Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "Active Lifestyles - Physical Literacy as a way to promote physical activity in inactive groups" "Jan Seghers" "Physical Activity, Sports & Health Research Group, Policy in Sports & Physical Activity Research Group" "Project background: A major issue in modern societies is the increasing gap between different social groups, which also affects the possibilities to lead an active and healthy lifestyle. Increasing number of reports depict an increasing number of children and adolescents in Europe as a high-risk group with regard to a healthy development. A growing number of young people in modern societies allegedly is becoming to fat, is physically unfit, has adopted unhealthy nutritional patterns and sedentary lifestyles at an early age with all the negative consequences for the individual's development and social health care systems. Project objectives: The project aims to (1) describe the problem in the participating countries (Belgium, Greece, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Sweden) on the basis of quantitative data; (2) analyze the problem by means of a qualitative study (Interviews with young people from the target group) and (3) develop recommendations and counteractions for tackling the problem of inactivity Project study design: The study will include six European Countries, in which the prevalences rates of overweigth and obesity vary from countries with high prevalences (e.g. Italy, Greece and Great Britain), countries with moderate prevalences (Germany, Belgium) to a country with a low prevalence rate (Sweden), The duration of the study will be 24 month beginning in April 2011 and will be conducted in three phases. Phase 1: Description of the problem in participating countries; Phase 2: Analysis of the problem in participating countries; Phase 3: Development of counteractions in participating countries)." "Identification and mode of action of natural products from Chinese medicinal plants active against biofilms of Candida species pathogenic for humans." "Patrick Van Dijck" "Molecular Biotechnology of Plants and Micro-organisms" "Biofilms are communities of cells that have adhered to a substrate and that consist of multiple layers of cells attached to each other and embedded in extracellular materials. These communities are strongly resistant to external factors, including to common antimicrobial treatment. Emerging species such as C. glabrata present an even higher resistance to the commonly used antifungal drugs such as azoles, and biofilms of that species are extremely difficult to eradicate. In an effort to identify novel antifungal molecules potent against C. albicans and C. glabrata biofilms, we screened a selection of Chinese plant extracts and isolated several active components, some with already known antifungal activity and some with uncharacterized features against fungal growth. The aim in this project is to determine the mode of action of these novel antibiofilm compounds." "IOF Proof of Concept: Development of dual acting drugs targeting biased Mu opioid agonism and neuropeptide FF antagonism for the treatment of actute and chronic pain" "Steven Ballet" Chemistry "In view of the ongoing opioid epidemic worldwide, there is a clear need for safer and better analgesics. We have synthesised and evaluated a set of multitarget compounds capable of acting simultaneously on the opioid and neuropeptide FF systems. By modulating one or more receptors with only a single compound, we were able to reduce the variability in the compounds’ pharmacokinetics when using drug cocktails and enhance therapeutic efficacy. Our results show that the produced lead compounds are potent analgesics with reliable activity after acute and chronic administration and consequently also a favourable safety profile." "Active cities: Active mobility increased for sustainable zero-carbon urban multimodality, through human-centric planning, mobility hubs and behaviour change." "Pieter Van den Broeck" "Urban Design, Urbanism, Landscape and Planning, Department of Marketing (main work address Leuven), Physical Activity, Sports & Health Research Group" "Active Cities increases the share of active mobility (walking, cycling) in North Sea Region (NSR) cities for sustainable zero-carbon multimodality, through: human-centric planning of streets, green-accessibility of mobility hubs (train stations, schools) and behaviour change, putting citizens (back) at the core. Walking and cycling are age-old methods of mobility, emission-free, and healthy, but stagnant or in decline in cities’ multimodal urban mobility systems. Streets and public spaces are car-centric, mobility hubs do not sufficiently facilitate or promote walking and cycling in a multimodal journey, and more people should consider it an attractive option as part of their journeys. Active Cities runs 3-type pilots in 8 NSR cities from all 7 countries to demonstrate innovative transnational methodologies and technologies in urban planning, mobility planning, and