Study on open science: The general state of the play in Open Science principles and practices at European life sciences institutes

Nowadays, open science is a hot topic on all levels and also is one of the priorities of the European Research Area. Components that are commonly associated with open science are open access, open data, open methodology, open source, open peer review, open science policies and citizen science. Open science may a great potential to connect and influence the practices of researchers, funding institutions and the public. In this paper, we evaluate the level of openness based on public surveys at four European life sciences institute

Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality

Law as Change: Engaging with the Life and Scholarship of Adrian Bradbrook

In 2011, Professor Adrian J Bradbrook retired from a distinguished scholarly career spanning over forty years. During this time, he made a significant contribution to teaching and scholarship not only in property law — specifically to leasehold tenancies law and easements and restrictive covenants — but also to energy law, especially the emerging and growing field of solar energy. This book brings together those people who worked closely with Bradbrook, each an expert in their own right, to honour a career by critically engaging with the contributions Bradbrook made to property and energy law. Each author has chosen a topic that both fits with their own cutting-edge research and explores the related contributions made by Bradbrook. Most unusually, this collection ranges widely across property law, energy law and human rights

Law as Change: Engaging with the Life and Scholarship of Adrian Bradbrook

In 2011, Professor Adrian J Bradbrook retired from a distinguished scholarly career spanning over forty years. During this time, he made a significant contribution to teaching and scholarship not only in property law — specifically to leasehold tenancies law and easements and restrictive covenants — but also to energy law, especially the emerging and growing field of solar energy. This book brings together those people who worked closely with Bradbrook, each an expert in their own right, to honour a career by critically engaging with the contributions Bradbrook made to property and energy law. Each author has chosen a topic that both fits with their own cutting-edge research and explores the related contributions made by Bradbrook. Most unusually, this collection ranges widely across property law, energy law and human rights

Sustainability politics: The consequences of rebounds Vol. 1

To achieve a sustainable or steady-state economy a society must be able to hold negative environmental impacts, whether defined as resource depletion or as pollution, to desired maxima. That is, it must control throughput defined as resource inputs plus low-value outputs. This can be done directly through capping input substances or approached indirectly through various sustainability paths, fruitfully classified into three groups: control of the number of people, control of the quantity of goods and services per person, and increasing the ratio of goods and services per unit of either resource consumption or pollution. This taxonomy coincides with the formula I = PAT. It is found that each indirect path suffers from rebounds: whatever inputs are left temporarily fallow after reducing population, and/or the affluence of some people, and/or the technological ratio of inputs to economic output, are merely consumed to support more people, raise the affluence of others, and/or increase the amount of economic output. In order however to decrease throughput to sustainable levels – solving the primary problem of human ecology, that of the scale of the human economy in relation to biophysical limits – we needn’t measure exact levels of rebound: directly imposing caps achieves this goal. Once overall caps are in place, population, affluence and efficiency will find their levels decentrally and democratically. Social problems to be addressed in a lower-throughput economy concern the just distribution of rights to consume or pollute common property, unemployment that can result from economic shrinkage, and in general just distribution of the pie when the pie is getting smaller. It is suggested that environmental research should focus on winning democratic majorities for sustainability and identifying the ethical, aesthetic and quality-of-life benefits of a smaller economy. Only worldwide political action – not that of individuals, firms or even countries – is likely to achieve sustainability

Esa 12th Conference: Differences, Inequalities and Sociological Imagination: Abstract Book

Esa 12th Conference: Differences, Inequalities and Sociological Imagination: Abstract Boo