In this wide-ranging and stimulating book, a leading authority on the history of medicine and science presents convincing evidence that Dutch commerce-not religion-inspired the rise of science in the ...sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Harold J. Cook scrutinizes a wealth of historical documents relating to the study of medicine and natural history in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe, Brazil, South Africa, and Asia during this era, and his conclusions are fresh and exciting. He uncovers direct links between the rise of trade and commerce in the Dutch Empire and the flourishing of scientific investigation.Cook argues that engaging in commerce changed the thinking of Dutch citizens, leading to a new emphasis on such values as objectivity, accumulation, and description. The preference for accurate information that accompanied the rise of commerce also laid the groundwork for the rise of science globally, wherever the Dutch engaged in trade. Medicine and natural history were fundamental aspects of this new science, as reflected in the development of gardens for both pleasure and botanical study, anatomical theaters, curiosity cabinets, and richly illustrated books about nature. Sweeping in scope and original in its insights, this book revises previous understandings of the history of science and ideas.
This open access book shows policymakers which initiatives work when responding to the increasing diversity in cities, towns and neighborhood's. In recent times, policymakers have grappled with ways ...of responding to this increase, which has resulted in a plethora of policy initiatives, some more effective than others. Bringing together a large amount of research and evidence-based policy recommendations, this book offers both a sense of strategic direction as well as more specific, actionable advice. It brings together a remarkable mixture of policy areas that touch upon issues of diversity, immigration policy, education, and labour policy. It is of benefit and importance to all those making policies for a country with increasing immigration.
This study investigates whether the presence of green space can attenuate negative health impacts of stressful life events. Individual-level data on health and socio-demographic characteristics were ...drawn from a representative two-stage sample of 4529 Dutch respondents to the second Dutch National Survey of General Practice (DNSGP-2), conducted in 2000–2002. Health measures included: (1) the number of health complaints in the last 14 days; (2) perceived mental health (measured by the GHQ-12); and (3) a single item measure of perceived general health ranging from ‘excellent’ to ‘poor’. Percentages of green space in a 1-km and 3-km radius around the home were derived from the 2001 National Land cover Classification database (LGN4). Data were analysed using multilevel regression analysis, with GP practices as the group-level units. All analyses were controlled for age, gender, income, education level, and level of urbanity. The results show that the relationships of stressful life events with number of health complaints and perceived general health were significantly moderated by amount of green space in a 3-km radius. Respondents with a high amount of green space in a 3-km radius were less affected by experiencing a stressful life event than respondents with a low amount of green space in this radius. The same pattern was observed for perceived mental health, although it was marginally significant. The moderating effects of green space were found only for green space within 3 km, and not for green space within 1 km of residents' homes, presumably because the 3-km indicator is more affected by the presence of larger areas of green space, that are supposed to sustain deeper forms of restoration. These results support the notion that green space can provide a buffer against the negative health impact of stressful life events.
The summer of 2018 was characterized by high temperatures and low precipitation values in the Netherlands. The drought negatively impacted different sectors, resulting in an estimated damage of 450 ...to 2080 million Euros. Strong regional differences were observed in the precipitation shortfall across the country, with highest deficits in the southern and eastern regions. This raised two questions: (i) have increasing global temperatures contributed to changes in meteorological and agricultural droughts as severe or worse as in 2018? And (ii) are trends in these types of droughts different for coastal and inland regions? In this paper we show that there is no trend in summer drought (Apr-Sep) near the coast. However, a trend in agricultural drought is observed for the inland region where water supply is mainly dependent on local precipitation. This trend is driven by strong trends in temperature and global radiation rather than a trend in precipitation, resulting in an overall trend in potential evapotranspiration. Climate model analyses confirm that this trend in agricultural drought can at least in part be attributed to global climate change.
Interested in Diversity Bodó, Balázs; Helberger, Natali; Eskens, Sarah ...
