Purpose: To establish age-related, normal limits of monocular and binocular spatial vision under photopic and mesopic conditions. Methods: Photopic and mesopic visual acuity (VA) and contrast thresholds (CTs) were measured with both positive and negative contrast optotypes under binocular and monocular viewing conditions using the Acuity-Plus (AP) test. The experiments were carried out on participants (age range from 10 to 86 years), who met pre-established, normal sight criteria. Mean and ± 2.5σ limits were calculated within each 5-year subgroup. A biologically meaningful model was then fitted to predict mean values and upper and lower threshold limits for VA and CT as a function of age. The best-fit model parameters describe normal aging of spatial vision for each of the 16 experimental conditions investigated. Results: Out of the 382 participants recruited for this study, 285 participants passed the selection criteria for normal aging. Log transforms were applied to ensure approximate normal distributions. Outliers were also removed for each of the 16 stimulus conditions investigated based on the ±2.5σ limit criterion. VA, CTs and the overall variability were found to be age-invariant up to ~50 years in the photopic condition. A lower, age-invariant limit of ~30 years was more appropriate for the mesopic range with a gradual, but accelerating increase in both mean thresholds and intersubject variability above this age. Binocular thresholds were smaller and much less variable when compared to the thresholds measured in either eye. Results with negative contrast optotypes were significantly better than the corresponding results measured with positive contrast (p < 0.004). Conclusions: This project has established the expected age limits of spatial vision for monocular and binocular viewing under photopic and high mesopic lighting with both positive and negative contrast optotypes using a single test, which can be implemented either in the clinic or in an occupational setting.
Scientific research from within and beyond academia continues to provide the justification and the knowledge for policy developments directed toward migration and integration governance. A proliferation of scholarship aims to study, pilot, and investigate the ‘best practices’ for facilitating integration, which is then taken up in advice to policy makers. Many authors have written about this science-policy nexus (Boswell 2009; Penninx, Garcés-Mascareñas, and Scholten 2005; Scholten et al. 2015; Verbeek, Entzinger, and Scholten 2015) These works have also engaged in critical reflection, problematizing this nexus and demonstrating how funding structures draw researchers not only into addressing short-term policy goals, but also into reproducing some of the essentialist worldviews that come with methodological nationalism (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002) and the ‘national order of things’ (Malkki 1995). Yet, the colonial legacies and dis/continuities of these logics in integrationism have not received much attention so far.The paper takes a critical lens on the implications of the science-policy complicity in reproducing colonial logics of ‘cultural distance’, based on perspectives and empirical research from different national (Netherlands and Switzerland) and supra-national (EU) contexts. We analyse texts which shape the civic integration programme in the Netherlands, the genealogy of the integration requirement to respect the values of the constitution in Switzerland, and the EU framework on migrant integration. This combined analysis brings forth the role scientists and knowledge producers play in (re)producing the colonial logics within integrationism, and their contributions to the regime of truth within which integration discourse operates. Throughout this article, we draw on examples from these different contexts to display that integration and its migranticized (Dahinden 2016) subjects are constructed through practices deemed as scientific or objective expertise, building on important work by Schinkel (2018) on integration research as “neocolonial knowledge production” and Favell’s (2022) critical reflections on integration indicator frameworks. As we demonstrate, the “idea of integration as an issue of cultural distance is rendered imaginable in and through colonial legacies and scientific practices from which policy draws legitimacy. We show how cultural distance is produced in the scientification of migrants’ assimilability in a ‘Western work ethic’, in measurement of migrants’ adherence to liberal values, and through constructions of integration drawing on social imaginaries of national and European identity. Importantly, we argue that by presenting this cultural distance as a product of objective, scientific processes of empirical observation, the notion of cultural distance is normalised and depoliticized, which ultimately legitimizes integrationism as a mode of governance.The present study builds on important contributions (by Schinkel 2017; Favell 2022; Korteweg 2017; Bonjour and Duyvendak 2017, and others) in attempting to destabilize the normalization of integrationism as the widely accepted mode of governance of ‘immigrant’ or ‘ethnic’ populations and their inherent and problematic ‘distance’. The content and structure of this summer school in post-colonial Amsterdam would allow us to continue our critical reflexive discussions to better understand the colonial logics at play and how they operate in multiple contexts and at multiple levels of governance, in and beyond integration
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Normal is a concept that stems from two very interesting mathematical concepts: the normal distribution and the central limit theorem. People possess infinite numbers of properties. By far the most are unknown, they don’t matter to our reality. However, through our knowledge systems - perception and thinking - we transform infinite into finite: height, weight, intelligence, kindness, wealth, strength etc. The sum of a large number of independent variables forms a normal distribution again. Human sciences are often hide the fact that distributions are side effects of mathematical descriptions of traits. Every person can also be described in qualities in which (s)he belongs to the absolute top (and minimum). However, probably humanity isn 't interested in those distributions in which you achieve the top. But then again, being neurotic, being rich, or being intelligent according to an IQ test is ultimately also arbitrary.
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Achtergrond Steeds meer technologie is beschikbaar om zelfmanagement en kwaliteit van leven van ouderen te bevorderen. Zorgorganisatie Livio maakt gefragmenteerd gebruik van die technologie en zoekt naar een manier om technologie duurzaam te implementeren en in te bedden in reguliere werkprocessen, steeds in samenwerking met de cliënt. De Normalization Process Theory (NPT) biedt concrete aanwijzingen om inbedding van innovaties in werkprocessen te ondersteunen. Daarbij is de focus op het concrete wat en hoe het werk gedaan wordt. De NPT onderscheidt daarbij vier mechanismen: samenhang, betrokkenheid, samen doen en reflectie. Met het op NPT gebaseerde NoMAD-instrument kan innovatiebereidheid en implementatievoortgang op die vier mechanismen gemonitord worden. Doelstelling Met deze aanvraag wordt een breed implementatieproject voorbereid gericht op inbedden van technologie in verpleeghuis, thuiszorg en woonzorgcentra (VVT) in Oost-Nederland, met (inter)nationale opschalingsmogelijkheden. In dit project werken hogeschool Saxion, zorgorganisatie Livio en Roessingh Research & Development samen om dit te realiseren. De doelen van deze voorbereidende aanvraag zijn: a) Het aanpassen van het NoMAD instrument voor de implementatie van technologie, voor de context van verpleeghuis, thuiszorg en woonzorgcentra, b) het uitwerken van een werkwijze om cliënten te betrekken in de implementatie van technologie. Daarnaast is het doel van deze aanvraag om een consortium te vormen van zorgorganisaties, netwerk-, onderwijs-, MKB- en kennisinstellingen ten behoeve van het brede implementatieproject om daarmee een subsidieaanvraag voor RAAK Publiek te schrijven, gericht op implementatie van technologie in Oost-Nederland. Resultaten - Aangepaste versie van NoMAD geschikt voor het monitoren van de implementatie van technologie in de VVT; - Een werkwijze voor cliëntparticipatie tijdens het implementatieproject; - Consortium met partners van zorgorganisaties, netwerkorganisaties, MKB, onderwijs, kennisinstellingen en cliëntenorganisaties, ten behoeve van - RAAK Publiek subsidieaanvraag gericht op implementatie van technologie in VVT in regio Oost-Nederland.
