"We dropped the ball after the first SARS outbreak," Eric Snijder, professor of molecular virology at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), said to WNL Op Saterdag. If lessons had be learnt from that coronavirus outbreak, antiviral meds could have been ready to help with the Covid-19 outbreak, he said.
Science
Apr 7 '20 09:45
Mar 31 '20 08:41
Johnson & Johnson and the United States Department of Health pushed 1 billion dollars into a possible vaccine against coronavirus Covid-19 being developed by Janssen Vaccines & Prevention in Leiden, a subsidiary of the American company. Johnson & Johnson hopes to have the first batches of Covid-19 vaccines ready for emergency authorization by early next year, the company said in a statement.
Mar 30 '20 16:30
Researchers in Noord-Nederland are launching a large scale study into the possible risk factors for coronavirus Covid-19. The researchers hope that this study, done by bio-bank Lifelines, the University of Groningen, UMC Groningen, and the Aletta Jacobs School of Public Health, will help predict the course of future infectious diseases, Dagblad van het Noorden reports.
Mar 26 '20 15:15
The public attention given to the number of deaths and infections at the hands of Covid-19 has led to speculation about the impact of the disease on the Netherlands in comparison to in other affected countries. However, experts warn, the tendency to draw conclusions from numbers alone can be misleading.
Mar 22 '20 09:00
Museums all around the Netherlands have begun offering content online to give patrons a taste of culture while facilities remain closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Several others have added a variety of children's content to entertain and educate young students forced to stay at home while their schoolhouse doors stay shut.
Mar 19 '20 17:20
While the province of Noord-Brabant has seen an alarming rise in coronavirus patients, which nearly quadrupled since March 12, the overall percentage of total Dutch cases resident in the province has steadily declined. As of Thursday, Noord-Brabant was home to 842 people who tested positive for coronavirus, nearly 36 percent of the Dutch total of patients for whom their residence was known.
Just one week ago, Noord-Brabant was the home province of 46 percent of the country's cases, data from public health agency RIVM showed. By March 17 that number was below 39 percent.
Dec 27 '19 08:30
Maastricht University in the Netherlands said it was adversely affected by a "serious cyber attack." The university has been trying to recover from the attack since Tuesday, where offenders reportedly used ransomware, a method that encrypts files which are then only decrypted after a ransom is paid.
Dec 17 '19 17:00
The Dutch government is implementing a large number of rules, regulations, and law changes at the stroke of midnight on January 1. Below is a summary of changes made in the category Education and Culture:
Nov 28 '19 09:18
A new invention from blood bank Sanquin means that the abolition of animal testing is one step closer. Sanquin developed a new test to see if medicines cause fever which uses donor blood instead of the current method of using rabbits. Currently 400 thousand rabbits die through this testing per year worldwide, including around 500 in the Netherlands, RTL Nieuws reports.
Nov 11 '19 10:20
The Netherlands might not be able to keep roadways from icing over this winter, due to high levels of the chemical PFAS in the country's rock salt supply. Rock salt makes up the vast majority of the country's road salt supply, of which an average of 200 thousand tons is distributed every winter along Dutch roads, said Ardin Bos in an interview with the Telegraaf.
Oct 21 '19 15:20
The Solar Team of the Eindhoven University of Technology won the World Solar Challenge in Australia in the cruiser category. This is the fourth year in a row that the Eindhoven team won gold in this category for family solar-powered cars, the university announced on Twitter.
Sep 30 '19 15:30
The latest images from Dutch space instrument Tropomi, which maps air pollution around the globe, shows that India is the new top polluter in the world. Also, research shows that the Netherlands has one of the highest concentrations of nitrogen dioxide in Europe, Pieternel Levelt, head of satellite observation at Dutch meteorological institute KNMI and professor at TU Delft, said to newspaper AD.
Sep 13 '19 09:59
A team from Radboud University Nijmegen was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize for their research into dirty bank notes. The research showed that Romanian banknotes hold onto bacteria the longest, while Croatia's money is cleanest.
