Mysterious microscope
A mystery on the fifth floor of Universiteitssingel 50: who owns that “futuristic gadget” that was found in the corridor? “A cross between a sci-fi prop and a DIY project gone wild,” is the description sent by the finder, associate professor Harry Gosker, to colleagues in recent weeks via e-mail and intranet. Okay, those words were written with a wink (“and some help from ChatGPT”), Gosker admits on the phone. There is a suspicion as to what it is: a self-made fluorescence microscope – a microscope that can be used to study tissue, making parts of it visible by causing it to emit light. “But we don’t know exactly, and we have no idea how old it is either. It contains fairly expensive parts, including lenses. It is strange that someone would just leave it there.”
Even more strange: that up until now nobody has contacted Gosker. “The thing has been in my office for weeks, I have now had it transferred to professor of microscopy Marc van Zandvoort. He felt that it certainly should not be discarded. But I think that it is also just gathering dust in his lab; they might be able to use it for spare sparts eventually.” If the owner wants to prevent this potential dismantling, they can still contact Harry Gosker ([email protected]).
Pole goes viral
A pole that automatically sinks into the ground and then comes back up again: it sounds rather boring, but the past weeks, it has been an absolute hit on TikTok. The account with the name butterflyeffect722, which only posts short films of the sinking pole in the Boschstraat in Maastricht, received more than half a million likes in one month’s time. Some videos were watched more than a million times, with a peak of 8.8 million views.
Reason for its popularity? Schadenfreude. Road users who have just collided with a pole are the focus point. Since the installation of the system in 2006, such accidents are the order of the day. The poles only allow vehicles with permits, including public transport buses, access to the restricted traffic area of the Markt. A few seconds after these have passed the poles, they shoot upwards again. Motorists who quickly follow a car or bus, or who have missed the warning signs, get stuck on the pole. This happens dozens of times a year, after which the city authorities claim the damages – amounting to thousands of euros – from the drivers.
The frustration about the situation has existed for a long time, but it hasn’t led to a solution yet. The popularity on TikTok seems to have given new life to the discussion: the local fractions of D66, Volt and Partij Veilig Maastricht recently submitted a motion to have the poles replaced by a more “collision-friendly model” or camera surveillance with automatic fining.
Fair darts
Seeing your research results back in a competition with the best dart players in the world? This happened to researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology. The popular Premier League Darts, which ended after sixteen weeks last Thursday, adapted its playing schedule to fit calculations created in Eindhoven this year.
The organisation actually introduced a new format in 2022, in which the dart players play a weekly knock-out competition. This did not always work out fairly. It appeared that some players came up against strong competitors more often than others.
This could be fairer, PhD candidate Roel Lambers discovered during his research into fairness in sports schedules. As easy as the conclusion sounds, the calculations were very difficult. “That is really serious mathematics,” supervisor and professor Frits Spieksma emphasised to sister newspaper Cursor. He took the plunge and approached the organisation via a contact form on the website. “I thought: I will never hear from them again,” said Spieksma. But when he saw the schedules for 2024, it turned out that these had been adapted in accordance with their results. It didn’t, by the way, help fellow countryman Michael van Gerwen: he couldn’t help but see British Luke Littler win the competition.