5 November 1, 2012 | year 55
Biweekly magazine of the Eindhoven University of Technology For news: www.cursor.tue.nl and follow tuecursor on Twitter and Facebook
6 | Fetus in distress 2 Wintertime
4 TU/e cars
10 University news
2 | For Starters
November 1, 2012
Multitasking women
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
Clmn
Women are better at multitasking than men, or so they say. Such statements are hard to prove by a single example, but Judith van Laar makes an impressive attempt at doing so anyway. She’s a gynecologist in training and recently obtained her doctorate degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering like it’s no big deal. She managed to combine part of her training with her doctorate research - that’s how she excuses her success. And hey, being a gynecologist it’s a small step to becoming a mother of two along the way, right?
It’s ALL about EVERYTHING
Tom Jeltes
See pages 6-7.
Photography Rien Meulman Bart van Overbeeke
Rewwwind
Cover
www.cursor.tue.nl
iStockphoto
Translation
Our Rewwwind feature provides you with snippets of last week’s news. What happened online after the previous Cursor magazine was published?
Annemarie van Limpt (pages 2,3,6,7) Benjamin Ruijsenaars (pages 4,5)
Layout Natasha Franc
Editorial board prof.dr. Cees Midden prof.dr. Hans Niemantsverdriet Angela Stevens- van Gennip Thomas Reijnaerts Arold Roestenburg Anneliese Vermeulen-Adolfs
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Student flats in office building Mauritsstraat 25 October 2012 - The office building on the corner of Maurisstraat and Hoogstraat in the Eindhoven city center will be converted into a student housing complex with 138 independent living units for foreign students. The near-empty office building will have to undergo major reconstruction, but the studios are expected to be completed by August next year. Rent will be anywhere between 400 and 450 euro, including gas, water and electricity. Foreign students aged 23 or older may apply for a federal housing allowance, so the units remain affordable. To guarantee a proper ‘flow’, tenants will have to sign a campus contract, which states they
have to move within six months of graduating or quitting their studies.
There are many things important to humanity. One of them could be the diversity of interests that single individuals possess. Some are sinking in the technology ocean, the others race with newest design trend lines. Some of us are poets, some read poetry, the others, on the other hand, in general don’t give a hoot about rhyming words. Yes, this diversity of people and their interests is extremely important. It benefits us professionally and individually. We develop faster, sink deeper, see broader. In sum, we achieve higher goals in our societies and in personal lives. Highly skilled engineers work in the laboratories devoted to the development of fancy technologies easing people’s lives. Some anthropologists are still bite by bite tasting the origins and evolution of our societies and cultures. Now, this diversity of people and their interests is important also because there should be a flow from one side to the other. From engineer to anthropologist, from designer to technician and then reversed.
The knowledge exchange circle. Running like a fast river. We are worth much less, if we are only interested in what we know the best. And university is the place, where this idea is or at least should be explicitly exposed. We study to be universal. To be not only mathematicians, but as well to know something about theater, visual art, music… That’s how it all started in the Ancient Greece. That’s how I hope our education and thirst for knowledge will continue to be. And at the end, I just want to say: let’s be interested in more than what we see and have around us. Let’s know more!
Indr User Systeme Kalinauskaite, Interaction trainee ID
TU/e tightens up doctoral procedure 24 October 2012 - The fraud issue concerning Tilburg professor Diederik Stapel has led TU/e to intensify its quality control for dissertations. Starting 2013, new doctoral candidates should have a second supervisor next to their main supervisor. On top of that, every member of the PhD committee has to present a written assessment. Today, only members of the smaller core committee do so.
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.
