Neo-Atlantis: The Netherlands under a 5-m sea level rise

What could happen to the Netherlands if, in 2030, the sea level starts to rise and eventually, after 100 years, a sea level of 5 m above current level would be reached? This question is addressed by studying literature, by interviewing experts in widely differing fields, and by holding an expert workshop on this question. Although most experts believe that geomorphology and current engineering skills would enable the country to largely maintain its territorial integrity, there are reasons to assume that this is not likely to happen. Social processes that precede important political decisions - such as the growth of the belief in the reality of sea level rise and the framing of such decisions in a proper political context (policy window) - evolve slowly. A flood disaster would speed up the decision-making process. The shared opinion of the experts surveyed is that eventually part of the Netherlands would be abandoned. © 2008 The Author(s)

Coevolution of the cell cycle and deferred-use cells

The cell cycle and cell fate decisions are interlinked in a broad range of developmental contexts in many organisms. Coordination of stem cell proliferation and differentiation is essential for normal development, organ homeostasis, and tissue repair through a direct interplay between cell cycle progression and differentiation in somatic stem cells in the skin, brain, gut, and hematopoietic system. The connection between cell cycle and cell fate decisions is present across the whole evolutionary tree. Human embryonic stem cells have an interconnection between cell cycle, self-renewal, and differentiation, while they exert a metastable state with heterogeneity at the single cell level. The cell cycle is tightly intertwined with cell fate decisions in diverse species ranging from yeast to human. Particularly important insight to the processes coordinating cell fate and the cell cycle has been derived from pluripotent stem cells

Environmental Policy and Environment-oriented Technology Policy in the Netherlands

This chapter presents an overview of the Dutch environmental policy (EP) and environment-oriented technology policy (ETP). The main aim is to give insights into some of the recent modifications and innovations in both EP and ETP systems, and to trace some of these changes back to the historical roots of EP and ETP in the Netherlands. The paper starts with an overview of environmental policy in the Netherlands, and a description of the standard EP system. This is followed by an introduction to recent developments in Dutch environmental policy. These involve the system of environmental planning, the focussing on target groups, the use of negotiated agreements, and stimulating the introduction of environmental management systems in companies. The next section focuses on environment-oriented technology policy. An overview of the development of ETP is provided by evaluating the main policy documents. Following this, the standard ETP system, the technology subsidy scheme, is reviewed. The main institutions and instruments are described in section 5.2 and the implementation of technology policy at the national and regional levels is explained. A number of new developments are then presented. The paper concludes with a review of the inter-policy co-ordination between EP and ETP in the Netherlands

Surface chemical analysis of raw cotton fibres and associated materials

Three scientists are stranded on an uninhabited island. They do not have any food and they cannot return to the world of civilization. The engineer indicates that she is helpless: there are no tools available to build a boat. The political scientist is at a loss: she is not powerful enough to goad any others into action. The economist, however, cries out that he has the answer: let us assume we have the power to make the right equipment arrive, wouldn’t the problem be solved

Navigating the dilemmas of climate policy in Europe: evidence from policy evaluation studies

Climate change is widely recognised as a ‘wicked’ policy problem. Agreeing and implementing governance responses is proving extremely difficult. Policy makers in many jurisdictions now emphasise their ambition to govern using the best available evidence. One obvious source of such evidence is the evaluations of the performance of existing policies. But to what extent do these evaluations provide insights into the difficult dilemmas that governors typically encounter? We address this question by reviewing the content of 262 evaluation studies of European climate policies in the light of six kinds of dilemma found in the governance literature. We are interested in what these studies say about the performance of European climate policies and in their capacity to inform evidence-based policy-making. We find that the evaluations do arrive at common findings: that climate change is framed as a problem of market and/or state failure; that voluntary measures tend to be ineffective; that market-based instruments tend to be regressive; that EU-level policies have driven climate policies in the latecomer EU Member States; and that lack of monitoring and weak enforcement are major obstacles to effective policy implementation. However, we also conclude that the evidence base these studies represent is surprisingly weak for such a high profile area. There is too little systematic climate policy evaluation work in the EU to support systematic evidence-based policy making. This reduces the scope for sound policy making in the short run and is a constraint to policy learning in the longer term