Nursing staff now more productive thanks to technology. (Photo: ANP)
Over the last decade, hospitals in the Netherlands have become an impressive 19 percent more productive. Of this gain, 5 percent was lost due to inefficiencies of scale.
Economists from the faculty of Technology, Policy & Management presented their findings on the productivity and efficiency in Dutch hospitals between 2003 and 2009 at a congress held at the Ministry of Health last Thursday. The researchers from the centre for innovations and public sector efficiency studies (Ipse studies) essentially told the audience that Dutch hospitals had grown beyond their optimal growth levels: increasing production capacity by 1 percent boosts the costs by 1.23 percent. “Growth of scale thus hinders the development of productivity,” the report states. And yet, although the wave of hospital fusions may have dissipated, fusions do still occur. Continued…
Posted in Articles, Delta.
Tagged with economics, efficiency, hospitals, TPM.
By admin
– oktober 13, 2011
Ashraf Mir doubles as a driving instructor - Photo: Tomas van Dijk
They are credited for a milder city climate, cleaner air and improved insulation. But how well do green walls really perform? Ashraf Mir (MSc) graduated on the topic.
It’s a long road for a refugee from Afghanistan to ultimately become a TU graduate. Ashraf Mir (30) once earned his money knotting carpets in Pakistan, and later by giving driving lessons in Rotterdam. Last Friday however he graduated with an ‘8’ for his thesis on green facades. Continued…
Posted in Articles, Delta.
Tagged with Ashraf Mir, city climate, green walls, Marc Ottelé, vertical green.
By admin
– oktober 6, 2011
The Nobel Prize for physics was awarded to the three Americans who, in 1998, showed that the expansion of the universe 14 billion years after the Big Bang has not slowed down. Instead, it speeds up. “A bizarre concept,” says professor of astrodynamics, Boudewijn Ambrosius.
Professor Boudewijn Ambrosius sees himself as a professional amateur in astronomy. His own field, space engineering at the faculty of Aerospace Engineering, merely provides astronomers with tools. Think of the Hubble telescope and its successor, the James Webb telescope. The developments of astronomical insights, Ambrosius has followed as an interested outsider. He remembers when he first heard about the Big Bang theory: it seemed logical that eventually gravity would slow down the expansion of the universe and pull everything together again. The idea of a cyclic universe attracted him. But some ten years ago, it became clear that instead the expansion speeds up. “It’s bizarre,” Ambrosius days, “that everything that once came into being will end up becoming thinner and thinner and thinner.” Continued…
Posted in Articles, Delta.
Tagged with dark energy, expansion, Nobel prize, supernova's.
By admin
– oktober 6, 2011
How to adapt the power grid to the challenges of distributed generation and fluctuating inputs from renewable sources? Professor Lou van der Sluis presented his new book on smartgrid research last Tuesday.
“The research programme is a contribution to solving the problems we identified eight years ago,” Van der Sluis says. “Moreover, the added value is that researchers from different universities and research institutes, like ECN and Kema, have grown into a research community.”
Continued…
Posted in Articles, Delta.
Tagged with electricity, Lou van der Sluis, power transmission, smartgrid.
By admin
– oktober 6, 2011
For nearly a century architects have been dreaming of a material as strong as steel and as transparent as glass. We have now learned so much about glass that it is increasingly used as a sort of transparent concrete.
TU Delft has several world-renowned experts on glazing among its teaching staff. Professor Mick Eekhout (Architecture) and his company, Octatube. construct glazed roofs all over the world. Closer to home, the South and East glazed atriums in the university’s BK City are his creation. Working to a tight schedule, Prof. Eekhout and his team expanded the existing main building with two enormous cubes, largely constructed in glass. For London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, he constructed a spectacular glazed roof over a building in the museum’s courtyard. Twisting, double-glazed panels rest on sloping laminated glass bearers up to 11 metres long.
Download as .pdf
Continued…
Posted in Articles, Delft Outlook.
Tagged with architecture, glass.
By admin
– oktober 1, 2011
Professor Piero Colonna in his lab - Photo: Tomas van Dijk
Some 300 researchers from around the world visited the seminar on Organic Rankine Cycle power systems last week, organised by Professor Piero Colonna (3mE).