Digital journalism,
02/2019, Letnik:
7, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Using survey evidence from the Netherlands, we explore the factors that influence news readers' attitudes toward news personalization. We show that the value of personalization depends on commonly ...overlooked factors, such as concerns about a shared news sphere, and the depth and diversity of recommendations. However, these expectations are not universal. Younger, less educated users have little exposure to non-personalized news, and they also show little concern about diverse news recommendations. We discuss the policy implications of our findings. We show that quality news organizations that pursue reader loyalty and trust have a strong incentive to implement personalization algorithms that help them achieve these particular goals by taking into account diversity expecting user attitudes and providing high quality recommendations. Diversity-valuing news readers are thus well placed to be served by diversity-enhancing recommender algorithms. However, some users are in danger of being left out of this positive feedback loop. We make specific policy suggestions regarding how to address the issue of diversity-reducing feedback loops, and encourage the development of diversity-enhancing ones.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and its subsequent decision to stop its gas export to Europe, Europe’s energy dependence on Russia was put on full display. In this ...paper, we map energy relations with Russia in three European countries that in the period of analysis between 2012 and 2022 were among the most important energy customers of Russia: Poland, Germany and the Netherlands. Moreover, we examine how this issue has been addressed – if at all – in party programs in elections in the same period. Examining party programs, we argue, brings new insights and a better understanding of how energy policies and relations with Russia were viewed in the three countries – and in the EU in general in that period. The paper identifies two ideal types – the ‘liberal pragmatists’, who treated strong energy interdependence as a possible conflict-mitigating measure, and the ‘hard core realists’, who viewed strong energy dependence on Russia as a possible source of strategic threat.
Thanks to the construction of large databases such as LINKS and GENLIAS based on Dutch civil certificates, our knowledge of individual demographic behavior in the past has improved significantly. ...However, the use of such research infrastructures also introduces some potential pitfalls, as these databases do not contain all information available from the original sources. For instance, variables that are available on the original source but lacking in LINKS are the places of residence of the bride and the groom at marriage. A common practice among researchers using LINKS and GENLIAS is therefore to identify migrants by comparing an individual’s birth place with the place of marriage. The place of marriage, however, is not necessarily identical to the place of residence, because couples traditionally contracted their marriage in the bride's or bride's parents' municipality of residence. It is therefore particularly likely that grooms are erroneously considered as migrants even though they had never moved before marriage. In this paper we explore whether this poses a problem to studies using the place of marriage as an equivalent to the place of residence. This will be achieved with the help of the marriage certificates release from the Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN), which, unlike LINKS, contains both the place of marriage of the couple and the residence of the bride and groom, and allows us to compare the findings derived from both approaches. The analyses show that identifying migrants based on place of marriage causes indeed a significant overestimation of male migrants, but not of female migrants. We therefore suggest the use of a couple's place of first childbirth as a robustness check to avoid overestimating male migration in the past.
Borderless Empire explores the volatile history of Dutch Guiana, in particular the forgotten colonies of Essequibo and Demerara, to provide new perspectives on European empire building in the ...Atlantic world. Bram Hoonhout argues that imperial expansion was a process of improvisation at the colonial level rather than a project that was centrally orchestrated from the metropolis. Furthermore, he emphasizes that colonial expansion was far more transnational than the oft-used divisions into "national Atlantics" suggest. In so doing, he transcends the framework of the "Dutch Atlantic" by looking at the connections across cultural and imperial boundaries. The openness of Essequibo and Demerara affected all levels of the colonial society. Instead of counting on metropolitan soldiers, the colonists relied on Amerindian allies, who captured runaway slaves and put down revolts. Instead of waiting for Dutch slavers, the planters bought enslaved Africans from foreign smugglers. Instead of trying to populate the colonies with Dutchmen, the local authorities welcomed adventurers from many different origins. The result was a borderless world in which slavery was contingent on Amerindian support and colonial trade was rooted in illegality. These transactions created a colonial society that was far more Atlantic than Dutch.
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