EU Agro Biogas Project

EU-AGRO-BIOGAS is a European Biogas initiative to improve the yield of agricultural biogas plants in Europe, to optimise biogas technology and processes and to improve the efficiency in all parts of the production chain from feedstock to biogas utilisation. Leading European research institutions and universities are cooperating with key industry partners in order to work towards a sustainable Europe. Fourteen partners from eight European countries are involved. EU-AGRO-BIOGAS aims at the development and optimisation of the entire value chain – to range from the production of raw materials, the production and refining of biogas to the utilisation of heat and electricity

High temperature antimony ion implantation in strained silicon-on-insulator

We present experimental results on shallow junction formation in strained silicon-on-insulator by antimony ion implantation and standard rapid thermal processing. An attempt is made to obtain Sb activation without layer amorphization by implanting Sb at elevated temperature. The focus is on studying the Sb activation during implantation at high temperature. Rutherford backscattering spectrometry and secondary ion mass spectroscopy are employed for characterization of Sb diffusion in amorphous and crystalline Si. The results are discussed in terms of the defect reaction kinetics involved. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Design, Realization, and First Validation of an Immersive Web-Based Virtual Patient Simulator for Training Clinical Decisions in Surgery

BACKGROUND: Immersive patient simulators (IPS) allow an illusionary immersion into a synthetic world where the user can freely navigate through a 3-dimensional environment similar to computer games. Playful learning with IPS allows internalization of medical workflows without harming real patients. Ideally, IPS show high student acceptance and can have positive effect on knowledge gain. Development of IPS with high technical quality is resource intensive. Therefore most of the high-fidelity IPS are commercially driven. Usage of IPS in the daily curriculum is still rare. There is no academic-driven simulator that is freely accessible to every student and combines high immersion grade with a profound amount of medical content. AIM: Therefore it was our aim to develop an academic-driven IPS prototype that is free to use and combines a high immersion grade with profound medical content. In addition, a first validation of the prototype was conducted. METHODS: The conceptual design included definition of the following parameters: amount of curricular content, grade of technical quality, availability, and level of validation. A preliminary validation was done with 25 students. Students' opinion about acceptance was evaluated by a Likert-scale questionnaire. Effect on knowledge gain was determined by testing concordance and predictive validity. RESULTS: A custom-made simulator prototype (Artificial learning interface for clinical education [ALICE]) displays a virtual clinic environment that can be explored from a first-person view similar to a video game. By controlling an avatar, the user navigates through the environment, is able to treat virtual patients, and faces the consequence of different decisions. ALICE showed high students' acceptance. There was positive correlation for concordance validity and predictive validity. Simulator usage had positive effect on reproduction of trained content and declarative knowledge. CONCLUSIONS: We successfully developed a university-based, IPS prototype (ALICE) with profound medical content. ALICE is a nonprofit simulator, easy to use, and showed high students' acceptance; thus it potentially provides an additional tool for supporting student teaching in the daily clinical curriculum. ((C) 2015 Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.