3 October 4, 2012 | year 55
Biweekly magazine of the Eindhoven University of Technology For news: www.cursor.tue.nl and follow tuecursor on Twitter and Facebook
4 | The hangover comes later 3 The car of the future
6 The secret of the mussel
12 University news
2 | For Starters
Ouzo, wodka en tequila?
Colophon Editor in chief Han Konings
Executive editor Brigit Span
Editorial staff Judith van Gaal Tom Jeltes | Science Frits van Otterdijk Norbine Schalij Monique van de Ven
Staff Nicole Testerink Gerard Verhoogt Enith Vlooswijk
Oh, the Dutch and their silly habits. They eat bread for lunch, have over an old man from Spain and his horse every December…and enjoy binge drinking from time to time. Some international students and staff members are shocked by the Dutch’ alcohol consumption, while others have seen worse back home. I’d like to see different nationalities adopt each other’s habits in the future, but I’m not sure TU/e has the ambition to incorporate drinking habits in their plans towards becoming a more international university. What I do hope is for foreign and Dutch
Photography
Annemarie van Limpt (pages 2,3,6,7) Benjamin Ruijsenaars (page 4,5)
Natasha Franc
Editorial board prof.dr. Cees Midden prof.dr. Hans Niemantsverdriet Angela Stevens- van Gennip Thomas Reijnaerts Arold Roestenburg Anneliese Vermeulen-Adolfs
Address editorial office TU/e, Laplace 0.40 5600 MB Eindhoven tel. 040 - 2474020 e-mail: cursor@tue.nl
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Judith van
Gaal
students and staff to come together at (even) more parties. And who really needs alcohol at parties, anyway? Check pages 4 and 5
Our Rewwwind feature provides you with snippets of last week’s news. What happened online after the previous Cursor magazine was published?
Translation
Doctorate ends in drama after car burglary 26 September 2012 - It should have been one of the best days of her life, but for TU/e doctoral candidate Maartje Bastings it ended badly. After successfully defending her dissertation on supramolecular materials and a subsequent dinner and party at the Effenaar, she found out a little after midnight that all her belongings -including
valuable scientific data- had been stolen from her car.
Twitter-enabled tooth implant. Read that again. Call me old-fashioned, but I find no reason or motivation whatsoever to have the need to broadcast all across the Internet the number of times I’ve brushed my teeth today. Such is one of the rather banal applications of nano-technology shown at the Nano Supermarket exhibition during the Discovery Festival, this past Friday 28th at the Klokgebouw in Eindhoven. Granted, the expo had some very interesting projects, like the use of modified algae for the production of electricity, as well as appliances that had antibacterial nano-screens. However, more than half of the product concepts presented seemed to justify themselves by a mere “I know what you think, but it has nano-somethings!”. What we need is to question ourselves, do we really need contact lenses which are able to change color? Or paper made from our cultivated dead skin cells? Or even mood-responsive make-up? With features that have no justification other than being fashionable, many of
the “innovations” presented are not solving any issues, and seem to be thought as extra means to brag, like a jacket that changes color according to the amount of calories burned. Having very tiny gold flakes does not qualify a lipstick as a technologically forward product. Difficult to manufacture? Sure. Discussion provoking? Definitely, albeit not for the reasons Nano Supermarket defends. Twitter-enabled tooth implant. How about no? Technology should not be justified by its components, but by its utility.
Emilio M M.Sc. Autoaldonado, Student motive Te from Mexic chnology o
Elsevier: Eindhoven and Utrecht deserve best university titles
TU/e students to build solar family car 2 October 2012 - Over twenty students from various departments will be wor king on a family car that runs on solar energy partly. Solar Team Eindhoven (STU) wants to use the car for the World Solar Challenge held in the Australian outback in October 2013. Solar Team
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mns: h colu nglis ue.nl/en/ E e r Mo or.t n .curs www -my-opinio in
Twitter in your mouth? Why?
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Cover Bart van Overbeeke
Layout
Clmn
Rewwwind
Rien Meulman Bart van Overbeeke
October 4, 2012
Eindhoven will be competing in the new Cruiser category in which the vehicles are not only scored for speed, but also for the number of passengers they can carry, how much electricity is charged from the mains along the way, and for comfort and user-friendliness.
The design should be completed by the end of this year; the team wants to start construction of the car in January, so the vehicle will be completed in June.
