Flood risk and resilience in the Netherlands: In search of an adaptive governance approach

In the Netherlands, dealing with the risk of flooding in the face of the current climate change requires a governance approach that is less based upon the long-standing tradition of prevention and protection, and more oriented toward ideas of resilience and adaptivity. Such an approach is assumed to be more resilient compared to static approaches and better equipped to deal with the indeterminate character of a problem like flood risk. This article presents the Dutch attempt to introduce a more polycentric and adaptive governance approach in flood management, called multilayered safety (MLS).We studied this approach via interviews and an extensive document study, and analyzed the institutions governing the issue using the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework of Elinor Ostrom. For years, the issue was in the hands of a small network of actors, mainly occupied by water experts and governed by a strong lead organization and permanent bodies. While introducing a new, more adaptive policy concept the government encountered both resistance and inability within the existing policy regime. This article shows that the issue of flood safety was successfully 'tamed' for decades. Adopting a more adaptive and polycentric approach necessitates 'untaming' the issue of flood safety

Understanding of Relation Structures of Graphical Models by Lower Secondary Students

A learning path has been developed on system dynamical graphical modelling, integrated into the Dutch lower secondary physics curriculum. As part of the developmental research for this learning path, students’ understanding of the relation structures shown in the diagrams of graphical system dynamics based models has been investigated. One of our main findings is that only some students understand these structures correctly. Reality-based interpretation of the diagrams can conceal an incorrect understanding of diagram structures. As a result, students seemingly have no problems interpreting the diagrams until they are asked to construct a graphical model. Misconceptions have been identified that are the consequence of the fact that the equations are not clearly communicated by the diagrams or because the icons used in the diagrams mislead novice modellers. Suggestions are made for improvements

Meer Grip op het Ongrijpbare

Poremećaj iz autističnog spektra je neurorazvojni poremećaj koji djeluje na razvoj socijalnih interakcija, komunikacijskih i motoričkih vještina te učenje i ponašanje uz ograničene interese i stereotipije. Prosječno vrijeme dijagnosticiranja poremećaja iz spektra autizma jest u dobi djeteta od tri godine, iako se odstupanja u razvoju karakteristična za ovaj poremećaj mogu uočiti i u dobi od 12 mjeseci. Procjenjuje se da se 1/160 djece u svijetu suočava s navedenim poremećajem. Biološki marker za poremećaj iz autističnog spektra nije otkriven pa se dijagnoza i dalje postavlja na temelju ponašajnih obilježja. Dijagnoza poremećaja iz autističnog spektra se očituje drugačijim obiteljskim funkcioniranjem zbog čega je i ostalim članovima obitelji potrebno pružiti psihološku pomoć. Zadaća medicinske sestre je pravovremeno uočavanje odstupanja od urednoga razvoja kod djeteta, usmjeravanje roditelja na stručnjake multidisciplinarnog tima te prilagođavanje intervencija osnovnim potrebama djeteta. Kvaliteta zdravstvene skrbi kod djeteta s poremećajem iz spektra autizma ovisit će o težini simptoma, prihvaćanju dijagnoze od strane obitelji, raspoloživog stručnog osoblja te intenzitetu provođenja metoda rane intervencije u svakodnevici. Terapijski postupci u ranoj intervenciji i kasnijoj dobi trebaju biti prilagođeni djetetovoj dobi, interesima te preferiranom načinu komunikacije. Roditelj u terapijskim postupcima ima ulogu «ko-terapeuta» te je educiran od stručnog osoblja kako pomoći djetetu u svakodnevnom funkcioniranju. Otvoreniji pristup zdravstvenih djelatnika prema djetetu s poremećajem iz autističnog spektra, uz edukaciju roditelja, učitelja i zajednice u cjelini pomaže prihvaćanju dijagnoze na većoj društvenoj razini.Autistic spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects the development of social interactions, communication and motor skills, so as learning and behavior with limited interests and stereotypes. The average time to diagnose autistic spectrum disorder is at the age of three years, though the developmental deviations, characteristic for this disorder, can be noticed even at the age of 12 months. It is estimated that 1/160 children in the world are facing this disorder. Since biological marker for autistic spectrum disorder still has not been determined, diagnosis is still based on behavioral features of a child. Diagnosis of autistic spectrum disorders manifests by different family functioning, which is why other family members need to be provided with psychological assistance. The nurse's task is to timely notice deviations from early child’s development, to guide parents to multidisciplinary team professionals and to adjust interventions to basic child’s needs. The quality of health care for a child with autistic spectrum disorder depends on the severity of the symptoms, diagnosis acceptance by the family, available professional staff, and the intensity of practicing early intervention methods in everyday life. Therapy procedures in the early intervention time and later in years should be moderated related to the child's age, interests and the preferred way of communication. The parent in therapeutic procedures has the role of a "co-therapist" and is trained by expert staff to help the child in their daily activities. An open approach of healthcare professionals to the child with an autistic spectrum disorder, combined with the education of parents, teachers and the community as a whole, helps to accept the diagnosis at a higher social level

