Mediamusic (E-Journal)
Not a member yet
40683 research outputs found
Sort by
Administrative Justice and Empirical Legal Research:Debunking the Ordinary Religion of Legal Instrumentalism
No full textFor many years, most studies on administrative justice were written from a doctrinal legal perspective. More recently, however, administrative justice has also become the subject of a growing body of empirical research. This chapter provides an overview of empirical administrative justice research in three fields: administrative decision-making, redress mechanisms, and the impact of redress mechanisms on administrative practice. In legal doctrine, ‘legal instrumentalism’ has become central to thinking about administrative justice. However, the findings from empirical research provide little support for the underlying assumptions of instrumentalism. In this way, empirical legal research forces us to rethink the relationship between administrative law and administrative justice. The chapter concludes that while in some cases law and legal institutions may be an effective instrument to promote administrative justice in other cases, the direct impact of law is severely limited and law may even have a negative effect on the quality of administrative justice
The Summer School Oncology Groningen:Improving a Successful International Course by Refining the Old, Maintaining What's Good
No full textFor more than two decades, the International Summer School Oncology for Medical Students (ISOMS) has organized a biennial 2-week international summer school program in Groningen, the Netherlands. The summer school aims to increase knowledge about general cancer care, reduce fear of talking to cancer patients, and expose students to cancer-related problems. After 22 years, there was a need to improve the summer school format, the application procedure, and the intensity of the course. Here, we describe and evaluate these and additional changes that were made to the program. Several changes were made to the summer school format. The course was shortened from 10 days to a more intensive 7 days. The scientific program was integrated with the clinical program and students were taught scientific writing and presentation skills. The application process involved a personal video pitch. Importantly, the new summer school format was organized by a committee in which medical students had the lead. To evaluate the changes to the summer school, we conducted knowledge tests and regularly obtained feedback. There was a high overall student satisfaction, with a median score of a 9 out of 10. Students appreciated the interactive sessions and practicals and the scientific program, and were satisfied with the course level. All students had improved test scores. Improvement points highlighted the need for a less packed schedule and more lectures on basic oncology principles, or were related to specific lectures. The student-led innovation and adaptation of the ISOMS has been successful.</p
People from lower social classes elicit greater prosociality:Compassion and deservingness matter
No full textEnvironmental values and identities, at the personal and group level, motivate individuals’ climate actions. Many individuals report having strong environmental values and self-identities, and thus appear personally motivated to support and take climate action. To achieve society-wide climate action, we argue that it is critical to fully use this personal motivational base for climate action by, for instance, emphasizing the environmental benefits of climate actions and reminding people of their past pro-environmental actions. Individuals’ perceptions of others’ endorsement of environmental values are, however, more negative, which may inhibit consistent climate action. Making people aware that others also strongly value the environment could be a critical strategy to motivate climate action, particularly for individuals that are not strongly personally motivated
CMInject:Python framework for the numerical simulation of nanoparticle injection pipelines
No full textCMInject simulates nanoparticle injection experiments of particles with diameters in the micrometer to nanometer-regime, e.g., for single-particle-imaging experiments. Particle-particle interactions and particle-induced changes in the surrounding fields are disregarded, due to low nanoparticle concentration in these experiments. CMInject's focus lies on the correct modeling of different forces on such particles, such as fluid-dynamics or light-induced interactions, to allow for simulations that further the scientific development of nanoparticle injection pipelines. To provide a usable basis for this framework and allow for a variety of experiments to be simulated, we implemented first specific force models: fluid drag forces, Brownian motion, and photophoretic forces. For verification, we benchmarked a drag-force-based simulation against a nanoparticle focusing experiment. We envision its use and further development by experimentalists, theorists, and software developers. Program summary: Program Title: CMInject CPC Library link to program files: https://doi.org/10.17632/rbpgn4fk3z.1 Developer's repository link: https://github.com/cfel-cmi/cminject Code Ocean capsule: https://codeocean.com/capsule/5146104 Licensing provisions: GPLv3 Programming language: Python 3 Supplementary material: Code to reproduce and analyze simulation results, example input and output data, video files of trajectory movies Nature of problem: Well-defined, reproducible, and interchangeable simulation setups of experimental injection pipelines for biological and artificial nanoparticles, in particular such pipelines that aim to advance the field of single-particle imaging. Solution method: The definition and implementation of an extensible Python 3 framework to model and execute such simulation setups based on object-oriented software design, making use of parallelization facilities and modern numerical integration routines. Additional comments including restrictions and unusual features: Supplementary executable scripts for quantitative and visual analyses of result data are also part of the framework.</p
Political implications of disconnection on social media:A study of politically motivated unfriending
