Although there is an array of technical solutions available for retrofitting the building stock, the uptake of these by owner‐occupants in home improvement activities is lagging. Energy performance improvement is not included in maintenance, redecoration, and/or upgrading activities on a scale necessary to achieve the CO2 reduction aimed for in the built environment. Owner‐occupants usually adapt their homes in response to everyday concerns, such as having enough space available, increasing comfort levels, or adjusting arrangements to future‐proof their living conditions. Home energy improvements should be offered accordingly. Retrofit providers typically offer energy efficiency strategies and/or options for renewable energy generation only and tend to gloss over home comfort and homemaking as key considerations in decision‐making for home energy improvement. In fact, retrofit providers struggle with the tension between customisation requirements from private homeowners and demand aggregation to streamline their supply chains and upscale their retrofit projects. Customer satisfaction is studied in three different Dutch approaches to retrofit owner‐occupied dwellings to increase energy efficiency. For the analysis, a customer satisfaction framework is used that makes a distinction between satisfiers, dissatisfiers, criticals, and neutrals. This framework makes it possible to identify and structure different relevant factors from the perspective of owner‐occupants, allows visualising gaps with the professional perspective, and can assist to improve current propositions.
MULTIFILE
n Nederland wordt de grofmotorische ontwikkeling van zuigelingen van de geboorte tot het loslopen meestal gemeten met de Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS). Dit instrument komt uit Canada. Nederlandse kinderfysiothera-peuten vragen zich al langer af of de Canadese normwaarden van de AIMS wel passend zijn voor Nederlandse zuige-lingen. Deze studie toont aan dat specifieke Nederlandse normwaarden noodzakelijk zijn.
In the wake of neo-liberal informed global trends to set performance standards and intensify accountability, the Dutch government aimed for ‘raising standards for basic skills’. While the implementation of literacy standards was hardly noticed, the introduction of numeracy standards caused a major backlash in secondary schools, which ended in a failed introduction of a high stakes test. How can these major differences be explained? Inspired by Foucault’s governmentality concept a theoretical framework is developed to allow for detailed empirical research on steering processes in complex systems in which many actors are involved in educational decision-making. A mixed-methods multiple embedded case-study was conducted comprising nine school boards and fifteen secondary schools. Analyses unveil processes of responsibilisation, normalisation and emerging dividing practices. Literacy standards reinforced responsibilities of Dutch language teachers; for numeracy, school leadership created entirely new roles and responsibilities for teachers. Literacy standards were incorporated in an already used instrument which made implementation both subtle and inevitable. For numeracy, schools distinguished students by risk of not passing the new test affirming the disciplinary nature of schools in the process. While little changed to address teachers main concerns about students’ literacy skills, the failed introduction of the numeracy test usurped most resources.
Energy transition is key to achieving a sustainable future. In this transition, an often neglected pillar is raising awareness and educating youth on the benefits, complexities, and urgency of renewable energy supply and energy efficiency. The Master Energy for Society, and particularly the course “Society in Transition”, aims at providing a first overview on the urgency and complexities of the energy transition. However, educating on the energy transition brings challenges: it is a complex topic to understand for students, especially when they have diverse backgrounds. In the last years we have seen a growing interest in the use of gamification approaches in higher institutions. While most practices have been related to digital gaming approaches, there is a new trend: escape rooms. The intended output and proposed innovation is therefore the development and application of an escape room on energy transition to increase knowledge and raise motivation among our students by addressing both hard and soft skills in an innovative and original way. This project is interdisciplinary, multi-disciplinary and transdisciplinary due to the complexity of the topic; it consists of three different stages, including evaluation, and requires the involvement of students and colleagues from the master program. We are confident that this proposed innovation can lead to an improvement, based on relevant literature and previous experiences in other institutions, and has the potential to be successfully implemented in other higher education institutions in The Netherlands.
In this proposal, a consortium of knowledge institutes (wo, hbo) and industry aims to carry out the chemical re/upcycling of polyamides and polyurethanes by means of an ammonolysis, a depolymerisation reaction using ammonia (NH3). The products obtained are then purified from impurities and by-products, and in the case of polyurethanes, the amines obtained are reused for resynthesis of the polymer. In the depolymerisation of polyamides, the purified amides are converted to the corresponding amines by (in situ) hydrogenation or a Hofmann rearrangement, thereby forming new sources of amine. Alternatively, the amides are hydrolysed toward the corresponding carboxylic acids and reused in the repolymerisation towards polyamides. The above cycles are particularly suitable for end-of-life plastic streams from sorting installations that are not suitable for mechanical/chemical recycling. Any loss of material is compensated for by synthesis of amines from (mixtures of) end-of-life plastics and biomass (organic waste streams) and from end-of-life polyesters (ammonolysis). The ammonia required for depolymerisation can be synthesised from green hydrogen (Haber-Bosch process).By closing carbon cycles (high carbon efficiency) and supplementing the amines needed for the chain from biomass and end-of-life plastics, a significant CO2 saving is achieved as well as reduction in material input and waste. The research will focus on a number of specific industrially relevant cases/chains and will result in economically, ecologically (including safety) and socially acceptable routes for recycling polyamides and polyurethanes. Commercialisation of the results obtained are foreseen by the companies involved (a.o. Teijin and Covestro). Furthermore, as our project will result in a wide variety of new and drop-in (di)amines from sustainable sources, it will increase the attractiveness to use these sustainable monomers for currently prepared and new polyamides and polyurethanes. Also other market applications (pharma, fine chemicals, coatings, electronics, etc.) are foreseen for the sustainable amines synthesized within our proposition.
The main objective is to write a scientific paper in a peer-reviewed Open Access journal on the results of our feasibility study on increasing physical activity in home dwelling adults with chronic stroke. We feel this is important as this article aims to close a gap in the existing literature on behavioral interventions in physical therapy practice. Though our main target audience are other researchers, we feel clinical practice and current education on patients with stroke will benefit as well.
