News in Brief – Delta 19

Bruil designed juice cartons that children can play with when empty. Her design concept, called ‘Sap op stap’, involved carton juice packets which can be folded into the shape of a bus, boat or airplane and then played with outdoors as toys.

Knowledge migrants
The wealth of original ideas and fine reputations of its universities makes the Netherlands an attractive place for internationals students and researchers, according to a recent SEO economic research study. Compared to ten other Oeso countries, only the United States and Switzerland are more popular destinations for knowledge migrants than the Netherlands. Knowledge migrants – defined as those who hold polytechnic and/or university degrees – come to the Netherlands for various reasons, including entrepreneurial opportunities and higher salaries for engineers. Students meanwhile often come to the Netherlands via exchange programmes or on scholarships. The educational quality and reputation of the universities also play a major role in their decisions to come here. Foreign researchers especially value the wealth of original ideas pursued here, as expressed in the number of patent applications and publications in scientific journals.

Computing superpower
China is now a world supercomputing superpower. China’s Nebulae machine, situated in Shenzhen, is ranked second on the biannual Top 500 supercomputer list. This is also the first time China has two supercomputers (also the NUDT TH-1, ranked 7th) in the top ten. The US however still dominates the list, claiming seven of the top ten fastest computers, including the world’s fastest, the Cray XT5, whose top speed is 1.75 petaflops. One petaflop equals 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

iTunes U
“How many hours of lectures are available on Collegerama for iTunes U?” That was the question students were asked to answer in the iPod Touch competition. Victor Westerwoudt, a fourth-year applied sciences student, guessed the closest to the right answer of 7,000 hours. Westerwoudt has long been a fan of iTunes U: “I’ve been using it for ages, to watch MIT physics lectures for example. I’m glad that TU Delft is now on iTunes U as well.”

Numerus clausus
Starting as of the 2011-2012 academic year, TU Delft will introduce a numerus clausus for its first-year BSc programmes in Architecture, Industrial Design Engineering and Aerospace Engineering. This measure will limit the number of new students that can be enrolled in each programme. The aim is to ensure the university’s educational standards remain high as government funding for education decreases. “In the past few years the university has been confronted with dwindling funding from the government and our future income is uncertain”, says Paul Rullmann, vice-president of the Executive Board. “At the same time the number of students entering our degree programmes has increased by a third. This results in problems with capacity. We must take measures for these three large programmes to prevent that student numbers affect educational quality.”

Cybersave yourself
TU Delft recently launched a new campaign designed to raise awareness about the safe use of digital information, computers and networks at home and at the university. The campaign, called ‘Cybersave Yourself’, warns of the dangers of posting digital information and gives some simple tips about protection at the website: www.cybersaveyourself.nl. The site provides information about the safe use of social media, about protecting information on your mobile phone, protecting data and dealing with phishing e-mails.

 Er bestaan wel andere websites voor projectbeheer (zoals projectplace.com), maar die zijn vooral gericht op bedrijven en kosten al vaak een paar tientjes in de maand.

Tijdens zijn studie management, economie en recht aan de Avans Hogeschool in Breda ontdekte Wouter Rosenkamp zelf hoe belangrijk het projectbeheer was. Wie zou wat ook alweer doen en wanneer zou het af zijn. Dat soort dingen.

Als oplossing ontwikkelde hij het webtool Mijnprojectgroep.nl dat het makkelijker moet maken ‘om een planning te maken en te beheren, documenten met elkaar te delen en een taakverdeling op te zetten.’ En dat alles voor niks, alleen inschrijven.

Tot nu toe hebben zich 400 personen aangemeld en er komen tien tot twintig per dag bij.

Inkomsten moeten uiteindelijk uit advertenties komen, maar tot het einde van het jaar rekent Rosenkamp daar niet op.

De hosting is uitbesteed en kan tot een aantal duizend klanten verwerken. Als het groter wordt, is een ander serverpark nodig, maar dan verwacht Rosenkamp ook adverteerders aan te kunnen trekken.

De gratis service blijft bestaan, hoewel daar in de toekomst mogelijk ‘premium pakketten’ naast komen die dan wel betaald moeten worden.

Garantie over ‘uptime’ en veiligheid van bestanden wordt niet gegeven. Dat doen volgens Rosenkamp andere gratis diensten als Hotmail, Gmail en Hyves ook niet. Maar, zegt hij, tot nu toe is de website nog geen moment uit de lucht geweest.