Research on infant cognitive development is often statistically insufficiently powerful and replicability is a serious problem. A consortium of four baby labs will replicate two fundamental studies, which play a key role in debates on the learning mechanisms involved in language acquisition (Marcus et al. 1999) and on the cognitive benefits of bilingualism (Kovács and Mehler, 2004). By replicating each study in all four laboratories, we can improve the statistical power of the studies and test the robustness of the original results from these two important infant studies.

Addictions are among the most common and costly of all mental and brain disorders. In the biomedical literature addiction is described as chronic brain disease, as an alternative to rational choice. I propose an alternative account, in which biased choice is central. The good news is that we can measure and influence this, with positive initial results for people with addiction. This project will test new methods to measure biased choice and its underlying cognitive processes as well as new methods to influence these, which may help counter addiction.

Yearly textile waste adds up to 110 million tons globally1 (13 kg per person globally), the majority going to landfill or incineration. Mechanical and chemical textile recycling requires relatively pure waste streams. The Netherlands is a technology leader for textile sorting and mechanical recycling,2 but unfortunately a large-volume fraction of textile waste consists of blends or inseparable mixtures of different materials. For cotton/polyester(PET) mixtures (the largest volumes in textiles), no techno-economic recycling options exist today.3 A breakthrough proof-of-principle was obtained (using Avantium’s DAWN Biorefinery technology4) for hydrolyzing cotton (cellulose) to valuable building blocks, even when mixed with polyester. The residual PET could be recycled to rPET, in close to quantitative yield. Avantium is a technology partner that can plug the cotton (cellulose) hydrolysis into their DAWN technology. Avantium will host and guide the 2 Technology PhD students in their Amsterdam labs. CuRe is a technology partner for plugging-in the PET chemical recycling into their technology.5 With Modint,6 Wieland7 and Groenendijk8 the consortium has relevant partners across the textiles value chain (including sorting and recycling). If successful, the resulting technology can convert millions of kg of Dutch waste textiles and 10s of millions of tons of textile waste globally to valuable polyester building blocks (monomers) and to rPET. Finally, for every ton of waste textile saved from incineration by MIWATEX, about 2 tons* of CO2 emissions will be avoided just from material incineration alone. *Cotton (C6H10O5)n and PET (C10H8O4)n yield 1.63 and 2.29 ton CO2/ton waste textile upon incineration, respectively.

Today, science centres and museums have an important role in society to enrich young peoples cultural capital with regard to science and technology (S&T). This so-called science capital is for an important part dependent on the way families observe, discuss, and explore science and technology (Archer et al., 2012). To develop a large science capital it is not only important that young people gain knowledge about S&T, but also that they develop ways in which they can reason about this knowledge and connect it to their own context. The focus of the current project is on the way families in museums have conversations and explore together. The aim of the project is to develop and test a facilitator (i.e., explainers in science centres) approach that stimulates richer conversations and more intense exploration within families. The develop of this approach for facilitators is based on results form recent literature that shows that focussing attention on relevant observations is a pleasant and effective way to let children explore in a qualitative better way. The project entails an experimental study with three conditions of guidance, among which a control condition (no guidance) and two guidance conditions. Data from the control condition will be analysed to reveal interactions between families in relation to person characteristics. The hypothesis is that the guidance condition that focuses on the description of relevant observations, results in richer conversations and more intense experimentation within families.

To strengthen democracy, people need to be able to think critically about controversial issues. Critical thinking about controversial issues tends to be sub-optimally integrated in most school subjects. The focus is usually on subject-specific skills and knowledge. However, developing critical thinking about controversial issues also requires more general critical thinking and moral reasoning skills. In cross-curricular approaches, on the other hand, there is little attention for subject-specific aspects. Little is known about more integrative approaches. With this proposal we therefore aim to develop and test an integrative approach towards the teaching of critical thinking about controversial issues. The basis for this integrative approach is Levinson’s (2006) framework for addressing the epistemological and ethical structure of controversy. This framework serves as a point of departure for developing a pedagogy for teaching students what is at stake in certain controversies, by explicating the roles of evidence and values. This approach will be embedded in an existing innovative controversial-issues pedagogy: ‘Science Journalism’. We propose two interlinked projects, in science and history education in which we develop an instrument to measure students’ understanding of the role of evidence and values in different types of controversies and investigate to what extent secondary students demonstrate this understanding. In addition, we investigate the effects of the integrated approach on students’ understanding of the role of evidence and values in different types of controversies, their critical thinking about specific controversial issues, general critical thinking skills, moral reasoning skills and use of subject-specific knowledge.