Wintertime -
our hope in dark times
Last weekend we could change our clocks back from daylight saving time. This allows us to still leave for university in daylight and to get out of bed a little less early. The feeling is correct: during winter, our internal clock is better synchronized with social clock time and we behave more in line with the rising and setting of the sun. So for a little while, bringing science to young people before the clock has struck nine will feel a little less painful. These young people themselves should not even be in class before ten anyway. During adolescence our internal clock gradually shifts to a later time, so we are evening persons - ‘night owls’ - at our most extreme around our 20th birthday. This basically implies that we are brutally violating most students’ internal rhythms by expecting them to get out of bed in the middle of their biological night. For them in particular, wintertime is bliss: one extra hour of sleep, plus a clock that’s better attuned to their internal clock. And frankly, looking at my colleagues and myself, this extra hour of night’s rest is not only doing them good. Most of us switch to wintertime - the ‘real’ time after all - swiftly and smoothly. The real pain of daylight saving time comes in the spring. The German chronobio logist Kantermann and his colleagues from Groningen demonstrated in 2007 that
this forward change of the clock has much worse repercussions and that some evening persons do not completely align with the clock throughout the summer. The first days after switching to daylight saving time also correlate with worse mood, more stress, a higher number of car accidents, and an increase of around 5% in heart attacks. And all this for an energy benefit that was never demonstrated and is fiercely disputed.
Yvonne de Kort, Asso ciate profes in the Hum sor enviro an-Technol nmental ps ogy Intera ychology ction grou p, departm ent of IE&IS
The good news is that the frequency of heart attacks shows a slight ‘dip’ after resetting the clock in autumn. We also sleep around 20 minutes longer in winter than in summer. So there is hope in these dark times: sleeping longer, getting up later; everything will be ok now - even if only for a little while.
For Starters | 3
See for more news www.cursor.tue.nl
Vox Academici Prof.mr.dr. Jan Smits, professor of Law and Technology, Department of IE&IS
Should scientists legally cover themselves? Six Italian scientists were sentenced to a serious stint in jail after having provided ‘incorrect advice’. In 2009, they are said to have misjudged the risks of an earthquake in the Italian city of l’Aquila. Instead of being warned, inhabitants were reassured; the minor quakes that were measured did not indicate a major earthquake, they claimed. The devastating earthquake that followed anyway took the lives of more than three hundred people. Can scientist be held responsible for that? If so, does a sentence like this one lead to more well-founded statements, or will it backfire and lead to scientists adopting a ‘better safe than sorry’ mindset in future risk analyses? Both science and Berlusconi have been convicted in a single week. I can’t think of a greater contrast”, says Jan Smits, professor of Law and Technology at the Department of IE&IS at TU/e. “It’s downright mad those scientists were indicted in the first place, regardless of whether or not they should have been convicted. You see, it’s a fishy case: stories are contradicted and facts are
covered up. Why, for example, were only the scientists convicted instead of the entire risk committee? And what about the exact time of that notorious press conference? They say it’s not an indictment of science itself, but of the way science is communicated. Well, that statement won’t stick. It seems science turns out to be the bad guy after all. I experienced the consequences of the quake from up close, because one of our staff members is from l’Aquila. I can tell you this much: if they’re looking for the bad guys, they should be looking somewhere else. It happened three years ago and the city is still a mess. If scientists can be held accountable for that, too, we should probably all consider changing jobs.” “Warnings abound, just look at weather alarms alone. I think the real problem is of a different nature: we have access to all information available everywhere. About a year ago, I was watching TV when I felt a tremor. I tweeted: ‘Hey, that felt like an earthquake’. It spread like wildfire. Journalists also get their
news from social media websites. Unfortunately, one-liners tend to enter the cloud before hard facts are confirmed. We should stop and think about this way of communicating, seriously. It’s almost like one-liners are becoming an art form, while we should go back to proper differentiation.”
“Not one-liners, but differentiation” “I think it’s up to communication staff and journalists to tackle the one-liner hype; is missing out on a scoop more important than checking the facts? Still, scientists have a responsibility, too. We have to figure out how to deal with situations like these. After all, one-liners are becoming ever more important in these times of ‘publish or perish’ in our line of work. Let’s aim for differentiation. If we don’t, I dread the future: ‘Sign first, and then I’ll give you my scientific point of view’. It will not be the American, but the Italian way.” (NT)
Jan Smits. Archive photo | Bart van Overbeeke
Students Mechanical Engineering drenched The Dommel seesaw has been inextricably linked to the Mechanical Engineering construction competition for first-year students.
