Nibs

The I-Share project of the TU’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science will introduce “the person behind the computer,” says Pavel Garbacki, who has worked on the Tribler part of the I-Share project for the past three years. The most popular peer-to-peer network at the moment, Bittorent, doesn’t save information and users remain anonymous. Tribler however saves the user’s history. “And just like with MSN, with Tribler people can create groups of friends,” Garbacki says. “So that you’ll know who you download files from. These are people you can trust, and therefore you won’t get viruses, and they’re also people who have the same interests as you.” And those aren’t the only differences with other peer-to-peer networks. With Tribler, the costs are much lower and downloading times twice as fast.
Debates

Studium Generale is currently trying to set up a debating competition at TU Delft. If academic and student associations are able to generate enough interest, students will begin debating in May. Studium Generale has asked Ton Monasso, a student and chairman of the Young Democrats in the Haagland region, to organize the debates. Monasso thinks that TU Delft students, who are not known for their debating skills, can benefit from developing and improving their verbal communication skills. He said this could then for example give Delft students an edge over Indian and Chinese engineers on the job market. Monasso believes that “creativity and team-work skills can contribute to giving TU Delft engineers a good position on the international labor market, now and in future.”
Face cover

Students at the Erasmus University Rotterdam will soon no longer be allowed to wear hats or burkas during exams. The university has decided to prohibit headwear after a number of cases involving cheating came to light. Students for instance have been caught writing information on the underside of a hat’s visor. At TU Delft, students are also prohibited from wearing headwear during exams. This prohibition is established in the TU’s ‘Regulation for use of buildings, grounds, and facilities, for students and visitors’. Article 2.2 states, in part, that “it is not allowed, within the university buildings during lectures, study groups or other forms of academic teaching, to wear any face covering articles that hinder the non-verbal communication between students and teachers or between students…and which in any way obscures the identity of the student.”
Better building

To better prepare building sites for construction, many problems such as flooding and settling can be overcome. Such problems occurring on new construction sites cost society hundreds of millions of euros. But now a new consortium, ‘Better Building and Residential Preparation’, will tackle these problems. TU Delft and five others parties, including engineering companies, signed a partnership agreement last Wednesday. The consortium wants to develop innovative techniques for building on difficult terrain, and they want to make all the relevant knowledge available throughout the entire building sector.
Honorary professor

TU Delft’s Professor Cees Beenakker has been appointed an ‘honorary professor’ at Tsinghua University in Peking. He will also become a member of Tsinghua University’s Institute of Microelectronics. With this, Beenakker is will occupy a formal bridge-building position between TU Delft, the Dutch corporate sector and China. Beenakker is the second Dutch ‘honorary professor’ appointed by Tsinghua University, which has appointed approximately 180 honorary professors in the past five years in an effort to rapidly internationalize its research and academics.

New network

The peer-to-peer network of TU Delft, Tribler, will soon be online for the first time. This new social network will mean that finally faster down- and uploading and live video streaming will become a reality. The I-Share project of the TU’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science will introduce “the person behind the computer,” says Pavel Garbacki, who has worked on the Tribler part of the I-Share project for the past three years. The most popular peer-to-peer network at the moment, Bittorent, doesn’t save information and users remain anonymous. Tribler however saves the user’s history. “And just like with MSN, with Tribler people can create groups of friends,” Garbacki says. “So that you’ll know who you download files from. These are people you can trust, and therefore you won’t get viruses, and they’re also people who have the same interests as you.” And those aren’t the only differences with other peer-to-peer networks. With Tribler, the costs are much lower and downloading times twice as fast.
Debates

Studium Generale is currently trying to set up a debating competition at TU Delft. If academic and student associations are able to generate enough interest, students will begin debating in May. Studium Generale has asked Ton Monasso, a student and chairman of the Young Democrats in the Haagland region, to organize the debates. Monasso thinks that TU Delft students, who are not known for their debating skills, can benefit from developing and improving their verbal communication skills. He said this could then for example give Delft students an edge over Indian and Chinese engineers on the job market. Monasso believes that “creativity and team-work skills can contribute to giving TU Delft engineers a good position on the international labor market, now and in future.”
Face cover

Students at the Erasmus University Rotterdam will soon no longer be allowed to wear hats or burkas during exams. The university has decided to prohibit headwear after a number of cases involving cheating came to light. Students for instance have been caught writing information on the underside of a hat’s visor. At TU Delft, students are also prohibited from wearing headwear during exams. This prohibition is established in the TU’s ‘Regulation for use of buildings, grounds, and facilities, for students and visitors’. Article 2.2 states, in part, that “it is not allowed, within the university buildings during lectures, study groups or other forms of academic teaching, to wear any face covering articles that hinder the non-verbal communication between students and teachers or between students…and which in any way obscures the identity of the student.”
Better building

To better prepare building sites for construction, many problems such as flooding and settling can be overcome. Such problems occurring on new construction sites cost society hundreds of millions of euros. But now a new consortium, ‘Better Building and Residential Preparation’, will tackle these problems. TU Delft and five others parties, including engineering companies, signed a partnership agreement last Wednesday. The consortium wants to develop innovative techniques for building on difficult terrain, and they want to make all the relevant knowledge available throughout the entire building sector.
Honorary professor

TU Delft’s Professor Cees Beenakker has been appointed an ‘honorary professor’ at Tsinghua University in Peking. He will also become a member of Tsinghua University’s Institute of Microelectronics. With this, Beenakker is will occupy a formal bridge-building position between TU Delft, the Dutch corporate sector and China. Beenakker is the second Dutch ‘honorary professor’ appointed by Tsinghua University, which has appointed approximately 180 honorary professors in the past five years in an effort to rapidly internationalize its research and academics.