1.
Amsterdam
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Amsterdam is the capital and most populous municipality of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Its status as the capital is mandated by the Constitution of the Netherlands, although it is not the seat of the government, which is The Hague. Amsterdam has a population of 851,373 within the city proper,1,351,587 in the urban area, the city is located in the province of North Holland in the west of the country. The metropolitan area comprises much of the part of the Randstad, one of the larger conurbations in Europe. Amsterdams name derives from Amstelredamme, indicative of the citys origin around a dam in the river Amstel, during that time, the city was the leading centre for finance and diamonds. In the 19th and 20th centuries the city expanded, and many new neighborhoods and suburbs were planned, the 17th-century canals of Amsterdam and the 19–20th century Defence Line of Amsterdam are on the UNESCO World Heritage List. As the commercial capital of the Netherlands and one of the top financial centres in Europe, Amsterdam is considered a world city by the Globalization. The city is also the capital of the Netherlands. Many large Dutch institutions have their headquarters there, and seven of the worlds 500 largest companies, including Philips and ING, are based in the city. In 2012, Amsterdam was ranked the second best city to live in by the Economist Intelligence Unit and 12th globally on quality of living for environment, the city was ranked 3rd in innovation by Australian innovation agency 2thinknow in their Innovation Cities Index 2009. The Amsterdam seaport to this day remains the second in the country, famous Amsterdam residents include the diarist Anne Frank, artists Rembrandt van Rijn and Vincent van Gogh, and philosopher Baruch Spinoza. The Amsterdam Stock Exchange, the oldest stock exchange in the world, is located in the city center. After the floods of 1170 and 1173, locals near the river Amstel built a bridge over the river, the earliest recorded use of that name is in a document dated October 27,1275, which exempted inhabitants of the village from paying bridge tolls to Count Floris V. This allowed the inhabitants of the village of Aemstelredamme to travel freely through the County of Holland, paying no tolls at bridges, locks, the certificate describes the inhabitants as homines manentes apud Amestelledamme. By 1327, the name had developed into Aemsterdam, Amsterdam is much younger than Dutch cities such as Nijmegen, Rotterdam, and Utrecht. In October 2008, historical geographer Chris de Bont suggested that the land around Amsterdam was being reclaimed as early as the late 10th century. This does not necessarily mean there was already a settlement then, since reclamation of land may not have been for farming—it may have been for peat. Amsterdam was granted city rights in either 1300 or 1306, from the 14th century on, Amsterdam flourished, largely from trade with the Hanseatic League
2.
Netherlands
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The Netherlands, also informally known as Holland is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom. The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, Amsterdam is the countrys capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the worlds largest port outside East-Asia, the name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means lower countries, influenced by its low land and flat geography, most of the areas below sea level are artificial. Since the late 16th century, large areas have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes, with a population density of 412 people per km2 –507 if water is excluded – the Netherlands is classified as a very densely populated country. Only Bangladesh, South Korea, and Taiwan have both a population and higher population density. Nevertheless, the Netherlands is the worlds second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products and this is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. In 2001, it became the worlds first country to legalise same-sex marriage, the Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G-10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as being a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. The first four are situated in The Hague, as is the EUs criminal intelligence agency Europol and this has led to the city being dubbed the worlds legal capital. The country also ranks second highest in the worlds 2016 Press Freedom Index, the Netherlands has a market-based mixed economy, ranking 17th of 177 countries according to the Index of Economic Freedom. It had the thirteenth-highest per capita income in the world in 2013 according to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, the United Nations World Happiness Report ranked the Netherlands as the seventh-happiest country in the world, reflecting its high quality of life. The Netherlands also ranks joint second highest in the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the region called Low Countries and the country of the Netherlands have the same toponymy. Place names with Neder, Nieder, Nether and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in all over Europe. They are sometimes used in a relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Boven, Oben. In the case of the Low Countries / the Netherlands the geographical location of the region has been more or less downstream. The geographical location of the region, however, changed over time tremendously
3.
