Academic Ceremonies March 2010

“Distributional choices in EU climate change law and policy. Towards a principled approach?”

This thesis analyses, from the perspective of legal principles, choices made in EU law concerning the distribution of benefits and costs arising from climate change policies. It recommends making a number of changes to EU climate change law, to reduce tensions between choices and principles. Examples are: review EU policy on biofuels, particularly in relation to imported biofuels; review the approach of the EU to burden sharing between Member States, to ensure that old Member States do not profit from past inactions; monitor closely the interactions that may take place among mitigation measures recently adopted, in order to swiftly correct undesired (distributional) impacts; reconsider the EU approach to burden sharing at international level, in particular the equal per capita approach, and start considering at theoretical level the feasibility of EU-wide personal carbon trading.

Key words:

climate change policies, EU law

“Compensating catastrophe victims; a comparative law and economic approach”​

“Sociaal-Psychiatrische verpleegkunde: de ontwikkeling van een verpleegkundig specialisme in het domein van de Nederlandse sociale psychiatrie”

“Toll-like receptors in development, health and disease”

“Replicating DNA at Top Speed – Chromatin at Risk”

“Understanding fatigue in multiple sclerosis. From a psychological perspective”​

“Immunosuppressive and anti-proteolytic therapy in vascular diseases”

“Modest expectations; causes and effects of migration on migrant households in source countries”

This research, mainly looking at Albania and Moldova, investigates the reasons why people migrate internationally and send remittances. It also analyses the consequences of internal migration on the wellbeing of migrants and their family and how it affects the relationship between family members. It shows that migrant households earn higher incomes after migration, but are worse off in many aspects, e.g. housing. This is because they live in poor, semi-legal conditions and because migration is an expensive investment. Consequently, family solidarity remains high after migration, especially financial and good transfers.

Keywords:

Migration, remittances, Albania, Moldova, family, transfers

“Stroke survivors with aphasia and their social participation”

“Preventing Irreparable Harm Provisional Measures in International Human Rights Adjudication”​

“Carotid baroreflex activation; a novel method to treat resistant hypertension”

“Molecular Genetic Analysis of Patients with Rare Bleeding; disorders in South Iran”

“Modeling asymmetric and time-varying dependence”

This research is concerned with developing and extending models for dependencies between economic variables. Many techniques exist to capture such co-movements and this thesis focuses on a class of functions called copulas or dependence functions. Although with the help of copulas one can model and capture very distinct forms of dependence, most of the literature assumes that the type and degree of dependence remains constant over time. This research shows how one can relax this restriction, and it shows the usefulness of these so called time-varying copulas for investment decisions and by studying the contagion of financial crisis.

Key words:

economic variables, copulas

“Molecular and cellular alterations in the aging and Alzheimer’s disease brain: implications for therapeutic and preventative strategies”

“Climate change and tourism”

“The impact of supervised exercise therapy on intermittent claudication”​

“Waarom sommigen liever leraar worden en anderen beter geen bankier kunnen worden”

“The chicken embryo as a model for ductus arteriosus developmental biology”

“Oxygen Stress; effect on pre- and perinatal development and vascular reactivity”

“Network Formation Games”

“Macroeconomic Forecasting using Business Cycle Leading Indicators”

“Cortical processing of pain: a bridge between experimental findings and clinical applications”

Pain is a subjective experience. This means that not only psychical factors but also psychological, cognitive, social and environmental factors influence the way pain is perceived. This subjective character makes direct measurement of pain impossible. Pain Event-Related Potentials (pain-ERP) represent the cortical response to pain and are thought to be a more objective measure compared to self-report measures such as Visual Analogue Scales. However, the pain-ERP is a rather complex measure which contains considerable variability. This variability most probably is caused by other (pain-related) information which needs to be identified. This thesis discusses the use of Event-Related Potentials in pain research. More specifically, it discusses methodological concerns and ideas about unravelling the pain-ERP.

“Towards an inclusive society; healthcare for people with intellectual disability”