social innovation (co-creation, campaigns, incentives). E.g Leeuwarden’s rail zone, Mechelen’s bike house, Lille’s maison des mobilités. Transnational knowledge and network partners enrich and customise existing tools, evaluate and compare transnational impact and provide an evidence-based roadmap for urban and mobility planners across NSR. The cities bring urban/mobility typologies and work with various target groups, incl. minorities, increasing transnational replicability and scalability. Only together the cities have sufficient opportunities to experiment and adopt (others’) successful approaches, around their (limited) large scale urban transformation investments and mobility schemes. Uniquely, in Active Cities, walking and cycling are planned together, rather than separately, and as an integral part of the multimodal system to decrease the individual car dependency, and make mobility affordable and available to all." "Smart Casting of conrete structures by active control of rheology" "Geert De Schutter" "Department of Structural Engineering and Building Materials" "Concrete production processes do not take full advantage of the rheological potential of fresh cementitious materials, and are still largely labour-driven and sensitive to the human factor. SmartCast proposes a new concrete casting concept to transform the concrete industry into a highly automated technological industry. Currently, the rheological properties of the concrete are defined by mix design and mixing procedure without any further active adjustment during casting. The goal of this proposal is the active control of concrete rheology during casting, and the active triggering of early stiffening of the concrete as soon as it is put in place. The ground-breaking idea to achieve this goal, is to develop concrete with actively controllable rheology by adding admixtures responsive to externally activated electromagnetic frequencies. Inter-disciplinary insights are important to achieve these goals, including inputs from concrete technology, polymer science, electrochemistry, rheology and computational fluid dynamics." "Active Compliant Polishing Tools for Delicate Part Finishing" "Tegoeh Tjahjowidodo" "Manufacturing Processes and Systems (MaPS)" "Many manufacturing industries rely on compliant tools to achieve certain surface qualities, which is typically achieved by using compliant tools that can adapt to various complex surface geometries. The problem faced by industries is the limited options in choosing the backing material that conforms with the polished parts with various geometries and materials. This project focusses on the development of an active-passive compliant tool that allows for achieving different intermediate hardness values (compliance) that are not feasible with a traditional setup. Establishing a relationship between the compliant property and the material removal rate will allow for polishing complex geometry in delicate components." "Active and intelligent fibre-based packaging - innovation and market introduction (ActInPak)" "Wim DEFERME" "Materials and Packaging Research &Services, Engineering Materials and Applications" "Research and development of new fibre-based packaging materials with active and intelligent features have shown huge potential to optimise the supply chain, and increase the shelf-life of foodstuff and enhance consumer consciousness of food utilisation. Very few of the potential solutions have, however, been able to reach the market. This Action aims to identify and focus on the key technical, social, economic and legislative factors relevant for a successful deployment of renewable fibre-based functional packaging solutions. This will be achieved by conducting research and development into active and intelligent packaging, encompassing both scientific and technical solutions, addressing the opportunities for, and obstacles to, market introduction. The innovative approach of this Action lies in the sharp focus on the integration of active and intelligent solutions in papermaking in order to create next-generation functional fibre-based packaging. The Action will achieve the objectives by providing an open multidisciplinary platform for the complete paper and board packaging value chain and aims at strong involvement of industrial partners throughout Europe. Sustainable fibre-based packaging materials with new and active functionalities may help to introduce new products on the market with higher value and profits for paper and board manufacturers than traditional products." "Tuning graphene into a spin active material: Exploiting its size-specific interaction with metal clusters" "Joris Van de Vondel" "Quantum Solid State Physics (QSP)" "The success of semiconductor industry relies on the continuous improvement of the performances of integrated circuits (IC). So far, this has been achieved by reducing the size of the basic building block of these circuits, the metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET). The downscaling of MOSFET’s has been realized by introducing new materials, like high-k dielectric/metal gate stacks and high-mobility semiconductors (Ge, III-V compounds). Since this down-scaling is approaching its limits, the continuous increase in performance of integrated circuits can only be preserved through the implementation of radically new approaches.  