Delft University Of Technology Research Articles

Modeling the cortical response elicited by wrist manipulation via a nonlinear delay differential embedding.

Regarding motor processes, modeling healthy people's brains is essential to understand the brain activity in people with motor impairments. However, little research has been undertaken when external forces disturb limbs, having limited information on physiological pathways. Therefore, in this paper, a nonlinear delay differential embedding model is used to estimate the brain response elicited by externally controlled wrist movement in healthy individuals. The aim is to improve the understanding of the relationship between a controlled wrist movement and the generated cortical activity of healthy people, helping to disclose the underlying mechanisms and physiological relationships involved in the motor event. To evaluate the model, a public database from the Delft University of Technology is used, which contains electroencephalographic recordings of ten healthy subjects while wrist movement was externally provoked by a robotic system. In this work, the cortical response related to movement is identified via Independent Component Analysis and estimated based on a nonlinear delay differential embedding model. After a cross-validation analysis, the model performance reaches 90.21% ± 4.46% Variance Accounted For, and Correlation 95.14% ± 2.31%. The proposed methodology allows to select the model degree, to estimate a general predominant operation mode of the cortical response elicited by wrist movement. The obtained results revealed two facts that had not previously been reported: the movement's acceleration affects the cortical response, and a common delayed activity is shared among subjects. Going forward, identifying biomarkers related to motor tasks could aid in the evaluation of rehabilitation treatments for patients with upper limbs motor impairments.

Autorotation Transfer of Training: Effects of Helicopter Dynamics

This paper analyzes the effects of the helicopter dynamics on pilots’ learning process and transfer of learned skills during autorotation training. A quasi-transfer-of-training experiment was performed with 10 experienced helicopter pilots in the SIMONA moving-base flight simulator at Delft University of Technology. Pilots had to control an in-house flight dynamics model setup to simulate two types of helicopter dynamics: (1) a “hard” dynamics characterized by a low autorotative flare index requiring high pilot control compensation and (2) a “easy” dynamics characterized by a high autorotative flare index with low pilot control compensation required. Two groups of pilots tested these types of dynamics in a different training sequence: hard-easy-hard (HEH group) and easy-hard-easy (EHE group). The main conclusion of this study proved that simulator training for autorotation can best start with pilots training in the most resource demanding condition. A more challenging helicopter’s dynamics will require higher pilot agility and more rapid responses to his/her perceptual changes. This will result in pilots developing more robust and adaptable flying skills. Indeed, a clear positive transfer of training effect was observed in the experiment presented in this paper in terms of acquired pilot skills in the HEH group, but not the EHE group. Positive transfer was especially observed in terms of reduced rate of descent at touchdown. The two groups differed in the control strategy applied, with the HEH group having developed a control technique mimicking more closely the one adopted in a real helicopter.

Preface

This Special Issue presents selected contributions from the WindEurope Annual Event 2024 Conference that took place 20-22 March in Bilbao. A total of 23 papers are included, addressing one (or more) of the conference themes:• Resource assessment• Turbine technology• Wind farm: installation and operations• Floating offshore wind• Digitalisation• Environmental sustainability and social acceptance• Grid and system integration• Renewable hydrogen and Power-to-X. Conference Committee for the Scientific Program • Amir R. Nejad, Professor, NTNU• Nicolaos Cutululis, Professor, Technical University of Denmark (DTU)• Simon Watson, Professor, Delft University of Technology• Julia Gottschall, Chief Scientist, Fraunhofer IWES• A. Mehrad Kazemi Amiri, Research Associate, Strathclyde University• Jan Helsen, Professor, Vrije Universiteit BrusselWe thank all, more than 30, reviewers for their engagement and effort, without which these proceedings would not have been possible. As with previous WindEurope events, the European Academy of Wind Energy (EAWE) has been responsible for organizing the review process for scientific contributions and has contributed to the development of the conference sessions. WindEurope has been responsible for the organization and logistics of the conference, and we thank their highly professional staff and their associates for the excellent collaboration. Proceedings editor Amir R. Nejad, Professor, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

