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The development of a European Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) officially started with the entry into force of the INSPIRE Directive in 2007. INSPIRE's implementation phase should be completed by the European Union (EU) and its member states at the end of 2021: a pivotal point to evaluate INSPIRE's current governance and explore future scenarios. First, INSPIRE's governing system is evaluated through an online survey by its involved stakeholders. Second, these results are applied in an agent-based model to explore potential governance scenarios and strategies. The results show that strong aspects of INSPIRE's governing system are the supported vision and its formal structures, such as standards, technology and roles and responsibilities. Weak aspects are the access to resources, especially budget and time resources, and data use. The agent-based simulations show that INSPIRE is probably more constrained by its budget resources than its current dominant hierarchical interaction mix, although a combination of adaptive governance and continuous budget proved the most sustainable governance scenario.

Cover -- Table of Contents -- Preface: Because it wasn't there yet -- Part 1: STOP!: First look! Then read! Then interpret! -- Chapter 1: Introduction: A book about how we look at things -- 1.1 What this book is -- 1.2 What this book is not -- 1.3 What do we mean by images? -- 1.4 Not primarily text -- 1.5 Making shapes: 2D and 3D -- 1.6 The power of an image with text -- 1.7 Communicative-rhetorical -- 1.8 Three theoretical schools -- Chapter 2: Visual literacy: Knowing about images makes you image-wise -- 2.1 Definitions enough -- 2.2 Two perspectives -- 2.3 Skills and knowledge -- 2.4 Gestalt, semiotics and rhetoric -- 2.5 Interpretation is an iterative process -- Chapter 3: Why images?: The functions of visual language -- 3.1 Doing justice to complexity -- 3.2 Conveying a universal message -- 3.3 Telling, proving, persuading -- 3.4 Making it possible to compare things -- 3.5 Stimulating, arousing emotions, entertaining -- Part 2: Theory: Three perspectives on visual literacy -- Chapter 4: Gestalt: Gestalt 2.0: an aid to both maker and user -- 4.1 Gestalt = simplicity -- 4.2 The Law of Figure-Ground -- 4.3 The Law of Simplicity -- 4.4 The Law of Proximity -- 4.5 The Law of Similarity -- 4.6 The Law of Symmetry -- 4.7 The Law of Similar Background -- 4.8 The Law of Common Fate -- 4.9 The Law of Closure -- 4.10 The Law of Enclosure -- 4.11 The Law of Gap-filling -- 4.12 The Law of Continuity -- 4.13 The Law of Experience -- 4.14 Gestalt as 'an overall experience' -- Chapter 5: Semiotics: The meaning of what we see -- 5.1 Surrounded by signs -- 5.2 Three types of signs, according to Peirce -- 5.3 Layers of meaning, Barthes' theory -- 5.4 Who is right: Barthes or Peirce? -- 5.5 What use is this knowledge? -- Chapter 6: Visual rhetoric: Images that persuade -- 6.1 Classical rhetoric: the art of persuasion -- 6.2 Modern rhetoric.

In the present study, we tested whether Muslim minority members are more susceptible to conspiracy theories than majority members in the Netherlands. We examined conspiracy theories that are relevant (portraying the Muslim community as victim or Jewish people as perpetrators) and irrelevant for participants' Muslim identity (about the 2007 financial crisis, and other theories such as that the moon landings were fake). Results revealed that Muslims believed both identity-relevant and irrelevant conspiracy theories more strongly than non-Muslims. These differences could not be attributed to the contents of Muslim faith: Ethnic minority status exerted similar effects independent of Muslim identity. Instead, evidence suggested that feelings of both personal and group-based deprivation independently contribute to belief in conspiracy theories. We conclude that feelings of deprivation lead marginalized minority members to perceive the social and political system as rigged, stimulating belief in both identity-relevant and irrelevant conspiracy theories.

Kan een proces van de-radicalisering worden gestimuleerd of ondersteund? Geïnspireerd op buitenlandse ervaringen is in de gemeentes Winschoten en Eindhoven gedurende twee jaar geëxperimenteerd met een de-radicaliseringsaanpak voor rechts-radicale jongeren. Deze rapportage is de weerslag van een studie die door de Universiteit Leiden en de Anne Frank Stichting werd verricht naar de aanpak in beide gemeentes. Er is onderzocht in hoeverre lokale instellingen een actieve rol kunnen spelen bij het tegengaan en terugdraaien van radicaliseringprocessen

Government 2.0 is often presented as a means to reinforce the relation between state and citizens in an information age. The promise of Government 2.0 is impressive but its potential has not or hardly been realized yet in practice. This paper uses insights from various disciplines to understand Government 2.0 as an institutional transformation. It focuses on three key issues ‑ leadership in government, incentives for citizens and mutual trust ‑ and our analysis shows that Government 2.0 efforts are too often guided by overly optimistic and simplified ideas about these issues. Our discussion suggests that there are no easy, one‑size‑fits‑all ways to address challenges of leadership, citizen incentives and trust: a contextual approach and hard work is needed to tackle these challenges. Realizing Government 2.0 means looking beyond the technology and understanding its potential in a specific situation.

