Between public participation and energy transition:The case of wind farms

This thesis researches the role of the public in governmental wind farm decision-making procedures in the Netherlands. Wind farms are an essential part of the Dutch energy transition towards to a CO2 neutral society. For a successful realisation of wind farms it is important that the Dutch society supports this realisation. Unfortunately, many wind farm plans so far have been met with substantial societal resistance. For a long time this phenomenon was explained by the self-interest based Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) theory. However, recent studies suggest a strong link to the decision-making processes leading to the realisation of wind farms. Therefore, this thesis studies the relation between government and the public during the governmental decision-making process of a wind farm. This concerns an interdisciplinary study into the concept of public participation on the basis of fundamental legal and political science theories. Both disciplines have studied the concept of public participation in detail and both lead to different analysis and conclusions. This theoretical framework results in an evaluative norm, namely the deliberative ideal, in which processes focus on the common good and dialogue rather than individual interests. This thesis secondly analyses how the concept of public participation is implemented in the wind farm relevant legal frameworks: Dutch administrative, environmental and spatial planning law. On the basis of this analysis and a case study we arrive at the conclusion that the legal implementation does not meet the deliberative ideal and make some suggestions to improve these decision-making procedures

Ln(III) complexes as potential phosphors for white LEDs

Generating white light with LED technology requires a trick; one of them is to use color-converting (phosphor) layer that covers the LED chip. Suitable phosphors that can be excited with LEDs are scarce, necessitating research in this area. Complexes of the trivalent lanthanoids are interesting candidates, as their absorption properties can be tuned by modification of the organic part of the molecule, while the emission is line-like in nature and characteristic for the Ln(III) ion. In this thesis, several classes of Ln(III) coordination compounds are explored and their photophysical properties investigated. Several compounds with promising properties, such as a long-wavelength excitation maximum and a high photoluminescence quantum yield are reported.Metals in Catalysis, Biomimetics & Inorganic Material

A novel coordination network of Tb(III) with 2-hydroxy-trimesic acid showing very intense photoluminescence

Metals in Catalysis, Biomimetics & Inorganic Material

Renewable energy projects and species protection. A comparison into the application of the EU species protection regulation with respect to renewable energy projects in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Belgium, Denmark and Germany

Renewable energy projects, such as offshore and onshore wind and solar farms, including the necessary infrastructure, have an impact on biodiversity. Given the status of biodiversity across Europe, and the ambitions for the maintenance of species, limiting the impact of renewable energy generation units on biodiversity is of fundamental importance. This study offers an insight into the incorporation of species protection aspects in current permit practices, and contributes to the discussion on dealing with species protection issues in the process of upscaling sustainable energy facilities

Simultaneous whole-animal 3D-imaging of neuronal activity using light field microscopy

3D functional imaging of neuronal activity in entire organisms at single cell level and physiologically relevant time scales faces major obstacles due to trade-offs between the size of the imaged volumes, and spatial and temporal resolution. Here, using light-field microscopy in combination with 3D deconvolution, we demonstrate intrinsically simultaneous volumetric functional imaging of neuronal population activity at single neuron resolution for an entire organism, the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. The simplicity of our technique and possibility of the integration into epi-fluoresence microscopes makes it an attractive tool for high-speed volumetric calcium imaging.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figures, incl. supplementary informatio

Learning from failure

We study decentralized learning in organizations. Decentralization is captured through a symmetry constraint on agents’ strategies. Among such attainable strategies, we solve for optimal and equilibrium strategies. We model the organization as a repeated game with imperfectly observable actions. A fixed but unknown subset of action profiles are successes and all other action profiles are failures. The game is played until either there is a success or the time horizon is reached. For any time horizon, including infinity, we demonstrate existence of optimal attainable strategies and show that they are Nash equilibria. For some time horizons, we can solve explicitly for the optimal attainable strategies and show uniqueness. The solution connects the learning behavior of agents to the fundamentals that characterize the organization: Agents in the organization respond more slowly to failure as the future becomes more important, the size of the organization increases and the probability of success decreases.Game theory

Design and mechanistic insight into ultrafast calcium indicators for monitoring intracellular calcium dynamics.

Calmodulin-based genetically encoded fluorescent calcium indicators (GCaMP-s) are powerful tools of imaging calcium dynamics from cells to freely moving animals. High affinity indicators with slow kinetics however distort the temporal profile of calcium transients. Here we report the development of reduced affinity ultrafast variants of GCaMP6s and GCaMP6f. We hypothesized that GCaMP-s have a common kinetic mechanism with a rate-limiting process in the interaction of the RS20 peptide and calcium-calmodulin. Therefore we targeted specific residues in the binding interface by rational design generating improved indicators with GCaMP6fu displaying fluorescence rise and decay times (t1/2) of 1 and 3 ms (37 °C) in vitro, 9 and 22-fold faster than GCaMP6f respectively. In HEK293T cells, GCaMP6fu revealed a 4-fold faster decay of ATP-evoked intracellular calcium transients than GCaMP6f. Stimulation of hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons with five action potentials fired at 100 Hz resulted in a single dendritic calcium transient with a 2-fold faster rise and 7-fold faster decay time (t1/2 of 40 ms) than GCaMP6f, indicating that tracking high frequency action potentials may be limited by calcium dynamics. We propose that the design strategy used for generating GCaMP6fu is applicable for the acceleration of the response kinetics of GCaMP-type calcium indicators