24, at a temperature of 11.8 degrees, almost 200 On October
students (including about
10 ladies) entered into battle. Group
12 won the competi-
tion. Their construction gave in at a pulling power of
5,000 Newton, whereas the 2 groups that finished last sank at 400 Newton
already. (TJ)
Photo | Rien Meulman
4 | Focus
November 1, 2012
Text | Monique van de Ven Illustration | Sandor Paulus
Driving 2.0
For nearly a decade now University Racing Eindhoven has been attracting much attention with its -electricracing cars. Meanwhile, several other TU/e student teams are also hard at it with their cars of the future. These pages are devoted to four of these student teams racing cars. Ka-chow!
A car is
Name Solar Team Eindhoven Since June 2012 Who 22 Students of Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences, Industrial Design, Computer Science and the Built Environment Home base Department of Electrical Engineering Competition The Cruiser class of the World Solar Challenge Goal Winning the World Solar Challenge and building the car of the future Name of car Is determined by the main sponsor What can it do? The car is ‘a marriage between the solar car and the electric car of today - though better’, says the team, good for a range of 750 kilometers and seating four passengers comfortably. Top speed 120 km/hour, accelerates from 0 to 100 in 20 seconds, 380 kilos, good for 56 h.p. and 1.6 kWh power at 70 km/hour (‘less than a vacuum cleaner’). By joining Solar Team Eindhoven, as the team claims, we are switching to ‘driving 2.0’. Greatest sustainability factor: Little to no CO2 emission. When the car is parked in front of the house or at the office, it can be recharged, so that it becomes possible to drive fully on solar energy. Greatest (technical) challenge for the team: To make the car as a whole efficient, aerodynamic and light. Not every component individually needs to be optimized, but the whole car, always watching out for conflicting interests. With each design choice, the weight must be considered again. Online solarteameindhoven.nl • twitter.com/solarEHV • facebook.com/solarteameindhoven
Clean and autonomous Naam InMotion Since March 2012 Who Master (internship) students and students graduating from various departments, while the team also wants to work with doctoral candidates and Higher Professional Education (hbo) interns Home base InMotion is a spin-off under the TU/e Innovation Lab, located inside the Multimedia pavilion. Competition None Goal To set up an innovation platform (‘living car lab’) and a media/PR showcase Name of car IM01 What can it do? The InMotion car will, according to the team, be the world’s most innovative and fastest race track car. It should achieve a top speed of 360 km/hour, accelerates from 0 to 100 in 1.8 seconds, delivers 1 Megawatt (= approximately
1250 h.p.) and can finish the 24-hour race of Le Mans. The IM01 has no seats; it is an autonomous car. If necessary, the autonomous steering can be exchanged for a seat. Further ‘specs’: active aerodynamics, autonomous motion and a range extender with 70% efficiency (as against the 30% effectively used for locomotion in today’s combustion engines). Greatest sustainability factor Integration of the most innovative researches in all areas into one showcase. ‘We are developing the technology to be used in cars in ten years’, the team claims. Greatest (technical) challenge for the team ‘Not allow the thought process to be limited by rules and existing conventions’ Online inmotion.tue.nl • inmotion@tue.nl • twitter.com/tueinmotion facebook.com/tueinmotion • linkedin.com/company/tueinmotion
Focus | 5
born
Less is more
See for more news www.cursor.tue.nl
