Super Yacht Sub 3 from U-Boat Worx submersible

The Super Yacht Sub 3 from U-Boat Worx (a Dutch company whose previous clients include the rich and famous, not excluding Russian President Vladimir Putin).

As its name suggests, this three-seater is intended to fit on the side of your luxury yacht, giving you and your guests the chance to set off on an underwater adventure at a moment's notice.

So what can you expect when you hand over your €1,750,000 (around £1.4m)?

The sub can drop to a depth of either 100m (330 feet) or 300m (1,000 feet) depending on which model you opt for, and is fitted with six powerful thrusters to help you take on the strongest of ocean currents.

Inside the pod are all the trimmings you would expect, including leather seats and air conditioning, so you can travel in comfort.

One of the most important points to note about the Super Yacht Sub 3 is its compact size (171cm or 5'7' in height) and lightness (3,500kg or 3.4 tons), that gives it plenty of flexibility when it comes to transportation and storage.

Thanks to the 42kWh lithium-ion battery fitted on-board the Super Yacht Sub 3 you can keep going for around 12 hours on a single charge (so you'll need to turn around after about 6).

Also of interest is the 'Manta controller' system that allows you and your guests to take it in turns piloting the sub.

This is another recent innovation we're starting to see in the field of personal submarines: the simplification of the control systems so that anyone can take the wheel with very little self-training.

As you may or may not know, depending on whether you own a luxury yacht, storing and launching your personal sub can be a tricky business.

With this in mind, the Super Yacht 3 has been built to be as versatile as possible in terms of how it can be lowered into the ocean and the types of cranes it's designed to work with, according to the Dutch manufacturer, it can be easily adapted to fit any kind of crane configuration.

'With its flexible lifting arrangement, ultra-small size and ultra-low weight, this submersible is ready to come aboard to add a new dimension to your seafaring,' says U-Boat Worx on the sub's promotional material.

You're probably wondering about safety features too: the Super Yacht Sub 3 is fitted with a safety buoy (for getting back up to the surface), a drop weight (for anchoring the craft) and 96 hours of life support, so if you get stranded you can look after yourself for four days before you need to start getting worried.

The submarine has also been given a DNV-GL classification, that means that the powers-that-be in the maritime industry have officially recognised the Super Yacht Sub 3 as something that's sea-worthy and safe to take out into the ocean.

The craft can be set to autopilot for 8 or 16 hours depending on which model you choose. The hull itself is built from acrylic and steel and access is via a top hatch above the vessel (there's also a side hatch for maintenance use).

Should you want to get in touch with those back on the yacht or on land, there's a VHF handheld unit fitted for that very purpose, while navigation is taken care of with an echosounder and a magnetic compass on board.

If you fancy saving up £1.4m to make a Super Yacht Sub 3 your own, the new luxury submarines are expected to be finished in September 2015, giving you some time to put aside a little every month.

The Super Yacht Sub 3 is small enough to fit inside a shipping container, which again makes transportation much more straightforward once you've put your order in.

U-Boat Worx has a good track record with its previous underwater vessels, which include the C-Explorer 5 being piloted by Vladimir Putin.

DelFly Explorer: Dutch scientists flap to the future with 'insect' drone - Video

A view of the DelFly Explorer, the world's lightest autonomous flapping drone, during a demonstration at the Delft Technical University, on January 29, 2014 

Dutch scientists have developed the world's smallest autonomous flapping drone, a dragonfly-like beast with 3-D vision that could revolutionise our experience of everything from pop concerts to farming.

"This is the DelFly Explorer, the world's smallest drone with flapping wings that's able to fly around by itself and avoid obstacles," its proud developer Guido De Croon of the Delft Technical University told AFP.

Weighing just 20 grammes (less than an ounce), around the same as four sheets of printer paper, the robot dragonfly could be used in situations where much heavier quadcopters with spinning blades would be hazardous, such as flying over the audience to film a concert or sport event.

The Explorer looks like a large dragonfly or grasshopper as it flitters about the room, using two tiny low-resolution video cameras, reproducing the 3-D vision of human eyes, and an on-board computer to take in its surroundings and avoid crashing into things.

And like an insect, the drone which has a wingspan of 28 centimetres (11 inches), would feel at home flying around plants.

"It can for instance also be used to fly around and detect ripe fruit in greenhouses," De Croon said, with an eye on the Netherlands' vast indoor fruit-growing business.

"Or imagine, for the first time there could be an autonomous flying fairy in a theme park," he said.

