Income segregation in The Netherlands - trends and analysis

Dutch society does not accept high levels of income segregation. This tendency has repeatedly been revealed in public opinion surveys. Dutch government intervenes on different levels trying to mix low and high income groups both between cities and suburbs, as well as within city neighborhoods. The question is to what extent the assumptions on actual concentration and differentiation of different income groups hold true if compared to real figures. This paper publishes income data at 500 by 500 meter cells, showing significant spatial patterns of distribution and growth of low and high income groups. Remarkably, high income groups appear to be more segregated than low income groups. All Dutch central city areas have regained high income groups in the period 1995-2000, while the reverse happens in all other city neighborhoods. Despite those tendencies, large parts of the cities have a mixed composition of low, medium and high income groups.

AC field effect flow control of EOF in complex microfluidic systems with integrated electrodes

In this work, we demonstrate that positive net flow can be induced and controlled with relatively low potential due to the parallel alignment of the integrated channel electrodes. Therefore, we present a novel method to exquisitely control Electro Osmotic Flow (EOF) by using integrated electrodes fabricated beneath a meandering channel geometry (Figure 1). Equation 1 describes EOF velocity for AC-driven flow, where εo and εr respectively are the permittivity of vacuum and that of water, ζ the zeta potential at the solid liquid interface, η the viscosity, Ex the electric field

Agenda-setting for research in oral health care:Connecting perspectives

Patients in oral health care suffer from a lack of implementation of research findings. This has an impact on the quality and safety of care provided by oral health care practitioners (OHPs). In this thesis, we provide insight into the composition of oral health research and research priorities of OHPs and patients. To identify the profile of oral health research, we analyzed which topics are addressed in current research portfolios of dental research institutes. The research portfolios of these institutes increasingly focus on basic science, while the focus on clinical dentistry declines. In addition, we found a discrepancy between the shares of health care expenditures in oral health care subfields and their corresponding oral health research. We, therefore, conclude there is an apparent disconnect between prevalent research topics and topics important for practice. To identify the research needs of OHPs and patients, a research agenda was developed. We first identified the most important research topics for both OHPs and patients separately. We connected the perspectives of OHPs and patients in a consensus meeting, where a joint research agenda was established. This research agenda uncovered that many of the prioritized topics are currently underrepresented in oral health research: Behavior change and the relation between general and oral health were ranked as most important. This research agenda can guide researchers, policymakers, and funders towards more relevant research subjects that correspond better with the end-users - both OHPs and patients -, and contribute to closing the gap between research and oral health care practice

The spatial transformation of the Netherlands 1988-2015

The release of the Fourth Policy Document on Spatial Planning in 1988 was the start of a new and highly dynamic age of spatial development in The Netherlands. The policy document itself embodied a major reorientation of the national spatial policy strategy. Development of the economy and infrastructure became the new goals of spatial policy, and thereby replaced the focus upon the public housing sector of the years before. The national airport Schiphol and the port of Rotterdam both expanded and became important focal points for the Dutch economy, new transport infrastructure including High Speed Railway was planned. In the cities, dilapidated districts were transformed into new urban residential areas and new suburban districts were built close to the cities. In the countryside many projects were started in order to transform agrarian land into ‘new nature’. On top of this, the Dutch spatial planning system itself faced a partial ‘regime shift’. Spatial development projects became more market-based instead of financed by public resources. But at the same time, the national government kept its central position in the planning system. Only fifteen years later, at the beginning of the new millennium, decentralization of spatial planning towards regional and local government became a major trend.This paper will focus upon the spatial transformation of the Netherlands during the 25 years after the release of the Fourth Policy Document on spatial planning. In order to assess the influence of the national spatial policy, I will give a brief review of the Fourth Policy Document. But the changes in the spatial policy strategy of the Fourth Policy Document did not came out of the blue. They were both result of and response to political and economic trends. Therefore, I will start with two major and interrelated trends: the urban crisis and globalization

Modal Particles in Dutch as a Second Language. Evidence from a Perception Experiment

The perception of modal particles in Dutch was studied, contrasting native and speakers of Dutch as a second language (DSL). According to expectations, non-native subjects turned out to have more significant problems with selecting the best fitting stimulus in the contexts designed to evoke a modal use of the target word. Contrary to expectation, however, the non-native subjects had problems with non-modal contexts as well. Work on spontaneous speech elicited from DSL-speakers with Spanish as L1 revealed an unexpected but clear hierarchy in the acquisition of modal particles. The results are taken as an indication that Dutch particles, as well as their interaction with prosody, merit more attention in didactic materials aimed at DSL-speakers