November 4, 2014

Ambulance drone could drastically reduce response times

Filed under: Health,Science by Orangemaster @ 11:29 am

Belgian engineering student Alec Momont, a graduate at the Delft University of Technology, has developed an ‘ambulance drone’, a defibrillator which can fly at 100 km/h able to reach heart attack victims very quickly. It uses the GPS of emergency calls to navigate.

This drone or ‘Unmanned Aerial Vehicle’ (UAV), can get a defibrillator to a patient within a 12 km2 zone within a minute, reducing the chance of survival from 8 percent to 80 percent. Momont explains that it is the relatively long response time of emergency services of around 10 minutes, while brain death and fatalities occur with four to six minutes, which makes the fatality rate so high.

I’m easily convinced. It reminds me of an evening in the pub recently chatting outdoors and watching an ambulance trying to find an address in Amsterdam West with their GPS but having to ask us for directions. The police was following them, got lost as well and asked us for those same directions. I’m sure that wasted at least 10 minutes.

One drone is expected to cost around 15,000 euro and could also carry other medical tools.

(Link: phys.org)

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November 3, 2014

Fined for Dutch flag on license plate

Filed under: Automobiles,General by Orangemaster @ 12:20 pm

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A man got fined 147 euro for putting the sticker of a Dutch flag over the EU logo on his license plate.

Legally you can’t hide any part of the license plate, not even something deemed non-essential by some. Apparently, in the UK someone put a UK sticker over the EU part, argued in court, and won. According to Wikipedia, the EU symbol is not compulsory in the UK.

Chances are, someone from the UK won’t leave the UK by car as often as the average Dutch car leaves its borders, and so not having the right sticker seems less important in the UK than in the Netherlands.

(Link: www.waarmaarraar.nl, Photo by Quistnix, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 1.0)

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October 31, 2014

Florida woman attempts fraud in Dutch and fails

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:25 am

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A woman in Florida faked slipping and falling on the floor at chain store Target in order to defraud her insurance company. Margaret Dagniewska, 38, told a Target employee that she injured her neck, back, legs and shin at the store.

First, the surveillance camera shows her sitting down and second – the funny bit – she called her mother in Dutch telling her that she was sitting on the floor. Little did she know that a store employee understood Dutch and made a right fool of Dagniewska.

When the paramedics showed up, they left Dagniewska sitting there to get up on her own. The woman was eventually jailed for fraud. Dagniewska is a known defrauder, and it is not know if she is a card-carrying Dutch or maybe Belgian national.

(Link: www.wptv.com, Photo of mop and bucket by Phil Parker, some rights reserved)

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October 29, 2014

Dutch bike designed and made in the Netherlands

Filed under: Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 9:43 am

EPO-bike-by-Bob-Schiller

Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Bob Schiller has launched Epo bicycles with the hopes of seeing bicycle manufacturing make a come back in the Netherlands. His goal was to design a bike that could be both built and used here. “Even our prime minister uses his bike to get to work. Cycling is part of our culture and it has been for centuries. However, an affordable, contemporary Dutch bicycle disappeared from our streets.”

True, most mass-produced bicycles are manufactured in Asia as labour costs there are lower. Gazelle and Batavus brand bikes are Dutch and there are more, but yes, the fancy new ones are usually expensive designer bikes like VanMoof or BlackStar Bikes and not the kind you ride to work every day for fear of them being stolen for starters.

It’s a nice idea, but unless labour costs go down, which they won’t, many designer Dutch bikes will continue to be a luxury item.

(Links: www.dezeen.com, www.madpac.nl)

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October 28, 2014

Joint record data transmission over new fiber type

Filed under: IT by Orangemaster @ 7:00 am

Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology together and the University of Central Florida, report in the journal Nature Photonics the successful transmission of a record high 255 Terabits/s over a new type of fiber allowing 21 times more bandwidth than currently available in communication networks. This new type of fiber could be an answer to mitigating the impending optical transmission capacity crunch caused by the increasing bandwidth demand.