Implementing Citizen Science within Open Science: Identifying Extra-Academic Skills, Collaborations, Rewards and Recognitions in the Context of a University

What should a university do to support citizen science initiatives within an open science context, and to assist and facilitate researchers in performing effective citizen science? Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) has developed an open science program that includes, among other projects, citizen science. However, performing citizen science is not a straightforward task. For the people designing and managing citizen science projects, it demands appropriate knowledge, understanding, and experience of the field, as well as knowledge of the practical implementation of citizen science and open science. This requires a deeper understanding of which extra-academic skills, collaborations, rewards, and recognitions are needed for a citizen science project. Therefore, we used a local, hydrological citizen science project, “Delft Measures Rain,” as a case-study, implementing citizen science methods and the TU Delft Open Science principles. By means of this case-study, we identify key tools and facilitation needs to assist researchers within TU Delft to perform effective citizen science and open science. This paper shows how the various stakeholders (i.e., researchers, citizens, civil servants, and NGO’s) can benefit from performing participatory research implementing citizen science and open science principles. We list 10 key elements, encompassing tools, facilitation, and infrastructures that universities can provide for their researchers to stimulate and support the implementation and execution of successful, legally sound, and open citizen science. This case study shows that with appropriate and extra-academic knowledge, tools, collaborations, rewards, and recognitions, citizen science can deliver what it promises and be of great value to universities and open science in general.

Empirical assessment of ChatGPT’s answering capabilities in natural science and engineering

ChatGPT is a powerful language model from OpenAI that is arguably able to comprehend and generate text. ChatGPT is expected to greatly impact society, research, and education. An essential step to understand ChatGPT’s expected impact is to study its domain-specific answering capabilities. Here, we perform a systematic empirical assessment of its abilities to answer questions across the natural science and engineering domains. We collected 594 questions on natural science and engineering topics from 198 faculty members across five faculties at Delft University of Technology. After collecting the answers from ChatGPT, the participants assessed the quality of the answers using a systematic scheme. Our results show that the answers from ChatGPT are, on average, perceived as “mostly correct”. Two major trends are that the rating of the ChatGPT answers significantly decreases (i) as the educational level of the question increases and (ii) as we evaluate skills beyond scientific knowledge, e.g., critical attitude.

Dialogue on Values, Design, Practice, and the Future

Redesigning deltas is the theme for our 182nd anniversary week at the Delft University of Technology. Two honorary doctorates are awarded to people who have an outstanding contribution to the field of Delta Urbanism: Kate Orff and Henk Ovink.
 The dialogue between Kate and Henk focused on four key aspects, each shedding light on their shared values, design philosophies, real-world projects, and their future visions.
 The first part delved into their commonalities, uncovering shared approaches to work, a strong commitment to making the world a better place, and advocacy efforts. Their dialogue revealed a mutual optimism and dedication to motivating people while emphasizing responsibility. The second part encompassed design and design-driven solutions. The conversation explored their perspectives on design in the context of design-based research, both in its present state and future trajectories. They deliberated on the definition of design, its role in problem-solving, and what changes might be necessary in academia. The third part centered on their real-world projects, such as the Water as Leverage program and the Living Breakwaters initiative. They shared insights gained from these endeavors, outlining lessons learned, areas for improvement, and collaborative opportunities for learning and growth. The discussion covered lessons learned from these projects and outlined the next steps. Finally, in the last part, they envisioned the future, particularly academia's role in catalyzing positive change and fostering innovation. Their dialogue encapsulated shared values, experiences, and aspirations, highlighting the potential for collaborative action within design, advocacy, and academia.

