'Create the future': an environment for excellence in teaching future-oriented Industrial Design Engineering

In 2001, the University of Twente started a new course on Industrial Design Engineering. This paper describes the insights that have been employed in developing the curriculum, and in developing the environment in which the educational activities are facilitated. The University of Twente has a broad experience with project-oriented education [1], and because one of the goals of the curriculum is to get the students acquainted with working methods as employed in e.g. design bureaus, this project-oriented approach has been used as the basis for the new course. In everyday practice, this implies a number of prerequisites to be imposed on the learning environment: instead of focusing on the sheer transfer of information, this environment must allow the students to imbibe the knowledge and competences that make them better designers. Consequently, a much more flexible environment has to be created, in which working as a team becomes habitual, and where cutting-edge technologies are available to facilitate the process. This can be realized because every student owns a laptop, with all relevant software and a full-grown course management system within reach. Moreover, the learning environment provides the fastest possible wireless network and Internet access available [2]. This obviously has its repercussions on the way the education is organized. On the one hand, e.g. virtual reality tools, CAD software and 3D printing are addressed in the curriculum, whereas on the other hand more traditional techniques (like sketching and model making) are conveyed explicitly as well. Together with a sound footing in basic disciplines ranging from mathematics to design history, this course offers the students a profound education in Industrial Design Engineering. The paper describes in more detail the curriculum and the education environment, based on which it is assessed if the course on Industrial Design Engineering can live up to its motto: ‘Create the future’, and what can be done to further enable the students to acquire the full denotation of that motto

Hospital discharge: What are the problems, information needs and objectives of community pharmacists? A mixed method approach

After hospital discharge, community pharmacists are often the first health care professionals the discharged patient encounters. They reconcile and dispense prescribed medicines and provide pharmaceutical care. Compared to the roles of general practitioners, the pharmacists' needs to perform these tasks are not well known.; This study aims to a) Identify community pharmacists' current problems and roles at hospital discharge, b) Assess their information needs, specifically the availability and usefulness of information, and c) Gain insight into pharmacists' objectives and ideas for discharge optimisation.; A focus group was conducted with a sample of six community pharmacists from different Swiss regions. Based on these qualitative results, a nationwide online-questionnaire was sent to 1348 Swiss pharmacies.; The focus group participants were concerned about their extensive workload with discharge prescriptions and about gaps in therapy. They emphasised the importance of more extensive information transfer. This applied especially to medication changes, unclear prescriptions, and information about a patient's care. Participants identified treatment continuity as a main objective when it comes to discharge optimisation. There were 194 questionnaires returned (response rate 14.4%). The majority of respondents reported to fulfil their role as defined by the Joint-FIP/WHO Guideline on Good Pharmacy Practice (rather) badly. They reported many unavailable but useful information items, like therapy changes, allergies, specifications for "off-label" medication use or contact information. Information should be delivered in a structured way, but no clear preference for one particular transfer method was found. Pharmacists requested this information in order to improve treatment continuity and patient safety, and to be able to provide better pharmaceutical care services.; Surveyed Swiss community pharmacists rarely receive sufficient information along with discharge prescriptions, although it would be needed for medication reconciliation. According to the pharmacist's opinions, appropriate pharmaceutical care is therefore impeded

Networked Design Decisions in Balanced Life Cycles

Many decisions, both conscious and unconscious, have to be made during a product development process. In reaching a decision, it is essential to take the consequences of the different alternatives into consideration. To assess preconditions and consequences of decisions, an actor network can be used. An actor network is a combination of interrelated entities, representing multiple individuals and/or organizations. By adding characteristics to these actors and their relation, aspects like supply chain and life cycle issues can be addressed.\ud \ud This publication describes the basic building blocks of an actor network from a generic and abstract viewpoint. From these essential building blocks, the construction of the overall actor network is described. Examples are used from the field of content-packaging combinations, as well as aspects from life cycle assessments to illustrate the intended fundamental functionality. In the bigger picture, the use of the actor network in the context of product-packaging combinations aims at achieving lasting balance in product-packaging networks

3D Nesting of Complex Shapes

In application areas like Layered Manufacturing, there is a continuous struggle to optimize the filling degree of the production batches. This publication proposes an algorithm for the 3D nesting of complex shaped objects. The algorithm starts with the determination of the preferred orientation of a part, and uses a non-deterministic approach, closely related to the “Brazil Nut Effect” to do the actual nesting. The publication describes the algorithm and its steps, and describes case studies to demonstrate the validity of the approach

Using actor networks in decision making during content-packaging development

In order to integrate sustainability in the development of content-packaging combinations, the consequences of decisions for the entire life cycle need to be analyzed in early stages of the development process. To adequately underpin these decisions, several aspects, for example the economic and the environmental impact, need to be assessed. A so-called actor network is developed to support designers in decision making. This publication examines practical use situations of this actor network tool based on information from research partners. Scenarios are written in order to depict requirements for the actor network tool, considering different users and functionalitie

Project-led education in packaging development and management

As an implicit subset of industrial design engineering, packaging development and management thereof has long been a changeling, because product and packaging development are usually regarded in a similar manner. At the same time, there is a clear difference between packaging design and product design. The packaging explicitly serves the content and, therefore, in most cases, packaging is of low economic value. For this reason, new packaging design is all too often subject to standard or existing packaging solutions. Besides this, packaging development has specific requirements, because it has to preserve and protect its content, which gives many technical requirements. Other important requirements are based on legislation, market acceptance, the environmental impact and usability.\ud \ud This implies that education in packaging development cannot be a carbon copy of the education in product development. Often, even more fields of expertise are involved, while having to meet all restrictions related to developing feasible and realistic packages in a shorter time-frame.\ud \ud This publication describes how project-led education is employed in an educational approach that allows students to adequately address the development of content-packaging combinations in a structured, effective and efficient manner. With this, the development efforts spent on product and packaging can become more in balance, not only doing justice to the separate life cycles of the two, but especially to the benefit of the combined life cycle of the content-packaging combination

