Betekenis van groene burgerinitiatieven voor het natuurbeleid in Nederland

De Rijksnatuurvisie en het Natuurpact met provincies benadrukken het belang van de vermaatschappelijking van het natuurbeleid. Burgers die via groene burgerinitiatieven het heft in eigen hand nemen, worden daarbij als één van dekansen benoemd om ‘de natuur terug te leggen in de handen van mensen’. Op basis van een analyse van 264 initiatieven, opgedeeld in tien ideaaltypische vormen van groene burgerinitiatieven beschrijven we in deze paper de ecologische,sociale en institutionele kracht van deze initiatieven

Using neural nets to predict transportation mode choice: Amsterdam network change analysis

In the Amsterdam metropolitan area, the opening of a new metro line along the north–south axis of the city has introduced a significant change in the region’s public transportation network. Mode choice analysis can help in assessment of changes in traveler behavior that occurred after the opening of the new metro line. As it is known that artificial neural nets excel at complex classification problems, this paper aims to investigate an approach where the traveler’s transportation mode is predicted through a neural net, trained on choice sets and user specific attributes inferred from the data. The method shows promising results. It is shown that such models perform better when it is asked to predict the choice of mode for trips which take place on the same underlying transportation network as the data with which the model is trained. This difference in performance is observed to be especially high for trips from and to certain areas that were impacted by the introduction of the north–south line, indicating possible changes in behavioural patterns, entailing interesting possible directions for further research

Using Neural Nets to Predict Transportation Mode Choice: An Amsterdam Case Study

In the Amsterdam metropolitan area, the opening of a new metro line along the north south axis of the city has introduced a significant change in the region’s public transportation network. Mode choice analysis can help in assessment of changes in traveler behavior that occurred after the opening of the new metro line. As it is known that artificial neural nets excel at complex classification problems, this paper aims to investigate an approach where the traveler’s transportation mode is predicted from a choice set through a neural net. Although the approach shows promising results, it has been found that its performance can be attributed partly to the presence of differences in data patterns between the actual and generated trips, which the neural net is able to detect. By adding generated user characteristic attributes, the performance of the model can be boosted slightly overall, and significantly concerning prediction of whether or not a trip was made by car

Applying transfer learning and various ANN architectures to predict transportation mode choice in Amsterdam

For long, statistical models have been used for transportation mode choice analysis, due to their ability to extract economic information from the model parameters. Recently, the application of Artificial Neural Nets to predict transportation mode choice is gaining ground, partly due to efforts that have led to an improved interpretability of this class of models. In this development, various innovations have been suggested concerning Neural Net architecture and hyperparameter tuning. Building on this, this paper investigates 3 similar Neural Net architectures to be applied to data from an Amsterdam case study. This data has been collected in 3 waves. Between the first and second collection period, the public transportation network in Amsterdam changed. A transfer learning approach is suggested to improve models that were trained on a single wave of data. Based on the test loss of the models from the transfer learning experiments, we conclude that this is a promising technique to use in this context, since it has shown to improve model performance

Relativistically rotating dust

Dust configurations play an important role in astrophysics and are the simplest models for rotating bodies. The physical properties of the general--relativistic global solution for the rigidly rotating disk of dust, which has been found recently as the solution of a boundary value problem, are discussed.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figure

Innovative Governance of Urban Green Spaces : Learning from 18 innovatives examples around Europe

In this report we have investigated 18 examples of innovative governance arrangements in urban green space management across Europe. In this analyses, we focused on three interrelated research questions: i) What do innovative governance arrangements look like in terms of aims, actors, structure, contexts, dynamics, and which of their elements can be seen as innovative? ii) Which are the most important perceived effects of these arrangements in their environmental and political contexts? iii) What lessons can be drawn from the supporting and hindering factors for these arrangements, and the power dynamics that take place

Disconnection from nature : Expanding our understanding of human-nature relations

The human relationship with nature is a topic that has been explored throughout human history. More recently, the idea of connection to nature has merged as an important transdisciplinary field of study. Despite increased scholarly attention to connection to nature, the notion of disconnection from nature remains undertheorized and understudied.In this perspective article, we argue for a more comprehensive understanding of disconnection from nature to strengthen theories of human-nature relationships that goes beyond individual relationships and considers social and collective factors of disconnection, including institutional, socio-cultural and power dimensions.Drawing on case insights, we present the 'wheel of disconnection' to illustrate how disconnections from nature manifest across individual or societal meaning-making processes, thereby problematizing existing research that seeks to create dualisms between human positive and negative impacts on the environment in isolation from cultural or political contexts.We do not seek to discount research or important practical efforts to foster an individual's connection to nature by elevating disconnection. Instead, we hope that creating greater awareness and understanding of disconnection will be able to guide opportunities going forward for strengthening a connection to nature along a continuum from the individual to the social. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.Peer reviewe

Mechanistic insights into the C₅₅-P targeting lipopeptide antibiotics revealed by structure-activity studies and high-resolution crystal structures

The continued rise of antibiotic resistance is a global concern that threatens to undermine many aspects of modern medical practice. Key to addressing this threat is the discovery and development of new antibiotics that operate by unexploited modes of action. The so-called calcium-dependent lipopeptide antibiotics (CDAs) are an important emerging class of natural products that provides a source of new antibiotic agents rich in structural and mechanistic diversity. Notable in this regard is the subset of CDAs comprising the laspartomycins and amphomycins/friulimicins that specifically target the bacterial cell wall precursor undecaprenyl phosphate (C(55)-P). In this study we describe the design and synthesis of new C(55)-P-targeting CDAs with structural features drawn from both the laspartomycin and amphomycin/friulimicin classes. Assessment of these lipopeptides revealed previously unknown and surprisingly subtle structural features that are required for antibacterial activity. High-resolution crystal structures further indicate that the amphomycin/friulimicin-like lipopeptides adopt a unique crystal packing that governs their interaction with C(55)-P and provides an explanation for their antibacterial effect. In addition, live-cell microscopy studies provide further insights into the biological activity of the C(55)-P targeting CDAs highlighting their unique mechanism of action relative to the clinically used CDA daptomycin