Aug 21 '19 12:20
From today the Dutch public can suggest names for the "Dutch" exoplanet that was gifted to the Netherlands by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), to celebrate the union's 100th birthday, the Volkskrant reports.
The IAU is responsible for, among other things, naming planets and other celestial bodies. To celebrate its 100th year of existence, the IAU "gave" planets to over 70 countries to name. The Netherlands got star HAT-P-6, which is 910 light years away from earth, and the planet that revolves around it, currently known by scientific name HAT-P-6-b.
Aug 15 '19 11:50
This week students from TU Delft's Project MARCH presented the fourth edition of their robotic exoskeleton that is intended to help people with paraplegia walk again. This new version, the MARCH IV, includes a new hip with which users can also step sideways - a first in this type of design, according to the students.
Aug 6 '19 16:50
The Eindhoven University of Technology designed a sustainable alternative for the diesel and petrol generators used at festivals - a collapsible wind turbine that comes equipped with solar panels and a battery for energy storage. The GEM tower will be tested for the first time at the Pukkelpop festival in Hasselt, Belgium nine days from now, NOS reports.
Aug 6 '19 10:10
The knowledge platform on integration and society KIS is looking into launching new studies into racism in the Netherlands. According to project leader Hanneke Felten, new research is desperately needed because there is currently virtually no scientifically based information on how to combat open racism, while this is a growing phenomenon. "Science focuses primarily on more subtle, unconscious prejudices, less on extreme, open racism", she said to newspaper AD.
Jun 9 '19 10:27
Residents in the Groningen province received a scary start to Sunday morning when an earthquake measuring 2.5 on the Richter Scale shook the ground and rattled windows. The earthquake took place at 7 a.m. with an epicenter located below the small village of Garrelsweer.
"It was a huge bang. For a moment I thought there was a truck on its side," Garrelsweer resident Sibrand Bakker told the Telegraaf.
Apr 11 '19 12:00
Astronomers managed to produce the first ever picture of an event horizon - a black hole's edge - by stringing together a global network of radio telescopes. "We have seen the gates of hell at the end of space and time", astrophysicist Heino Falcke of Radboud University in Nijmegen said about the picture at a press conference in Brussels, science journal Nature reports.
Apr 10 '19 12:10
The number of cats and dogs used for medical experiments increased by 49 percent in 2017. In that year 909 dogs and 200 cats were used as lab animals, compared to 656 dogs and 89 cats in 2016, AD reports based on figures from the Dutch food and consumer product safety authority NVWA.
Half of the laboratory dogs and a third of the cats did not survive the experiments in 2017, according to the newspaper.
Apr 9 '19 15:10
Playing games - any type of game ranging from puzzles to video games - makes you more intelligent, according to a study by University of Amsterdam researchers Jessica Piotrowski and Patti Valkenburg, and Karin Fikkers from the University of Utrecht. "We have to adjust our negative image of games", Piotrowski said to Fiola.
Apr 5 '19 14:35
While perhaps more commonly known for floods than droughts, The Netherlands is allocating seven million euros to combat excessively dry seasons in the country. The money will be used to build larger water reservoirs in sandy areas, to monitor levels of evaporation, and to reduce the impact of salinization on drinking water production, the government announced on Friday.
Apr 3 '19 12:40
Researchers found a Dutch shipwreck from early in the 16th century while cleaning up containers that went overboard from the MSC Zoe on New Year's eve. This is the oldest shipwreck ever discovered in Dutch waters, the National Cultural Heritage Agency said on Wednesday.
Feb 7 '19 15:10
Three skeletons were found during archeological excavations in Den Bosch. The skeletons are believed to be soldiers who died during the siege of the city in the Eighty Years' War in the 17th century. Two skeletons were excavated during the past few days. The third skeleton is in the process of being excavated on Thursday, NOS reports.