Education in collaboration with cities: the intentions of transdisciplinary courses

Purpose In collaboration with their home cities, universities increasingly develop courses in which students investigate urban sustainability challenges. This paper aims to understand how far-reaching the collaboration with urban stakeholders in these courses is and what students are meant to learn from the transdisciplinary pedagogies. Design/methodology/approach This research is designed as a qualitative multiple-case study into the intentions of transdisciplinary courses in which universities collaborate with their home cities: Delft University of Technology in Delft and Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions in Amsterdam. The study compares the written intentions of eight courses in course descriptions with the ideal intentions that teachers describe in interviews. Findings First, seven of the eight investigated courses were designed for urban stakeholders to participate at a distance or as a client but rarely was a course intended to lead to a collaborative partnership between the city and students. Second, the metacognitive learning objectives, such as learning to deal with biases and values of others or getting to know one’s strengths and weaknesses in collaboration, were often absent in the course descriptions. Learning objectives relating to metacognition are at the heart of transdisciplinary work, yet when they remain implicit in the learning objectives, they are difficult to teach. Originality/value This paper presents insight into the levels of participation intended in transdisciplinary courses. Furthermore, it shows the (mis)alignment between intended learning objectives in course descriptions and teachers’ ideals. Understanding both the current state of transdisciplinarity in sustainability courses and what teachers envision is vital for the next steps in the development of transdisciplinary education.

The open science culture: World programs and learning platforms

The dynamic academic and educational environment needs the specialists capable to work in the intensively developing open science information infrastructure, to retrieve, analyze and synthesize heterogeneous information, to process structured and unstructured research data; to document research findings, to represent them in the open access; to be engaged in social media, and to be aware of many aspects of the open science concept. The programs, forms, approaches and practice of training specialists in open science within the global initiative projects and organizations (FOSTER, Creative Commons, Digital Curation Center, COS, etc.), and individual organizations/universities (Humboldt university, Delft University of Technology) are explored. The best experience of educating open science culture online is discussed. The author also suggests the program of advanced training course “The open science culture” for scientists, post-graduatestudents, lecturers, and librarians. The program may be used in professional training and practice-oriented extended professional programs and specialized professional retraining. The study makes the background for building the system for teaching the principles and procedures of open science. The system may be implemented in academic and educational institutions.

Metric Optimization and Mainstream Bias Mitigation in Recommender Systems

Recommender Systems have drawn extensive attention in recent decades. The most important factor to make a recommender succeed is user satisfaction, which is largely reflected by the recommendation accuracy. In accordance, this thesis dives into recommendation accuracy from two different perspectives that, unfortunately, are at tension with each other: achieving the maximum overall recommendation accuracy, and balancing that accuracy among all users. The first part of this thesis focuses on maximizing the overall recommendation accuracy Li et al. [2021a]. This accuracy is usually evaluated with some user-oriented metrics tailored to the recommendation scenario. However, recommendation models could be trained to maximize some other generic criteria that do not necessarily align with the criteria ultimately captured by the metric above. Recent research usually assumes that the metric used for evaluation is also the metric used for training. We challenge this assumption, mainly because some metrics are more informative than others. Indeed, we show that models trained via the optimization of a loss inspired by Rank-Biased Precision (RBP) tend to yield higher accuracy, even when accuracy is measured with metrics other than RBP. However, the superiority of this RBP-inspired loss stems from further benefiting users who are already well-served, rather than helping those who are not. This observation inspires the second part of this thesis, where our focus turns to helping nonmainstream users, who are difficult to recommend to either because of the lack of data for effective modeling or a niche taste that is hard to match similar users. Our first effort consists in using side data, beyond the user-item interaction matrix, so that users and items are better represented. This will be of benefit especially for the non-mainstream users, for which the user-item matrix alone is ineffective. We propose Neural AutoEncoder Collaborative Filtering (NAECF) Li et al. [2021b], an adversarial learning architecture that, in addition to maximizing the recommendation accuracy, leverages side data to preserve the intrinsic properties of users and items and show that NAECF leads to better recommendations specially for non-mainstream users, while at the same time there is a marginal loss for the mainstream ones. Our second effort Li et al. [2023] consists in explicitly focusing more on non-mainstream users in a recommendation model. In particular, we propose a mechanism based on cost-sensitive learning that weighs users according to their mainstreamness, so that they get more attention during training. The result is a recommendation model tailored to non-mainstream users, that narrows the accuracy gap, and again at negligible cost to the mainstream users. Awarded by : Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands on 14 November 2023. Supervised by : Alan Hanjalic and Julián Urbano. Available at : https://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:235a5f5c-5e18-4e67-a8e6-84a7e310db12.