Name TU/ecomotive Since September 2012 Who 7 Bachelor students of Automotive Home base Electrical Engineering Department Competition Shell Eco Marathon Goal Build a small electric car that will take part in the Urban Concept class for city cars of the Shell Eco Marathon. Ambition: a place in the top ten. In addition: good enough to compete in the market for occasional traffic (think of the Renault Twizy). Does 50 kilometer to 1 kWh, comparable with 1 to 500 for petrol cars Name of car EM01, ‘nickname not yet known’ What can it do? Top speed 45 km/hour, range 24 km (competition) up to 150 km (on road battery), weight circa 160 kilo, maximum 130 cm high, modular battery packages, real wheel drive, two seats, production costs below 9,000 euro Greatest sustainability factor Less is more. Weight and thus rolling resistance must stay as low as possible, as well as air resistance through good aerodynamics and a small frontal plane. Greatest (technical) challenge for the team Make progress in the aerodynamics, especially in comparison with the Renault Twizy Online tuecomotive.nl • twitter.com/tuecomotive facebook.com/tuecomotive • info@tuecomotive.nl
Dynamic design Naam University Racing Eindhoven Since 2003 Who More than 50 students from nearly all TU/e departments, including Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences and Automotive Technology Home base Mechanical Engineering Department Competition Formula Student competitions worldwide, which last year included the English Silverstone track and the German Hockenheimring Goal provide students with practical experience outside their study programs; give them the opportunity to develop further and gain experience with the business community. ‘In addition, we want to be the world’s number 1.’ Name of car Most recent existing car is the URE07 (to be seen in the illustration), but the team is meanwhile working on the URE08 (the QR code hides a first impression) What can it do? This year the team is building its fourth electric racing car, which will also be assessed in the competition for its dynamic performance, design, costs and business model. The car has a top speed of 155 km/hour, reaches 100 kilometer per hour in less than 3 seconds and has a range of 22 km (in intensive racing). The car has one seat and a target weight less than 180 kilos Greatest sustainability factor The drive line of the car consists of a battery and an electric motor. Electric driving is the future and this racing car provides an opportunity to promote the electric automotive industry Greatest (technical) challenge for the team Build a completely new and better racing car every year. As it will be ssion assessed for different components, each aspect must be elaborated Impre down to the minutest detail. RE08 nl U e. .tu or rs cu w. Online Universityracing.nl • universityracing@tue.nl • twitter.com/Uracing ww facebook.com/universityracing
6 | Research
See for more news www.cursor.tue.nl
Fetus in distress She was already a medical doctor, but now she’s that other doctor as well. Dr. Judith van Laar researched ways to determine, based on their heart rate, if an unborn child is in danger during the mother’s pregnancy or labor. The gynecologist in training received her doctorate from the Department of Electrical Engineering on October 31. Whenever a baby’s in trouble in the uterus, doctors may decide to induce labor or do a C-section. These interventions can save the baby’s life, but quite often the procedure turns out to have been unnecessary. It’s a problem, because ‘it doesn’t hurt to try’ doesn’t apply here, especially if the child is born well before their due date. Premature birth is one of the main causes for disease and death with newborns. Besides, such a traumatic start to life can reverberate for a long time. Especially if paired with oxygen deficiency prognoses can be grim, says Van Laar. Caesarian sections aren’t without risk for mothers, either, she adds. “It’s still abdominal surgery with a risk of internal bleeding, infection and organ damage. And the uterus is scarred, due to which it may tear during a next pregnancy.”
