6 | Fetus in distress - Cursor

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
Address editorial office
TU/e, Laplace 0.40
5600 MB Eindhoven
tel. 040 - 2474020
e-mail: [email protected]
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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
Who22 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
NaamInMotion
Since
March 2012
WhoMaster (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 baseInMotion is a spin-off under the TU/e Innovation Lab, located inside the
Multimedia pavilion.
CompetitionNone
Goal
To set up an innovation platform (‘living car lab’) and a media/PR showcase
Name of carIM01
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 • [email protected] • twitter.com/tueinmotion
facebook.com/tueinmotion • linkedin.com/company/tueinmotion
Focus | 5
born
Less is more
See for more news www.cursor.tue.nl
NameTU/ecomotive
Since
September 2012
Who
7 Bachelor students of Automotive
Home base
Electrical Engineering Department
Competition
Shell Eco Marathon
GoalBuild 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 • [email protected]
Dynamic design
Naam
University Racing Eindhoven
Since2003
WhoMore 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
Goalprovide 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 carMost 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 • [email protected] • 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