Education

News in Brief – Delta 8

City living A British company called City Living wants to build a student hotel in the centre of the TU Delft campus. The company’s hotel concept is the same everywhere: 15 m2, furnished rooms with bathroom and (sometimes kitchen) for 95 euros per week.

Students staying there can also use common rooms with kitchens, fitness rooms, City Living bicycles, a cleaning service and laundry room. Maximum stay is ten months. City Living especially targets international students, a company spokesperson said, but Dutch students are also welcome: “You can’t live in our residences permanently, but if for example you come from Groningen, it’s a good way to start. Then from Delft you can search for another apartment.”  

Poker face
Students play online poker and watch YouTube videos during lectures. But Akke Suiker, recent winner of TU Delft’s ‘2010 Teacher of the Year Award’, says such activities have no place in lecture halls. He’s calling for a new policy pertaining to laptops. Suiker notes an increase in recent years of laptop use in his first-year statistics course, which is attend by 200 to 300 students. Students often tell Suiker that they want to use their laptops to take notes, but Suiker doesn’t accept this argument. Meanwhile, Jacco Hoekstra, dean of the Aerospace Engineering faculty, is reluctant to set new policy: “The other side of the argument is that we use the blackboard to distribute digital materials and indeed some students do take notes with their laptops.” 

Bad sleep
Researchers have found that using technology – like televisions, mobile phones, computers, or video game devices – before going to bed can negatively affect your ability to fall asleep and get the necessary amount of sleep. “Artificial light exposure between dusk and the time we go to bed at night suppresses release of the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin, enhances alertness and shifts circadian rhythms to a later hour – making it more difficult to fall asleep,” Dr Charles Czeisler, a Harvard Medical School professor involved in the research said. “This study reveals that light-emitting screens are in heavy use within the pivotal hour before sleep.”

Creative crisis
Crisis leads to creativity and sometimes also profits, concludes Ton Valk, coordinator of first-year students at the 3mE faculty. Due to budget cuts and other factors, the IDE faculty decided to dismantle its shared workshop over the course of last year. Valk says the replacement solutions proved to be better in many ways. Further, as of the third quarter there are three new or improved teaching labs. Educational gains have also been achieved through collaborative efforts with secondary vocational schools. Meanwhile, costs have been cut in half to approximately 400,000 euro.

2010 Dewis Award
Rector Karel Luyben has awarded the Dewis Award for the best female PhD student of the year to Maaike Snelder. The award ceremony was held during the ‘Climate for Women in Science’ symposium, organized by Delft Women in Science (Dewis). The Dewis Award for excellence honours the quality of a thesis by a young female scientist at TU Delft. The award criteria include a PhD with honours, the anticipated international and/or social significance of the research, and the originality of the research question and the approach.

Hold it
Research conducted by psychologists at Twente University has found that people with full bladders show better judgment when choosing between ‘small and immediate’ rewards and ‘larger but delayed’ awards. The researchers believe this is because parts of the brain involved in bladder control are also involved in impulse control. The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, also concluded that just thinking about words related to urination triggered the same effect. Dr Mirjam Tuk, who led the study, said that the “brain area sending this signal, is activated not only for bladder control, but for all sorts of control.”

International registration
TU Delft is developing a central registration system for students and staff who are abroad. A development prompted by the recent unrest in North Africa and the Middle East. Other universities have stared similar initiatives. A problem for universities is that they often do not know where exactly they can find their students and staff, which is especially problematic when crisis situations develop.   

Editor Redactie

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