Spintronics, in which one manipulates the spin of electrons next to their charge, could be the required addition to overcome the challenges conventional electronics face today. During the last decades, the scientific community successfully demonstrated injection, transport and manipulation of spins in Si, metals, graphene and more. Despite these significant achievements, a spin-based alternative for logic elements, such as the MOSFET, did not yet reach the level of performance to compete with the charge based alternatives. More than 10 years ago, the discovery of graphene's properties ignited the research on two-dimensional (2D) materials, enabling new and exciting opportunities in both fundamental and applied sciences. The 2D material is a zero-gap semiconductor: its valence and conduction band touch in the so-called Dirac point, around which its band energy dispersion is linear. The ultimate confinement in one dimension enables gate control of graphene's transport properties. Using a device with a back-gate structure allows to tune the type (electrons/holes) and number of charge carriers in a continuous fashion, i.e. the (ambipolar) electric field effect. Moreover, graphene exhibits a number of extraordinary properties, including excellent thermal and electrical conductance, extreme flexibility, high mechanical strength, and pronounced quantum-mechanical phenomena such as the quantized Hall effect. Furthermore, graphene has proven to be an excellent starting material for spintronics. Intrinsic graphene has low spin-orbit and hyperfine interactions, resulting in few spin relaxation mechanisms and hence it exhibits a long spin diffusion length, making it a suitable spin transport channel. However, this implies that pristine graphene is predominantly a passive spintronic element: it offers very limited active spin manipulation. In the semiconductor industry, doping plays a crucial role: it tailors the semiconducting material to have the desired properties. In case of graphene, the doping effects go beyond the addition or removal of an electron from the conduction band. For example, adatoms and nanoparticles adsorbed on graphene can (locally) tune the spin-orbit coupling. Enhanced spin-orbit coupling is expected to lead to an enlarged and/or tunable spin Hall effect, robust quantum spin Hall states, alter the spin lifetime anisotropy, and spin-splitting in the graphene density of states. As such, graphene decorated with adparticles is expected to activate graphene’s spintronic potential. Due to the extreme sensitivity of graphene devices, one desires a high level of control in adsorbing adparticles on graphene. Such control is offered by state-of-the-art cluster fabrication and deposition techniques, which allows to select the size and composition of metal clusters with atomic resolution. Using these techniques, gas phase clusters showcased a distinct atom-by-atom size dependence, dominated by quantum confinement effects, in the electronic and structural properties. This leads to unique physico-chemical properties, such as magnetism made of atoms that form non-magnetic bulk metals, catalytic activity of gold clusters opposed to their inert bulk phase, and metal-dielectric transitions that occur when adding a single atom. Clusters can be regarded as extensions to the periodic table of elements in the third dimension, or, in the framework of this project, as superdopants. In this thesis, it is demonstrated for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, an experimental study of spin transport in size-selected cluster-decorated graphene devices. Graphene spin valves were fabricated and characterized in-situ using measuring facilities built in the context of this thesis. These spin valves are decorated with Au3 and Au6 clusters, which are created in a DC magnetron sputtering source, size selected, and subsequently deposited on the spin valves. As the density of deposited clusters on graphene is incremented, the spin transport parameters of the graphene channel are carefully monitored using Hanle spin precession measurements. It is found that both gold cluster sizes scatter spins via the Elliot-Yafet mechanism. The induced spin-orbit coupling strength is a few meV for both clusters, with the value for Au3 being roughly twice as large as that of Au6. A gradual increase of the deposited cluster density (up to 1e14 clusters/cm^2) decreases the spin and momentum lifetime of the graphene channel, with Au6 clusters affecting both spin and momentum lifetime more strongly than the Au3 clusters. Density functional theory calculations provide insights into the spin relaxation mechanism. The dependence of graphene's electronic and spintronic properties on the exact