Bicycle balance assist system reduces roll and steering motion for young and older bicyclists during real-life safety challenges.

Bicycles are more difficult to control at low speeds due to the vehicle's unstable low-speed dynamics. This issue might be exacerbated by factors such as aging, disturbances, and multi-tasking. To address this issue, we developed a prototype 'balance assist system' with Royal Dutch Gazelle and Bosch eBike Systems at Delft University of Technology, which includes an electric motor capable of providing additional steering torque. We implemented a speed-adaptive feedback controller to generate the additional steering torque to that of the rider. We conducted a study with 18 older and 14 younger cyclists to first examine the effect of aging, disturbances, and multi-tasking on cycling at lower forward speeds, and evaluate the effectiveness of the system in improving the stability of the rider-bicycle system while facing these challenges. The study consisted of two scenarios: a single-task scenario where participants rode the bicycle on a marked narrow straight-line track, and a multi-task scenario where participants performed a shoulder check task and followed visual cues while tracking the straight-line. We introduced handlebar disturbances using the steer motor in half of the trials in both scenarios. All trials were repeated with and without the balance assist system. We calculated the bicycle mean magnitude of roll and steering rate-as indicators of bicycle balance control and required steering actions, respectively-and the rider's mean magnitude of lean rate with respect to the ground to investigate the effect of the balance assist system on rider's lateral motion. Our results showed that aging, disturbances, and multi-tasking increased the roll rate, and the balance assist system was able to significantly reduce it. The effect size of the balance assist system in reducing the roll rate across all conditions was found to be larger in older cyclists, indicating a more substantial impact compared to younger cyclists. Disturbances and multi-tasking increased the steering rate, which was successfully reduced by the balance assist system. Aging did not significantly affect the steering rate. The rider's lean rate was not significantly affected by age, disturbances, or the balance assist, indicating that the upper body plays a minor role when riders have good steering control authority. Overall, our findings suggest that lateral motion and required steering action can be affected by age, multi-tasking, and handlebar disturbances which can endanger cyclists' safety, and the balance assist system has the potential to improve cycling safety and reduce the incidence of single-actor crashes. Further investigation on riders' contribution to control actions is required.

A centrifuge study into the installation response of steel, open-ended, tubular piles, dynamically driven using prolonged impulses

A centrifuge study into the installation response of steel, open-ended, tubular piles, dynamically driven using prolonged impulses

<em>Ex ante</em> analysis of circular built environment policy coherence

As European governments adopt new circular built environment policies to cope with the socio-ecological crisis, the need for evaluating such policies gains in urgency. Ex post evaluation is, however, difficult as these policies have not been in place long enough to have had significant effects. Nonetheless, ex ante policy evaluation may be possible by assessing policy coherence or the alignment and synergies of policy goals, instruments and implementation practices. This paper proposes a framework to analyse circular built environment policies. This framework is based on a combination of two existing analytical frameworks: circular city development and policy coherence analysis. The framework is tested for the case of a circular built environment in campus development at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, which is regarded as an urban development proxy. Policy documents and semi-structured interviews were analysed and coded. Results confirm previous findings about a prevailing focus on looping actions and indicates limited policy instrumentalisation across governance levels. Identified multilevel (in)coherence in circular city policy is pointed out as consequence of siloed-led and supply chain-based thinking and underdeveloped circular policy frameworks. Finally, the analytical benefits of circular city development and policy coherence frameworks are discussed. Policy relevance Circular economy policies are conceptually limited in delivering a more circular city and built environment. By proposing and testing a circular city policy coherence framework, this article reveals the limited effect of circular economy policies in coping with unsustainable urbanisation. Policymaking and implementation for circularity in the built environment require frameworks that embrace urban complexities instead of reductionist approaches seeing the built environment as a mere agglomeration of supply-chains. Policymakers may use the proposed circular city policy coherence framework as a tool for ex ante policy evaluation in diverse areas of urban development, and specifically for built environment interventions. The combination of both content- and process-based frameworks enables the identification of possible (in)coherence in current and future policy goals, instruments and implementation practices. This can improve policy in early stages of implementation and create more effective policy outputs and outcomes in the long term.

