The sexiest lecture of the year?
a. Advanced Food Chemistry
b. Nutrition and Health
c. Food Quality Management
There was nothing particularly risqué about the lecture itself. After it was over the professor, alone at his laptop, found himself (by accident, he said) on a porn site. The classroom was still visible online, causing a big commotion. The upshot: exit porn prof.
2. The most popular lab animal in DLO?
a. The fish
b. The mouse
c. The chicken
For the first time in history, DLO was open about its use of animals in experiments. Fish were in the lead, with a total of 17,000 of them used in 2011. The rise of aquaculture is generating a lot of extra research.
3. ‘A decision on shaky grounds’. What?
a. Gilbert Atuga withdraws from the student council
b. Alterra keeps a hydrological study under its hat
c. Irene Poll is crowned Student of the Year
Dutch national ombudsman Alex Brenninkmeijer wrote a pretty damning report on the conduct of an Alterra study on groundwater levels in the Netherlands. The answers a and c are true as well, in themselves, but were not what the title referred to.
4. Feels like ‘an old camel in amongst the lambs’. Who?
a. Aalt Dijkhuizen announcing his departure during the opening of Orion
b. Oldest student at Wageningen University counts his blessings
c. Han Lindeboom on his stint on Texel
This was said by 55-year-old Huub Lenders, organic winegrower in Portugal, who has started an MSc in Management Economics and Consumer Studies.
5. Didn’t see the light. Who?
a. Huang Ningen
b. Ine de Vries
c. The porno-prof.
See the answer to question 1. Huang Ningen (‘Follow Wageningen’) is the name of a Chinese baby born in Beijing in mid-August. The parents, Tom and Zoe, are alumni who met as students in Wageningen. Ine de Vries (writer’s real name known to the editors) had her debut with the short story The Ninth, set in Orion.
6. True!
a. Plants grow towards red light
b. Plants grow towards green light
c. Plans grow towards blue light
A Wageningen discovery! It is the blue rays of light specifically that influence the direction the seedlings grow in. Wageningen and American researchers also revealed the mechanism responsible for this. Clever stuff.
7. The supply contract for coffee was withdrawn. Why?
a. The coffee was not pure
b. The coffee was not fairtrade
c. The coffee was not nice
The coffee tender ended in a fiasco. The procedure was impeccable but the coffee on offer was just not tasty enough. So for the foreseeable future we’re drinking DE.
8. 175,000 euros. What?
a. Idealis director Hans van Medenbach’s golden handshake
b. Martin Kropff’s reduced salary
c. The costs of the opening party in Orion
On his renewed appointment Martin Kropff had to take a drop in salary of 15 percent. How much is left on his salary slip is private. The Orion party cost a pretty penny too, but then it was quite a bash. The dismissed Van Medenbach got 175,000 euros to go away with.
9. 9456?
a. The postcode of the street where the wolf of Luttelgeest was found
b. The number of staff at Wageningen UR
c. The access code to the forbidden floor of Orion
There are a lot of people working at Wageningen UR, but not 9456. And as a postcode, this figure takes you to the Aa and Hunze. In the short story The Ninth (see question 5), this code brings you the floor in Orion where things go on that cannot bear the light of day.
10. Filthy, according to RTL. Who or what?
a. Student house WURhalla
b. Student house Elhalla
c. Student house Walhalla
The RTL TB programme ‘How clean is your house?’ gave student house Elhalla a good going-over.
11. Insight that won alumnus Bert Tolkamp the Ig-Nobel Prize:
a. When a cow stands up it is hard to predict when it will lie down again
b. When a cow stands up it is almost certain to lie down again at some point
c. Don’t disturb a pregnant cow
Yes! A Nobel prize. Even if it is for an alumnus and is actually an Ig-Nobel prize. Tolkamp did research on the reclining behaviour of cows with this –trivial it may seem at first glance – result.
12. A highlight. Which of the three?
a. Arnold van Vliet wins Wageningen gold medal
b. Argos coxed double skull turns heads at Varsity
c. Wageningen: best farmers’ university in the world
Cuddly biologist Arnold van Vliet won the Wageningen silver medal of honour. The successful Argo pair turned heads, but did so without a cox. In the National Taiwan University Rankings, Wageningen at last came out as the world’s top agricultural university. Just in time for Aalt Dijkhuizen.
13. Power cuts on campus will be longer in future. Why?
a. Wageningen UR is cutting back on energy
b. Wageningen UR thinks a reserve cable is too expensive
c. The growth of the campus makes it harder to locate a defect
The existing reserve cable is no longer available and a new one will cost 875,000 euros. According to the board, that investment outweighs the risk of disruption by a storm.
14. Bennekom was kept awake by it!
a. Beringhem’s first birthday on 13 September 2013
b. The soil drilling national championships on 2 October 2013
c. The west wind on 2 September 2013
The foreign students in Beringhem hold very civilized parties. The soil drillers don’t disturb anyone, unless you count the worms. The real disturbance came from the opening party in Orion, the noise from which carried as far as the other side of Bennekom on the west wind.
15. The Green Man cheers up at the thought of…
a. Radix Polaris
b. Ellen Jansen
c. Dijkgraaf students who put out their own garbage
The Green man likes all sustainable initiatives, so all the answers are correct. Radix Polaris is the shared freezer in Radix. Ellen Jansen initiated a swap campaign, to draw attention to the excessive use of plastic bags. Everyone loves those quirky Dijkgraaf students: especially when they deal with their own garbage.
16. And we are calling it: Virodrome.
a. Domelike incubator to be built next to FrieslandCampina
b. Nickname for the toilets at microbiology
c. PhD student patents small seven-sided pyramid
The incubator is still unborn. Nothing is known yet about the form it will take. The toilets at Microbiology are simply called WC. Virodrome is the name of a seven-sided pyramid-shaped particle that uses the SIRV2 virus to escape from the host cell. Microbiologist Tessa Quax discovered this remarkable ploy in a single-cell organism in a hot spring in Iceland.
17. Wageningen UR is going to research urban issues. Together with?
a. Zurich (ETH)
b. London (UCL)
c. Boston (MIT)
With the TU Delft and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That is how Wageningen and Delft trumped the Amsterdam universities.
18. Alterra researchers wants extraterrestrial garden. With which plant?
a. Arabidopsis
b. Arnica
c. Sunflower
Ecologist Wieger Wamelink got into the press with his study of the growth potential of plants in moon and mars soil. He tried it with tomatoes and Arnica montana, among other plants.
19. Student daughters get more money from their parents than sons because…
a. They think they are princesses
b. The parents think they need more support
c. They whinge for money more than boys
Resource did its own research and what do you know? Girls get an average of 233 euros from their parents, boys no more than 165 euros. Why? There may be something in both answers a and c. But the main reason assumed in the article is the princess syndrome: parents think girls are more vulnerable.
20. Duivendaal was full, just like old times. Why?
a. In support of the Year of the Bee
b. To protest against Monsanto
c. To celebrate the student housing in the former admin headquarters
The March against Monsanto on 27 May brought an estimated 1500-2000 people into action. A motley crew of bee fanciers, peace activists, Monsanto-haters and other do-gooders.