cluster size indicates the importance of the microscopic details for graphene functionalisation towards spintronic applications.In a similar fashion, Ni4 clusters are decorated on a graphene spin valve. Fueled by the debate in literature, this study focusses on the spin scattering mechanisms in graphene by evaluating the Elliot-Yafet and the D'yakonov-Perel spin scattering mechanisms in the cluster decorated sample. This thesis aids the understanding of spin scattering in graphene by the controlled modification of the graphene flake by cluster deposition. It provides experimental data to the discussion on the role of the D'yankonov-Perel mechanism and the Elliot-Yafet mechanisms causing spin relaxation in graphene. This thesis is expected to guide future experiments in the search for phenomena useful for spintronic applications such as the (inverse) spin Hall effect or a strong gate dependence of the spin current, enabling the Datta-Das spin transistor." "Education renewal project (OVP) 2008: From hearings to active think-tank. Pilots in the biological sciences." "Luc Leyns" Biology "Problem: Our teaching experience teaches us that in the biology study program, the traditional form of teaching in which the teacher / assistant teaches and the student must assimilate the offered knowledge, does not always work efficiently. This problem is certain when we realize that (i) students use different learning styles and (ii) this assimilation method is insufficient to process a number of biological concepts in a critical and profound way. This situation is not new and is expressed in different aspects during all years of the study program, both in the Bachelor and in Master. Education models should therefore be developed that not only enable the student to develop a sustainable knowledge base, but also to acquire practical skills. In order to achieve this goal, extra attention must be paid to new skills training. In our view this can be achieved by moving away from the current, rather passive, unimedial educational landscape. The alternative is the switch to an active multimodal model where the students ""learn by doing"". As a result, we propose a series of methods to transform the classroom lectures into active think tanks. Target audience: In this pilot study we aim for Biology students of the third Bachelor year and the two Master years, with the Erasmus students included. After this pilot project we hope that this can be opened up to other scientific disciplines, as well as the entire VUB community. These study years were chosen because during the first two years of the program, students gather a lot of knowledge and learn a number of skills, but they have little chance to bring these two aspects together and use them in practice." "Influence of surface active agents on bubble activity in high frequency cleaning systems" "Stefan De Gendt" "Sustainable Chemistry for Metals and Molecules" "One of the multiple challenges that the semiconductor industry is facing in maintaining the current scaling trends is the removal of undesired contamination, typically originating from the environment or from fabrication process steps. Cleaning steps are among the most critical since they are repeated several times during IC fabrication. In particular, the critical size of the particles to be removed has decreased, following the general IC aggressive scaling trends, to below 30 nm.Traditional chemistry-based cleaning solutions suffer from excessive underetching, i.g. the removal of a thin substrate layer. With the current stringent requirements for the removal of nanoparticles, substrate loss must be reduced to a minimum. Therefore, the need for new efficient cleaning technologies and/or for a significant improvement of the existing ones has originated from these issues.Physical cleaning techniques, such as megasonic cleaning and spray cleaning, have been introduced a few decades ago with a double aim: to aid conventional cleans by enabling the removal of contaminants through mechanical forces and to minimize, at the same time, material loss. Among these techniques, megasonic cleaning makes use of microbubbles which are oscillating in a liquid due to the application of sound waves with frequencies in the megahertz range.It has been theoretically and experimentally demonstrated that acoustic cavitation and the resulting bubble activity is fundamental for a successful cleaning of semiconductor structures. Different types of cavitation bubble regimes co-exist, which give origin to different physical effects. More stable bubble regimes are responsible for phenomena such as acoustic streaming and cavitation microstreaming, leading to shear stresses at the wafer surface and inducing mechanical forces responsible for cleaning. More violent bubble regimes may cause shock waves and jet streams, phenomena that can clean but are also responsible for local damage to the substrate and to the fragile patterned structures. Therefore, particulate removal by means of megasonic fields presents multiple challenges. On