LIFU for major depressive disorder - Targeting the neural networks of depression

LIFU for major depressive disorder - Targeting the neural networks of depression Tiago Costa, Assistant Professor at the Department of Microelectronics, Delft University of Technology, discusses opportunities surrounding low-intensity focused ultrasound in the treatment of major depressive disorder in a minimally invasive manner. Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a prevalent and debilitating mental health condition affecting millions worldwide. While various treatment options exist, including medication and psychotherapy, a significant proportion of individuals with MDD do not achieve full remission or experience adverse side effects from existing treatments. Consequently, there is a need for innovative and effective therapeutic approaches to address this complex disorder. One emerging and promising area of research is the use of low-intensity focused ultrasound (LIFU) to treat major depressive disorder. LIFU is a non-invasive technique that utilises ultrasound waves at lower intensities compared to high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU), which is used for the thermal ablation of tissue. By focusing these ultrasound waves on specific brain regions, LIFU has shown potential in modulating neural activity and potentially alleviating depressive symptoms.

Effect of Temperature and H Flux on the NH3 Synthesis via Electrochemical Hydrogen Permeation.

Invited for this month's cover is the group of Prof. Fokko M. Mulder at the Delft University of Technology. The image on the cover shows how in the NH3 synthesis via hydrogen-permeable electrode the N, H species on the catalyst surface can be controlled, using the analogy of a traffic controller. The Research Article itself is available at 10.1002/cssc.202300460.

Reducing social diabetes distress with a conversational agent support system: a three-week technology feasibility evaluation.

People with diabetes mellitus not only have to deal with physical health problems, but also with the psycho-social challenges their chronic disease brings. Currently, technological tools that support the psycho-social context of a patient have received little attention. The objective of this work is to determine the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of an automated conversational agent to deliver, to people with diabetes, personalised psycho-education on dealing with (psycho-)social distress related to their chronic illness. In a double-blinded between-subject study, 156 crowd-workers with diabetes received a social help program intervention in three sessions over three weeks. They were randomly assigned to receive support from either an interactive conversational support agent () or a self-help text from the book "Diabetes burnout" as a control condition (). Participants completed the Diabetes Distress Scale (DDS) before and after the intervention, and after the intervention, the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ-8), Feeling of Being Heard (FBH), and System Usability Scale (SUS). Results indicate that people using the conversational agent have a larger reduction in diabetes distress (, ) than the control group (, ) and this difference is statistically significant (, ). A hypothesised mediation effect of "attitude to the social help program" was not observed. An automated conversational agent can deliver personalised psycho-education on dealing with (psycho-)social distress to people with diabetes and reduce diabetes distress more than a self-help book. This study has been preregistered with the Open Science Foundation (osf.io/yb6vg) and has been accepted by the Human Research Ethics Committee - Delft University of Technology under application number 1130. The data and analysis script are available: https://surfdrive.surf.nl/files/index.php/s/4xSEHCrAu0HsJ4P.