26 september 2012 - In the annual ranking of Elsevier magazine, TU/e is the best university based on student reviews. According to professors and lecturers, Utrecht University is the best university of the Netherlands. The latter group does consider TU/e to be the best university of technology in the country, however.
Brainmatters Psychology is becoming ever more important at TU/e. Technical systems and artifacts, be they games, cars, robots, lighting systems or buildings, are all meant for human end users eventually. It’s essential to know how these users perceive, think, feel, and act. The new human-oriented program Psychology & Technology examines every technical design from a psychological perspective. From now on, Cursor will be taking a closer psychological look at students, teachers, labs, technical artifacts, the workplace, the scientific business, campus, education, and websites.
The Smartphone
Laboratory
The Erasmus University in Rotterdam is going to use cameras to prevent cheating during exams. It was predictable that students, even if they never cheat, would not enjoy this. If you aim a camera on people to keep watch over them they will pay more attention to what they are doing, but at the same time they begin to suspect their peers of dishonest behavior. This creates an atmosphere of distrust that no one likes. Yet I predict that in the future we are going to make much more use of cameras. Not because we start worrying less about our privacy, but because we can do such cool stuff with them, that we cannot help ourselves to use them. The first year students of Psychology and Technology that I teach recently got the assignment to do an experiment replicating a paper published in 1983 in Science. Researchers showed that people who are angry have a higher heart rate than people who are happy. Physical properties such as your heart rate can therefore tell us something about how you feel.
Daniel Lake Assistant ns, Professor in Applied Cognitive Psychology
In the original study, the researchers used sophisticated equipment and computers to measure heart rate. My students successfully replicated the experiment - with their smartphones. With a free app that measures the redness of your skin, which is an indicator for the dilation of your blood vessels, the camera on your phone can be used to reliable measure a person’s heartbeat. So you are carrying a laboratory in your pocket, with which you can gauge how other people feel. I can already see what will happen. In a few years, our students will create an app for your smartphone that you can aim at the person you are talking to, and with which you can literally see if you make the heart of that person beat faster. 110 beats per minute? Shall we skip desert and go back to your place right away?
For Starters | 3
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Vox Academici Dr.ir. Igo Besselink, assistant professor of Dynamics and Control, Department of Built Environment
Car of the future: electric or hydrogen? Last week, with a lot of fuss, Hyundai announced the big news: by the end of the year they want to start producing a hydrogen car, the new ‘car of the future’. Wasn’t the electrical car supposed to be just that a few years back? The big question is whether the hydrogen car will catch on with consumers, or if we’ll be facing practical problems once again, like a charging station shortage. And what are supposed to be the main advantages of hydrogen cars over electric ones, anyway? “We have to realize a hydrogen car is an electric car as well, the only difference being that with the former, most of the energy is transported as hydrogen rather than a charged battery”, Igo Besselink explains. Along with some of his colleagues from the Dynamics and Control group, he presented the Lupo EL last year, an electric car and one of TU/e’s showpieces. “The hydrogen car was considered the car of the future ten years ago already. Arnold Schwarzenegger used to flaunt his ‘green’ hydrogenpowered Hummer, posing for pictures
everywhere. The problem concerning the short lifespan of the fuel cell - initially it didn’t even last 5,000 hours - has been solved by now, but the availability of hydrogen and how to make it is still a serious issue. It’s a lot easier to just plug in your car at home.”
