May 16, 2013

Printing human skin in 3D to help burn victims

Filed under: Science,Technology by Orangemaster @ 11:16 am

The concept of SkinPrint, thought up by a group of students at Leiden University, uses a 3D printer to print pieces of human skin for skin grafting. SkinPrint has won the Digital Award, the country’s most sought-after student award.

“SkinPrint could mean a revolution in medicine”, explains team leader Ingmar van Hengel in the press. A healthy piece of skin is removed from a burn victim and then printed, ready to be used for medical procedures. SkinPrint must undergo a lot more scrutiny and certification before it can be used, say about five years.

There are many scientists around the world working on printing human body parts such as skin, ears, livers and what not. Have a look at 7 Cool Uses of 3D Printing in Medicine.

(Link: www.parool.nl, Photo of an Ultimaker)

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April 4, 2013

Nineteenth century Netherlands plans to reclaim everything

Filed under: Architecture,Technology by Branko Collin @ 10:10 am

This map by Belgian citizen and inventor Jerôme Wenmaekers from 1876 shows his plans to reclaim the entire Zuiderzee, including the Wadden Sea.

According to De Verdieping van Nederland, Wenmaekers plans required the use of his own dike building machines, but the inventor would not release the plans for those until he got the reclamation concession. On the other hand, the minister of public works would not approve the plan as long as he could not see how the machines worked. Both parties remained in that deadlock and in the end it was Cornelis Lely whose plans were used.

Lely’s plan was much less ambitious, but still very ambitious—his Flevoland polder is the largest artificial island in the world by a wide margin.

The green inset in this second map from 1866 shows the area Wenmaekers wanted to reclaim. According to NRC, for 70 years (between 1850 and 1920) the Dutch discussed what to do with the country’s ‘wet heart’, which led to at least 581 publications. One plan even called for the reclamation of the North Sea.

(Source: Nationaal Archief, via Martin Wisse)

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March 29, 2013

Still to be opened Apple museum changes venue

Filed under: Technology by Orangemaster @ 11:22 am

Back in December 2012 we told you about the Netherlands’ first Apple museum opening its doors in Ureterp, Friesland on 16 March 2013, but that didn’t happen due to space issues at the original venue.

Instead, the Apple museum will be housed in a farm in the tiny village of Orvelte, Drenthe. Picture a quaint Dutch village of 230 souls with a blacksmith, a glassblower, a clog maker, an old fashioned sweets shop and an Apple museum.

We’re all still waiting for the official opening date; we’ll keep you posted.

(Link: www.hyped.nl, Photo: two of the many Apples cluttering my closet)

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March 6, 2013

Taking the guesswork out of expiration dates

Filed under: Food & Drink,Science,Technology by Orangemaster @ 6:34 pm

Expiration dates on food are just a guideline. Sometimes, things like milk are bad from the get-go, while tinned products seem to last for years. However, we don’t really know, as most of us make sure nothing green is growing on our food or sniff it to make sure it smells alright.

But wouldn’t it be great to have the guesswork taken out of the equation? The Eindhoven University of Technology is working on doing just that using a plastic analogue-digital converter, or plastic chip. The cost of having these chips on food are less than a euro cent and could also be used for other expiration date sensitive goods such as medicine.

One of the researchers on this project says food can be monitored already using standard silicon chips, but that is too expensive, about 10 euro cent, which is too much for a one euro item. That is why they are using plastic, as the chips can be applied directly to packaging. And apparently, the chips use some very complex mathematics to make sure they work properly.

(Link: opmerkelijk.nieuws.nl, Photo of Orange juice – expiration date by viZZZual.com, some rights reserved)

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February 25, 2013

Printing error in law could mean more money for record companies

Filed under: IT,Technology by Branko Collin @ 1:20 pm

Here is some free advice for our government. If you want the difference between gigabit and gigabyte to be clear, do not abbreviate those words!

A small printing error has made it so that multinational record companies can pump even more of our tax money out of the country, at least in theory. In October last year the Ministry of Justice published a table of copyright levies in Staatsblad, the official government newspaper in which laws and decisions must be printed to become legal. Where the ministry wanted to write ‘gigabyte’, it wrote ‘Gb’, an abbreviation meaning gigabit. When talking about storage a byte typically contains 8 bits.

This means that legally speaking people who for example buy a smartphone with 2 gigabytes of storage would have to pay a higher price.

In practice this will likely not occur. Jochem Donker, a legal consultant working for Stichting Thuiskopie, the organisation that will collect the levies, told Webwereld: “We agreed upon gigabytes, so I find it hard to imagine that parliament suddenly changed its mind. This is probably a capslock error. I expect we will not abuse this.” Several lawyers called the use of ‘gigabit’ “an apparent mistake” (kennelijke verschrijving).

The ministry has decided that it will not correct the text until the levies are up for revision in 2014. “If we had meant gigabit, we would have written Gbps.” Fail! Gbps means ‘gigabit per second’. Later the spokesperson admitted that the ministry had made a mistake. “But it is evident that we meant ‘gigabyte’. The reports of the lower house also say ‘gigabyte’.”