'Real small insects'
Unlike other drones that use rotor blades and can weigh hundreds of times as much, the Explorer has two wings on each side that flap rapidly to create lift. "We got our inspiration from real small insects," De Croon said.

Chief Developer Guido de Croon releases the DelFly Explorer, the world's lightest autonomous flapping drone, during a demonstration at the Delft TU, on January 29, 2014

While smaller "flapping" drones exist, such as the RoboBee developed by students at Harvard University in the US, they are tethered for power, control and processing, and thus far from autonomous.

The Explorer has its own small lithium polymer battery that allows it to fly for around nine minutes, while it "sees" with its onboard processor and a specially-developed algorithm to make instant decisions.

RoboBee

It has wireless analogue video, gyroscopes and a barometer to calculate its height.

Different algorithms would allow it to perform different tasks, and because it is autonomous it could be sent into enclosed spaces such as concrete buildings or mine shafts, where radio control would be impossible, to search for casualties or hazards.

"The DelFly Explorer knows precisely where obstacles are located," said De Croon as the aircraft, built from composite materials including carbon fibre, fluttered towards a wall during a demonstration flight before veering elegantly away in search of another route.

But De Croon admits that humans are not quite able to produce swarms of autonomous robotic insects the size of bees or flies, mainly because of restrictions on battery life.

"Still there are some major challenges... and if I have to put a number on it, I think we are still a few decades away," he laughed.

Europe launches RoboEarth: 'Wikipedia for Robots'

A robotic arm, left, puts a package of Pringles on the serving tray of another robot to deliver it to an imaginary patient in a mock hospital room at the Technical University (TU) of Eindhoven, Netherlands, Wednesday Jan. 15, 2014. 

A group of five of Europe's top technical universities, together with technology conglomerate Royal Philips NV, are launching an open-source system dubbed "RoboEarth" Thursday. 

The heart of the mission is to accelerate the development of robots and robotic services via efficient communication with a network, or "cloud". 

AP Photo/Peter Dejong

Let the robot race begin. Expectations are high for RoboEarth, a new European-funded system to speed the development of human-serving robots.

Scientists from five major European technical universities have gathered in the Netherlands this week for its launch and to demonstrate possible applications.

The first: the deceptively simple task of delivering a glass of milk to a patient in a mock-up hospital room.

The system is sometimes billed as a kind of Wikipedia for robots, allowing them—or their programmers—to turn to it for information.

In a demonstration Wednesday at Eindhoven Technical University (TU), RoboEarth wirelessly instructed a scrappy waste bin-sized robot called "Avi" to scan a room's physical layout, including the location of the patient's bed and the placement of a carton of milk on a table nearby.

Then the system activated a second robot, the more humanoid "Amigo," which used the map provided by Avi to locate the milk, grasp it with a pincer hand and bring it to the side of the hospital bed.

That mission accomplished, he dropped it on the floor. Fortunately, it was a test run and no milk was spilled. Amigo hasn't been programmed for crying anyway.

The hospital exercise is just the beginning. Organizers say the tasks the robots are carrying out are of a technological sophistication comparable to those performed by high-end robots in automobile factories—they just look clumsier because robots that interact with humans are not performing repetitive tasks in the controlled, sanitized and predictable surroundings of a factory.

Amigo, a white robot the size of a person, uses information gathered by other robots to move towards a table to pick up a carton of milk and deliver it to an imaginary patient in a mock hospital room at the Technical University (TU) of Eindhoven, Netherlands, Wednesday Jan. 15, 2014. 

A group of five of Europe's top technical universities, together with technology conglomerate Royal Philips NV, are launching an open-source system dubbed "RoboEarth" Thursday. 

The heart of the mission is to accelerate the development of robots and robotic services via efficient communication with a network, or "cloud". 

AP Photo/Peter Dejong

Dutch Scientists make breakthrough in Nuclear fusion power station

The superconductivity research group of the University of Twente (UT) has made a technological breakthrough crucial to the success of nuclear fusion reactors, allowing for clean, inexhaustible energy generation based on the workings of the stars in our galaxy.

The crux of the new development is a highly ingenious and robust superconducting cable system.

This makes for a remarkably strong magnetic field that controls the very hot, energy-generating plasma in the reactor core, laying the foundation for nuclear fusion.

The new cables are far less susceptible to heating due to a clever way of interweaving, which allows for a significant increase in the possibilities to control the plasma.

Moreover, in combination with an earlier UT invention, the cables are able to withstand the immense forces inside the reactor for a very long time.

The increased working life of the superconductors and the improved control of the plasma will soon make nuclear fusion energy more reliable: the magnet coils take up one third of the costs of a nuclear fusion power station.

