The making of a specimen

I spend most of my time in the laboratory to destroy slabs - but before doing so, we first have to make our specimens.
The slabs I'm testing are reinforced concrete slabs, which are cast in timber formwork in the laboratory hall. The reinforcement is delivered as ready-made cages according to our drawings, and the concrete is delivered by a truck mixer from a nearby plant.

We start with the timber formwork:

And we also have the reinforcement in our laboratory hall:

One of these cages is used per slab:

Then, the reinforcement is placed into the formwork:

Now we're ready to pour on some concrete... Notice the mixer truck at the entrance of the laboratory.

The concrete is taken to the formwork and then poured into it:

Meanwhile, we also cast small cubes to check the material properties of the concrete:

After pouring the concrete, the surface of the slab needs to be finished:

The result: some freshly-made concrete slabs:

These can be used in our setup after typically 28 days - ready to suffer!

A PhD defense at Georgia Tech

I've recently attended two PhD thesis defenses at Georgia Tech, which were quite different from a PhD thesis defense at TU Delft.

One of the first differences, is that the thesis itself is not fully completed and printed yet at Georgia Tech before the defense. In Delft, the thesis committee will give their input on the draft thesis before the defense, then the thesis is printed and after distribution of the printed dissertations, the defense itself can take place. At Georgia Tech, and I assume at other US universities, the defense takes place before the completion of the thesis.

The defense itself consists of a presentation which is open to the public, as well as the actual defense with the committee, behind closed doors.
The presentation is attended by the committee and lasts one hour. In this presentation, the defending PhD candidate receives enough time to explain his/her thesis work to its full extent. At TU Delft, the presentation only lasts 20 minutes, is not attended by the committee and has to be given "such that friends and family can actually understand what you've been doing all those years."

While a defense at TU Delft is very formal, is only held in the Senaatszaal of the Aula and involves a beadle and paranymphs, a defense at Georgia Tech is less formal. Also, at TU Delft, the defense and the actual graduation are merged into one ceremony, while at Georgia Tech the defense and commencement are separate, and months apart.

What seems to me an advantage of the system used at Georgia Tech, is the shorter time between the first completed draft of the thesis and 'being done' (which would mean the defense in Delft or the submission and acceptance of the thesis at Georgia Tech). At TU Delft, this seems to be a matter of months, while at Georgia Tech it is more a matter of weeks.

Blog post about holidays

Before I went on holiday last summer, I read this inspiring post (in Dutch) about how you can keep that "holiday feeling" a longer.

That feeling was described as:
"This feeling is associated with peace, energy, creativity, inspiration and relaxation"

This made me realize how much I actually need a holiday every now and then. As a salaried employee of my university, I am entitled 41 working days of paid leave per year (yes, that's not a typo, and that's quite common for us here).

As I had read this article before I left, I decided I would pay closer attention to how precisely I was feeling before and after my (relatively short and very full holiday).

I left completely exhausted. In fact, I fell asleep before my plane took off and slept through most of my 10 hour flight.

Now that I've been back to research for one week, I clearly noticed how taking a break positively influenced my abilities. My thinking is clearer, my attention span longer and my focus sharper. Even though I find it hard to stop and rest for a while, this should be a reminder for the upcoming (crazy-busy) months.

As a result of this, I decided I will take the recommendations of that post and put them into practice. Here's a brief summary of that advice:
- do something new once per week
- take enough breaks
- go outside
- turn off your phone/mail/twitter/facebook
- surround yourself with that holiday feeling

I'll be writing in 1 or 2 months to describe how I could savor my holiday feeling a little longer.

A personal note: I wrote my holiday was rather short (10 days) but very full. In fact, it was filled with the PhD defense of my boyfriend, my birthday, a lot of partying and our engagement.

How to write an abstract in 30 minutes

Have you ever been in the following situation?

You have selected a conference you would like to attend, and you have all the information you need for writing the abstract (the conference topic which suits your work, the maximum amount of words, submission through a website or email). Maybe you've googled "How to write an abstract". And there you are, with a new Word document and a scary white page in front of you. You go and get a cup of coffee, and stare at the screen. You play around with some words to come up with a good title which is within the maximum amount of characters allowed. You go and get another cup of coffee. Check Facebook. Get a snack... And before you know a few hours have gone by and Word is still showing an almost empty screen.

I've found what really works for me to write an abstract in roughly 30 minutes. As I was googling "How to write an abstract" in the past, I came across this article by Philip Koopman which caught my attention.

What I most like about this website is the questions it has in the different sections your abstract should contain:

Motivation: Why do we care about the problem and the results?

Problem statement: What problem are you trying to solve?

Approach: How did you go about solving or making progress on the problem? Did you use simulation, analytic models, prototype construction, or analysis of field data for an actual product?

Results: What's the answer?

Conclusions: What are the implications of your answer? Is it going to change the world (unlikely), be a significant "win", be a nice hack, or simply serve as a road sign indicating that this path is a waste of time (all of the previous results are useful)?

In fact, whenever I now write an abstract, I simply copy and paste these questions into a new document. Then I start answering them one by one. Sometimes I just talk out loud and write it down. Style and grammar don't matter to me at that point - I just need to get the ideas out first.
These answers then make up the first draft of my abstract. I simply delete the questions, and print out this first version. At that point, I start manipulating the abstract into a readable text, in correct English (as good as possible in my case), and making sure the entire piece flows from its starting point and background description towards the results and conclusions.

Do you have a method which helps you to write abstracts?