A hydrogen car is ready to go in no time “Extracting hydrogen from natural gas is a fairly efficient process compared to other available methods. Then again, you might as well drive a car that runs on natural gas - less hassle, same level of CO2 emission. There’s been a lot of discussion regarding renewable energy like solar and wind power, but even in that respect the electric car outplays the hydrogen car. Driving a Lupo EL for one year, you’d need about twenty square meters of solar panels. For a similar car running on hydrogen, you need three times as many. That’s a big difference. So in fact, the hydrogen car isn’t that
efficient and sustainable at all.” “A hydrogen car can easily drive for four hundred kilometers on end, while electric cars need charging after about a hundred kilometers. Charging the battery of an electric car may take several hours, but a hydrogen car is ready to go in no time. The time it takes for the car to be filled up again is the one major advantage of the hydrogen car. Then again, the only hydrogen station is currently located in Arnhem, so that’s an issue for people living in Eindhoven. For me, the ‘original’ electric car is still the car of the future. The Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment recently showed that people with electric cars are more and more satisfied with their vehicles. The number of electric cars sold is still rising, so why would the media report negatively about them? The charging station in front of Built Environment is in use all the time!” (NT)
Dr.ir. Igo Besselink and the Lupo EL. Archive photo | Bart van Overbeeke
Playground for adults On Friday, September
28,
the Klokgebouw hosted the very st Eindhoven Discovery
1
Festival. The event mixed art, science, and electronic music. During the day, some
300
high-school students visited the exhibition at Strijp-S, followed by approximately
1,200 nightly visitors. The ‘singing’ Tesla Coil, put together at TU/e, was hard to miss. Armed with a sword,
6 adventurous volunteers took on the 0.5 million volts generated by the lightning installation. Visitors also made
78 Braitenberg robots, and provided Philips with 140 usable results for their sleep research. (MvdV)
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Photo | Bart van Overbeeke
4 | Zoom in
October 4, 2012
The hangover Consumption of alcohol | Norbine Schalij and Judith van Gaal Photos | Bart van Overbeeke You are a student, therefore you drink? Not by definition. True, a considerable amount of beer is drunk during drinks and nights out, but there also appears to be a fair number of non-drinkers among TU/e students. Cursor investigated what and how much is taken in at TU/e.
You are lounging on the sofa totally sloshed, any incoming noise is like an explosion and you decide never ever to touch a beer again. Some students experience this several times a week, whereas others do not have a drop to drink because they want to be able to focus optimally on their studies. Jan (18) is a first-year student of Electrical Engineering. On Mondays and Wednesdays after his rowing practice at Thêta he drinks four beers on average. After lectures on Thursdays he pops in at Walhalla, where he knocks back about seven pints. Then he goes out at Stratumseind. Via Thor he has obtained a pass for café Santé so a beer costs him only 1 euro. He has no idea how much he drinks then. Last Thursday he came home so late that he skipped the Calculus lecture on Friday. “I can look at it on the website. My lectures on Friday morning aren’t going to stop me from going out on Thursdays.” Fourth-year student of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Science Anne (21) likes to drink wine. “It’s nice with the dinner. I usually have two or three glasses, not too much. It does get to be excessive when I go out. Then I’ll have ten glasses of wine.” Which makes her tipsy: “I become more talkative, normally I’m quieter.” When counting the number of glasses going down in an ‘ordinary’ week, we get to 37. Thursday, Friday, Saturday she goes out, two nights she drinks wine with dinner at her parents, one night she drinks when eating with friends. She does not know whether that is a lot, 37 glasses. “How much is actually a safe amount?” ‘It’s tasty’, ‘It’s cozy’, ‘My friends also drink’ and ‘It allows me to loosen up’ are some of the reasons given for knocking
down a beer, wine or a shot, when we ask around among TU/e students. ‘I want to focus on my study’, ‘During the Bachelor’s phase I can handle that, but now that I’m in my Master’s phase I’m too busy’, ‘I’m not in digs’, ‘It’s expensive’ and ‘I just don’t like it’, are among the reasons why students don’t drink alcohol. Thomas Milde of the international association says that many foreign students find it annoying that Dutch students drink on Thursday night, because they go home to their parents during the weekend. The foreign students prefer to let their hair down on Friday and Saturday night. Thor (study association Electrical Engineering) tells us that in the academic year 2011/2012 some 12,600 liters of Bavaria and 4,500 liters of special beer were consumed. Wine lags far behind with merely 50 liters. On average the Thursday afternoon drink is visited by some 120 students. In the Salon (cocktail room Van der Waals, Applied Physics) some 500-600 beers are served on a weekly basis to the 150 members (students and coworkers). Soft drinks make up around ten percent of what is drunk. At GEWIS (Mathematics & Computer Science) there is some 7,000 liters flowing from the tap annually. Both at Protagoras (Biomedical Engineering) and at Simon Stevin (Mechanical Engineering) 150 50-liter kegs are consumed every year. At the Common Room (space in the Bunker frequented by international students) all kinds of events take place where there is a great variety in the amounts that are drunk. “Although it is difficult to make an estimate, I think that some 50 liters of draft beer is sold per evening”, Thomas Milde of the
international association informs us. Dolf van Onna (Eindhoven Students’ Union) may not have exact figures, but says that the alcohol consumption differs widely there as well. “The closer to examinations, the less they drink.” Every year the various study associations have some sixty drinking occasions. At all associations draft beer is drunk the most, followed by special beers. Mixed drinks and shots are also popular, while wine seems to be on the way down. Not all associations are equally forthcoming about their alcohol consumption, for that matter. ‘Confidential information’ they say, and ‘We can’t say anything about the contracts with suppliers’. When asked about the alcohol consumption during general drinks at
TU/e, caterer Eurest says that ‘this kind of data is not monitored in particular’. What is known, though, is that beer is drunk most during those drinks and red and white wine are competing for second place. According to brewer Bavaria students are relatively large buyers and alcohol consumption among students is a very important chunk of their sales. While no statements are made about the quantities of beer supplied, a spokesman says: “We all know that students drink substantial amounts of beer, so in that sense they are important for our turnover. Bavaria is the regular beer supplier for six associations in Eindhoven.”