The longer their working life, the cheaper the energy will be. The research is a project within the context of the Green Energy Initiative of the University of Twente.

Cost-effective clean energy Project leader Arend Nijhuis: 'The worldwide development of nuclear fusion reactors is picking up steam, and this breakthrough leads to a new impulse.'

Arend Nijhuis

'Our new cables have already been extensively tested in two institutes.' Mr Nijhuis has been invited to form a new collaboration with oppressive China and expects that the UT system will become a global standard.

The world's largest nuclear fusion reactor, ITER, is under construction in Cadarache in France, and is expected to start operation by 2020, as a joint project of the US, EU, Russia, India, Japan, South Korea and China.

However, China and South Korea have also initiated their own national large-scale nuclear fusion projects, in which the UT technology can be incorporated.

Read the full article here

Theo Jansen's Strandbeests

Kinetic sculptor and artist Theo Jansen builds 'strandbeests' from yellow plastic tubing that is readily available in his native Holland.

The graceful creatures evolve over time as Theo adapts their designs to harness the wind more efficiently. They are powered only by the wind and even store some of the wind's energy in plastic bottle 'stomachs' to be used when there is no wind.

Mars One - Dutch Reality TV Program colonising Mars

The updated HD version is also available: Mars One introduction film (updated version).

The updated version includes subtitles in several languages: http://youtu.be/n4tgkyUBkbY

Hello Mars, here we come! A TV production Dutch company says it will produce the biggest reality TV show ever, centered around a group of humans who will colonise Mars.

Mars One was founded by Bas Lansdrop, a Netherlands researcher from Delft University, and has the backing of Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Gerard Hooft.

The TV firm claims it will put four people on the red planet every two years, beginning 2023.

Dutch H5N1 Flu researchers Eager to Restart their Hybridisation work

After six months of dispute, research in the Netherlands that made a deadly H5N1 flu airborne will be published this week. The scientists behind it now want to get on with their work – but they can't.

In December 2011, a US biosecurity committee advised against publishing the research, fearing it was "dual-use research of concern" (DURC) – done for noble reasons, but dangerous if pathogens escaped or if bioterrorists obtained them. Most committee members changed their minds in April, and approved publication.

But in January, before that turnaround, the world's top flu labs declared a moratorium on any further such research in a bid to calm the situation. "Now, we don't know under what conditions we can lift the moratorium," says Ab Osterhaus of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, where the research was done.

In theory they can at any time, because the agreement was voluntary. The problem, says Anthony Fauci, head of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is that any similar research done before ground rules for DURC are clarified could run into a similar dispute over publishing.

The US hastily published a new DURC policy in March. It says that if work with any of 15 pathogens increases virulence, transmission, hosts or resistance to defences, researchers must apply a mitigation plan to be agreed by relevant authorities. 

This may include increased containment, changing the experiment, withholding results, classifying the work under secrecy rules – or just not doing it.

A further plan will be published soon, says Fauci. It will flesh out what risks are unacceptable and how to mitigate them, and draw up a committee from US government agencies to apply the rules.

Some researchers welcome the move. "The policy adds another layer of oversight to make sure that all angles have been discussed before and after an experiment with potential dual use," says Adolfo García-Sastre at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.

Others fear trouble. Ron Fouchier, who led the Dutch work on H5N1, says the Dutch authorities are happy with his biocontainment precautions, but a US committee is re-examining them under the new DURC rules. 

He worries that pathogen research could simply leave the US. Fouchier thinks researchers and authorities should discuss safety while planning research – and that it should apply to more than the 15 pathogens.

"We need international guidelines on how to decide who can do what, based on the risks and benefits of the research," says Osterhaus. At the moment, he adds, not even bio-containment labs are standardised. He has asked the European Commission to get involved.

The World Health Organization will publish new guidelines on biosafety in coming weeks, and plans a global meeting on DURC issues next year.

David Heymann, chairman of the UK Health Protection Agency, agrees that global standards are needed.

"Stronger regulations are easy, but they're false security, as they either are not enforced, or affect law-abiding scientists but not rogues," he says. What will work, he adds, is if scientists agree on how to do research safely – and enforce this through peer pressure.

The Netherlands by André Kuipers. - Composite Image

7 shots of The Netherlands taken by ESA Astronaut André Kuipers on board the ISS.

Donkervoort GTO - Dutch supercar

The new Donkervoort GTO uses the 2.5-litre five-cylinder turbo from the Audi TT RS and, despite being the firm's largest-ever car, still weighs just 700kg - half the weight of a VW Golf.

