Social work in the Netherlands is attracting an increasing number of Turkish and Moroccan Dutch professionals, mostly second-generation migrant women from a Muslim background. Inspired by Amartya Sen’s capability approach, this article presents the findings of a qualitative content analysis of 40 interviews with professionals by peers from the same background. The question is, what kind of professionals do these newly started social workers desire to be and what hindrances do they encounter? The professionals challenge the dominance of Western beliefs and values. This becomes tangible in their desires and constraints and especially in the process of choice.
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Droop control is used for power management in DC grids. Based on the level of the DC grid voltage, the amount of power regulated to or from the appliance is regulated such, that power management is possible. The Universal 4 Leg is a laboratory setup for studying the functionality of a grid manager for power management. It has four independent outputs that can be regulated with pulse width modulation to control the power flow between the DC grid and for example, a rechargeable battery, solar panel or any passive load like lighting or heating.
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This report is the final report for the FPGA accelerated PID controller, part of the Distributed Control Systems project. This project runs within the Lectoraat Robotics and High Tech Mechatronics of Fontys Hogeschool Engineering Eindhoven. The Lectoraat has the goal to develop applicable knowledge to support education and industry. This knowledge is acquired with projects run in conjunction with the industry. The report will go into detail for the software designed for this project, not the hardware design. This report is intended for follow up students working on the Distributed Control Systems project. Within this report the assumption is made that the reader is at least familiar with the terms EtherCAT, FPGA, Linux and PID controllers. However for each part a small basic introduction is included. For readers looking for the accomplishments in this project, the results are in chapter six. Following are short descriptions of the chapters in this report. The first chapter will give a short introduction to the project. It talks about why the project was conceived, where the project was done and what the expected end result is. The second chapter, the problem definition, talks about how the project has been defined, what is included and what is not and how the customer expects the final product to function and look like. The third chapter details the methodology used during this project. All the research preformed for this project will be described in the forth chapter. This chapter goes into the research into the Xilinx Zynq 7000 chip, Beckhoff's EtherCAT system, how the Serial Peripheral Interface works and how a PID controller functions. Following in chapter five the design is expanded upon. First the toolchain for building for the Zynq chip is explained. This is followed by and explanation of the different software parts that have been designed. Finally chapters six and seven provide the results and the conclusions and recommendations for this project.
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A fast growing percentage (currently 75% ) of the EU population lives in urban areas, using 70% of available energy resources. In the global competition for talent, growth and investments, quality of city life and the attractiveness of cities as environments for learning, innovation, doing business and job creation, are now the key parameters for success. Therefore cities need to provide solutions to significantly increase their overall energy and resource efficiency through actions addressing the building stock, energy systems, mobility, and air quality.The European Energy Union of 2015 aims to ensure secure, affordable and climate-friendly energy for EU citizens and businesses among others, by bringing new technologies and renewed infrastructure to cut household bills, create jobs and boost growth, for achieving a sustainable, low carbon and environmentally friendly economy, putting Europe at the forefront of renewable energy production and winning the fight against global warming.However, the retail market is not functioning properly. Many household consumers have too little choices of energy suppliers and too little control over their energy costs. An unacceptably high percentage of European households cannot afford to pay their energy bills. Energy infrastructure is ageing and is not adjusted to the increased production from renewables. As a consequence there is still a need to attract investments, with the current market design and national policies not setting the right incentives and providing insufficient predictability for potential investors. With an increasing share of renewable energy sources in the coming decades, the generation of electricity/energy will change drastically from present-day centralized production by gigawatt fossil-fueled plants towards decentralized generation, in cities mostly by local household and district level RES (e.g PV, wind turbines) systems operating in the level of micro-grids. With the intermittent nature of renewable energy, grid stress is a challenge. Therefore there is a need for more flexibility in the energy system. Technology can be of great help in linking resource efficiency and flexibility in energy supply and demand with innovative, inclusive and more efficient services for citizens and businesses. To realize the European targets for further growth of renewable energy in the energy market, and to exploit both on a European and global level the expected technological opportunities in a sustainable manner, city planners, administrators, universities, entrepreneurs, citizens, and all other relevant stakeholders, need to work together and be the key moving wheel of future EU cities development.Our SolutionIn the light of such a transiting environment, the need for strategies that help cities to smartly integrate technological solutions becomes more and more apparent. Given this condition and the fact that cities can act as large-scale demonstrators of integrated solutions, and want to contribute to the socially inclusive energy and mobility transition, IRIS offers an excellent opportunity to demonstrate and replicate the cities’ great potential. For more information see the HKU Smart Citieswebsite or check out the EU-website.
Our country contains a very dense and challenging transport and mobility system. National research agendas and roadmaps of multiple sectors such as HTSM, Logistics and Agri&food, promote vehicle automation as a means to increase transport safety and efficiency. SMEs applying vehicle automation require compliance to application/sector specific standards and legislation. A key aspect is the safety of the automated vehicle within its design domain, to be proven by manufacturers and assessed by authorities. The various standards and procedures show many similarities but also lead to significant differences in application experience and available safety related solutions. For example: Industrial AGVs (Automated Guided Vehicles) have been around for many years, while autonomous road vehicles are only found in limited testing environments and pilots. Companies are confronted with an increasing need to cover multiple application environments, such restricted areas and public roads, leading to complex technical choices and parallel certification/homologation procedures. SafeCLAI addresses this challenge by developing a framework for a generic safety layer in the control of autonomous vehicles that can be re-used in different applications across sectors. This is done by extensive consolidation and application of cross-sectoral knowledge and experience – including analysis of related standards and procedures. The framework promises shorter development times and enables more efficient assessment procedures. SafeCLAI will focus on low-speed applications since they are most wanted and technically best feasible. Nevertheless, higher speed aspects will be considered to allow for future extension. SafeCLAI will practically validate (parts) of the foreseen safety layer and publish the foreseen framework as a baseline for future R&D, allowing coverage of broader design domains. SafeCLAI will disseminate the results in the Dutch arena of autonomous vehicle development and application, and also integrate the project learnings into educational modules.