Such a traumatic start to life can reverberate for a long time Van Laar is a gynecologist in training at the Máxima Medisch Centrum in Veldhoven. Next to her training, supervised by doctor and TU/e part-time professor prof.dr. Guid Oei, she’s also been conducting scientific research over the past years. She now obtained her doctorate from the Department of Electrical Engineering, supervised by that same Oei. The main goal of Van Laar’s research was to prevent children from suffering from oxygen deficiency or unnecessary premature birth. To check up on the unborn child during pregnancies, doctors use a cardiotocogram, monitoring both the child’s heart rate and the contraction of the mother’s uterus. Measurements can be done from outside using ultrasound, like the ultrasounds we all know. Still, for an
accurate, long-lasting measurement of the baby’s heart rate an electrode should be pasted to the child’s body, which is something that can only really be done when the mother has gone into labor. “The cardiotocogram is widely used, but turns out to be of limited diagnostic value”, says Van Laar. An extra measuring technique is needed to determine if, in case of doubt, intervention is necessary. Van Laar’s research elaborates on the work of two other TU/e doctors, dr.ir. Rik Vullings and dr.ir. Chris Peters. These engineers developed a way to measure a fetus’ heart rate using paste electrodes on the mother’s belly (Vullings), as well as software to analyze those signals (Peters). Van Laar studied how to determine a fetus is in trouble based on their heart rate. It’s often paired with oxygen deficiency in the babies, which can be established by carefully sampling a drop of blood from a tiny incision in the head. She compared the heart rates of ten babies born with oxygen deficiency to those of ten healthy babies. The researcher has concluded it’s possible to determine whether or not the unborn child is really in danger by charting variations in heart rate frequency - to what extent the heart rate goes up and down as time progresses. “The idea behind this approach is that variations in heart rate show us what part of the fetus’ nerve system, active or passive, has the upper hand. In case of relatively frequent slow variations, it means the active system is dominant, which is a sign the baby is stressed.” It may also be a sign the baby is just moving around, because that also triggers the active nerve system. “Looking at the heart of a marathon runner, one might conclude they’re stressed as well. It’s important to establish why the active nerve system is dominant, because it may not have a medical reason. Luckily, a fetus in distress has a tendency to lie still, and there are other ways to distinguish an active child from a baby in distress. Nonetheless, it is definitely something
Florian, Judith van de Laar’s son, stressed and relaxed - with respective heart rates. Photos | Angelique Lemmens
to keep in mind.” As far as adults are concerned, we already know a lot about the relationship between heart rate variations and cardiovascular diseases, for example, but there´s only a handful of studies about unborn babies. It turns out it´s not easy to distill relevant parameters from their heart rate. The first thing you need to do, is do a so-called spectral analysis of the measuring signal, the well-known line moving up and down we know from countless hospital series. The analysis visualizes what frequency components are present in the heart beat (see figure below).
frequency peak means the baby is stressed, it turns out. Still, it only shows if you correct the readings for the mean heart rate, says Van Laar. “That has proven extremely important. Since with a higher heart rate the frequency variation decreases automatically, you run the risk of relative changes being veiled.” It’s a complicated story, which boils down to this: any valuable predictions about the baby’s health can be done based on normalized power spectra only. And any values calling for intervention depend on how far the fetus has developed by that point, too.
yet, due to the electrically isolating sebum the fetus develops in that period.” All in all, it will be a while before spectral analysis of the heart beat, measured from ‘the outside’ with electrodes on the mother’s belly, will have become a standard procedure. That doesn’t take away the fact that they’ve already come a long way, says Van Laar. “Back when I was taking measurements, only three percent of our non-invasive electrocardiograms was suitable for analysis. The mother’s heart rate, muscle contractions and uterus largely dominated the baby’s signal. By now, that percentage has risen to 44 percent.”
A high lowfrequency peak means the baby is stressed
An example of a ‘power spectrum’ of an adult’s heart rate, where the power of the signal is plotted against the frequency. A raised left peak (many low frequencies, LF) points to stress in unborn children.
If the heart rate frequency fluctuates relatively slowly, a peak shows up in the left side of the graph. A high low-
“There’s a period during pregnancy, roughly between 30 and 34 weeks, in which we can’t do proper measurements
That improvement could mean the difference between an infeasible method and one that can actually be implemented, she admits. “Over the past years, there have hardly been any new publications on this subject. I think it’s owing to the fact you need a team consisting of both engineers and doctors for this type of research. A doctor couldn’t do it alone, but neither could an engineer. The cooperation between hospital and university just works really well for this subject. And if you ask me, I’d say that’s pretty unique.” (TJ)
See for more news www.cursor.tue.nl
Research | 7
Judith van Laar. Photo | Bart van Overbeeke