The Caterham-style car a hefty 150mm wider and 350mm longer, says the firm, to accommodate Audi's longitudinally-mounted five-cylinder engine.

This motor has also been lightened by 30kg, again to aid weight distribution and handling.

ESA Astronaut, Andre Kuipers promotes Dutch Cheese in space

Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers will have a special treat waiting for him in orbit when he arrives in space next month: five kilogrammes of Amsterdam's finest cheese, its maker said Saturday.

The 53-year-old Kuipers is due to blast off on board a Soyuz rocket on December 21 with two other astronauts for a five-month-mission on board the International Space Station.

"Andre is a big fan of our cheese and asked us in a letter to arrange with space authorities to see if we could send up some of his favourite Old Amsterdam," the cheesemaker's spokeswoman Henriette Westland told AFP.

"After numerous emails to NASA and the European Space Agency, they agreed to send up around 10 kilogrammes (22 pounds)," she added.

She said the Dutch traditional snack had to be specially cut and wrapped before being shipped to Houston and then to Kazakhstan, where five kilogrammes were blasted off on board a cargo rocket to the ISS at the end of October.

Another five kilogrammes are expected to go up on another freight rocket from the Baikonur launching site by the end of January, Westland added.

Old Amsterdam cheese is one of the Westland company's best-known export brands and sold in some 70 countries.

Dutch Superbus: IAA Commercial Vehicles

Visitors examine a super bus concept project by Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, at the IAA Commercial Vehicles expo in Hanover, Germany

Dutch Moon Rock is a Fake: Is NASA Gift a fraud?

The lump of 'moon rock' had been on proud display for decades

A treasured piece of Moon Rock at the Dutch Rijkmuseum (the national museum) is nothing more than petrified wood, curators say.

It was originally a gift directly from NASA to the Dutch people. NASA claimed that it was gathered during the first manned lunar landing. Clearly, this claim is now in doubt.

The 'moon rock' was gifted to former Prime Minister Willem Drees during a goodwill tour by the three Apollo-11 astronauts shortly after their moon mission in 1969.

Mr Drees cherished it until he died. The 'moon rock' was then put on display at the Amsterdam Rijkmuseum. Again, a mistake may have taken place at this point and the wrong rock selected for display.

At one point the 'moon rock' was insured for around $500,000 (£308,000), but tests have now proved that the 'rock' on display is not the genuine article.

"Hey, You can trust me, I'm an astronaut!"

The Rijksmuseum, which is perhaps better known for paintings by artists such as Rembrandt, says it will keep the piece as a curiosity.

"It's a good story, with some questions that are still unanswered," Xandra van Gelder, who oversaw the investigation that proved the piece was a fake, was quoted as saying. "We can laugh about it." The "moon rock" had originally been vetted and verified through a phone call to Nasa, she added.

NASA gave honorary 'moon rocks' to more than 100 countries following lunar missions in the 1970s, allegedly. NASA officials said they had no explanation for the Dutch discovery but you can be sure that there is now a race on, by other 'rock' owners, to authenticate their 'treasured' rocks.

Is it only the Dutch that would be so 'amused' at misplacing a $500,000 civic artifacts? It is not like them to be so easily fooled when it comes to economic matters. Perhaps there is a more interesting story here, that is not being told, allegedly.

Dodo Bones Found in Mauritius

Dutch scientists from Leiden, representing the University's Dodo Research Team, have shared in the unique discovery of two bones , a pelvis and a leg, of the extinct flightless bird, the Dodo. These were found in the Mare aux Songes marsh on the island of Mauritius.

In the past, only single bones have been discovered. Peculiar to Mauritius, the Dodo was about one metre tall and weighed about 20kg. It died out in the late 17th century, as a result of human 'activity'.

The Leiden Natural History Museum Naturalis said that this was the first time that Dodo bones have been found in the position in which they died. A new excavation method was used, a drainage technique, which made the discovery possible. The bones lay among the remains of three giant turtles which probably got stuck in the marsh.

Definition: Human Activity
The birds were killed partly for food but mainly for sport by the islands visitors, the Dutch! The birds were pursued by the sailors and could not escape because they were flightless. Up to that point and for centuries prior to the human invasion, the Dodo had no enemies or predators so, it had no need to fly.

The Dutch certainly have a great interest in the Dodo and its mass extinction on the island of Mauritius because it was Dutch sailors, from the notorious East India Company (VOC) that perpetrated the massacre and carried out the eventual extinction of the species. So, every time the Dodo scientists from Leiden go to Maurituis, its really a bit of a guilt trip!