Zoom in | 5
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comes later Alcohol policy at TU/e TU/e has no clearly defined alcohol policy. Still, there are rules in force during the Intro, including one that says there can be no drinking before a certain time. The ‘intro parents’ are given information about responsible alcohol consumption by NovadicKentron, the addiction services network. For example, they are given the tip to ask explicitly ‘would you like beer or soft drink’ in order not to give new students the impression that they ‘should’ only drink beer. Mirjam Jahnke, Head of Security at TU/e, tells us that alcohol can only be sold and consumed at places that have a so-called CFM license for use as a catering establishment and that all study associations have such a license, among others. “Students working in
When are you addicted? You are addicted when: • you cannot do without alcohol anymore • the reward system in your brains is unsettled Mathijs de Croon, health and safety officer at Novadic-Kentron, explains: “Due to frequent drinking the reward system in your brains gets used to a soothing high. You need more to bring about the same feeling. Whether you cannot do without it anymore, differs from person to person. I advise youngsters who wonder whether they are addicted to abstain from drinking for a month. Experience what it feels like. And I also ask them why they drink. If it is because they like to have a few beers when going out, I give them the following advice: ‘make sure you can keep doing that. Make sure you don’t get addicted. For addiction is a chronic brain disorder with a guarantee that you will fall back after a night of alcohol. Even when you have kicked the habit, you can never drink again. Not even one beer. Then you cannot go out anymore the way you like to do now.’” Novadic-Kentron is in favor of raising the age limit for alcohol to 18. For the age of 21 there is no support yet, so it could even have a contrary effect, De Croon thinks. The addiction services institution adheres to the ‘standard of acceptable risk’ which has been drafted by the World Health Organisation. For men the standard is 14 glasses a week, for women 7 glasses. An important subrecommendation in this context is that you should not drink two days a week. De Croon: “That is intended to prevent habituation.”
the bar of a study association must first follow a training course in responsible alcohol consumption and social hygiene, so they have a certain responsibility in the bar.” The Federation of Study Associations Eindhoven (FSE; umbrella organization of the study associations) arranges the licenses with the municipality and supervises the drinks. Together with the TU/e fire brigade they have established a ‘regulation for cocktail rooms’, which specifies inter alia who needs to attend what training course. The FSE conducts random checks to see if associations abide by the rules. If they do not, the federation can issue a warning in writing and impose a fine later. Chairman Rick van Kemenade says that this has never happened yet, though.
6 | Research
October 4, 2012
Dina Ribena. Photo | Bart van Overbeeke
Research | 7
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The (adhesive) power of mollusks More and more, scientists are inspired by nature when solving difficult problems. Mussels stay put in turbulent tidal currents by gluing themselves to the seabed; we could do with a type of waterproof glue like that, too. Doctoral candidate Dina Ribena dove into the secret of the mussel. For centuries, moisture has been an important factor in glue becoming unstuck. Water gradually reduces the adhesive power of natural, protein-based glues. Although modern, synthetic polymer glues are much more moisture resistant, they’re not great for gluing things together underwater under turbulent circumstances. It’s all the more striking then, that mussels seem to have found a solution to that problem. These shellfish prefer to settle right in the middle of high and low tide - a place where powerful tidal currents pass eutrophic water through their wide-open shells. They do of course run the risk of either being washed up to the deadly shore or being dragged to the depths of stagnant waters where there’s hardly any food to be found. Mussels can cling to a number of bases by secreting a unique mix of sticky proteins that harden into byssus threads, with which the animal can realize a rock solid attachment. That, along with their aerodynamic shape, makes them pretty much immune to even the most violent tidal currents. What’s the mussel’s secret? How do they manage to do what we can’t, despite all our technical knowledge? Scientists and glue manufacturers would love to be able produce this wondrous sticky substance. Harvesting the product from mussels
directly is too expensive. The Latvian doctoral candidate Dina Ribena tells us that thousands of mussels are needed for a single gram of pure ‘mussel glue’.