The new fiber has seven different cores through which the light can travel, instead of one in current state-of-the-art fibers. This compares to going from a one-way road to a seven-lane highway. Also, they introduce two additional orthogonal dimensions for data transportation – as if three cars can drive on top of each other in the same lane. Combining those two methods, they achieve a gross transmission throughput of 255 Terabits/s over the fiber link. This is more than 20 times the current standard of 4-8 Terabits/s.

(Link: phys.org, Photo by Mephisto, some rights reserved, based on a photo by Daniel Mayara)

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October 24, 2014

Bike path with solar cells finally being built

Filed under: Bicycles,Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 11:39 am

SolaRoad

In 2011 we had a story about a Dutch bike path with solar panels to be built in Krommenie, North Holland by SolaRoad in 2012, but apparently construction is happening right now in October 2014.

A straight stretch of 70 metres of bike path is being fitted with a concrete base, topped with a 1 cm thick layer of crystalline silicon solar cells. The solar cells will be protected by a thick, heavy-duty glass surface strong enough to drive a truck over it.

The Netherlands’ 140,000 kilometres of bike paths could be built out of 400 to 500 km2 of solar cells, which would provide a much bigger surface than the total roof surface of all Dutch houses, to give you an idea of future possibilities.

(Link: motherboard.vice.com, Photo: SolaRoad)

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October 23, 2014

Banksy makes his own Vermeer in Bristol

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 10:06 am

Bristol, UK now has their very own ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ revisited by Banksy and called ‘Girl with the Pierced Eardrum’, which has already been defaced. The earring is an alarm box.

(Link: www.independent.co.uk, Photo of Banksy’s Cleaner by Dan Brady, some rights reserved)

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October 22, 2014

Simple and soothing time lapse film of Dutch cities

Filed under: Architecture,Film by Orangemaster @ 12:39 pm

“In ,’7685 Frames of Netherlands’, filmmaker Pengcheng He documents the beauty of the old cities of the Netherlands in a charming series of tilt-shift time-lapses. He shot the video in Delft, Rotterdam and Amsterdam.”

Many people don’t see Rotterdam as one of the old cities, mainly because few old buildings were left in the city after the WWII. Delft and Amsterdam join cities like Haarlem and Nijmegen as old cities.

Amsterdam’s IJ river ferries kick it off, then the Stopera, but I’ll let you play guess the city on your own because I could possibly describe the entire video location by location (yes, that is a bit scary) having lived extensively in all three cities. Sometimes, the film even has a miniatures feel to it.

(Link: laughingsquid.com, Photo of Rotterdam, KPN building by Roel Wijnants, some rights reserved)

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October 21, 2014

Historical verdict in weed growers’ case

Filed under: Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 1:56 pm

The court of Groningen handed down a ‘historical verdict’ last Thursday by refusing to punish two cannabis growers who ‘safely and responsibly’ carry out their work, only selling to coffee shops and even paying taxes. While the court found the growers guilty of cultivating weed, it refused to punish them for doing so, underlying the Dutch hypocrisy of punishing ‘the back door’ while turning a blind eye to selling through ‘the front door’. Weed sold in coffee shops is ‘tolerated’ and still illegal, but it continues to be supplied illegally, which is often challenged.

“Coffee shops must supply themselves and so cultivation must be done to satisfy these demands,” the Groningen court said, “but the law does not state how this supply should be done.” What growers do is illegal, but allowing the sale of cannabis since 1976 in coffee shops is very hypocritical and blatantly encourages crime.

The government enjoys the tax money it gets from legitimate businesses like coffee shops, and now the back door has now been left open. Other growers could also soon go unpunished, en route to the legal supply of cannabis for coffee shops.

(Links: phys.org, www.voc-nederland.org)

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October 17, 2014

Playing with your food can be art

Filed under: Art,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 12:00 pm

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Daniel Kok makes artwork with custard, in Dutch known as ‘vla’, which comes in cartons like milk cartons. He’s going strong on instagram, showcasing Dutch and international portraits. He calls it ‘Vlaart’ (‘vla’ and ‘art’). Kok says his daughter asked him to make her something in 2011 and has been honing his custard art skills every since.

(Link and image: www.froot.nl)

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