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Cities of Commerce develops a model of institutional change in European commerce based on urban rivalry. Cities continuously competed with each other by adapting commercial, legal, and financial institutions to the evolving needs of merchants. Oscar Gelderblom traces the successive rise of Bruges, Antwerp, and Amsterdam to commercial primacy between 1250 and 1650, showing how dominant cities feared being displaced by challengers while lesser cities sought to keep up by cultivating policies favorable to trade. He argues that it was this competitive urban network that promoted open-access institutions in the Low Countries, and emphasizes the central role played by the urban power holders--the magistrates--in fostering these inclusive institutional arrangements. Gelderblom describes how the city fathers resisted the predatory or reckless actions of their territorial rulers, and how their nonrestrictive approach to commercial life succeeded in attracting merchants from all over Europe. Cities of Commerce intervenes in an important debate on the growth of trade in Europe before the Industrial Revolution. Challenging influential theories that attribute this commercial expansion to the political strength of merchants, this book demonstrates how urban rivalry fostered the creation of open-access institutions in international trade.

The aim of this study is to investigate: 1. the well-being (job stress and job dissatisfaction) of academic staff at the University of Antwerp, 2. the specific factors of the work environment who have an impact on employee well-being, and 3. the interaction between HR practices and employee well-being. Suggestions of improvement of the work environment are to be formulated. In order to meet this purpose, a conceptual model was designed, based on the stress model developed in the Institute for Social Research (ISR) (University of Michigan), and on the HR-model of Peccei (2004). The elements most likely to cause job stress, according to the participants, were workload and time pressures, uncertainty, lack of feedback and social support. Further, it appeared that the HR-related job characteristics cause job dissatisfaction: perceptions on participation, assessment, reward and support have an impact on job satisfaction of the academic staff.

During the past few years, bibliometric studies were conducted on research performance at three Flemish universities: The University of Ghent, the Catholic University of Leuven, and the University of Antwerp. Longitudinal analyses of research input, publication output, and impact covering a time span of 12 years were made of hundreds of research departments. This article outlines the general methodology used during these studies, and presents the main outcomes with respect to the faculties of medicine, science, and pharmaceutical science at the three universities involved. It focuses on the reactions of the researchers working in these faculties and of the university evaluation authorities on the studies. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Collective housing or cohousing has gained popularity in the housing market because it promotes social, economic and environmental sustainability, and contributes to a better quality of life. While young professionals are increasingly choosing for peer-shared housing, student expectations are increasing with regard to personal space and comfort. Following the massive expansion of the student population, private sector developers have recently become more involved in the student accommodation market providing high standard expensive single person flats. Responding to a lack of attention to student housing preferences in both student housing and cohousing research, this study aims to discover housing preferences of Belgian students with a focus on the relative importance they attach to private versus shared amenities. We carried out a stated preference experiment among students in higher education in Antwerp. Our results show that the main point of interest for the majority of the students is the type of housing, followed by rent and size. Regarding the type of housing, a studio flat is the most preferred accommodation, while living in a student room in the same house as the landlord the least preferred. Hence, our results show a high preference for private facilities. We conclude that private investors are actually responding to current student preferences. As their high standard student housing projects are easy to construct, maintain and organise, we expect more of them in the near future. However, the willingness to pay of university students is significantly lower than that of university college students who study 1 or 2 years less. Consequently, a demand for a diversified student housing market will presumably persist.

The extinct, organic-walled, proximochorate dinoflagellate cyst Operculodinium? borgerholtense Louwye 2001 was first described from Miocene shallow-marine deposits of northern Belgium, and has since been documented from the Miocene of the eastern North Atlantic, North Sea, Austria, Hungary, and Egypt. Conventional and confocal light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy are used to reveal new details of the archeopyle, wall structure, and ornament. The archeopyle is shown to have well-defined rather than rounded angles, a distinction we consider significant in assigning this species only provisionally to the genus. Operculodinium? borgerholtense was a euryhaline neritic species highly tolerant of environmental stress, a feature consistent with its morphological variability. Present records indicate a tropical-subtropical to temperate paleoclimatic distribution. It ranges from the upper Lower Miocene to upper Middle Miocene, and promises to be a useful stratigraphic marker particularly in neritic settings where adverse paleoenvironmental factors have excluded other species.

From the findings, it appears that the Rotter scale could have a different meaning for female and male students. Hypothesised that the female's responses to the items are determined by what they feel to be socially acceptable answers. These answers reflect the general perception that in most societies women are more dependent than men on external factors. (JLN)

Following the annual US Army Corps of Engineers workshop at the 23rd Black Engineer of the Year Awards and STEM Global Competitiveness Conference in February, Lieutenant General [Robert L. Van Antwerp] Antwerp, Jr. spoke to USBE&IT magazine. The chief of engineers of the United States Army celebrated the more than 200 resumes that Corps recruiters collected at the BEYA Career Fair. Twenty-eight offers were made. The Corps now boasts 18 new employees from diverse fields - architecture/architectural engineering, construction management, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, civil engineering and electrical engineering technology - all of them discovered during Black Engineer of the Year week. LTG Antwerp: That goes back to where we began with our research lab entering partnerships with universities. We want universities to work on things that are important in the industry. I think it is good for students because it takes them away from theory and gets them to practical application. The other part is that students rub elbows with scientists, engineers, and our educators that work in the field. I think it's a great connection, and I applaud the universities for not just relying on what goes on in the institutions. When you do that, you are building excitement for what could be the [students] profession. My wife's a nurse, and when she was going through nursing school she did rounds. You'd go to prenatal, and then maybe to the emergency room, and then the operating room - all designed to help you determine what you'd like to do. A lot of good comes out of these partnerships, not the least of which is we're trying to help students decide what they might be passionate about.