Summarization: European Union policy on soil threats and soil protection has prioritized new research to address global soil threats. This research draws on the methodology of Critical Zone Observatories (CZOs) to focus a critical mass of international, multidisciplinary expertise at specific field sites. These CZOs were selected as part of an experimental design to study soil processes and ecosystem function along a hypothesized soil life cycle—from incipient soil formation where new parent material is being deposited, to highly degraded soils that have experienced millennia of intensive land use. Further CZOs have been selected to broaden the range of soil environments and data sets to test soil process models that represent the stages of the soil life cycle. The scientific methodology for this research focuses on the central role of soil structure and soil aggregate formation and stability in soil processes. Research methods include detailed analysis and mathematical modeling of soil properties related to aggregate formation and their relation to key processes of reactive transport, nutrient transformation, and C and food web dynamics in soil ecosystems. Within this program of research, quantification of soil processes across an international network of CZOs is focused on understanding soil ecosystem services including their quantitative monetary valuation within the soil life cycle. Further experimental design at the global scale is enabled by this type of international CZO network. One example is a proposed experiment to study soil ecosystem services along planetary-scale environmental gradients. This would allow scientists to gain insight into the responses of soil processes to increasing human pressures on Earth's critical zone that arise through rapidly changing land use and climate. ; Presented on: Vadose Zone Journal

BACKGROUND: The International Carotid Stenting Study (ICSS) of stenting and endarterectomy for symptomatic carotid stenosis found a higher incidence of stroke within 30 days of stenting compared with endarterectomy. We aimed to compare the rate of ischaemic brain injury detectable on MRI between the two groups. METHODS: Patients with recently symptomatic carotid artery stenosis enrolled in ICSS were randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to receive carotid artery stenting or endarterectomy. Of 50 centres in ICSS, seven took part in the MRI substudy. The protocol specified that MRI was done 1-7 days before treatment, 1-3 days after treatment (post-treatment scan), and 27-33 days after treatment. Scans were analysed by two or three investigators who were masked to treatment. The primary endpoint was the presence of at least one new ischaemic brain lesion on diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) on the post-treatment scan. Analysis was per protocol. This is a substudy of a registered trial, ISRCTN 25337470. FINDINGS: 231 patients (124 in the stenting group and 107 in the endarterectomy group) had MRI before and after treatment. 62 (50%) of 124 patients in the stenting group and 18 (17%) of 107 patients in the endarterectomy group had at least one new DWI lesion detected on post-treatment scans done a median of 1 day after treatment (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 5.21, 95% CI 2.78-9.79; p<0.0001). At 1 month, there were changes on fluid-attenuated inversion recovery sequences in 28 (33%) of 86 patients in the stenting group and six (8%) of 75 in the endarterectomy group (adjusted OR 5.93, 95% CI 2.25-15.62; p=0.0003). In patients treated at a centre with a policy of using cerebral protection devices, 37 (73%) of 51 in the stenting group and eight (17%) of 46 in the endarterectomy group had at least one new DWI lesion on post-treatment scans (adjusted OR 12.20, 95% CI 4.53-32.84), whereas in those treated at a centre with a policy of unprotected stenting, 25 (34%) of 73 patients in the stenting group and ten (16%) of 61 in the endarterectomy group had new lesions on DWI (adjusted OR 2.70, 1.16-6.24; interaction p=0.019). INTERPRETATION: About three times more patients in the stenting group than in the endarterectomy group had new ischaemic lesions on DWI on post-treatment scans. The difference in clinical stroke risk in ICSS is therefore unlikely to have been caused by ascertainment bias. Protection devices did not seem to be effective in preventing cerebral ischaemia during stenting. DWI might serve as a surrogate outcome measure in future trials of carotid interventions. FUNDING: UK Medical Research Council, the Stroke Association, Sanofi-Synthélabo, European Union, Netherlands Heart Foundation, and Mach-Gaensslen Foundation.