Biweekly magazine of the Eindhoven University of TechnologyFor news: www.cursor.tue.nl and follow tuecursor on andmm

12February 21, 2013 | year 55

University news

10More with less4Oh mirror, mirror ...2

5 | Chips for chips

Our Rewwwind feature provides you with snippets of last week’s news. What happened online after the previous Cursor magazine was published?

19 February - TU/e professor Maarten Steinbuch committed himself to being an ambassador for 80DR, an interna-tional racing event where teams have to try and travel around the world in

eighty days without using any fossil fuels or combustion engines. He wants to mobilize one or more Dutch teams for the event.

19 February - TU/e researchers prof.dr. Andrea Fiore and dr.ir. Jacques Huyge will be supervising two STW projects on optic sensors and the microstructure of porous materials, respectively. There’s

a total of approximately 1.5 million euro involved. STW will be funding a total of five technical science projects.

Maarten Steibuch ambassador for 80DR Two STW grants for TU/e research

www.cursor.tue.nlRewwwind

2 | For Starters February 21, 2013

Brainmatters

Mirror, mirrorSnow White’s evil stepmother had an interesting mirror. Not only was it capable of passing esthetic judgment on women, it did so in utter truthfulness - an awe-inspiring combination in the eyes of many men, I’m sure.

Now I don’t need an intelligent mirror to tell me that I’m not, in fact, the fairest of them all at seven in the morning, but there are some more interesting uses. Intelligent mirrors, including camera, processor, and display, are currently being developed as health monitors and coaches for in the bathroom, and serve as stylists in the dressing room.

In 2005, Accenture introduced the ‘persuasive mirror’ concept, for example. Based on behavioral analysis (think of sleep, physical activity, diet et cetera) the mirror creates a digital extrapolation of someone’s appearance onto the looking-glass. A smoker? You’ll see your reflection turning ashen and weary in twenty virtual years’ time.

Despite the fact we don’t always appreciate what our reflections show us -be they extrapolations of the future or not- we are attached to them. Like Narcissus, one of

Greek mythology’s tragic figures, we all have a subconscious, but strong preference for people who are like us in appearance and/or behavior. Research by Jeremy Bailenson of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab showed that when swing voters in the US were presented with a political candidate that had been morphed with a picture of that specific voter, their vote would swing to the candidate resembling them, rather than to the candidate that hadn’t been morphed. Another study from the same lab proved that when a virtual character mimics your head movements (with a slight delay), test subjects were likely to classify that character as nicer, more competent and more convincing.

Since education at TU/e is benefiting from ICT implementations more and more, my students will soon be treated to a virtual edition of their teacher - one who seems nicer, more competent and more convincing than ever. And the fountain of youth morphing me with a twenty-year-old student probably won’t hurt, either. Oh, mirror, mirror…

Psychology is becoming ever more important at TU/e. Technical systems and artifacts, be they games, cars, robots, lighting systems or buildings, are all meant for human end users eventually. It’s essential to know how these users perceive, think, feel, and act. The new human-oriented program Psychology & Technology examines every technical design from a psychological perspective. From now on, Cursor will be taking a closer psychological look at students, teachers, labs, technical artifacts, the workplace, the scientific business, campus, education, and websites.

Wijnand IJsselsteijn, professor of Cognition and Affect in

Human Technology Interaction. Photo | Rien Meulman

ColophonEditor in chief

Han Konings

Executive editor Brigit Span

Editorial staff Judith van Gaal

Tom Jeltes | ScienceOdette Knappers (trainee)

Frits van OtterdijkNorbine Schalij

Monique van de Ven

Staff Nicole TesterinkGerard Verhoogt

Photography Rien Meulman

Bart van Overbeeke

CoverBart van Overbeeke

TranslationAnnemarie van Limpt (pages 2,3,5)

Benjamin Ruijsenaars (page 4)