Evolutionary psychology
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Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological structure from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which psychological traits are evolved adaptations – that is. Adaptationist thinking about physiological mechanisms, such as the heart, lungs, Evolutionary psychologists argue that much of human behavior is the output of psychological adaptations that evolved to solve recurrent problems in human ancestral environments. The theories and findings of EP have applications in fields, including economics, environment, health, law, management, psychiatry, politics. Evolutionary psychology is an approach that views human nature as the product of a set of evolved psychological adaptations to recurring problems in the ancestral environment. Evolutionary psychology adopts an understanding of the mind that is based on the theory of mind. EP views the brain as comprising many functional mechanisms, called psychological adaptations or evolved cognitive mechanisms or cognitive modules. Some mechanisms, termed domain-specific, deal with recurrent adaptive problems over the course of evolutionary history. Domain-general mechanisms, on the hand, are proposed to deal with evolutionary novelty. EP has roots in psychology and evolutionary biology but also draws on behavioral ecology, artificial intelligence, genetics, ethology, anthropology, archaeology, biology. Most of what is now labeled as sociobiological research is now confined to the field of behavioral ecology, Nikolaas Tinbergens four categories of questions can help to clarify the distinctions between several different, but complementary, types of explanations. Evolutionary psychology focuses primarily on the why, Questions, while traditional psychology focuses on the how. Evolutionary psychology is founded on several core premises, the brain is an information processing device, and it produces behavior in response to external and internal inputs. The brains adaptive mechanisms were shaped by natural and sexual selection, different neural mechanisms are specialized for solving problems in humanitys evolutionary past. The brain has evolved specialized neural mechanisms that were designed for solving problems that recurred over deep evolutionary time, Human psychology consists of many specialized mechanisms, each sensitive to different classes of information or inputs. These mechanisms combine to produce manifest behavior, Evolutionary psychology has its historical roots in Charles Darwins theory of natural selection. In The Origin of Species, Darwin predicted that psychology would develop an evolutionary basis, Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Darwins work inspired William Jamess functionalist approach to psychology, Darwins theories of evolution, adaptation, and natural selection have provided insight into why brains function the way they do
4.
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
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Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is a university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, founded in 1880. VU is one of two large, publicly funded universities in the city, the other being the University of Amsterdam. The literal translation of the Dutch name Vrije Universiteit is Free University. Free refers to independence of the university from both the State and Church, both within and outside the university, the institution is commonly referred to as the VU. Although founded as an institution, VU has received government funding on a parity basis with public universities since 1970. Over the past decades, VU has transformed from an institution into a broad. While the Netherlands does not have a ranking system, according to the CWTS Leiden Ranking. The university is located on an urban campus in the southern Buitenveldert neighbourhood of Amsterdam. In 2014, VU had 23,656 registered students, most of whom were full-time students and that year, the university had 2,263 faculty members and researchers, and 1,410 administrative, clerical and technical employees, based on FTE units. The universitys annual endowment for 2014 was circa €480 million, about three quarters of this endowment is government funding, the remainder is made up of tuition fees, research grants, and private funding. The official university seal is entitled The Virgin in the Garden, in 1990, the university adopted the mythical griffin as its common emblem. The position of its wings symbolizes the freedom in the name from both the State and Church. The bright and blue postmodern symbol has been the point of the universitys Main Building ever since. The VU was founded in 1880 by a group of orthodox-Protestant Christians led by Abraham Kuyper as the first orthodox-Protestant university in the Netherlands, Kuyper was a theologian, journalist, politician, and prime minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905. He was a professor of theology at VU as well as the universitys first rector magnificus, kuypers worldview and philosophy is referred to as Neo-Calvinism. As a reflection of his beliefs, Vrije Universiteit literally means Free University to signify independence from government and church. Teaching at the Vrije Universiteit started in 1880 in a few rooms rented at the Scottish Missionary Church, here, Kuyper and four fellow professors began lecturing in three faculties, theology, law, and the arts. By the turn of the 20th century, the Scottish Missionary Church became too small for the number of students. In the following years, the university acquired more buildings throughout the city, in 1905, VU was formally accredited and granted the legal right to award academic degrees
5.
University of Oxford
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The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university located in Oxford, England. It grew rapidly from 1167 when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris, after disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled north-east to Cambridge where they established what became the University of Cambridge. The two ancient universities are frequently referred to as Oxbridge. The university is made up of a variety of institutions, including 38 constituent colleges, All the colleges are self-governing institutions within the university, each controlling its own membership and with its own internal structure and activities. Being a city university, it not have a main campus, instead, its buildings. Oxford is the home of the Rhodes Scholarship, one of the worlds oldest and most prestigious scholarships, the university operates the worlds oldest university museum, as well as the largest university press in the world and the largest academic library system in Britain. Oxford has educated many notable alumni, including 28 Nobel laureates,27 Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom, the University of Oxford has no known foundation date. Teaching at Oxford existed in form as early as 1096. It grew quickly in 1167 when English students returned from the University of Paris, the historian Gerald of Wales lectured to such scholars in 1188 and the first known foreign scholar, Emo of Friesland, arrived in 1190. The head of the university had the title of chancellor from at least 1201, the university was granted a royal charter in 1248 during the reign of King Henry III. After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled from the violence to Cambridge, the students associated together on the basis of geographical origins, into two nations, representing the North and the South. In later centuries, geographical origins continued to many students affiliations when membership of a college or hall became customary in Oxford. At about the time, private benefactors established colleges as self-contained scholarly communities. Among the earliest such founders were William of Durham, who in 1249 endowed University College, thereafter, an increasing number of students lived in colleges rather than in halls and religious houses. In 1333–34, an attempt by some dissatisfied Oxford scholars to found a new university at Stamford, Lincolnshire was blocked by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge petitioning King Edward III. Thereafter, until the 1820s, no new universities were allowed to be founded in England, even in London, thus, Oxford and Cambridge had a duopoly, the new learning of the Renaissance greatly influenced Oxford from the late 15th century onwards. Among university scholars of the period were William Grocyn, who contributed to the revival of Greek language studies, and John Colet, the noted biblical scholar. With the English Reformation and the breaking of communion with the Roman Catholic Church, recusant scholars from Oxford fled to continental Europe, as a centre of learning and scholarship, Oxfords reputation declined in the Age of Enlightenment, enrolments fell and teaching was neglected
6.
