sea urchin Diadema antillarum on the different materials was tested under marine laboratory conditions. Competent D. antillarum larvae were added to beakers with a tile made from one of the substrates and monitored for settlement after two days. Half of the tiles of each material were covered with a four-week old biofilm, the other half had no biofilm. Results show that substrate type and the presence of a biofilm affected settlement rates significantly. After 48h, highest settlement rates were found on CEM III with biofilm (30% settlement), CSA with biofilm (26% settlement) and E0 with biofilm (20% settlement). Without biofilm, the same substrates yielded only 4 to 10% settlement. CEM I, GS, and LS had overall low settlement rates (<5%) irrespective of biofilm. Post-settlement morphology was not affected by substrate type or biofilm, with juveniles having a mean test diameter of 593 ± 12 µm and a mean spine length of 487 ± 27 µm. This study provides alternative choices for regular concrete that enhance the larval settlement of the key herbivore D. antillarum. We recommend studying these alternative materials in the field to obtain a better understanding of the effects of substrate on the ecological community development over larger time- and spatial scales.
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Introduction: Oral health care of older people in long-term care facilities is insufficient, stressing the need for clear evidence-based implementation strategies to improve oral care. In 2013, a systematic review was performed and new evidence was published. This study aimed to gain insights into implementation strategies used to promote or improve oral health care for older people in long-term care facilities, explore their effectiveness and uncover strategy content in behavioral change techniques, and report the differences between the current results and those of the 2013 study. Methods: A systematic review of the literature according to PRISMA guidelines and meta-analyses of implementation strategies were performed. Cochrane Library, PubMed, and CINAHL databases were searched for papers published between 2011 and 2023. Strategies were identified using the Coding Manual for Behavioral Change Techniques. Meta-analyses of oral health outcomes (“plaque” and “denture plaque”) were performed with random-effects models using R language for statistical computing. Results: 16 studies were included in the current results; 20 studies were included in the 2013 findings. More high-quality studies (67 %) were included in this review than in 2013 (47 %). Dental care professionals were involved in 14 of the 16 studies. Fourteen of the 16 studies used and/ or combined five or more different implementation strategies: knowledge, intention, awareness, self-efficacy, attitude, and facilitation of behavior. Implementation positively affected the knowledge and attitudes of the nursing staff; however, the oral health of older people did not necessarily improve. In the 2013 review, more studies indicated combined oral health measurements were effective (71 %) than in the current review (20 %–33 %). Meta-analysis of four studies on dental plaque (0—3 scale) showed a significant, statistically small mean difference of -.21 (CI -.36; -.07, Cohen's d -.29) between the control and treatment group. Meta-analysis of three studies on denture plaque (0—4 scale), showed a significant, statistically large mean difference of -.76 (CI -1.48; -.05, Cohen's d -.88). Conclusions: In this review, more implementation strategies and combinations were used to implement oral care in long-term care. Implementation strategies positively affected the knowledge and attitudes of nursing staff; however, the oral health of older people did not necessarily improve. Meta-analyses on plaque showed that oral care implementations are effective; for denture plaque, the effect size was large and thus may have more clinical value than for dental plaque.
The catalytic oxidation of potato starch by [MnIV2 (μ-O)3(tmtacn)2][H2O](CH3COO)2 (Mncat, with tmtacn =1,4,7-trimethyl-1,4,7-triazacyclononane) with H2O2, was recently introduced as a promising alternative to ubiquitous sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl). Here, we report an in-depth investigation into interactions of the catalyst with the starch granule. Pitted starches obtained by pre-treatment with high-frequency ultrasound (HFUS) were shown to result in a uniquely homogeneous oxidation. To study this further, fractionation of oxidised potato starch was done which showed a preference for the oxidation of smaller granules with a higher relative surface area. This result was corroborated by chemical surface gelatinisation of fractionated granules. These studies showed that the inside of the granules was oxidised, but that Mncat had a moderate preference for oxidation of the periphery. Together, these results allow for a better understanding of oxidation of starch by Mncat and how it differs from NaOCl oxidation making further optimisation of the process possible.