LayoutNatasha Franc

Editorial boardprof.dr. Cees Midden

prof.dr. Hans NiemantsverdrietAngela Stevens- van Gennip

Thomas ReijnaertsArold Roestenburg

Anneliese Vermeulen-Adolfs

Address editorial officeTU/e, Laplace 0.35

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The narrow road

I was raised in the best Roman Catholic tradition. I even served as an altar boy and acolyte (promotion!). One thing I vividly remember from those days is a colorful board showing two directions in which you might take your life. On the left, a wide road with all kinds of enter- tainment and recreation, ending in hell. On the right, a narrow road that could only be accessed through a tiny gateway, ending in paradise. The all-seeing Eye hovering over the picture.

Why this trip down memory lane, you ask? I thought about that picture when we published an article on our website about the obligation for potential students to do an interview prior to starting their careers at TU/e. It’s by no means a unique measure, because it’s done elsewhere, too. We want to help our students get onto the right track right away, preferably the narrow one that’s accessible through that tiny gate only. They shouldn’t be wasting any time on entertainment or a position on the board, as that would have a negative influence on study results. After all, we’ve made a deal with our minister - Jet’s all-seeing Eye.

I was going through a couple of my old pictures. Pictures that my dad took a long time ago, with his analogue Zenit camera. A camera which now lies on a shelf in front of me, and probably is already mine. These pictures are indeed the captures of the moments in the past. Impossible to repeat or fix. Nowadays, however, we have so many opportunities to store the moments of our lives with digital photography. Moreover, besides storing pictures, we are also able to edit them. Make our past moments prettier and glossier than they actually were. Although I also think that digital photography is a great addition to my life and it opens up so many doors to become an ‘artist’ or to get closer to your friends and family (even while being far away from them), I miss that feeling of imperfection which you get while watching pictures taken with an analogue camera. That excitement - you never knew what’s gonna come out of your film. If you don’t know well how the light and photography work together (what ISO, exposure, shutter speed, etc. you need), your unprofessionalism can lead to so many wrong things with your shot, and yet make it so pretty.

The good thing is that the recent boom of the digital camera is calming down. Digital camera, as a perfect tool to capture moments fast and be able to edit the shots on the site, seems to be not enough. Everyone can do that. Everyone can be a photographer with their Canon or Nikon. But people want to be special and unique. Perhaps that’s why we still get back to analogue photography by bringing Lomography back to vivid life and using the digital photography to mimic instant analogue pictures with Instagram and other apps.

Indre Kalinauskaite, User System Interaction trainee at ID department

Photography Today

The wide road will come to be a quieter one soon, then. With the basic stipend and free public transport pass being discontinued, students won’t be able to afford that route, anyway. But why, I wonder, was the little me fascinated by that wide road rather than by that boring, narrow path that seemed to have absolutely nothing to offer?

Clmn

Han Konings, editor in chief Cursor

We all have a strong preference for people who are like us

For Starters | 3See for more news www.cursor.tue.nl

Vox Academici

How do we remove plastic from the sea?

Dr.ir. Bart Noordover, assistant professor of Materials Chemistry at the Department of Chemical Engineering

Photo | Jack Aarts (as per Maarten Beelen’s request, the slide shown differs from the one in the original picture)

Dr.ir. Bart Noordover. Photo | DPI/Bart van Overbeeke

Last Saturday night, February 16, Maarten Beelen of TU/e delivered a lecture for an audience of 800 during ‘Het Wonder van Eindhoven’ (the miracle of Eindhoven) in Paradiso, Amsterdam. The cultural 2-day event focused on the city of light.

The ‘system integration and application manager’ at TU/e who’s also part of the TU/e spinoff PRECEYES Medical Robotics talked about the eye robot the company wants to market. The robot serves as an assistant to the surgeon, enabling them to operate 10 to 20 times more accurately.

