Cleaving, Condensing and Manipulating Single DNA Molecules

MacKintosh, F.C. [Promotor]Wuite, G.J.L. [Copromotor

Dutch Experience in Irrigation Water Management Modelling

Modeling the soil-water-crop atmosphere system to improve agricultural water management in arid zones (SWATRE); Groundwater approach to drainage design in irrigated agriculture (SGMP); Computer Program for flume and weir design (FLUME 3.0); A hydrodynamic model in the design of operational controllers for water systems (MODIS/MATLAB); Decision support simulation model for water management at a regional and national scale (SIWARE); Management of water delivery systems (RIBASIM/OMIS); A water allocation, scheduling, and monitoring program (WASAM); and Irrigation agencies, farmers and computational decision support tools

Augmenting mental models

The complexity of conceptualizing mental models has made Virtual Reality an interesting way to enhance communication and understanding between individuals working together on a project or idea. Here, the authors discuss practical applications of using VR for this purpose

Creating shared mental models: The support of visual language

Cooperative design involves multiple stakeholders that often hold different ideas of the problem, the ways to solve it, and to its solutions (i.e., mental models; MM). These differences can result in miscommunication, misunderstanding, slower decision making processes, and less chance on cooperative decisions. In order to facilitate the creation of a shared mental model (sMM), visual languages (VL) are often used. However, little scientific foundation is behind this choice. To determine whether or not this gut feeling is justified, a research was conducted in which various stakeholders had to cooperatively redesign a process chain, with and without VL. To determine whether or not a sMM was created, scores on agreement in individual MM, communication, and cooperation were analyzed. The results confirmed the assumption that VL can indeed play an important role in the creation of sMM and, hence, can aid the processes of cooperative design and engineering

Chiral Brownian heat pump

We present the exact analysis of a chiral Brownian motor and heat pump. Optimization of the construction predicts, for a nanoscale device, frequencies of the order of kHz and cooling rates of the order of femtojoule per second.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Evaluation of Three Rapid Tests for Diagnosis of P. Falciparum and P. Vivax Malaria in Colombia.

The diagnostic capacity of three malaria rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs), NOW-Malaria-ICT, OptiMAL-IT, and Paracheck-Pf, was evaluated against expert microscopy in Colombia. We tested 896 patients, of whom microscopy confirmed 139 P. falciparum, 279 P. vivax, and 13 mixed P.f/P.v infections and 465 negatives. Paracheck-Pf and NOW-malaria-ICT were more accurate in detecting P. falciparum (sensitivities 90.8% and 90.1%, respectively) in comparison with Optimal-IT (83.6%). NOW showed an acceptable Pf detection rate at low densities (< 500/microL), but resulted in a higher proportion of false positives. For P. vivax diagnosis, Optimal-IT had a higher sensitivity than NOW (91.0% and 81.4%, respectively). The choice between the two Pf/Pv detecting RDTs balances P. falciparum and P. vivax detection rates. Considering some degree of P. falciparum overtreatment and failure to detect all P. vivax cases as more acceptable than missing some cases of P. falciparum, we recommend careful implementation of NOW-malaria-ICT in areas where microscopy is lacking. The price is however still a constraint