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Meer lummelen, minder werk in de tuin, tóch een mooie tuin en winst voor vogels en insecten. Dat is nou vogelvriendelijk tuinieren. Benieuwd wat u allemaal níet hoeft te doen dit voorjaar?

This thesis is an exploration of the relation between objects and humans within the performance artwork Touch, fold, touch, touch (2022) by artist Lola Schot. The performance entails nine human performers who move with and touch objects Schot created. These objects are abstract sculptures that most resemble colorful stones, each with their own particular shape, size, weight, texture and color. The human performers are asked to move with and touch the objects in a loving and explorative way, to find out how their own body ‘fits’ aside and in the object’s body. When interviewed, the human performers explain that during this process, they felt that the objects’ shapes, weight, size, temperature and texture made them move and touch in certain ways. The performance manifests a new and challenging way of relating to nonhumans, which is linked in this research to the concept of being-with, as theorized by Donna Haraway. This concept helps Haraway to propose to live together with nonhumans in an inclusive way, in the middle of a society with ecological problems. To explore how the objects in Touch, fold, touch, touch perform interactivity and closeness to human performers, this research focuses on the question ‘How do human and object performers in Lola Schot’s artwork Touch, fold, touch, touch (2022) together manifest a relationship of being-with?’ To answer this question, the human performers that took part in the performance were interviewed about their physical and mental experiences. The outcomes were analyzed relationally, by using three core analyzing-concepts that help to discover to what extend the artwork is part of Haraway’s being-with world. These three concepts are: touch, affect and agency. Each concept is used to analyze the artwork through a specific lens and helps to investigate the relationship between the object performers and human performers. Throughout this thesis objects and humans are both called performers, since the hypothesis is that the objects t

Door op de ‘lichaamstaal’ van de vogels om u heen te letten, snapt u ineens beter waar ze mee bezig zijn en hoe ze zich voelen. Negen soorten gedrag die bij veel vogelsoorten voorkomen.

Maai uw gras minder vaak. Dat bespaart tijd én u maakt een groot verschil voor de natuur in uw tuin.

In deze tijd van het jaar is de kans groter dan ooit dat u een houtsnip ziet. Dat is natuurlijk bijzonder, maar soms ook droevig, want houtsnippen kunnen behoorlijk onhandig doen als ze onderweg zijn.

Border is een chic woord voor een rand bloeiende planten langs uw grasveld, tuinpad of zithoekje. Die plantenrand verdient een mooi woord, want bloemen maken de tuin mooi en vogelvriendelijk. Prettig: zo’n bloemenzee krijgt u ook zonder strak ontwerp en zonder groene vingers. Begin eraan in september en maak een bloemenzee voor uzelf en de vogels.

Het broedseizoen is in volle gang en veel vogels hebben inmiddels jongen. In dit bericht worden een paar indrukwekkende, ontroerende of vieze voorbeelden uitgelicht van de offers die vogelouders in deze periode brengen voor hun kroost.

Met eigen ogen zien hoe jonge vogels hun ouders leren kennen en een band vormen: de camera’s van 'Beleef de Lente' maken dit wonder mogelijk. Maar de pimpelmeesjes zijn al uitgevlogen en de zeearenden staan ook op het punt. Hoe gaat dat verder? Blijft die band bestaan en herkennen volwassen vogels elkaar nog?

NLDA Masterthesis, In 2002, the Netherlands decide to give military support to the US-led mission Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan. In 2014, the Dutch government decided to militarily support the US-led mission Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) to fight against Islamic State (IS) in Iraq. Through a combination of qualitative critical discourse analysis and quantitative content analysis, this research reconceptualizes the core concepts of securitization theory – existential threat, audience acceptance and extraordinary measures – by looking into the absence or presence of legal and/or security aspects of legitimization in the political and social discourse. The goal is to contribute to building a theory of how the decisions to militarily support missions are legitimized and to further the debate on the way securitization theory is a suitable framework for understanding this. This research analyses the way the Dutch government legitimized OEF and OIR in the political and social discourse. First, it shows that the focus on existential threat in securitizing speech acts is too narrow as a legitimization focused on legal and institutional arguments can be equally powerful. Support to OEF was legitimized by stating that the Netherlands was rightfully doing so as it adhered to and upheld international law. The Dutch contribution to OIR, in contrast, used a legitimizing framework based on the inherent threat IS posed to the Netherlands. Second, the analysis shows that speaking security requires addressing different audiences in different discourses and that audience acceptance arises when these discourse mutually reinforce each other. Although different audiences can fulfil different roles and one particular audience may seem to have (had) more influence in the final decision-making, the two cases show that the implementation of extraordinary measures (i.e. military support) happened because the legitimizing arguments in the political and social discourses were similar and ultim

Everywhere around us machines are handed more responsibilities, because with their unique abilities, they are able to outperform humans on many tasks. However, since humans have their own unique abilities in which they still outperform machines, a logical step would be for humans and machines to collaborate in human-agent teams. For such collaboration, it is essential that they communicate smoothly. Communicating as a team member is a difficult challenge, as it requires both humans and agents to be context-sensitive and proactive. In this thesis, an attempt was made at developing agents that learn how to communicate proactively. A combination of both data-driven learning methods as well as rule-based agent technology was used, while carefully reflecting on the influences of both methods on the learning process and the resulting behavior. Different kinds of learning agents were evaluated both in simulation as well as in an experiment where they worked together with humans. Agents learned to communicate proactively reasonably well after training in simulation, being able to use a minimal amount of communication to improve their performance as much as possible. In transferring to a context in which they played with humans, they were able to use the behaviors learned during simulation, while also learning some additional behaviors. The human team members generally trusted their agent companions, while differences in the extent to which people felt they collaborated with the agent as a team and usability were found for different kinds of communication. This work is an attempt at bridging the different kinds of research that exist into team communication, by looking into computational and technical methods for developing proactive agent communication while constantly keeping human team members in mind.