Search for CP Violation in the Decay Z -> b (b bar) g

About three million hadronic decays of the Z collected by ALEPH in the years 1991-1994 are used to search for anomalous CP violation beyond the Standard Model in the decay Z -> b \bar{b} g. The study is performed by analyzing angular correlations between the two quarks and the gluon in three-jet events and by measuring the differential two-jet rate. No signal of CP violation is found. For the combinations of anomalous CP violating couplings, ${\hat{h}}_b = {\hat{h}}_{Ab}g_{Vb}-{\hat{h}}_{Vb}g_{Ab}$ and $h^{\ast}_b = \sqrt{\hat{h}_{Vb}^{2}+\hat{h}_{Ab}^{2}}$, limits of \hat{h}_b < 0.59$and$h^{\ast}_{b} < 3.02$ are given at 95\% CL.Comment: 8 pages, 1 postscript figure, uses here.sty, epsfig.st

Rotational IMRT techniques compared to fixed gantry IMRT and Tomotherapy: multi-institutional planning study for head-and-neck cases

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recent developments enable to deliver rotational IMRT with standard C-arm gantry based linear accelerators. This upcoming treatment technique was benchmarked in a multi-center treatment planning study against static gantry IMRT and rotational IMRT based on a ring gantry for a complex parotid gland sparing head-and-neck technique.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Treatment plans were created for 10 patients with head-and-neck tumours (oropharynx, hypopharynx, larynx) using the following treatment planning systems (TPS) for rotational IMRT: Monaco (ELEKTA VMAT solution), Eclipse (Varian RapidArc solution) and HiArt for the helical tomotherapy (Tomotherapy). Planning of static gantry IMRT was performed with KonRad, Pinnacle and Panther DAO based on step&shoot IMRT delivery and Eclipse for sliding window IMRT. The prescribed doses for the high dose PTVs were 65.1Gy or 60.9Gy and for the low dose PTVs 55.8Gy or 52.5Gy dependend on resection status. Plan evaluation was based on target coverage, conformity and homogeneity, DVHs of OARs and the volume of normal tissue receiving more than 5Gy (V_5Gy). Additionally, the cumulative monitor units (MUs) and treatment times of the different technologies were compared. All evaluation parameters were averaged over all 10 patients for each technique and planning modality.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Depending on IMRT technique and TPS, the mean CI values of all patients ranged from 1.17 to 2.82; and mean HI values varied from 0.05 to 0.10. The mean values of the median doses of the spared parotid were 26.5Gy for RapidArc and 23Gy for VMAT, 14.1Gy for Tomo. For fixed gantry techniques 21Gy was achieved for step&shoot+KonRad, 17.0Gy for step&shoot+Panther DAO, 23.3Gy for step&shoot+Pinnacle and 18.6Gy for sliding window.</p> <p>V_5Gyvalues were lowest for the sliding window IMRT technique (3499 ccm) and largest for RapidArc (5480 ccm). The lowest mean MU value of 408 was achieved by Panther DAO, compared to 1140 for sliding window IMRT.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>All IMRT delivery technologies with their associated TPS provide plans with satisfying target coverage while at the same time respecting the defined OAR criteria. Sliding window IMRT, RapidArc and Tomo techniques resulted in better target dose homogeneity compared to VMAT and step&shoot IMRT. Rotational IMRT based on C-arm linacs and Tomotherapy seem to be advantageous with respect to OAR sparing and treatment delivery efficiency, at the cost of higher dose delivered to normal tissues. The overall treatment plan quality using Tomo seems to be better than the other TPS technology combinations.</p

Outcomes of early switching from intravenous to oral antibiotics on medical wards

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate outcomes following implementation of a checklist with criteria for switching from intravenous (iv) to oral antibiotics on unselected patients on two general medical wards. METHODS: During a 12 month intervention study, a printed checklist of criteria for switching on the third day of iv treatment was placed in the medical charts. The decision to switch was left to the discretion of the attending physician. Outcome parameters of a 4 month control phase before intervention were compared with the equivalent 4 month period during the intervention phase to control for seasonal confounding (before-after study; April to July of 2006 and 2007, respectively): 250 episodes (215 patients) during the intervention period were compared with the control group of 176 episodes (162 patients). The main outcome measure was the duration of iv therapy. Additionally, safety, adherence to the checklist, reasons against switching patients and antibiotic cost were analysed during the whole year of the intervention (n = 698 episodes). RESULTS: In 38% (246/646) of episodes of continued iv antibiotic therapy, patients met all criteria for switching to oral antibiotics on the third day, and 151/246 (61.4%) were switched. The number of days of iv antibiotic treatment were reduced by 19% (95% confidence interval 9%-29%, P = 0.001; 6.0-5.0 days in median) with no increase in complications. The main reasons against switching were persisting fever (41%, n = 187) and absence of clinical improvement (41%, n = 185). CONCLUSIONS: On general medical wards, a checklist with bedside criteria for switching to oral antibiotics can shorten the duration of iv therapy without any negative effect on treatment outcome. The criteria were successfully applied to all patients on the wards, independently of the indication (empirical or directed treatment), the type of (presumed) infection, the underlying disease or the group of antibiotics being used