Small business, big markets, one world

Dit rapport is een introductiepaper van het International Small Business Congress 2002, dat gehouden zal worden in Amsterdam van 27 tot en met 30 oktober 2002. Aangezien de euro op 1 januari 2002 geïntroduceerd wordt, zal speciale aandacht worden besteed aan de economische integratie in Europa en de gevolgen daarvan voor het kleinbedrijf.

How education can be leveraged to foster adolescents’ nature connection

Scientific research on the relationship between nature and health/wellbeing has increased dramatically in recent years. Contact with nature during childhood, both within formal and informal learning contexts, has diverse demonstrated positive effects on young people. In this chapter, we present the results of an interdisciplinary systematic literature review that brings together key insights on the relevance of outdoor leaning from the health and education sciences perspectives. Research highlights the outdoors as an important context for learning with great potential for increased motivation in students. Empirical evidence also supports that contact with nature positively effects students’ performance and school well-being. Moreover, literature also clearly demonstrates that learning in and about nature holds great potential for stimulating nature connection among young people. By extension, it can contribute to long-term and intrinsic motivation among citizens to take up a commitment to protect and conserve (local) nature. Nature connection is a known predictor of sustainable environmental behavior inside and outside of school, as well as later in life. Studies also report on positive health effects of nature contact. Many studies point toward mental health, stress reduction, and ability to concentrate in particular. There is growing evidence that exposure to nature during childhood can positively influence cognitive development and mental health, ranging from emotional and behavioral effects to reduced risk of mental health problems later in life. Because of the health and educational benefits, residential green space is receiving more and more attention, also when it comes to health inequality: unequal access to or proximity of green space in the residential or learning environment can contribute to health inequality. This means that attention in education to nature contact can make an important contribution to counteracting health inequalities among young people. Natural environments provide children with unique opportunities to develop themselves and feel better mentally, with positive effects on school performance, endorsing the potential importance of green playgrounds for students’ mental well-being. Finally, we will show that the promotion of nature connection during childhood, e.g., through school interventions, can thus contribute to health and well-being at the individual level, but also to a more sustainable society

Laparoscopy to predict the result of primary cytoreductive surgery in advanced ovarian cancer patients (LapOvCa-trial): a multicentre randomized controlled study

Contains fulltext : 108486.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)BACKGROUND: Standard treatment of advanced ovarian cancer is surgery and chemotherapy. The goal of surgery is to remove all macroscopic tumour, as the amount of residual tumour is the most important prognostic factor for survival. When removal off all tumour is considered not feasible, neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) in combination with interval debulking surgery (IDS) is performed. Current methods of staging are not always accurate in predicting surgical outcome, since approximately 40% of patients will have more than 1 cm residual tumour after primary debulking surgery (PDS). In this study we aim to assess whether adding laparoscopy to the diagnostic work-up of patients suspected of advanced ovarian carcinoma may prevent unsuccessful primary debulking surgery for ovarian cancer. METHODS: Multicentre randomized controlled trial, including all gynaecologic oncologic centres in the Netherlands and their affiliated hospitals. Patients are eligible when they are planned for PDS after conventional staging. Participants are randomized between direct PDS or additional diagnostic laparoscopy. Depending on the result of laparoscopy patients are treated by PDS within three weeks, followed by six courses of platinum based chemotherapy or with NACT and IDS 3-4 weeks after three courses of chemotherapy, followed by another three courses of chemotherapy. Primary outcome measure is the proportion of PDS's leaving more than one centimetre tumour residual in each arm. In total 200 patients will be randomized. Data will be analysed according to intention to treat. DISCUSSION: Patients who have disease considered to be resectable to less than one centimetre should undergo PDS to improve prognosis. However, there is a need for better diagnostic procedures because the current number of debulking surgeries leaving more than one centimetre residual tumour is still high. Laparoscopy before starting treatment for ovarian cancer can be an additional diagnostic tool to predict the outcome of PDS. Despite the absence of strong evidence and despite the possible complications, laparoscopy is already implemented in many countries. We propose a randomized multicentre trial to provide evidence on the effectiveness of laparoscopy before primary surgery for advanced stage ovarian cancer patients. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Netherlands Trial Register number NTR2644

