News In Brief

New proposals call for a historic shift in the university’s role in order to safeguard its world-class status. According to university’s governing council% plans, British undergraduates will lose out to foreign undergraduates, who pay higher tuition fees and to postgraduates whose numbers would double to boost Oxford’s income. The plans aim to recast Oxford along with the lines of an American-style Ivy League University, concentrating on the lucrative post-graduate market. The plan calls for the number of native British students to be cut from this September by one percentage point a year over the next five years to create more places for foreign undergraduates. This would take place within a freeze on the overall numbers of undergraduates, as Oxford mounted an aggressive expansion of postgraduate provision. A university spokeswoman said Oxford lost 2,600 pounds on each of its British and European Union undergraduates every year. EU students pay the same fees as those from Britain.
Daughter punished

Japan’s Wako University revoked its offer of admission to a woman whose father led the sect responsible for 1995’s Tokyo subway poison-gas attacks. The daughter of guru Shoko Asahara was refused admission to the university even after passing the entrance examinations. “We’re not certain we could protect her from the eyes of curious people if she was admitted,” Wako University President Osamu Mihashi said. “We suspect that her admission would disturb the educational environment of our school even if she’s not directly responsible.” Guru Asahara was sentenced to death in February.
Hacker

A hacker broke into the TU’s computer network last week and damaged the computers of more than 50 employees. The Technical Support department (DTO) spent the whole week repairing the damage. Employees with ‘infected’ computers could no longer use the network, Internet and email programs. DTO tracked down the hacker, who came from outside the TU, during a routine scan of the TU network. The hacker managed to open a number of ports that were supposedly inaccessible to those outside the TU. The so-called STP servers were hacked. Hackers can use these servers to, for example, play Internet games. The DTO took the precautionary measure of closing off part to the network in order to make illegal trafficking impossible. It was apparently difficult to keep the hackers out and therefore the DTO surrounded its servers with firewalls, to deny the hackers.
Shell

Last week TU Delft graduate René de Dooij won a defence technology award for his work on ‘maximising’ the artillery shell. With a little luck, his concept artillery shell will travel much further after firing than current shells. And this is thanks to, as the award committee declared, the ‘extremely gratifying’ results of De Dooij’s work. by the committee of the department of Defence Technology at the Koninklijk Instituut van Ingenieurs (Royal Institute for Engineers) annually awards the J.M.J Kooy Prize to the best graduate in the field.
Naked Nixon

A man wearing nothing but a trench coat, a Richard Nixon mask and tennis shoes entered a class auditorium at the University of Iowa just as a meteorology exam was beginning. The man opened his trench coat, danced around and then ran out the door yelling. A previous incident happened in February when a man fitting the same description interrupted a sociology class and ran across the front of the lecture hall with his trench coat open to 400 students. If arrested, the man could be charged with indecent exposure and disorderly conduct.
Power

Professor Wim Dik (65), a professor of ICT-orientated organisations at the Technology, Policy and Management Faculty has been proclaimed the most influential engineer in the Netherlands by Technical Weekly magazine. The magazine analysed the careers of about 750 engineers. Dik, former chairman and CEO of KPN Telecom, is also a member of the advisory boards of Unilever, ABN Amro and Carré. TU Delft alumni are well represented on the list: seven ‘Delftenaren’ are ranked in the top ten alone. The only woman on the list is Marike van Lier Lels (ranked sixth).

Asian Oxford

Foreign undergraduates, particularly Asian students, will outnumber British undergraduates at the University of Oxford. New proposals call for a historic shift in the university’s role in order to safeguard its world-class status. According to university’s governing council% plans, British undergraduates will lose out to foreign undergraduates, who pay higher tuition fees and to postgraduates whose numbers would double to boost Oxford’s income. The plans aim to recast Oxford along with the lines of an American-style Ivy League University, concentrating on the lucrative post-graduate market. The plan calls for the number of native British students to be cut from this September by one percentage point a year over the next five years to create more places for foreign undergraduates. This would take place within a freeze on the overall numbers of undergraduates, as Oxford mounted an aggressive expansion of postgraduate provision. A university spokeswoman said Oxford lost 2,600 pounds on each of its British and European Union undergraduates every year. EU students pay the same fees as those from Britain.
Daughter punished

Japan’s Wako University revoked its offer of admission to a woman whose father led the sect responsible for 1995’s Tokyo subway poison-gas attacks. The daughter of guru Shoko Asahara was refused admission to the university even after passing the entrance examinations. “We’re not certain we could protect her from the eyes of curious people if she was admitted,” Wako University President Osamu Mihashi said. “We suspect that her admission would disturb the educational environment of our school even if she’s not directly responsible.” Guru Asahara was sentenced to death in February.
Hacker

A hacker broke into the TU’s computer network last week and damaged the computers of more than 50 employees. The Technical Support department (DTO) spent the whole week repairing the damage. Employees with ‘infected’ computers could no longer use the network, Internet and email programs. DTO tracked down the hacker, who came from outside the TU, during a routine scan of the TU network. The hacker managed to open a number of ports that were supposedly inaccessible to those outside the TU. The so-called STP servers were hacked. Hackers can use these servers to, for example, play Internet games. The DTO took the precautionary measure of closing off part to the network in order to make illegal trafficking impossible. It was apparently difficult to keep the hackers out and therefore the DTO surrounded its servers with firewalls, to deny the hackers.
Shell

Last week TU Delft graduate René de Dooij won a defence technology award for his work on ‘maximising’ the artillery shell. With a little luck, his concept artillery shell will travel much further after firing than current shells. And this is thanks to, as the award committee declared, the ‘extremely gratifying’ results of De Dooij’s work. by the committee of the department of Defence Technology at the Koninklijk Instituut van Ingenieurs (Royal Institute for Engineers) annually awards the J.M.J Kooy Prize to the best graduate in the field.
Naked Nixon

A man wearing nothing but a trench coat, a Richard Nixon mask and tennis shoes entered a class auditorium at the University of Iowa just as a meteorology exam was beginning. The man opened his trench coat, danced around and then ran out the door yelling. A previous incident happened in February when a man fitting the same description interrupted a sociology class and ran across the front of the lecture hall with his trench coat open to 400 students. If arrested, the man could be charged with indecent exposure and disorderly conduct.
Power

Professor Wim Dik (65), a professor of ICT-orientated organisations at the Technology, Policy and Management Faculty has been proclaimed the most influential engineer in the Netherlands by Technical Weekly magazine. The magazine analysed the careers of about 750 engineers. Dik, former chairman and CEO of KPN Telecom, is also a member of the advisory boards of Unilever, ABN Amro and Carré. TU Delft alumni are well represented on the list: seven ‘Delftenaren’ are ranked in the top ten alone. The only woman on the list is Marike van Lier Lels (ranked sixth).