The interest in his field of research is directly related to the oil price, says Professor Piero Colonna. It was high in the 1970s and now pressure is building again, with major technology companies sniffing out start-ups as a means of entering the market.
The Rankine Cycle is what drives 90 percent of all electric power plants, as it describes the thermodynamic conversion of thermal energy into work, usually by boiling up steam, which drives a turbine coupled to a generator. For large systems (10 to 1,000 megawatts), there is nothing better. For smaller systems, however, water cannot be used, and the adoption of an organic fluid allows for very high efficiency rates. That’s what Organic Rankine Cycle or ORC stands for. Suitable organic fluids are less dense than water and the larger volume occupied by the organic vapour is key to the design of efficient turbines. By choosing the right fluid, ORC engineers can maximise the system efficiency. Continued…
Posted in Articles, Delta.
Tagged with Colonna, Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC), renewable energy.
By admin
– september 29, 2011
The eco-city design ‘Hanging Gardens’ for the Erasmusveld quarter in The Hague. (Design: Arjan van Timmeren/2T atelier)
During Green Building Week, a team of TU lecturers has launched a brand new book on eco-cities. The book is to help future designers and engineers to green up the urban environment.
Love them or loathe them, cities are here to stay. In 2007 half of the world’s population lived in cities and by 2050 the UN expects seventy percent of all people will be urbanites. The UN Habitat programme foresees the rise of mega- and hypercities with over twenty million inhabitants. One could regard cities as ecological monsters consuming water, energy and materials in huge amounts (forty percent of all materials extracted is used in buildings and structures), and releasing polluted water, greenhouse gases and piles of waste in return. Continued…
Posted in Articles, Delta.
Tagged with architecture, cities, ecology, urban development.
By admin
– september 25, 2011
Molecular engine designed by Seldenthuis and Prins. (Illustration: Marijn van der Meer)
Make a nanogap, stick a molecule across and see what it does. Ferry Prins’ experiments could lead to molecular memories, more efficient solar cells and the tiniest motor ever.
He is basically a chemist, although he mainly worked with physicists during his PhD project. Dr Ferry Prins just loves molecules and is excited that the latest technologies at Applied Sciences allowed him to almost put his finger onto these tiniest building blocks of chemistry. What’s more: he did most of his experiments at room temperature.
A whole lot of tricks are required to get in contact with single molecules. A 1 to 2 nanometer wide gap for example cannot be made by lithography. Instead, a current is fed through a thin platinum wire until it locally ‘evaporates’ and leaves a nanogap between the electrodes. Now try to stick a molecule across the gap – another nasty hit and miss affair, which requires patience and persistence. Continued…
Posted in Articles, Delta.
Tagged with Ferry Prins, molecular science, nanotechnology.
By admin
– september 25, 2011
Tim Zaman with his flight robot. (Photo: Tomas van Dijk)
Tim Zaman did it again. He launched a helium balloon and made photos at the edge of space. But this time, he beamed the images back to base.
When MSc biorobotics student, Tim Zaman, launched a helium balloon last year, and brought back spectacular images of the IJsselmeer and the near-black edge of space at from 30 kilometres high, many enjoyed his adventurous enterprise. The payload had continuously transmitted its gps-position, which enabled Tim and his friends to track the balloon and retrieve the black box from the IJsselmeer, in which it had dropped. Only then could he inspect the photos. Continued…
Posted in Articles, Delta.
Tagged with balloon, robot, Tim Zaman.
By admin
– september 25, 2011
How about a detour then? - Photo: Danish Ahmed.
On their daily drudge to the office, suburbanites seldom get lost. But they do get stuck along the way. Their travel pattern demands another type of navigation information.
Regular travellers have very little need of a navigation device once they know their favourite routes, and the occasional by-ways. The information that they do need, they gather while starting the day. Television and radio provide information on the weather and traffic situation. Dedicated websites show the degree of congestion on the ring roads in colour codes. And yet: commuters often end up stuck in traffic jams because the information they collected was not timely, specific or relevant enough. Continued…
Posted in Articles, Delta.
Tagged with commuting, IDE, navigation, TomTom, traffic.
By admin
– september 8, 2011
