Marine spatial planning: risk or opportunity for fisheries in the North Sea?

The North Sea is one of the busiest marine areas in the world. It is also a major fisheries ground. Bordered by seven countries with their own spatial uses and claims, the stage is set for complex and demanding governance challenges. Recent decades have also seen user groups multiply, competition for space and resources increase, and the pressure on the marine environment and its living natural resources grow. As governments strive to balance conservation and economic development needs, they also have to deal with inter-as well as intra-national user conflicts. Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) has arrived as a new approach to these issues. It is argued that for North Sea fishing people and their communities MSP holds risks as well as opportunities, depending on which institutions are formed and what role they are allowed to play in the planning process

Science-Policy Interactions in MPA Site Selection in the Dutch Part of the North Sea

At the 7th conference of the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD-COP7, Kuala Lumpur, 2004) it was agreed to establish a global network of marine and coastal protected areas by 2012. The defined objectives of this MPA-network are based on the ecosystem approach: to protect biodiversity and other ecological values, and to ensure sustainable use. The (inter)national policy guidelines state that the selection of MPAs should be based on scientific information and ecological criteria only. As a signatory to the Convention, the Netherlands is now faced with meeting this obligation, and the process of designating the first Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the Dutch part of the North Sea is currently in progress. We focus on the science–policy interactions that are part of this Dutch MPA selection process. By taking a closer look at the contemporary site selection process as well as its historical background, we show that ecological, socio-economic and political considerations cannot always be easily separated. Uncertainty is high and the ultimate selection and delimitation of candidate sites rather seems to be the result of a balancing act between ecological, socio-economic and political interests, in which scientific and policy guiding procedures blend with ad-hoc political decision making, and with expert judgment in cases where data is lacking. As such, this paper presents an example of present-day environmental policy making in action

Aligning the goals of learning analytics with its research scholarship: an open peer commentary approach

To promote cross-community dialogue on matters of significance within the field of learning analytics (LA), we as editors-in-chief of the Journal of Learning Analytics (JLA) have introduced a section for papers that are open to peer commentary. An invitation to submit proposals for commentaries on the paper was released, and 12 of these proposals were accepted. The 26 authors of the accepted commentaries are based in Europe, North America, and Australia. They range in experience from PhD students and early-career researchers to some of the longest-standing, most senior members of the learning analytics community. This paper brings those commentaries together, and we recommend reading it as a companion piece to the original paper by Motz et al. (2023), which also appears in this issue.Horizon 2020(H2020)883588Algorithms and the Foundations of Software technolog

Cyberlaw in the Netherlands

The area of Cyber Law is one of the most dynamic in the field of the legal profession. Scholars and lawyers alike have their hands full of interesting case materials and the opportunities within this field are enormous. However, it has to be said that the area of Cyber Law and Information Technology and Law are not the so-called usual suspects from a legal perspective. Therefore, it has taken some time before both academics and practitioners fully embraced the challenges of these fields. With technology continually changing and progressing over time, this brings forth interesting questions from a legal perspective. Should legal norms be as technology neutral as possible or is the technological nature of many issues a clear signal that legal norms should be relatively flexible and susceptible to change when new technologies shine a different light over what before seemed like a clear and unambiguous rule. Take for example, ownership of digital materials, an issue fiercely debated in the Netherlands. The traditional conception was that ownership should only apply to tangible objects. This changed in 1921 when the notion of economic value was introduced in the ‘Elektriciteits-arrest’ when the Supreme Court was faced with the question whether or not electricity could be stolen. More than 90 years later the Supreme Court decided that virtual objects could also be stolen. This development shows that legal change can take a great deal of time and that courts and legislators both can be reluctant to apply traditional laws to typically non-traditional technical situations. Nowadays the relation between everything cyber and law is being more and more embraced. The increasing importance of the ICT market, the amount of specialized lawyers and specific disciplines of law that focus specifically on internet, intellectual property and ICT, all show that the area of Cyber Law is continuously growing in importance. This book provides a relevant source of Cyber Law in the Netherlands. The European and international influences on many subjects discussed in this book are briefly mentioned but not analyzed. Rather, this book specifically deals with the areas of Cyber Law in the context of Dutch legislation and Dutch case law without having to be familiar with Dutch law. Furthermore, the authors aimed for relative independence of each chapter of the book. Therefore in general most parts can be used without dependence on the previous part(s)

The effect of computerized brain training on cognitive impairments and quality-of-life after stroke: A RCT

Rehabilitation Medicin