Preface

This Special Issue presents selected contributions from the WindEurope Annual Event 2023 Conference that took place 25-27 April in Copen-hagen. A total of 25 papers are included, addressing one (or more) of the three conference themes:• Resource assessment• Turbine technology• Wind farm: installation and operations• Floating offshore wind• Digitalisation• Environmental sustainability and social acceptance• Grid and system integration• Renewable hydrogen and Power-to-X. Conference Committee for the Scientific Program • Amir R. Nejad, Professor, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)• Stephan Barth, Managing Director, ForWind - Center for Wind Energy Research• Athanasios Kolios, Professor, Technical University of Denmark (DTU)• Simon Watson, Professor, Delft University of Technology• Olimpo Anaya-Lara, Professor, Strathclyde University• James Carroll, Reader (Associate Professor), Strathclyde UniversityWe thank all, more than 30, reviewers for their engagement and effort, without which these proceedings would not have been possible. As with previous WindEurope events, the European Academy of Wind Energy (EAWE) has been responsible for organizing the review process for scientific contributions and has contributed to the development of the conference sessions. WindEurope has been responsible for the organization and logistics of the conference, and we thank their highly professional staff and their associates for the excellent collaboration. Proceedings editor Amir R. Nejad, Professor, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

Neuronal networks of depression: Pushing the limits of brain stimulation technology

Neuronal networks of depression: Pushing the limits of brain stimulation technology A team of researchers at the University of Freiburg and Delft University of Technology have joined forces to explore a new focused ultrasound technology to tap into the Neuronal Networks of Depression. Major Depressive Disorder (MDD, or “depression”) is not a single disorder but a syndrome: a spectrum of associated behavioral symptoms that are defined (and re-defined with time) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders, American Psychiatric Association. Key symptoms are anhedonia and hopelessness. Clinical depression is diagnosed if the person experiences five or more of the nine symptoms during a continuous 2 week period, with at least one of the symptoms being either reduced motivation or anhedonia (DSM-5 American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Given the nine main symptoms, the pairing with one of the two essential traits, the bi-directionality of many symptoms (increase or decrease), or their sub-symptoms, there are several hundred different individual symptom profiles possible that would qualify for depression diagnosis (Fried & Nesse, 2015).

Adverse effects of painful diagnostic tests: mechanisms and moderators.

aInstitute of Psychology, Health, Medical and Neuropsychology Unit, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands bMedical Delta, Leiden University, Delft University of Technology, Erasmus University, the Netherlands Sponsorships or competing interests that may be relevant to content are disclosed at the end of this article.

Single-Molecule Protein Fingerprinting with Photonic Hexagonal Boron Nitride Nanopores.

ADVERTISEMENT RETURN TO ARTICLES ASAPPREVViewpointNEXTSingle-Molecule Protein Fingerprinting with Photonic Hexagonal Boron Nitride NanoporesDong Hoon ShinDong Hoon ShinDepartment of Precision and Microsystems Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 2, 2628 CD, Delft, The NetherlandsMore by Dong Hoon Shinhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-0438-0835, Xiliang YangXiliang YangDepartment of Precision and Microsystems Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 2, 2628 CD, Delft, The NetherlandsMore by Xiliang Yanghttps://orcid.org/0009-0003-8055-079X, and Sabina Caneva*Sabina CanevaDepartment of Precision and Microsystems Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 2, 2628 CD, Delft, The Netherlands*Email: [email protected]More by Sabina Canevahttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-3457-7505Cite this: Acc. Mater. Res. 2023, XXXX, XXX, XXX-XXXPublication Date (Web):March 14, 2023Publication History Received27 January 2023Published online14 March 2023https://doi.org/10.1021/accountsmr.3c00016© 2023 The Authors. Co-published by ShanghaiTech University and American Chemical SocietyRIGHTS & PERMISSIONSACS AuthorChoiceCC: Creative CommonsBY: Credit must be given to the creatorArticle Views431Altmetric-Citations-LEARN ABOUT THESE METRICSArticle Views are the COUNTER-compliant sum of full text article downloads since November 2008 (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals. These metrics are regularly updated to reflect usage leading up to the last few days.Citations are the number of other articles citing this article, calculated by Crossref and updated daily. Find more information about Crossref citation counts.The Altmetric Attention Score is a quantitative measure of the attention that a research article has received online. Clicking on the donut icon will load a page at altmetric.com with additional details about the score and the social media presence for the given article. Find more information on the Altmetric Attention Score and how the score is calculated. Share Add toView InAdd Full Text with ReferenceAdd Description ExportRISCitationCitation and abstractCitation and referencesMore Options Share onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InReddit PDF (4 MB) Get e-AlertsSUBJECTS:Defects,Fluorescence resonance energy transfer,Monomers,Nanopores,Peptides and proteins Get e-Alerts