Measuring perceived social presence in distributed learning groups

Kreijns, K., Kirschner, P. A., Jochems, W. M. G., & Van Buuren, H. (2011). Measuring perceived social presence in distributed learning groups. Education and Information Technologies, 16, 365-381.Social presence – the degree to which „the other‟ in a communication appears to be a „real‟ person – has captured the attention of those dealing with learning in groups through computer-supported collaborative learning environments. The concept is important because it affects participation and social interaction, both necessary for effective collaboration and knowledge construction. This article reports on the construction and validation of a self-reporting (Dutch-language) Social Presence Scale to determine perceived social presence in distributed learning groups using computer-supported collaborative learning environments. The result is a onedimensional scale consisting of five items with an internal consistency of .81. We used a nomological network of similar constructs for further validation. The findings suggest that the Social Presence Scale has potential to be useful as a measure for social presence

Final Report: Biological and Synthetic Nanostructures Controlled at the Atomistic Level

Nanotechnology holds great promise for many application fields, ranging from the semiconductor industry to medical research and national security. Novel, nanostructured materials are the fundamental building blocks upon which all these future nanotechnologies will be based. In this Strategic Initiative (SI) we conducted a combined theoretical and experimental investigation of the modeling, synthesis, characterization, and design techniques which are required to fabricate semiconducting and metallic nanostructures with enhanced properties. We focused on developing capabilities that have broad applicability to a wide range of materials and can be applied both to nanomaterials that are currently being developed for nanotechnology applications and also to new, yet to be discovered, nanomaterials. During this 3 year SI project we have made excellent scientific progress in each of the components of this project. We have developed first-principles techniques for modeling the structural, electronic, optical, and transport properties of materials at the nanoscale. For the first time, we have simulated nanomaterials both in vacuum and in aqueous solution. These simulation capabilities harness the worldleading computational resources available at LLNL to model, at the quantum mechanical level, systems containing hundreds of atoms and thousands of electrons. Significant advances in the density functional and quantum Monte Carlo techniques employed in this project were developed to enable these techniques to scale up to simulating realistic size nanostructured materials. We have developed the first successful techniques for chemically synthesizing crystalline silicon and germanium nanoparticles and nanowires. We grew the first macroscopic, faceted superlattice crystals from these nanoparticles. We have also advanced our capabilities to synthesize semiconductor nanoparticles using physical vapor deposition techniques so that we are now able to control of the size, shape and surface structure of these nanoparticles. We have made advances in characterizing the surface of nanoparticles using x-ray absorption experiments. Throughout this SI a number of long-term, strategic external collaborations have been established. These collaborations have resulted in 30 joint publications, strategic hires of postdocs and graduate students from these groups into groups at LLNL and the submission of joint research grants. We have developed collaborations on the theory and modeling of nanomaterials with the groups of Profs. Ceder and Marzari (MIT), Crespi (Penn State), Freeman (Northwestern), Grossman and Lester (UC Berkeley), Mitas (North Carolina State), and Needs (Cambridge). We are collaborating with Dr. Alivisatos's group in the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory on the fabrication, characterization and modeling of inorganic nanomaterials. We are working with Prof. Majumdar's group at UC Berkeley on the characterization of nanomaterials. We are working with the molecular diamond group at Chevron-Texaco who has developed a process for extracting mono-disperse samples of nano-scale diamonds from crude oil. We are collaborating with Dr. Chen at UCSF to develop CdSe nanoparticle-biolabels. As a result of the outstanding scientific achievements and the long-term collaborations developed during this strategic initiative we have been extremely successful in obtaining external funding to continue and grow this research activity at the LLNL. We have received two DARPA grants to support the further development of our computational modeling techniques and to develop carbon nanotube based molecular separation devices. We have received two new Office of Science BES grants to support our nanomaterials modeling and synthesis projects. We have received funding from the NA22 office of DOE to develop the materials modeling capabilities begun in this SI for modeling detector materials. We have received funding from Intel Corporation to apply the modeling techniques developed in this initiative to examine silicon nanowires fabricated on computer chips. We are also pursuing several additional sources of funding from BES, the DHS, and NIH to support the continuation of the research programs developed in this SI. The remainder of this report and the attached publications describe the background to this SI research project and the details of the scientific achievements that have been made

