Is de weg naar de hel geplaveid met euro's?: Een beschouwing over de negatieve aspecten van invoering van de euro

De euro. Hij is er. Banken en internationale bedrijven zijn onderling reeds begonnen met het afrekenen in euro's. De consument volgt in 2002. De euro wordt gezien als de kroon op één Europese markt zonder binnengrenzen. Duisenberg, president van de Europese Centrale Bank (ECB), zei eens in reactie op de heersende kritiek met betrekking tot de invoering van de euro: "Het niet invoeren van de euro kan worden gezien als het in de waagschaal stellen van de interne markt. " De euro is inmiddels ingevoerd. Maar de vraag blijft of de invoering van deze gemeenschappelijke Europese munt uitmondt in een groot economisch en politiek succes of in een enorme flop die de voortgang van het Europees integratieproces ondermijnt

McMondialisering en Coca-Colanisatie: De invloed van multinationals in ontwikkelingslanden

Johannesburg, Zuid-Afrika. In een McDonalds, midden in de stad, zit een vrouw met haar twee kinderen. Ze hebben ieder een McDeluxe in de ene hand en een grote beker Coca-Cola in de andere. Tweehonderd meter verderop, in een krottenwijk, zit een vrouw met haar vijf kinderen in het stof op de grond. De kinderen zitten te soffen op een korstje brood; hun McDepoverty

Van Bijlmerramp naar Binnenhoframp?: Een analyse van de parlementaire enquete naar de Bijlmerramp

Going down, going down ....... Zondagavond 4 oktober 1992 stortte een El Al-Boeing neer in de Bijlmer in Amsterdam. Ruim 6 jaar later werd er een parlementaire enquêtecommissie ingesteld om de toedracht en de gevolgen van deze vliegramp te onderzoeken, met als doel waarheidsvinding en het trekken van lessen voor de toekomst. De spanning en de emoties liepen tijdens de periode van de openbare verhoren hoog op. Politici en ambtenaren werden grondig aan de tand gevoeld. De commissie is inmiddels klaar, het eindrapport ligt er en het is nu aan de Tweede Kamer om er haar politiek oordeel over uit te spreken. Worden er ministers verantwoordelijk gesteld voor fouten of laksheid? Wordt de premier op het matje geroepen? Dreigt er een crisis voor Paars II? Paars 'going down'

Interview Drs. D.A. Benschop, staatssecretaris van Buitenlandse Zaken

Staatssecretaris Benschop gaf op 21 maart een gastcollege over 'Europa: verdiept of verbreed: de toekomst van de EU'. Het onderstaande interview is gehouden op basis van dit gastcollege en meerdere andere lezingen die te vinden zijn op de website van Buitenlandse Zaken

RoboFinch: A versatile audio-visual synchronised robotic bird model for laboratory and field research on songbirds

1. Singing in birds is accompanied by beak, head and throat movements. The role of these visual cues has long been hypothesised to be an important facilitator in vocal communication, including social interactions and song acquisition, but has seen little experimental study. 2. To address whether audio-visual cues are relevant for birdsong we used high-speed video recording, 3D scanning, 3D printing technology and colour-realistic painting to create RoboFinch, an open source adult-mimicking robot which matches temporal and chromatic properties of songbird vision. We exposed several groups of juvenile zebra finches during their song developmental phase to one of six singing robots that moved their beaks synchronised to their song and compared them with birds in a non-synchronised and two control treatments. 3. Juveniles in the synchronised treatment approached the robot setup from the start of the experiment and progressively increased the time they spent singing, contra to the other treatment groups. Interestingly, birds in the synchronised group seemed to actively listen during tutor song playback, as they sung less during the actual song playback compared to the birds in the asynchronous and audio-only control treatments. 4. Our open source RoboFinch setup thus provides an unprecedented tool for systematic study of the functionality and integration of audio-visual cues associated with song behaviour. Realistic head and beak movements aligned to specific song elements may allow future studies to assess the importance of multisensory cues during song development, sexual signalling and social behaviour. All software and assembly instructions are open source, and the robot can be easily adapted to other species. Experimental manipulations of stimulus combinations and synchronisation can further elucidate how audio-visual cues are integrated by receivers and how they may enhance signal detection, recognition, learning and memory

An internal health systems research portfolio assessment of a low-income country research institution

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In order to determine the type and amount of health systems research being conducted within ICDDR,B (also known as the Centre), a leading research institution in Bangladesh, an internal review of all on-going research protocols was conducted in September 2007.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A review of all ongoing research protocols within the Centre was conducted. The names of the investigators and the institutional divisions of the protocols were removed in order to decrease the amount of reviewer bias. The building blocks of the World Health Organization's "Framework for Action" on health systems was used to categorize the protocols considered to be health systems research projects. Several additional items were collected, e.g. the highest level of education completed by the Principal Investigator. A total dollar value was placed on the health systems research portfolio of the institution based on the budgets of the selected protocols.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>As of September 2007 16 out of 118 (13.5%) reviewed protocols were considered to be health systems research projects. Results of the six building blocks of the health system categorization demonstrated that a majority of these protocols involved elements of health services delivery. There was very little engagement in more downstream systems and policy research that involved leadership and governance of the health system. Eleven of the HSR studies were local in scope, while there was only one study that has a multinational focus. The Centre's total dollar value for the health systems research project portfolio added up to US$ 3,723,331.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This internal review can serve as a snap shot of on-going activities, and as a baseline for future assessments against which to monitor progress in the area of health systems research. Further, it can serve as a model for other institutions striving to assess and develop health systems research programmes and capacity.</p