A parade of 34 tiny DAFs and 7 DAF trucks marked the kickoff of the event on Friday, February 15. TU/e showcased their Tech United soccer robots as well as the musical robots of TeamDARE. There were also several product presentations by TU/e people. (JvG)

TU/e part of ‘Miracle of Eindhoven’

The plastic soup is known especially for its vast expanse -about 34 times the size of the Netherlands- of floating plastic in the Pacific. But last week, Rijkswaterstaat (public works and water management) announced our own North Sea is heavily polluted as well. Initial sediment sample analyses have shown pollution of the Dutch coast is more serious than was previously thought. And it’s not just floating plastic; they also found microplastics on the seabed: microscopic synthetic fibers from clothing and personal care products. Why are these plastics of such concern for the sea’s environment? And why does the industry still use harmful microplastics in their toothpastes and shower gels?

“It’s not so much the toxicity of the plastics that’s the problem; it’s the accumulation of the plastic particles and the possible uptake of certain components that are in the plastic”, says Bart Noordover, assistant professor at Polymer Materials Chemistry at the Department of Chemical Engineering. “Those synthetic particles enter marine organisms and travel the food chain, quite literally ending up back on our plates. After all, nature has no idea how to deal with plastic, because it’s an inert material that enzymes can’t decompose. People often talk about the Big Three:

polyethylene, polypropylene, and PET. Those are cheap, widely used plastics, and their micro particles are often deliberately added to all kinds of care products for a scrub effect, for example. They can be left out easily, but that would leave your mouth or skin with a very different sensation, of course. And manufacturers just don’t like complaining customers.”

“The only solution to the problem is tackling it at the source: preventing the plastics from getting into the sea. From manufacturers that would require a certain level of responsible entre-preneurship. Unilever has announced they’ll stop adding microplastics to their products, be it in 2015. The consumer has an important task as well. Let’s all think twice about using plastic for a change. Those kitchen minis Albert Heijn is currently giving out are a great example of how supermarkets still tend to give away loads of plastic junk. And plastic bags. Spend one afternoon shopping and you’ll have collected six

plastic bags easily. They’ll often end up in the bin right away. That’s the main problem, really: the time things are used and the time they spend in the environment as waste is grossly disproportionate. We can do better than that.”

“Unfortunately, microplastics that are already in the sea can’t be removed. Large, floating islands of plastics may be scooped up, but those tiny fibers are just too small. Even micromesh filter systems won’t do the trick. And it will keep building up, because the plastics aren’t degradable. We may be able to reduce our waste by using biodegradable plastic in the future. By tweaking the chemical structure of plastics, we can realize their degradability. Within our group, that’s an important research topic. We’re also looking into other sources for the production of plastics apart from petroleum, like biomass. And we’re trying to ‘green up’ the production process. Still, those are all plans for the future. For now, I’d suggest living by the adage: what doesn’t come in won’t have to go out. Have another critical look at your shampoo and shower gel.” (NT)

“Have another critical look at your shampoo and shower gel”

4 | Zoom in February 21, 2013

Building without a name

The artist’s impression of Project 2, seen from the direction of TNO; the building on the left is Gemini. In the foreground you see the Green Strip, so that the new design fits in seamlessly with the Campus 2020 plan. Halfway through 2012, Project 1 was already completed. It was given the name MetaForum and marked the start of the TU/e Science Park - an environment in which education, research, work and relaxation merge into one attractive whole.The design of Project 2 was executed by the architectural firm HH of Herman Hertzberger from Amsterdam. Ir. Veronique Marks, director of Real Estate Management: “It’s going to be very nice and compact and sustainable, with lots of light, which makes it suited for intensive use. In Potentiaal (the building of Electrical Engineering, ed.) we now have many floors, whereas in N-Laag we had a lot of corridors, so that people hardly saw each other. That will be a thing of the past soon. The new building will have a central hall so that there will be a great deal of interaction, which will definitely generate more innovation. It’s a totally different concept from the ones we are used to here.”