Here is more free advice. If you desperately do want to use abbreviations, for instance because you are printing a table and the columns aren’t very wide, explain your abbreviations in a legend.

(Image: Staatsblad)

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January 23, 2013

Have a break with chocolate but without WIFI access

Filed under: Design,Technology by Orangemaster @ 12:36 pm

An advertising campaign that builds on Kit Kat’s slogan ‘Have a break, have a Kit Kat’ features a place to sit and have a break that is WIFI free (‘Free no WIFI zone’). That’s right, no WIFI instead of the usual free WIFI, although ‘Free no WIFI zone’ sounds weird, evoking a ‘yes, we have no bananas’ grammar feel to it.

The red bench is right downtown Amsterdam on the Max Euweplein (Max Euwe Square), named after Dutch chess Grandmaster, Max Euwe. It’s also surrounded by a casino, a comedy club and more venues that cater to non-Dutch speaking tourists.

What is cool about this street furniture advertising campaign is that it actually blocks WIFI signals within a 5-metre radius. I will test it next time I am downtown and report back.

UPDATE On Jan 31 I went to see if it was there and it had gone.

(Link: www.amsterdamadblog.com, Photo of Kit kat by Jexweber.fotos, some rights reserved)

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January 22, 2013

Building to be built using a 3D printer

Filed under: Design,Technology by Orangemaster @ 10:36 am

Designed by Dutch architect Janjaap Ruijssenaars of Universe Architecture in Amsterdam, this möbius strip of a house, has a ‘coiled, acrobatic form, with double-curved walls and twisting floor plates, which could be impossible to build using conventional concrete construction methods’. However, Ruijssenaars says he could build or in any case theoretically build his home using a 3D printer.

Created for the European design competition, which highlights the work of young designers, the ‘Landscape House’ was designed by Ruijssenaars with the help of artist and mathematician Rinus Roelofs, and could be built as early 2014.

(Links and photo: www.architizer.com, techcrunch.com)

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January 19, 2013

Belgium bans Dutch Rail’s top train

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 9:48 pm

A Belgian rail safety body has suspended the Dutch high-speed train Fyra on its network, Dutchnews reports.

According to De Gelderlander, pieces of the train had been found on the track, which may have come loose because of chunks of ice on the track. The suspension won’t be lifted until Monday evening, according to Belgian paper Knack.

Dutch Rail introduced nine new Fyra trains on 9 December last year and cancelled its regular, cheaper Amsterdam-Brussels service on the same date. A Fyra ticket was twice as expensive as a ticket for the regular train.

State-owned Dutch Rail has a de facto monopoly on train services in the profitable areas of the Netherlands. Members of European Parliament get a 50% discount when they travel by Fyra, Dutchnews reported last year.

The new Fyra trains (model V250) are made by Italian company AnsaldoBreda, which wrote on 19 December: “The technical problems which occurred in the early days, – after careful technical analysis carried out by AB staff as well as by experts of the company that manage the network – were not imputable to the train, but to issues related to the infrastructure system.” Dutch Rail is putting the blame for the current problems squarely on AnsaldoBreda, according to treinreiziger.nl. Dutch Rail CEO Bert Meerstadt told the site: “The early problems combined with the safety risk that ice blocks are causing show that the V250 does not live up to what we agreed with its manufacturer.”

See also: Dutch Rail abused privacy ‘anonymous’ transport card users, and more

(Photo by Arnold de Vries, some rights reserved)

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January 2, 2013

Free public transport on NYE in Rotterdam due to software error

Filed under: Technology by Orangemaster @ 11:46 am

On New Year’s Eve in and around Rotterdam trams were free of charge because the check-in devices were programmed to believe that the year 2012 was a leap year. Since nobody could check in using the right device (scan their cards), transport was free.

A traveller also commented that when he tried to buy a monthly travel card on 30 December 2012 from the appropriate vending machine, it would insist the year had to contain 2012 in it and did not recognise the year 2013.

Maybe the software was programmed by Mayans.

(Link: www.rijnmond.nl)

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December 23, 2012

Apple museum opens its doors in Friesland

Filed under: Dutch first,History,IT,Technology by Branko Collin @ 12:33 pm

A museum dedicated to the computers of US manufacturer Apple has opened its doors in the town of Ureterp, just East of Drachten in Friesland.

The Apple Museum Nederland is run by volunteers and focuses on keeping Apple computers up and running so that visitors can experience first hand how these machines used to work. The museum is housed at the top floor of a Mac repair shop and is not affiliated with Apple.

On 22 December the museum opened its doors for the first time and it will also be open on 29 December and 5 January. The official opening will be on 16 March, Bright reports.

Macfreak says this is the third Apple museum in the world. The name Ureterp stems from Urathorp and means ‘Upper Village’, as in upstream from the river Boorne.

(Photo: Google Street View)

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