No full textThis study examines the political implications of social media through the lens of digital disconnectivity. Specifically, it focuses on politically motivated unfriending and examines its influence on individuals’ political engagement, namely political expression and information consumption on social media. Furthermore, considering the importance of minority-majority relations for understanding disconnection phenomena, we investigate whether the impact of unfriending is more pronounced among opinion minorities than majorities. Using a two-wave panel survey conducted in the post-Umbrella Movement Hong Kong, we find that politically motivated unfriending predicts an increased level of political expression, but that it is only significant among people who perceive themselves as holding minority opinions. At the same time, we find no relationship between unfriending and information consumption on social media. Based on the findings, we discuss the implications of unfriending for building digital “safe spaces” and its distinct role in promoting political engagement in times of political conflicts
Co-Evolution of Organizations in Infrastructure Planning:The Role of Communities of Practice as Windows for Collective Learning Across Project-Oriented Organizations
No full textChallenges in infrastructure planning require public infrastructure administrators, responsible for providing adequate infrastructure facilities, to be adaptive. These organizations evolve and interact with other organizations in a complex organizational landscape. This paper explores the contribution of inter-organizational communities of practice (CoPs) to collective learning and co-evolution of organizations in infrastructure planning. We conducted a case study of five inter-organizational CoPs in the domain of a typical public infrastructure administrator. The results suggest that inter-organizational CoPs enable, for example, policy and practice to co-evolve. Inter-organizational CoPs seem to provide a neutral ground where long-term sector benefits can overcome short-term organizational interests.</p
Denying the International
No full textWhere there have been many, there must be one. In the beginning and in the end, for the mess in-between can only be a transitory state. Or so Hans Blumenberg characterizes the fundamental presupposition of Western metaphysics. Very much in line with this logic, International Relations has invested a great deal of conceptual energy in unthinking and undoing the international as a constituent concept. This article critically engages with the temptation to purge the international from the discipline, and, more importantly, from political practice. There is a rich and powerful history of passing off the international as a thing. The reified international achieves a coherent organization of space by sacrificing time, and thus history and politics. Against this background, I unpack the metaphysics of order implicit in both uses and rejections of the international and propose a reflexive use of the international which serves as a constant, nagging reminder of a complex politics of difference
Optimal Admission and Routing with Congestion-sensitive Customer classes
No full textThis paper considers optimal admission and routing control in multi-class service systems in which customers can either receive quality regular service which is subject to congestion or can receive congestion-free but less desirable service at an alternative service station, which we call the self-service station. We formulate the problem within the Markov decision process framework and focus on characterizing the structure of dynamic optimal policies which maximize the expected long-run rewards. For this, value function and sample path arguments are used. The congestion sensitivity of customers is modeled with class-independent holding costs at the regular service station. The results show how the admission rewards of customer classes affect their priorities at the regular and self-service stations. We explore that the priority for regular service may not only depend on regular service admission rewards of classes but also on the difference between regular and self-service admission rewards. We show that optimal policies have monotonicity properties, regarding the optimal decisions of individual customer classes such that they divide the state space into three connected regions per class
Cortical thickness across the lifespan:Data from 17,075 healthy individuals aged 3-90 years
No full textDelineating the association of age and cortical thickness in healthy individuals is critical given the association of cortical thickness with cognition and behavior. Previous research has shown that robust estimates of the association between age and brain morphometry require large-scale studies. In response, we used cross-sectional data from 17,075 individuals aged 3-90 years from the Enhancing Neuroimaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis (ENIGMA) Consortium to infer age-related changes in cortical thickness. We used fractional polynomial (FP) regression to quantify the association between age and cortical thickness, and we computed normalized growth centiles using the parametric Lambda, Mu, and Sigma method. Interindividual variability was estimated using meta-analysis and one-way analysis of variance. For most regions, their highest cortical thickness value was observed in childhood. Age and cortical thickness showed a negative association; the slope was steeper up to the third decade of life and more gradual thereafter; notable exceptions to this general pattern were entorhinal, temporopolar, and anterior cingulate cortices. Interindividual variability was largest in temporal and frontal regions across the lifespan. Age and its FP combinations explained up to 59% variance in cortical thickness. These results may form the basis of further investigation on normative deviation in cortical thickness and its significance for behavioral and cognitive outcomes.</p
Social innovation and community-focussed civic initiatives in the context of rural depopulation:for everybody by everybody? Project Ulrum 2034
No full textIn this paper, we apply a civic perspective and social innovation theory to examine how residents of a Dutch village experiencing rural depopulation and austerity value an experimental civic initiative aimed at improving liveability, and what explains their evaluation. Using multivariate statistical analysis, we found that most residents were positive about the initiative and its contribution to local liveability. We also found that a substantial group knew very little about the initiative and that low-income groups, in particular, lacked the interest to identify and become engaged with it. Furthermore, we found that voluntary engagement had no predictive value for evaluation. Above all, tangible outputs explained the evaluation. A perceived increase in collaboration within the village and novel forms of collaboration with the local government also proved important, but only when they were accompanied by realised tangible outputs