Diclofenac Prolongs Repolarization in Ventricular Muscle with Impaired Repolarization Reserve

Background: The aim of the present work was to characterize the electrophysiological effects of the non-steroidal anti- inflammatory drug diclofenac and to study the possible proarrhythmic potency of the drug in ventricular muscle. Methods: Ion currents were recorded using voltage clamp technique in canine single ventricular cells and action potentials were obtained from canine ventricular preparations using microelectrodes. The proarrhythmic potency of the drug was investigated in an anaesthetized rabbit proarrhythmia model. Results: Action potentials were slightly lengthened in ventricular muscle but were shortened in Purkinje fibers by diclofenac (20 mM). The maximum upstroke velocity was decreased in both preparations. Larger repolarization prolongation was observed when repolarization reserve was impaired by previous BaCl 2 application. Diclofenac (3 mg/kg) did not prolong while dofetilide (25 mg/kg) significantly lengthened the QT c interval in anaesthetized rabbits. The addition of diclofenac following reduction of repolarization reserve by dofetilide further prolonged QT c . Diclofenac alone did not induce Torsades de Pointes ventricular tachycardia (TdP) while TdP incidence following dofetilide was 20%. However, the combination of diclofenac and dofetilide significantly increased TdP incidence (62%). In single ventricular cells diclofenac (30 mM) decreased the amplitude of rapid (I Kr ) and slow (I Ks ) delayed rectifier currents thereby attenuating repolarization reserve. L-type calcium current (I Ca ) was slightly diminished, but the transient outward (I to ) and inward rectifier (I K1 ) potassium currents were not influenced. Conclusions: Diclofenac at therapeutic concentrations and even at high dose does not prolong repolarization markedly and does not increase the risk of arrhythmia in normal heart. However, high dose diclofenac treatment may lengthen repolarization and enhance proarrhythmic risk in hearts with reduced repolarization reserve

The Incremental Cooperative Design of Preventive Healthcare Networks

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Soheil Davari, 'The incremental cooperative design of preventive healthcare networks', Annals of Operations Research, first published online 27 June 2017. Under embargo. Embargo end date: 27 June 2018. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10479-017-2569-1.In the Preventive Healthcare Network Design Problem (PHNDP), one seeks to locate facilities in a way that the uptake of services is maximised given certain constraints such as congestion considerations. We introduce the incremental and cooperative version of the problem, IC-PHNDP for short, in which facilities are added incrementally to the network (one at a time), contributing to the service levels. We first develop a general non-linear model of this problem and then present a method to make it linear. As the problem is of a combinatorial nature, an efficient Variable Neighbourhood Search (VNS) algorithm is proposed to solve it. In order to gain insight into the problem, the computational studies were performed with randomly generated instances of different settings. Results clearly show that VNS performs well in solving IC-PHNDP with errors not more than 1.54%.Peer reviewe

Carbohydrate mouth rinse: does it improve endurance exercise performance?

It is well known that carbohydrate (CHO) supplementation can improve performance in endurance exercises through several mechanisms such as maintenance of glycemia and sparing endogenous glycogen as well as the possibility of a central nervous-system action. Some studies have emerged in recent years in order to test the hypothesis of ergogenic action via central nervous system. Recent studies have demonstrated that CHO mouth rinse can lead to improved performance of cyclists, and this may be associated with the activation of brain areas linked to motivation and reward. These findings have already been replicated in other endurance modalities, such as running. This alternative seems to be an attractive nutritional tool to improve endurance exercise performance

Competition and quality indicators in the health care sector: empirical evidence from the Dutch hospital sector

textabstractThere is much debate about the effect of competition in healthcare and especially the effect of competition on the quality of healthcare, although empirical evidence on this subject is mixed. The Netherlands provides an interesting case in this debate. The Dutch system could be characterized as a system involving managed competition and mandatory healthcare insurance. Information about the quality of care provided by hospitals has been publicly available since 2008. In this paper, we evaluate the relationship between quality scores for three diagnosis groups and the market power indicators of hospitals. We estimate the impact of competition on quality in an environment of liberalized pricing. For this research, we used unique price and production data relating to three diagnosis groups (cataract, adenoid and tonsils, bladder tumor) produced by Dutch hospitals in the period 2008–2011. We also used the quality indicators relating to these diagnosis groups. We reveal a negative relationship between market share and quality score for two of the three diagnosis groups studied, meaning that hospitals in competitive markets have better quality scores than those in concentrated markets. We therefore conclude that more competition is associated with higher quality scores