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Current approaches to the control of house mouse infestations rely heavily on a reactive service, where treatments are undertaken in response to complaints. The impact of buildings on the distribution and persistence of house mouse infestations has received little attention. This paper reports the results of 117 surveys of domestic properties in an urban area of Manchester. Results found that mice were not uniformly distributed within the domestic properties surveyed and that general characteristics and construction of the property, food hygiene within the kitchen area and overall fitness influenced distribution. The paper highlights the need for an integrated approach to control to ensure long‐term eradication of chronic house mouse infestations.

Genetic modification (GM) has been called “the new biotechnology” and has been hailed as a leading enabling technology, facilitating major innovation in health care, as well as in the chemical, agricultural and food sectors. GM techniques facilitate the combination of DNA which would not occur naturally and, although there are no records of disease or accidents associated with GM work, potential risks do exist. Legislation designed to ensure that workers are adequately protected against hazards also limits the risk of environmental damage. Human error plays an important role in accident causation; therefore appropriate instruction, supervision and training for personnel working with GM/GMOs (genetically modified organisms) is essential. This article reviews the regulatory controls for GM work and discusses the findings of a preliminary study undertaken to identify the level, content, format and extent of biosafety training currently provided at sites undertaking GM work. While high levels of biosafety training were reported, the content, organisation and management varied between the establishments undertaking GM work. Recommendations are made regarding the management of biosafety training including the need to establish competency levels for all those working with, and supervising and managing work with, GMOs.

This paper aims to better understand if speculative activity is a factor or even the main factor in the run-up of oil prices in the spot market, particularly in the recent price bubble that occurred in the period from mid-2003 to 2008.

The methodology used is based on an existing vector autoregressive model proposed by Kilian and Murphy (2014), which is a structural model of the global market for crude oil that accounts for flow demand and flow supply shocks and speculative demand oil shocks.

From the output of the authors’ structural model, the authors ruled out speculation as a factor of rising oil prices. The authors have found instead that the rapid oil demand caused by an unexpected increase in the global business cycle is the most accurate culprit. Despite the change of perspective in the speculative component, the authors’ conclusions concur with the findings of Kilian and Murphy (2014) and others.

As far as the authors are aware, this is the first time that a study has used as a spread oil variable, a speculative component of the real price, replacing the oil inventories considered by Kilian and Murphy (2014). Another contribution is that the model used allows estimating traditional oil demand elasticity in production and oil supply elasticity in spread movements, casting doubt on existing models with perfect price-inelastic output for crude oil.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of meta-tags by the leading higher educational institutions (HEIs). It explores the various kinds of messages conveyed by HEIs in the meta-description tags of their website homepage. It further examines that whether the messages conveyed by HEIs are in accordance with the prospective students’ perspective.

A list of leading 200 universities was procured from the website of The Times Higher Education. Meta-keywords and meta-description tags of the HEIs websites’ homepage were drawn using online software. Descriptive analysis of the meta-tags was conducted to analyze their use by HEIs. Quantitative content analysis tool was applied to understand the messages conveyed by HEIs.

Meta-description tags are defined by more than half (58.79 percent), whereas meta-keywords are written by approximately a quarter (27.47 percent) of HEIs on their homepage. While defining their meta-description tags, HEIs frequently used words related to the themes such as institution, focus area, academic programs, image building, geography, student group and environment.

It will help the HEIs to understand the importance of meta-tags. Moreover, HEIs will be able to define their meta-description tags better.

This is the first research paper to explore and analyze the meta-tags of the HEIs websites.

Autism-specific characteristics have been associated with internet criminal activities. Internet and non-internet offenders differ on a series of demographic, psychological and offending variables. However, the clinical and criminal presentation of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in forensic secure care settings has been underexplored. This paper aims to explore the profiles of internet offenders with ASD admitted to a secure psychiatric unit.

This study provides the results of a service evaluation of individuals with ASD. The demographic, clinical and criminal characteristics of a small sample of internet offenders with ASD admitted to secure care are described and discussed.

Internet offenders present in secure care with high rates of comorbid disorders, histories of violence and traumatic experiences, mood disorders and difficulties with relationships. Of the 24 internet offenders discussed, 18 of them committed an offence of a sexual nature involving children.

This paper highlights the potential risks for individuals with ASD in using the internet and the possible difficulties associated with detecting this because of rapid advancements in technology.

Organisations bear a graver responsibility than they regularly realise. This chapter expands the foregoing sentence through a reflection on what the other chapters have said – that marketers' responsibility should go beyond the sale of a product and should include the consciousness of the social and environmental consequences of the product and that responsibility should start with strategy and accompany the product or service from ideation to commercialisation. The messages going out from the company about its sustainability initiatives must also be ethical. The chapter also presents the book chapters' practical value for teaching, research and consultancy as well as for business application and policy making or policy advocacy. Finally, the chapter calls for generally acceptable standards to measure product greenness and for more self-regulation especially in less regulated regions. The overall message is that, through the marketing function, managers can and must orient the firm's internal dynamics towards embracing both business goals and the common good by taking all stakeholders into consideration and creating value to be shared by all.

This chapter investigates whether core competence of managers and their expansive (vs. specialized) managerial style affects firms' innovative ability, capacity, and efficiency. Using exogenous CEO departures as a natural experiment, it establishes a causal link between managerial capability and innovation. Importantly, it reveals that firms with talented managers receive significantly more nonself citations; make significantly lower self-citations and lesser citations to the others, indicating novel and explorative innovation achievements. Also, managers with higher general (specialized) ability are cited more (less) by patents from a wider range of fields. Lastly, career concern is identified as a mechanism linking higher ability and innovation.

The growing uses of digital technologies have been creating several new business opportunities. Recently, a new concept has emerged in the literature, the “digital entrepreneurship ecosystem” (DEE). However, it has been empirically understudied. Thus, this study aims to analyze the influence of DEE on entrepreneurial activity. The meta-organization theory was used as a perspective of analysis. A quantitative methodology was applied in a sample that includes data from 28 European countries through the generalized method of moments. It was concluded that the DEE pillars, informal and formal institutions, market conditions, physical infrastructure, human capital and talent and networking and support positively influence entrepreneurial activity. It was also found that the variables knowledge, creation and dissemination and finance have a negative impact on entrepreneurial activity. Several theoretical and empirical contributions are also left for the various stakeholders. The present study is original, as no known studies analyze the influence of DEE on entrepreneurial activity in European countries from the perspective of meta-organization theory.