Mussels seem unaffected by even the most violent tidal currents She continues to explain that it’s yet unclear how the dozens of proteins in the mussel glue work together, but we do know some of the most important ones contain the so-called DOPA molecule. “DOPA is a chemical that changes into dopamine in the body, which is a well-known neurotransmitter causing feelings of being in love, for example.” Dopamine is easy to make and that opens up possibilities: recent research has shown that it’s possible to add a coating of dopamine to a large number of materials. Ribena: “You simply dissolve the dopamine in water and then submerge the substrate that needs coating. The dopamine forms a hydrophilic layer on which cells can be grown, for example.” And that can
A schematic rendition of the Langmuir-Blodgett process. The substrate (green) is coated with a single layer of dopamine molecules with hydrophobic fat tails. The black cubes push the molecules towards the substrate while it’s being extracted from the solution.
be used in all kinds of biomedical applications. Ribena stresses these dopamine coatings can’t be used as actual, everyday glue - they probably can’t glue heavy things together - but a derivative of the mussel glue may very well be used as a primer onto which a second layer (the top coating, which also may consist of cells) adheres well. It’s great dopamine can be used for this, but why it works - and how it can be improved - is barely known. Ribena’s work was supposed to shed some light on the matter. She coated several test surfaces with a number of dopamine layers (gold and sapphire, representing precious metals and metal oxides respectively). Initially she used the method described above and submerged them in a dopamine solution. She then meticulously researched the resulting coatings using an array of techniques. “These kinds of nanolayers are not analyzed easily. You need to incorporate a wide array of measuring techniques to be able to get an accurate idea of what you’ve created.” Ribena used laser and x-ray spectroscopy as well as scanning microscopes to visualize the surface. After many time-consuming measurements, she concluded the only way to learn more about the mussel glue is by studying a cleaner system. To that end, she equipped dopamine molecules with two types of long molecular tails. Those tails enables her to apply clean, single-layer coatings by means of a chemical procedure known as LangmuirBlodgett (see box). On top of that,
The setup for the ‘pull-off tests’. The substrate (an aluminum alloy) is coated with a dopamine glue ‘primer’ inspired by mussel glue. The primer is chemically connected to a polymer top coating onto which the test rod is glued with commercial glue.
Photo | Bart van Overbeeke
molecular tails easily stick to a conventional glue layer needed to measure the strength of the dopamine adhesive. To one of the two dopamine versions an amide group was added, the other remained free of additives. The amide group turned out to create hydrogen bridges - flexible interconnections between hydrogen atoms of two tails. This process makes for a cleaner single layer, which is exactly what you want in a primer. “The version without amide group caused much more irregularities, and that’s important to know because it affects the power of the glue.” The mechanically coated substrates have their molecules neatly positioned in the same direction, with the dopamine side stuck onto the substrate’s surface and the tails facing away from it. “I applied a top coating to that, which makes cross links with the tails of the dopamine molecules.” Finally, she glued a small metal rod onto the top coating using an epoxy adhesive for the ‘pull-off test’. “In this setup, the attachment of the dopamine to the substrate is the weakest link. By measuring the exact force needed to release the rod, the adhesive power of the dopamine glue can be determined.” The doctoral candidate says many researchers don’t bother to subject their coatings to realistic tests. To be able to
say anything at all about the adhesive power, you’ll have to expand the system - pulling apart separate molecules using a scanning microscope doesn’t say much about what happens on a macroscopic level. “Only a small number of researchers have provided realistic data.” Ribena’s tests have shown that her
Thousands of mussels are needed for a single gram of pure glue mussel-glue-based primer has three times more adhesive power compared to untreated metal, meaning the top coating sticks to the primer three times better. “My tests were based on those of the industry; they’re not entirely scientific, but the results are good. I’m fairly confident my study will see a follow-up.” That last bit is what matters to her most: “My dream is that this research will live.” (TJ)