Biotic and environmental dynamics through the Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous transition: evidence for protracted faunal and ecological turnover

The Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous interval represents a time of environmental upheaval and cataclysmic events, combined with disruptions to terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Historically, the Jurassic/Cretaceous (J/K) boundary was classified as one of eight mass extinctions. However, more recent research has largely overturned this view, revealing a much more complex pattern of biotic and abiotic dynamics than has previously been appreciated. Here, we present a synthesis of our current knowledge of Late Jurassic–Early Cretaceous events, focusing particularly on events closest to the J/K boundary. We find evidence for a combination of short-term catastrophic events, large-scale tectonic processes and environmental perturbations, and major clade interactions that led to a seemingly dramatic faunal and ecological turnover in both the marine and terrestrial realms. This is coupled with a great reduction in global biodiversity which might in part be explained by poor sampling. Very few groups appear to have been entirely resilient to this J/K boundary ‘event’, which hints at a ‘cascade model’ of ecosystem changes driving faunal dynamics. Within terrestrial ecosystems, larger, more-specialised organisms, such as saurischian dinosaurs, appear to have suffered the most. Medium-sized tetanuran theropods declined, and were replaced by larger-bodied groups, and basal eusauropods were replaced by neosauropod faunas. The ascent of paravian theropods is emphasised by escalated competition with contemporary pterosaur groups, culminating in the explosive radiation of birds, although the timing of this is obfuscated by biases in sampling. Smaller, more ecologically diverse terrestrial non-archosaurs, such as lissamphibians and mammaliaforms, were comparatively resilient to extinctions, instead documenting the origination of many extant groups around the J/K boundary. In the marine realm, extinctions were focused on low-latitude, shallow marine shelf-dwelling faunas, corresponding to a significant eustatic sea-level fall in the latest Jurassic. More mobile and ecologically plastic marine groups, such as ichthyosaurs, survived the boundary relatively unscathed. High rates of extinction and turnover in other macropredaceous marine groups, including plesiosaurs, are accompanied by the origin of most major lineages of extant sharks. Groups which occupied both marine and terrestrial ecosystems, including crocodylomorphs, document a selective extinction in shallow marine forms, whereas turtles appear to have diversified. These patterns suggest that different extinction selectivity and ecological processes were operating between marine and terrestrial ecosystems, which were ultimately important in determining the fates of many key groups, as well as the origins of many major extant lineages. We identify a series of potential abiotic candidates for driving these patterns, including multiple bolide impacts, several episodes of flood basalt eruptions, dramatic climate change, and major disruptions to oceanic systems. The J/K transition therefore, although not a mass extinction, represents an important transitional period in the co-evolutionary history of life on Earth

Towards Shared Social Responsibility: A Study of Consumers’ Willingness to Donate Micro-Insurances when Taking Out Their Own Insurance

consumer behaviour, corporate social responsibility, micro-insurance, willingness to donate,

Molecular dynamics study of the silica-water-SDA interactions

In this paper we have applied the molecular dynamics simulations in order to analyse the role of the structure directing tetrapropylammonium ions in the aggregation process that leads to silicalite formation. We address the specific question of how the interactions between silica precursor species and tetrapropylammonium ions/water evolve during the formation of the larger aggregates, that show initial micropore formation from more elementary building blocks. We have followed the dynamics and changes in the position of the tetrapropylammonium ions into the formation of TPA-Si-22 complexes. Moreover, the analysis based on the geometries of the systems being studied as well as the radial distribution function allowed us to predict the location of the TPA cations in fully formed nanoslabs. An interesting result is reported that the template cannot be accommodated any more in the newly formed cavities, but is pushed out of the channel like cavities to positions where in a later stage channel cross sections can be formed

Team Applied Robotics: A closer look at our robotic picking system

This paper describes the vision based robotic picking system that was developed by our team, Team Applied Robotics, for the Amazon Picking Challenge 2016. This competition challenged teams to develop a robotic system that is able to pick a large variety of products from a shelve or a tote. We discuss the design considerations and our strategy, the high resolution 3D vision system, the use of a combination of texture and shape-based object detection algorithms, the robot path planning and object manipulators that were developed.status: publishe