Project 2 is characterized by transparency, lots of light and open spaces, with voids connecting floors. The execution is in the hands of BAM Utiliteitsbouw. It concerns a so-called Engineer & Build contract, whereby the contractor is responsible for the working drawings. When completed, the building will have eleven floors and a basement. The floor area is 26,000 square meters, which means that the former number of square meters of the two departments is halved. ‘More with less’ was the catch phrase of the Real Estate Management intended to convince all stakeholders. Nevertheless it caused heated discussions among staff members, employees and students. The students are galled in particular by the fact that the size of the cocktail rooms and the workplaces of the study associations is reduced considerably.

Three-dimensional study into a possible workstation layout. The Executive Board has ordered the designers to make sure that the layout will be ‘flexible and fit for the future’.Project 2 will encompass spaces for (development-oriented) education, practical training, laboratories, general facilities and offices. To the right of the main entrance a small supermarket with fresh goods will be located. The basement can accommodate a thousand bikes. Spaces have also been earmarked for the pubs and the executive committees of study associations Thor and Van der Waals, including an outdoor terrace on the sixth floor. Beside the building 106 parking spaces will be laid out. The building can house 942 staff members (728 f.t.e) and 960 students.

www.cursor.tue.nl

Check the

Cascade

webcam:

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Check

the Gemini

webcam:

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Care to think

along about

the name

for the new

building?

Text | Frits van Otterdijk Artists impressions | Architectural firm HH

Hardly have the clouds of dust caused by the demolition of N-laag lifted, when the next step for the new building for the Applied Physics (TN) and Electrical Engineering (EE)

departments announces itself. On March 1 Bouwgroep BAM will start to peg out the building pit in the same place where

N-laag was located for almost four decades. The contours have been sharply delineated. What remains is a name for

the building which is now still being called ‘Project 2’.

The planningStart of construction: March 1, 2013First pile: April 11, 2013 (16.00 hours)Highest point: mid-2014Completion 1st part: December 12, 2014Completion specific laboratories: March 15, 2015

Building criteria• One building for the TN and EE department• One entrance• Sharing facilities such as the restaurant• An individual office environment for subdepartments• Entirely new construction• Light labs near working environment of subdepart-

ments, specific labs separately at ground level • Multifunctionality and efficient use of space

Research | 5See for more news www.cursor.tue.nl

Chips for chips

In developed countries, the average person throws away about one hundred kilos of food every year, partly because the expiration date on the packaging has come and gone. This waste is a problem for economic as well as environmental reasons. The main issue is that it’s hard to determine when food goes bad. The freshness of refrigerated products, for example, depends on the exact storage temperature, which is why producers of food are forced to make a fairly conservative estimate as far as the expiration date goes.

One of the ways to prevent food waste is by equipping packaging with an electronic food sensor that monitors the food’s acidity. A scanner can read the sensor to see if your steak is decomposing or whether your chips are still crispy or not. Technically, this idea is already feasible, says Eugenio Cantatore, associate professor at Mixed-signal Microelectronics. “All you need is a sensor and some basic electronics to read out the sensor. Standard silicon chips would be fine for that, except they’re too expensive.”

According to Cantatore, a simple silicon chip costs ten eurocents easily. While that’s not a lot when used in a computer or smartphone, it’s a substantial amount for a bag of chips worth less than a euro. “We’re working on electronic chips in which the semiconductor isn’t made of silicon, but of organic material. Plastic electronics, so to speak. These chips can be put into plastic packaging right away.” If dissolved in water, the plastic

semiconductor can even be printed onto all kinds of flexible surfaces such as paper and wrapping plastic, not unlike ink. And that makes plastic electronics cheaper than silicon electronics -sensor circuits at less than a cent are realistic- and they’re suitable for uses where conventional electronics just won’t do.

The fact plastic chips are flexible makes them unique, the Italian explains. “Current silicon chips are produced at high temperature, up to over a thousand degrees for crystalline silicon computer chips. Even the production of amorphous and polycrystalline silicon, which is used in monitors for example, requires a temperature of six hundred degrees. Because of these high temperatures, a substrate is needed: solid bedding that won’t melt. For computer chips that’s silicon, and for monitors it’s glass.