one hand, the physical forces generated in acoustic fields need to be tuned in such a way that they can overcome the adhesion forces keeping the contaminants attached to the substrate. On the other hand, the damaging behavior of these physical forces must be minimized. Since the magnitude of these effects depends mostly on the degree of control that can be obtained over the active bubbles, a deeper insight on the fundamental physical phenomena that accompany the acoustic field is essential to improve and optimize the performance of megasonic cleaning.This thesis investigates acoustic cavitation in 1MHz sound fields over a broad parameter space, with the specific objective of studying the effects of charge addition and of a lower surface tension on acoustically active bubbles. In this regard, two different surface active agents have been selected: Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate (SDS) and Triton X-100, as representative for anionic and nonionic surfactants, respectively. In the first part of this work, continuous acoustic fields are employed. Three main techniques are used: sonoluminescence (SL), cavitation noise (CN) and high speed imaging of acoustic bubbles. SL measurements in liquid with dissolved argon show that a hysteretic behavior in bubble activity can occur. This demonstrates that the ability of bubbles to emit light depends also on their previous cavitation history. Next, surfactant-containing solutions are employed after complete characterization. The effect of lower surface tension by means of a nonionic surfactant (Triton X-100) is addressed, which is followed by the effects of bubble charging by means of SDS solutions. Here, the preferred methodology is based on CN recording, since useful spectra can be obtained at low acoustic powers, while a SL signal is absent at low powers. Cavitation activity is found to be significantly enhanced when employing a lower surface tension solution. More in particular, the onset of bubble activity is shifted towards lower acoustic power densities. This enhancement is reproducible and consistent at different oxygen saturation levels.Subsequently, the effects of charges on the acoustic bubbles are investigated by using SDS. Surprisingly, cavitation activity is dramatically reduced upon SDS addition, at all O2 concentrations and acoustic powers. This effect can be mainly attributed to the decrease of bubble growth by coalescence. The electrostatic repulsion that sets in between bubbles, due to the adsorption of charged molecules, acts on the coalescence growth pathway. High speed imaging of acoustic bubbles in SDS solutions confirms that bubble coalescence is hindered. To further shed light on the mechanisms, a model is proposed, in which the repulsive electrostatic force is balanced with the attractive Bjerknes force for two equally oscillating bubbles. For small oscillation amplitudes, obtained at very low driving pressures, electrostatic repulsion dominates over the mutual inter-bubble attraction.Based on the experimental results obtained for lower surface tension solutions in combination with continuous acoustic fields, a model is proposed, which can explain the enhancement of bubble activity according to the parametric instability theory. The analysis shows that decreasing the surface tension leads to a higher instability for acoustic bubbles, which in turn leads to an increased degree of fragmentation and bubble production. In particular, at a lower surface tension, resonant active bubbles are already shape unstable at lower driving pressures, thus implying that, at the typical operating pressures utilized in megasonic cleaning tools, more bubbles should be created.In the last part of this work, it is demonstrated that the use of pulsed acoustic fields under traveling wave conditions is beneficial for the enhancement of acoustic bubble activity. This enhancement is also encountered for lower surface tension solutions and lower acoustic applied powers. The optimal experimental parameters are found to be in good agreement with the theory of bubble dissolution: longer off-times are needed for increased dissolved gas concentrations and/or lower surface tensions. These findings are further complemented by particle removal efficiency (PRE) and damage tests on contaminated blanket and patterned Si wafers, respectively. An increase in the average particle removal efficiency was achieved at lower surface tensions. Furthermore, particle removal experiments confirmed the link between the intensity of the ultraharmonic peaks and cleaning performance. In conclusion, the addition of a nonionic surfactant to the cleaning liquid has a twofold effect. On one hand, it enhances the bubble activity and the particle removal. On the other hand, for a specific applied acoustic power, lowering the bulk surface tension suppresses damage formation compared to a UPW reference liquid.The results reported in this work constitute a major effort into pushing the capabilities of megasonic cleaning further for the removal of "