University of Groningen
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The University of Groningen is a public research university in the city of Groningen in the Netherlands. The university was founded in 1614 and is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands as well as one of its largest, since its inception more than 200,000 students have graduated. It is a member of the distinguished international Coimbra Group of European universities, in April 2013, according to the results of the International Student Barometer, the University of Groningen, for the third time in a row, has been voted the best university of the Netherlands. In 2014 the university celebrated its 400th anniversary, the University of Groningen has ten faculties, nine graduate schools,27 research centres and institutes, and more than 175 degree programmes. There were four faculties – Theology, Law, Medicine, the coat of arms of the university was confirmed by the States of the City and County of Groningen in 1615. It consists of the arms, charged with an open book inscribed with the abbreviated words VER/BVM/DNI LV/CER/NA. The shield is surmounted by a crown of five leaves. The first 75 years of its existence were very fruitful for the University with about 100 students enrolling every year, on average two to three hundred students were registered with the University at any one time during this period. Opportunities and threats followed on each other’s heels during the nineteenth century, in 1815, at the same time as Leiden and Utrecht, the University gained recognition as a national college of higher education, but this was followed by discussions about closure. The situation improved markedly when a new university building, the Academiegebouw, was constructed in 1850. This made the fire completely destroyed this building in 1906 even more poignant. In the meantime, the Higher Education Act of 1876 had radically improved the position of the University, teaching now took place in Dutch as well as in Latin and the University was given a research as well as an educational duty. This laid the foundations for the present research university, the University of Groningen developed apace during the first decades of the twentieth century. The number of faculties and courses grew steadily while the number of students showed an explosive growth, when the University celebrated its first 300 years in 1914 there were 611 registered students, this had already grown to 1000 by 1924. After a drop back during the Depression, and in particular during the Second World War, in 2016 the Dutch chemist Ben Feringa, who worked most of his career at the university, won the Nobel prize for his work on molecular motors. Other strong research groups are in, Nanoscience, Physics, Molecular Biology, Microbiology, Medical Sciences, Neurosciences, Sociology, Philosophy, Theology, Archaeology and Arts. Every year more than 5,000 research publications go to print, the University of Groningen is a member of the so-called Excellence Group of the best universities in Europe. The Excellence Group has 56 members, which is 1.3 percent of the approximately 4,500 European institutions of higher education, the University of Groningen belongs to the top 100 large comprehensive research universities in the world
7.
Social psychology
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Social psychology is the scientific study of how peoples thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. In this definition, scientific refers to the method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all psychological variables that are measurable in a human being, Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the interaction of mental states and immediate social situations. Social psychology is a discipline that had traditionally bridged the gap between psychology and sociology, during the years immediately following World War II there was frequent collaboration between psychologists and sociologists. However, the two disciplines have become increasingly specialized and isolated from other in recent years, with sociologists focusing on macro variables to a much greater extent. Nevertheless, sociological approaches to social psychology remain an important counterpart to psychological research in this area, in addition to the split between psychology and sociology, there has been a somewhat less pronounced difference in emphasis between American social psychologists and European social psychologists. As a generalization, American researchers traditionally have focused more on the individual, however, the discipline had already developed a significant foundation. Following the 18th century, those in the field of social psychology were concerned with developing concrete explanations for different aspects of human nature. They desired to discover concrete cause and effect relationships that explained the social interactions in the world around them, in order to do so, they believed that the scientific method, an empirically based scientific measure, could be applied to human behavior. The first published study in this area was an experiment in 1898 by Norman Triplett, during the 1930s, many Gestalt psychologists, most notably Kurt Lewin, fled to the United States from Nazi Germany. Attitudes and small group phenomena were the most commonly studied topics in this era, during World War II, social psychologists studied persuasion and propaganda for the U. S. military. After the war, researchers interested in a variety of social problems, including gender issues. Most notable, revealing, and contentious of these were the Stanley Milgram shock experiments on obedience to authority, in the sixties, there was growing interest in new topics, such as cognitive dissonance, bystander intervention, and aggression. By the 1970s, however, social psychology in America had reached a crisis, there was heated debate over the ethics of laboratory experimentation, whether or not attitudes really predicted behavior, and how much science could be done in a cultural context. This was also the time when a radical situationist approach challenged the relevance of self, throughout the 1980s and 1990s social psychology reached a more mature level. Two of the social psychology matured in were theories and methods. Careful ethical standards now regulate research, pluralistic and multicultural perspectives have emerged. Modern researchers are interested in many phenomena, but attribution, social cognition, Social psychologists have also maintained their applied interests with contributions in health, environmental, and legal psychology
8.