In 2015, the large-scale influx of refugees to Europe became known as ‘the refugee crisis’, a term adopted by media, politicians, scholars and the public alike. Over a million people arrived in 2015 alone, mainly as a result of the Syrian civil war and the rise of Islamic State (IS). Through a critical qualitative analysis of Dutch counterterrorism and migration policies, this paper argues that a link between migration and terrorism exists. Using the framework of securitization theory, the relationship between these two phenomena can be localized in a process characterized by polarization. Marked by different perspectives on immigration, the Netherlands has witnessed growing tensions between its Muslim minorities on the one hand and its ‘regular’ Dutch population on the other hand. Since the turn of the millennium, (Muslim) migrants have increasingly been constructed as ‘Others’ because these new, unknown people were considered to pose a threat to Dutch society, economy, culture, religion and security. Consequently, the Dutch government adopted an approach that dealt with this problem from a security perspective. A similar, securitizing approach was adopted in the domain of counterterrorism. However, the government overlooked the fact that at the root of both problems was the ‘othering’ of migrants and, by extension, of Muslim minorities in the Netherlands who considered themselves to belong to the same collective identity (e.g. Moroccan Dutch people identify with asylum seekers from North Africa or refugees with an Islamic background). Its securitizing policies not only maintained this image of Muslims as ‘the other’, but only reinforced the perceived threats between these two distanced collectives. Thus, when it did not address this fundamental issue, polarization increased and reached its peak when the Netherlands was confronted with the refugee crisis of 2015. Afterwards, polarization turned into radicalization. Dutch people acted on the threat they had ‘foresee

3-APR-2018 - Het is weer de tijd van de raamgevechten. Dagenlang kunnen vogels ermee doorgaan: tegen het raam tikken en fladderen. Van de vroege ochtend tot de late avond. Om gek van te worden. Waarom doen vogels dit en kan het kwaad?

1-MEI-2018 - Planten en bomen knallen de lucht in en iedereen is lustig aan het snoeien en kappen: in tuinen én in gemeenteplantsoenen. Het lijkt logisch, maar het is toch niet zo’n goed idee in deze tijd van het jaar, want het verstoort vogelnesten. Wanneer moet u dan snoeien, wat mag echt niet en wat kunt u doen als het mis gaat?

Op papier is de Nederlandse natuur beschermd. In de praktijk valt dat echter tegen, want er is nauwelijks controle. De WetlandWachten van Vogelbescherming spannen zich met terreineigenaren in om daar verandering in te brengen, maar het Rijk en de provincies moeten óók aan de bak.

Wat heeft een waterschap van doen met een windturbine? Dat is de vraag waarmee het hoogheemraadschap van Schieland en de Krimpenerwaard sinds 2003 heeft geworsteld. Anno 2017 is dit waterschap in de regio Rotterdam overtuigd: voor een waterschap is het een plicht om een bijdrage te leveren aan de transitie naar duurzame energie.

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Rede uitgesproken bij het afscheid als hoogleraar Celbiologie aan de Faculteit der Natuurwetenschappen, Wiskunde en Informatica van de Radboud Universiteit, 18 november 2016, Item does not contain fulltext

This paper aims to gain an understanding of the role of religion in conflict. Specifically, religion plays a key role in legitimizing actions and gaining supporters for a particular movement. Therefore, the question ‘How do Islamic State and the Muslim Brotherhood use religion to legitimize their actions and how can we understand this legitimization?’ will be central to this paper. Two cases will be examined throughout this paper, namely the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic state. Their conflicts with, respectively, the governments of Hafiz and Bashar al-Assad were (and are) clearly religiously oriented. Using speeches and documents issued by both movements as well as relevant literature, an analysis of the use of religion by the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic State will be made. Taking a particularizing perspective, religion will be treated as an isolated phenomenon to enable the analysis of the frames used by both movements. Framing is a conscious and strategic act, and helps to give meaning to events, actions and other phenomena. Dividing the framing process in certain ‘framing tasks’ each chapter examines the use of religion in a particular framing task. These framing tasks are diagnostic framing, prognostic framing, and motivational framing. In the end, this paper shows that both movements make extensive use of religion to legitimize actions and gain supporters; they do so by publicizing a frame of injustice, for which they then provide a solution, and then motivate people to do something about.

Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, 24 januari 2014, Promotor : Zoelen, E.J.J. van Co-promotor : Leeuwen, J.E.M. van, Contains fulltext : 122889.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)

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Contains fulltext : 103221.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)