Netherlands Standardization Institute

This paper considers the dangers of the acceleration of political processes in a situation of emergency, which is characterized by panic and emotions of fear. The pandemic is seen as a kind of laboratory, that shows that a situation of fear and political acceleration leads to eventual stresses and crisis experienced by the political and juridical institutions. Political acceleration and fear are some of the preconditions of the exercise of an arbitrary power, unlimited and disruptive with regards to the rule of law. In this perspective both populism and the pandemic may potentially put democratic and liberal institutions under stress.

Spina bifida, also known as meningomyelocele, is a major birth defect mostly associated with folate deficiency in the mother early in pregnancy. The prevalence of spina bifida is disproportionately high in Ethiopia compared to the global average; about 10,500 liveborn are affected annually. Many affected infants do not receive timely repair surgery. There are a high number of stillbirths, and neonatal, infant, and under‐five deaths. Mandatory fortification of staple foods such as wheat and maize flour with folic acid, a B vitamin, is an effective primary prevention strategy for spina bifida. Survival in those with spina bifida increases if neurosurgical intervention is available soon after birth, along with continuous surgical and clinical aftercare throughout the lifespan. Currently, Ethiopia does not have mandatory food fortification for primary prevention or adequate neurosurgical capacity to meet the need to prevent adverse outcomes associated with spina bifida. We present in this paper two concurrent and complementary policy and practice solutions occurring in Ethiopia through global partnerships: (1) capacity‐building of neurosurgery care through training programs; and (2) promoting national mandatory folic acid fortification of staples for primary prevention of spina bifida. These two policy and practice interventions ensure all affected infants can receive timely pediatric neurosurgery and sustained surgical aftercare through required neurosurgeon availability, and ensure primary prevention of spina bifida. Primary prevention of spina bifida frees up significant neurosurgical capacity in resource‐poor settings that can then be directed to other critical neurosurgical needs thus lowering child mortality and morbidity.

The subject of Southworth’s book is Francesca (Fresca) Allinson (1902–1945), a puppeteer, choral conductor, writer and creator of folksongs, whose life was cut short by drowning. She grew up in a gifted and thoroughly non-conformist family. Her brother Adrian, a painter, studied at the Slade school. Her father worked as a doctor at his practice in London, obtaining and practising his own unorthodox convictions about hygiene and diet. As a radical pacifist Fresca helped provide alternative communities for conscientious objectors (COs). Her fictional autobiography A Childhood was published in 1937, by the Hogarth Press, the publishing house of Leonard and Virginia Woolf.

In recent years there has been growing interest in urban mining in buildings from various environmental and economic perspectives. Materials hidden in buildings are attractive alternatives to raw ones and building activities are responsible for a large share of urban waste in many societies. The paper presents an analysis of possibilities for urban mining in Amsterdam, initially focused on metals in residential buildings. Both global literature and local analysis suggest that performance in resource recovery from buildings is already as high as it can get. However, estimation of material content in buildings and of waste processing rates is far from reliable, accurate and precise enough to support such claims or identify possibilities for further improvement, including localization of resources in buildings and connections to building activities, in particular renovation.

Since 1980 soil pollution has been a major environmental issue in the Netherlands. A rapidly increasing number of suspected sites were discovered and today it is expected that up to a hundred thousand (industrial) sites will have to be investigated and a substantial amount of these sites will have to be cleaned up in the future within the frames of the Soil Clean Up (Interim) Act and the Soil Clean Up Guideline. Besides, investigations into possibly present soil pollution at locations where the building of houses is planned, are compulsory for certain categories since 1987. Many soil investigations have been carried out since 1980 and a much larger number will be carried out in the near future. Standardization of soil investigations is important to improve the quality of scientific information needed for effective decision making. Standardization has been a major issue for the Standards Committee “Soil quality” of the Netherlands Normalization Institute (NNI) since 1985. A number of (draft) standards for soil investigations, mainly with respect to the chemical, physical and biological examination of soil samples in laboratories, has been published since then. In 1989 a draft guideline on investigation strategies for exploratory soil surveys has been published for public comment. The strategy described comprises both the sampling (field work) as well as the analytical strategy (laboratory work). In this paper the principles of the draft guideline will be presented.

This paper describes a simulation study of (small sample) maximum likelihood estimation for mixtures of distributions. Maximum likelihood (ML) leads to a multidimensional maximization problem for which a modified Newton method and the EM algorithm are used. The moment and Kabir method are applied to provide initial points. For twenty-seven different mixture distributions a number of samples is generated by means of a pseudo-random number generator. Frequently the supplied initial points are not admissible. Although an ad hoc method for initial points behaves well, still no estimates are obtained for a number of samples.