LiftThe Delft police had to rescue five students from Leiden last weekend after they got stuck in an elevator in a building on the Bosboom Toussaintplein.
The police were assisted by an elevator repair company. The lift became stuck after the five students had begun dancing in it.
Cultural knowledge
While a product may be perfectly suited for one country, cultural differences can cause the same product to completely miss the mark in another country. And for an open economy like the Dutch economy, knowledge of other cultures is therefore vital for product development, according to Professor Daan van Eijk, who expounded on these views during his inaugural lecture as a professor of Industrial Design Engineering at TU Delft on December 8. Van Eijk also believes it’s essential to encourage more collaboration between product designers and social researchers, such as anthropologists. His main argument is that understanding how culture influences product development is essential for the Netherlands’ open economy. “It’s not true that globalization is causing all the products around world to look more and more like each other. That is indeed generally thought to be the case, but in fact the opposite is true,” Van Eijk says. During his address, Van Eijk also strongly emphasized the need for more multidisciplinary partnerships and research: “More collaboration between product designers and social researchers, such as anthropologists, is essential in this respect.”
Top earners
In 2005, TU Delft paid out the highest salaries of all the Dutch universities. But there is an exception: due to TU Delft reorganization, the university had to pay extra compensation to a number of employees. According to government figures, last year approximately 189 TU Delft employees earned more the prime minister of the Netherlands (158,000 euro). TU Delft was followed by the University of Utrecht (31 employees earning more than 158,000 euro), Groningen (30) and the University of Amsterdam (28).
Memory paper
Forget your USB stick? Doesn’t matter, because a Indian student has developed a technology for saving information on a piece of paper: up to 450 gigabytes (GB) – or 100 times that of a DVD – can be stored on a standard piece of A4 paper. The student, Sainul Abideen, showed a reporter from the Arab News how the technology worked by playing a film on his computer that was stored on piece of paper. Storing information on paper is cheaper than on CDs or DVDs and better for the environment.
Sustainable energy
A number of leading Dutch research institutes have launched the Dutch Research Platform on Sustainable Energy Supply (NODE). NODE aims to make the scientific knowledge about future energy sources developed by the respective partners more accessible for governments and industry. The platform will also promote partnerships, such as those between institutes and companies. “Only technology can provide solutions to the energy problems,” says Tim van der Hagen, one of NODE’s initiators and a professor of Reactor Physics at TU Delft. “The problem is that research is being fragmented at the moment and policy-makers, industry and scientists cannot consistently reach the levels of agreement needed to arrive at attainable solutions.” It’s for this reason that leading research institutes, including the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN), FOM-Rijnhuizen and the three Dutch technological universities, have decided to combine their strengths in the Netherlands Research Platform for Sustainable Energy Supply.
Lift
The Delft police had to rescue five students from Leiden last weekend after they got stuck in an elevator in a building on the Bosboom Toussaintplein. The police were assisted by an elevator repair company. The lift became stuck after the five students had begun dancing in it.
Cultural knowledge
While a product may be perfectly suited for one country, cultural differences can cause the same product to completely miss the mark in another country. And for an open economy like the Dutch economy, knowledge of other cultures is therefore vital for product development, according to Professor Daan van Eijk, who expounded on these views during his inaugural lecture as a professor of Industrial Design Engineering at TU Delft on December 8. Van Eijk also believes it’s essential to encourage more collaboration between product designers and social researchers, such as anthropologists. His main argument is that understanding how culture influences product development is essential for the Netherlands’ open economy. “It’s not true that globalization is causing all the products around world to look more and more like each other. That is indeed generally thought to be the case, but in fact the opposite is true,” Van Eijk says. During his address, Van Eijk also strongly emphasized the need for more multidisciplinary partnerships and research: “More collaboration between product designers and social researchers, such as anthropologists, is essential in this respect.”
Top earners
In 2005, TU Delft paid out the highest salaries of all the Dutch universities. But there is an exception: due to TU Delft reorganization, the university had to pay extra compensation to a number of employees. According to government figures, last year approximately 189 TU Delft employees earned more the prime minister of the Netherlands (158,000 euro). TU Delft was followed by the University of Utrecht (31 employees earning more than 158,000 euro), Groningen (30) and the University of Amsterdam (28).
Memory paper
Forget your USB stick? Doesn’t matter, because a Indian student has developed a technology for saving information on a piece of paper: up to 450 gigabytes (GB) – or 100 times that of a DVD – can be stored on a standard piece of A4 paper. The student, Sainul Abideen, showed a reporter from the Arab News how the technology worked by playing a film on his computer that was stored on piece of paper. Storing information on paper is cheaper than on CDs or DVDs and better for the environment.
Sustainable energy
A number of leading Dutch research institutes have launched the Dutch Research Platform on Sustainable Energy Supply (NODE). NODE aims to make the scientific knowledge about future energy sources developed by the respective partners more accessible for governments and industry. The platform will also promote partnerships, such as those between institutes and companies. “Only technology can provide solutions to the energy problems,” says Tim van der Hagen, one of NODE’s initiators and a professor of Reactor Physics at TU Delft. “The problem is that research is being fragmented at the moment and policy-makers, industry and scientists cannot consistently reach the levels of agreement needed to arrive at attainable solutions.” It’s for this reason that leading research institutes, including the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN), FOM-Rijnhuizen and the three Dutch technological universities, have decided to combine their strengths in the Netherlands Research Platform for Sustainable Energy Supply.
Comments are closed.