Les Roches Global Hospitality Education - Marbella, Spain is a private hospitality management university located in the Mediterranean coastal city of Marbella, Spain. Since its founding in 1995, the University offers accredited undergraduate and postgraduate degree programs in international hospitality management.
As human activities such as urbanization encroach on natural areas, some wildlife species adapt to these changes and learn ways to utilize newly available resources. We monitored the use patterns of the Eurasian otter in three urban ponds in southern Spain (Málaga province). We compared weekly otter visits and relative spraint abundance between the urban ponds and two control ponds located in natural areas, testing for differences in use patterns between them using Generalized Linear Mixed Models and the Wald–Wolfowitz run test. We also estimated prey survival rates through Kaplan–Meier estimator curves. We also assessed problems of coexistence with human interests. Relative spraint abundance was not affected by pond type (urban or natural). However, the number of otter visits was lower for urban ponds, and the pattern was not random but concentrated over a short time until prey depletion, suggesting consistent use of the urban feeding patches. Available food resources in urban settings can become a viable option for otters, which appear to explore urban habitats when it suits them. However, in the monitored urban ponds, otters competed with human interests and generated a conservation problem that almost led to lethal measures.
Abstract Since its burst in early 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has deeply affected every aspect of daily life, from international trade and travelling to restrictions on an individual level, becoming a complex multi-level and highly multi-faceted problem. Due to its overarching influence and deep impact, it can be seen as one of the most disruptive Grand Challenges of our time. Different from most other lasting Grand Challenges, such as Climate Change, the pandemic exerted its influence with little ramp-up, rapidly transforming health and health systems, human lives, goods and economic flows, decision-making mechanisms, research and innovation, and many other aspects of life in a very short span of time. Grand Challenges require extraordinary efforts from society as a whole since they need holistic, effective, collaborative endeavours to solve them. One such unique orchestrated effort can be observed in the subsequent series of virtual massive EUvsVirus ( https://www.euvsvirus.org/ ) events and committed collaborations (‘hackathon’, ‘matchathon’, ‘launchathon’, ‘community’, ‘EIC Covid platform’, and the unparalleled ‘Academia Diffusion Experiment’ [ADE], analysed in chapter “Academia Diffusion Experiment: Trailblazing the Emergence from Co-Creation” of this book). While this chapter explains ‘what’ has been produced with the ADE, inspired by the EUvsVirus phenomenon, the ADE chapter describes ‘how’ it has been done. Both are extremely unique in terms of content, procedure, motivation, collaboration, effects—and they attempt to trailblaze at highest level co-creation, co-evolution, and co-dreaming. Hence, situated as the last chapters of this book. This chapter will shed light on the EUvsVirus events, where over 30,000 individuals from 40 countries came together and addressed the complexity of this massive challenge in a pioneering and groundbreaking way. The chapter is focused on analysing the EUvsVirus hackathon (alongside its mentioned unique spillovers) as a tool, method, and process capable of channelling and activating individuals’ and institutions’ concerns, wills, and commitments into a unique orchestrated open, collaborative response to an urgent Grand Challenge, the pandemic. We are producing a multi-vortex tornado model, resembling the EUvsVirus phenomenon, its components, mechanisms, behaviour and how to replicate it to achieve such disruptive, global organisational effort of co-creation. Especially, the emergence of such collaboration in the face of such urgency leads to the assumption that there are crucial lessons to be learned from this endeavour, quite fittingly encapsulated by these words: ‘We are learning That though we weren't ready for this, We have been readied by it’. Amanda Gorman’s New Year poem ( https://amandagormanbooks.com/#the-hill-we-climb-and-other-poems or https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2022/01/06/exp-amanda-gorman-nye-poem.cnn )
Inspired by EUvsVirus, this chapter focuses on the Academia Diffusion Experiment (ADE) with more than 40 scholars and practitioners around the globe, who transform practice into science through co-creating, co-evolving, and co-dreaming. The chapter first introduces EUvsVirus as the context of the ADE and then uncovers the Denica 2.0 managerial method deployed to facilitate it, its primary constituents, governing principles, participants, information, and risk management. Finally, the chapter reflects the learnings from the ADE by discussing its potentials, problems, and challenges.
