News in Brief – Delta 19

For his PhD research, he studied driving behavior under time-stress conditions, such as when seeing an accident on the other side of the road and during adverse weather conditions. His findings can be implemented in the Intelligent Driver Model computer program, thus making responses to crisis situations more adequate and the simulation of traffic more realistic.

‘Always look ahead’

Frans van der Helm, professor of biomechatronics and biorobotics, has been awarded the Simon Stevin Master Prize, the largest award in the Netherlands for technical sciences. Prof. Van der Helm is doing an excellent job bringing fundamental research into practice and translating them to products. He heads two STW perspective programmes: NeuroSipe, which identifies the neurological background of motoric disorders; and H-haptics, which stands for a master–slave configuration for telemanipulation of robots, whereby the human user literally feels the feedback of what he is doing, whether it’s driving a car, mining metals from the deep sea or lifting a patient from her bed.

Study styles

Everyone studies for exams in their own individual way. While some students prefer to shut lock themselves away in their rooms to study, or go home to their parents house, others can be found searching every day for a place to study in the TU Library. But even there some students still isolate themselves, but with music. Lakshmeesh Rao Mohre Maruthi (23) loves the music from his home country: India. On his laptop is a play list of all types of Indian music. “I can study really well with it,” says the student, laughing, as he takes of his headphones. Mohre Maruthi, an MSc student studying systems and control (3mE), is currently studying for a course called ‘model predictive control’. His exam is on July 3. He tries to ensure he’s at the Library by 10:00 each morning. He’s untroubled by any commotion occurring around him. In fact, he says it’s too quiet in his spacebox room to concentrate. Mohre Maruthi makes long days. He usually eats lunch at a Turkish fast-food place off campus. He cooks his own evening meals. And then it’s back to the library the next morning, where he remains until midnight.

New Delta

After the summer vacation, Delta will return in a new format. As of August 30, the weekly newspaper will be replaced by a twice-monthly Delta magazine. The daily news stories will appear on the website, and the background stories of the latest news in the magazine. In August, Delta will also launch an iPhone app, which will allow users to access the latest articles on our website. An Android version will be launched shortly thereafter. Further, readers can

subscribe to our weekly digital newsletter. We hope that the new-look Delta will be well received. Please share your opinions of these changes with us.

Academic fraud

Dirk Smeesters, a Belgian professor of consumer behaviour at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University is suspected of committing academic fraud, reports the NRC Handelsblad newspaper. Smeesters has since resigned his post. Last year, another professor at the Erasmus University was caught committing fraud. An integrity commission is now reviewing Smeester’s academic research.

Smeesters has worked at Erasmus University’s Rotterdam School of Management since 2007.

Overweight immigrants

And international research study of some 7000 children has found that children from immigrant families in the Netherlands are more likely to be obese than children of people who were born in the Netherlands. Among children whose first language is not Dutch, 26 percent were found to be overweight and 9 percent obese, while only 15 percent of children with native Dutch parents were overweight. There are various reasons for this, says Professor Johannes Brug, a research coordinator at VU Medical Centre, which participated in the study: “Consumption of soft drinks is usually higher among children from immigrant families, they are less likely to eat at regular mealtimes and often miss breakfast. These children also watch more television, play less sport and sleep less.” Family educational levels and income also play a role.