Особенности образования неметаллических включений при производстве углеродистой электростали

Изложены результаты, полученных при реализации нового подхода к решению проблемы образования неметаллических включений (НВ), основанного на анализе генезиса и трансформации НВ в стали по всем этапам сталеплавильно–разливочного и прокатного (применительно к условиям сортопрокатно–проволочного стана) переделов

Interfacial Electronic Charge Transfer and Density of States in Short Period Cu/Cr Multilayers

Nanometer period metallic multilayers are ideal structures to investigate electronic phenomena at interfaces between metal films since interfacial atoms comprise a large atomic fraction of the samples. The Cu/Cr binary pair is especially suited to study the interfaces in metals since these elements are mutually insoluble, thus eliminating mixing effects and compound formation and the lattice mismatch is very small. This allows the fabrication of high structural quality Cu/Cr multilayers that have a structure which can be approximated in calculations based on idealized atomic arrangements. The electronic structure of the Cu and the Cr layers in several samples of thin Cu/Cr multilayers were studied using x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS). Total electron yield was measured and used to study the white lines at the Cu L{sub 2} and L{sub 3} absorption edges. The white lines at the Cu absorption edges are strongly related to the unoccupied d-orbitals and are used to calculate the amount of charge transfer between the Cr and Cu atoms in interfaces. Analysis of the Cu white lines show a charge transfer of 0.026 electrons/interfacial Cu atom to the interfacial Cr atoms. In the Cu XAS spectra we also observe a van Hove singularity between the L{sub 2} and L{sub 3} absorption edges as expected from the structural analysis. The absorption spectra are compared to partial density of states obtained from a full-potential linear muffin-tin orbital calculation. The calculations support the presence of charge transfer and indicate that it is localized to the first two interfacial layers in both Cu and Cr

Access to aidable residual hearing in adult candidates for cochlear implantation in the UK

Guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) permits candidates to receive a cochlear implant provided they only hear sounds louder than 90 dB HL at 2 and 4 kHz. In some patients, their level of residual hearing may be sufficient to warrant the use of a hearing aid in their non-implanted ear. A survey of unilaterally-implanted adults indicated that those implanted since the publication of NICE guidance were almost seven times more likely to use a hearing aid than those implanted prior to this. If contralateral hearing aid use provides additional benefits over implant use alone, it may be appropriate to consider the capacity to use residual hearing following implantation when determining candidacy