Our semiconducting materials can be processed at temperatures below two hundred degrees. That means they can be applied to plastics like polyethylene naphthalate, a cheap and flexible plastic related to PET that many bottles are made of.”

Of course, there are downsides to working with plastic electronics as well: there’s a reason silicon is still the standard. The basic components of electric circuits are transistors. And plastic transistors work according to a different principle than silicon specimens, says Cantatore. “They are accumulation transistors and that has a major influence on their characteristics.”

The electric characteristics of ‘ordinary transistors’ are very predictable, because all transistors in a single circuit are practically identical. “Plastic transistors, however, vary widely”, Cantatore explains. “The disadvantage of a cheap production process at low temperatures is that all plastic transistors differ. And that makes it much harder to create circuits. After all, you have to take into account the variability of the electric characteristics of the transistors. It requires complex mathematical models to predict the behavior of a circuit consisting of plastic electronics properly. We are experts in the field of designing circuits, but we also know about the physics of the transistors, and about mathematical models.”

With all that knowledge on board, Cantatore and his colleagues at Mixed-signal Microelectronics (MsM) have managed to build two different plastic ADCs (analog-to-digital converters) as a result of two different collaborations. Both results were heralded as one of the highlights of the authoritative electronics conference ISSCC in San Francisco earlier this week.

With an ADC, analog signals (the measuring signal of a sensor, for example) are converted into digital data. Until now, there were only two plastic ADCs. “We’ve added two new ones to the collection, doubling the world produc-tion”, the Italian researchers laughs. “One of the circuits, made within the European collaborative project COSMIC, is the very first printed ADC ever. On top of that, we’re using p-type as well as n-type transistors in this specific ADC, making it much easier to create all kinds of functionalities.” The researchers used screen printing to ‘stencil’ the circuits into the plastic.

With the development of plastic ADCs, implementation in the food and pharmaceutical industry is suddenly within reach. The fact is a sensor circuit consists of four components: the sensor itself, an amplifier, an ADC that digitalizes the signal, and a radio that enables distance reading. There are already

plastic sensors measuring pressure, temperature, light intensity and certain chemicals. And even amplifiers for radio stations like RFID are readily available in plastic. ADC then, is the last link in the chain.

The characteristics of the plastic ADC are not very mind-blowing yet: its maximum resolution is seven bits and speeds come in at a few Hz. Plastic electronics are much slower than silicon ones anyway. It’s not just the components that are larger -several micrometers at least-, but the signal speed is slower by a factor of a thousand as well.

A smartphone with plastic electronics won’t be happening, then. But for a sensor that monitors temperature for several weeks, or sends out a warning signal as soon as the steak starts going bad, size doesn’t matter. The same applies for a related use: plastic solar cells. Progress is being made in this field as well, thanks in part to the group of TU/e professor René Janssen. It seems plastic electronics and a sustainable future can go hand in hand, after all. (TJ)

Plastic disposable electronics: doesn’t exactly sound sustainable. Still, these alternative electronics may contribute to a reduction of food waste, and so to a better environment. TU/e researcher

dr.ir. Eugenio Cantatore and his colleagues developed a plastic AD converter - a breakthrough that was considered a highlight at this week’s ISSCC in San Francisco, the world’s foremost conference on

electronic chips. About electronics in a bag of those other chips.

A scanner to determine if your steak is still fresh

A plastic sensor costing less than a cent is realistic

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For more

information

on ORICIS:

The analog-to-digital converter (ADC). In this model, the conducting connections are made of gold and printed silver paste (a polymer in which drops of silver have been dissolved). Resistors are shown in black. The inset pictures the ADC by the COSMIC project. The ADCs from the ORICIS project are

visible in the background. Left and right PhD students Sahel Abdinia and Daniele Raiteri. In the center: Eugenio Cantatore. Photo | Bart van Overbeeke

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COSMIC: