Saxion University of Applied Sciences

About: Saxion University of Applied Sciences is a education organization based out in Enschede, Netherlands. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Health care & Context (language use). The organization has 390 authors who have published 653 publications receiving 8859 citations. The organization is also known as: Saxion University of Applied Sciences.

Bore-Soliton-Splash: van spektakel naar oceaangolf

Abstract: Ons nieuwe universiteitsplein heeft een magnifieke golfgoot (figuur 1). Door drie professoren afzonderlijk was ons midden september 2010 gevraagd om een soliton te maken in deze goot om het plein feestelijk te openen. Een soliton is een enkelvoudige golf, een gelokaliseerde opeenhoping van zich snel voortstuwende water. “Dat kan”, zeiden we, “maar een soliton is saai als openingsspektakel, door de ondoorzichtige gootwanden” [1]. We besloten onze kennis van solitonen, hydraulische sprongen, en stromingen te combineren tot een spetterend spektakel.

The Potential of Telemedicine for Patients with Chronic Disorders Experiencing Problems with Their Functioning

Abstract: It is hypothesized that telemedicine applications can make rehabilitation care more effective and efficient. Besides the demonstrated potential of image/audio-based technology, it is expected that telemedicine applications, which use biomedical and ICT technology, to support physical and cognitive behavioral rehabilitation at home or daily life style management, both under remote supervision of professionals, are considered very promising. Compared to traditional rehabilitation methods, these telemedicine applications enable the patient to receive more intensive treatment at moments they prefer, or when care/coaching is needed, instead of when scheduled. In addition they also have the advantage that no translation of the learned skills to everyday life is needed. However, these telemedicine applications are often too much technology driven and insufficiently guided by the need of end users and the added value of these applications is still insufficiently known as a proper evaluation methodology is scarcely applied and large studies are lacking. This paper addresses these two aspects by describing a concept for development of end user driven telemedicine applications followed by an evaluation methodology that enables us to show the added value when applied in every day care. This is illustrated for telemedicine applications that focus on physical rehabilitation of patients with a chronic disease who are experiencing problems with physical functioning. Based on the results available so far, it can be concluded that these telemedicine applications are well accepted by patients and are at least as effective as traditional care. Keywords-telemedicine; chronic disease; physical reconditioning; ambulant monitoring; home treatment; feedback.

Low Dimensional State Representation Learning with Reward-shaped Priors

Abstract: Reinforcement Learning has been able to solve many complicated robotics tasks without any need for feature engineering in an end-to-end fashion. However, learning the optimal policy directly from the sensory inputs, i.e the observations, often requires processing and storage of a huge amount of data. In the context of robotics, the cost of data from real robotics hardware is usually very high, thus solutions that achieve high sample-efficiency are needed. We propose a method that aims at learning a mapping from the observations into a lower-dimensional state space. This mapping is learned with unsupervised learning using loss functions shaped to incorporate prior knowledge of the environment and the task. Using the samples from the state space, the optimal policy is quickly and efficiently learned. We test the method on several mobile robot navigation tasks in a simulation environment and also on a real robot.

Impregnation quality of shredded semipreg after compression moulding

Abstract: Manufacturing of thermoplastic composites (TPC) inherently generates scrap, mainly in the form of offcuts or rejected parts. The growth of TPC over recent decades has now reached a point where developing specific recycling solutions for TPC waste has become crucial. While looking at the various steps during which scrap is produced, the nesting of semipreg or prepreg appears to be critical. This work aims to develop a route for recycling semipreg offcuts, comprising shredding and compression moulding. This article focuses on an experimental study of the compression moulding step of carbon fibres reinforced PPS (C/PPS) to investigate the uniformity and impregnation quality of plates. These plates were realised in a picture frame while varying both the fibre volume content between 30% and 50% and the processing parameters. Visual inspection and cross-sectional microscopy were performed to assess the quality of each plate. As a first step, the influence of the type of added matrix (film, powder, pellets) and the type of pre-impregnation (film, powder) was studied. Stacking of polymer powder with shredded powder-coated semipreg gave the best impregnation quality. It was also shown that longer dwell time at melt leads to better consolidation quality. However, the difficulty in obtaining good impregnation comes from the disentangled shredded material, which is composed of three forms: semipreg flakes, dry bundles and pieces of matrix. When dry bundles reach the mould surfaces during the filling of the mould or when they are packed together, the consolidation cycle hardly impregnates them and they remain dry afterwards. Furthermore, large local variations of fibre fraction were noticed, resulting from a random mould filling. Therefore, the recycling solution for shredded semipreg is feasible when the fibre fraction is reduced but improvements on the part variability still have to be made.

A framework for public information services in the twenty‐first century

Abstract: Purpose – The aim of this paper is to define a framework for public information services in the twenty‐first century, as a means to address some arguments that are put forward in the debate on the obsoleteness of public information services in the age of the internet.Design/methodology/approach – The paper discusses theoretical concepts on the function of information in modern democracy, followed by analysis of two foremost models of seeking knowledge, “the wisdom of crowds” and “expertise”, the different kinds of questions both forms apply to, the kind of knowledge the different models result in, and the application of the findings from that analysis in the information services environment.Findings – The function of information in a modern democracy still applies today. Information is a means to allow citizens to make informed decisions in the democratic process. The debate on the proper way to provide functional information services in modern democracy is roughly divided between two “schools of thought”...