Dawn: A Proton's Tale of All That Came to Be

DAWN: A Proton's Tale of All That Came to Be by Cees Dekker, Corien Oranje, and Gijsbert van den Brink. Translated by Harry Cook. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2022. 166 pages, discussion questions. Paperback; $22.00. ISBN: 9781514005668. *Imagine that you could witness the entire history of the universe first-hand, from the big bang to the end of time. Perhaps, if you were a sentient yet patient proton, you would have the necessary longevity and attention span, and this idea could become your reality. Such is the premise of Dawn: A Proton's Tale of All That Came to Be. "Pro," as the proton protagonist is known to his chatty neighboring subatomic particles, is born from quarks in the first second after the big bang, blind and knowing nothing, but with an insatiable curiosity about what is happening, and why. Conversations with other particles born a split-second earlier soon produce in Proton a deep admiration for a skilled Creator, and a sense of wonder and anticipation about what they have seen and what will happen next. *Throughout several chapters, Pro confusedly and vividly experiences the onset of light, nuclear fusion, a supernova, and incorporation into a molecule as part of a carbon nucleus. Pro ends up in the dust cloud that forms Earth, eventually witnessing the origin of terrestrial life as part of an RNA molecule. A rumor among the subatomic particles that the Creator wants to make personal contact with one of the creatures generates a guessing game as they witness the progress of evolution. Which lifeform will it be? *When Homo sapiens arrive on the scene, the story shifts to tracking biblical narratives, and the subatomic particles begin asking each other more theological questions. The Creator makes contact with two humans, a chieftain couple in Africa. The Fall ensues when the couple and their tribe reject the Creator's instructions, much to the subatomic particles' surprise and horror. Pro and his neighbors are then able to witness key moments in the progress of redemption, becoming fly-on-the-wall observers to events in the lives of several important biblical characters. "How is the Creator going to fix things?" the particles ask each other. *At this point it becomes apparent what a colossal challenge the three authors (a nano scientist, a novelist, and a theologian)1 have taken upon themselves. They have tried to produce a gripping narrative in which the protagonist does not know the outcome, but Christian readers will. They have set out to tell an entertaining story of the history of the universe from a Christ-centered perspective, filled with imaginative details that are consistent with modern science but also with the biblical witness. They have charged into a literary no man's land between fiction and nonfiction. *Do they succeed? In many ways, admirably so. The merging of science and biblical witness is skillfully accomplished, respecting the integrity of each source of knowledge. To readers of this journal, the idea of a Creator patiently guiding the evolution of the universe and of life over billions of years in order to generate Earth and its humanity, followed by the increasingly intimate involvement of that Creator in redeeming humanity, is familiar. To many others, this idea will be revelatory. *If evaluated as a work of fiction, it would be safe to say that Dawn is wildly imaginative, yet it is also strangely hindered by the passivity of the narrating subatomic particles. "Imagine that you yourself could determine where you would like to go" (p. 28), they muse just before the first protocell develops. Pro witnesses and experiences history but cannot intervene. The subatomic particles can react, but they have no agency in the macroscopic world. They do not embark on a quest or a voyage of self-discovery. "Just go with the flow" (p. 29), one advises. The tropes of fiction, however, are probably the wrong standards for evaluating this book. *Dawn succeeds, in the end, as creative nonfiction--the memoir of a proton. Along the way, it retells the old, old story in an imaginative way. The authors have created one of the most accessible books on science and Christianity to come out in recent years. Even young adults will be able to enjoy it. *Note *1Cees Dekker, distinguished nano-scientist at Delft University of Technology; Corien Oranje, novelist/theologian and author of Christian children's literature; and Gijsbert van den Brink, theologian and holder of the Chair of Theology and Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. *Reviewed by David O. De Haan, Professor of Chemistry, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA 92110.