Nibs

@01 kort nieuws kopje:Open research
More than 12,000 academics, including two Nobel laureates, have signed a petition urging the European Commission to make publicly funded academic research available for free on the Internet. The online petition directly challenges the lucrative businesses of many scientific publishers and comes ahead of an EC conference next month where ‘open access’ to research will be debated. The conference, held on 15-February in Brussels, is entitled ‘Scientific Publishing in the European Research Area – Access, Dissemination, and Preservation in the Digital Age’.

Math overrated?
A study of some three dozen countries challenges the popular belief that superior student achievement on international mathematics and science tests breeds national economic success. The study, which tracks economic-growth patterns from 1970 to 2000, found that the link between national productivity and high test scores weakens and, in some years, disappears when the so-called ‘Asian Tigers’ — Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea — are removed from researchers’ calculations. “If, in fact, the widespread belief that academic achievement is linked to economic growth is driven by only a few cases, then economic growth has something to do with those countries and not with the fact that they score high in math and science,” said Francisco Ramirez, the Stanford University (US) researcher who led the study. Ramirez’s study, which was published in the ‘American Journal of Education’, runs counter to calls made by many policymakers and business leaders to bolster K-12 mathematics and science education as a way for countries to keep from losing their economic edge over other nations.
2,000km

A team of students at TU Delft has set itself the goal of driving their Eco-Runner 1 car at least 2,000 km on just 1 liter of petrol. If successful, they will be one of the top 5 finishers of the 2007 Shell Eco-marathon, which will be held from May 11-13, in France. The marathon focuses on sustainable mobility and innovation, with the aim being to cover as many kilometers as possible on 1 liter of fuel. The record for this race is 3,836 kilometers and was set by a team of Swiss students in 2005. Each year the Shell Eco Marathon welcomes teams of talented young students from technological universities and institutes across Europe. The students must design and build their own vehicles. In principle, the competition is simple: drive as many kilometers as possible on a race track while using as little fuel as possible. Thousands of students from more than 20 European countries are set to compete in this year’s race with their futuristic vehicles.
Chinese delegation

Tsinghua University (Beijing) and TU Delft are broadening and deepening their partnership. A delegation of fourteen professors led by the president of Tsinghua University recently attended a workshop in Delft. Tsinghua is China’s leading technological university and many of China’s leaders obtained their degrees there. TU Delft’s Executive Board chairman Hans van Luijk stated that international partnerships at the highest level of knowledge are indispensable if the world is to cope with the enormous technological and scientific challenges of the coming decades, such as energy, climate change, water and urban development. The research partnership between Tsinghua and TU Delft will concentrate on these urgent issues. The workshop addressed four main topics: aerospace engineering, reactor technology, ICT, and engineering and policy analysis. Representatives of Dutch industry were joined at the workshop by officials from the education and economics ministries. The workshop’s aims included defining the partnership in selected research areas, exchanges of PhD students and professors, and joint MSc degrees.
Korean delegation

TU Delft hosted a delegation of 10 leading researchers from South Korea’s Embedded Software Cooperative Research Center. This knowledge institute will begin working in close cooperation with Holland’s Embedded Systems Institute in Eindhoven. The delegation visited various TU Delft faculties, including the faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science. The South Korean researchers will also visit Holland’s two other universities of technology. A seminar has also been organized, with the theme: ‘Embedded System Engineering Design Challenges’.