Maastricht University
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Maastricht University is a public university in Maastricht, the Netherlands. Founded in 1976, the university is the second youngest of the 13 Dutch universities, in 2013, nearly 16,000 students studied at Maastricht University, 47% of whom were foreign students, with over 3,200 employees. About half of the programmes are fully offered in English. Most of the masters and doctoral programmes are in English, besides traditional programmes, Maastricht University also has an honours liberal arts college, University College Maastricht and a Maastricht Science Programme in the same liberal arts tradition. The satellite University College Venlo opened in 2015, Maastricht University was officially established in 1976. This academic institution would be vital to sustain the life of the city. About 50 students enrolled in the first academic year, by the end of 1975, the Dutch Parliament eventually passed the statute needed for the institution to acquire national educational funds and to be able to award academic degrees. Sjeng Tans became the universitys first president, soon after its establishment, the university gained political support to increase its funding and to expand into other academic fields. The Faculty of Law was created in 1981, followed by the Faculty of Economics in 1984, in 1994, the Faculty of Arts and Culture and one year later the Faculty of Psychology were established. The Faculty of Humanities and Sciences started in 2005, containing a variety of units, such as the Department of Knowledge Engineering. Together with the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences Maastricht University currently has six faculties, the university was renamed Universiteit Maastricht in 1996 and added its English-language name in 2008. As of 2010, Maastricht University consists of six faculties offering 17 bachelor programmes,56 master programmes, at the central level, the university is governed by the Executive Board, consisting of a President, a Vice-President and a Rector. The Executive Board appoints faculty deans, other administrators and professors and has general management responsibilities and it is advised by the Supervisory Council that vets for instance the budget. Maastricht Universitys teaching and research programmes are carried out along the lines of faculties. Within faculties, teaching and research activities may be further decentralised through departments, schools, the names of organisational units, however, do not necessarily indicate their position within the university’s organisational hierarchy. In 2009, for example, the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration was renamed School of Business and Economics, the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences was established in 2007 as a merger between the Faculty of Health Sciences and the Faculty of Medicine. The latter was the first faculty to be established at Maastricht University, in 1980 the Faculty of Health Sciences was founded. The broad range of disciplines it offered in healthcare sciences, made the faculty unique, not only in the Netherlands, the format allowed students to integrate their discipline and research work into all areas related to society, health and disease
9.
Sustainability
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In ecology, sustainability is the property of biological systems to remain diverse and productive indefinitely. Long-lived and healthy wetlands and forests are examples of biological systems. In more general terms, sustainability is the endurance of systems, the organizing principle for sustainability is sustainable development, which includes the four interconnected domains, ecology, economics, politics and culture. Sustainability science is the study of development and environmental science. Sustainability can also be defined as a process characterized by the pursuit of a common ideal. An ideal is by definition unattainable in a time and space. However, by persistently and dynamically approaching it, the results in a sustainable system. Healthy ecosystems and environments are necessary to the survival of humans, ways of reducing negative human impact are environmentally-friendly chemical engineering, environmental resources management and environmental protection. Information is gained from green chemistry, earth science, environmental science, Ecological economics studies the fields of academic research that aim to address human economies and natural ecosystems. Moving towards sustainability is also a challenge that entails international and national law, urban planning and transport, local and individual lifestyles. The name sustainability is derived from the Latin sustinere, sustain can mean “maintain, support, or endure”. ”The 2005 World Summit on Social Development identified sustainable development goals, such as economic development, social development and environmental protection. This view has been expressed as an illustration using three overlapping ellipses indicating that the three pillars of sustainability are not mutually exclusive and can be mutually reinforcing, in fact, the three pillars are interdependent, and in the long run none can exist without the others. The three pillars have served as a ground for numerous sustainability standards and certification systems in recent years. Standards which today explicitly refer to the bottom line include Rainforest Alliance, Fairtrade. Some sustainability experts and practitioners have illustrated four pillars of sustainability, one such pillar is future generations, which emphasizes the long-term thinking associated with sustainability. There is also an opinion that considers resource use and financial sustainability as two pillars of sustainability. Sustainable development consists of balancing local and global efforts to meet human needs without destroying or degrading the natural environment. The question then becomes how to represent the relationship between those needs and the environment, a study from 2005 pointed out that environmental justice is as important as sustainable development
