Headlines

Last Thursday, the new student flats in the Uithof - Cambridge -were inaugurated by Utrecht's mayor, Ms Brouwer Korf. In 1992 thefirst preparations were made for the building of the big 'gatehouse' and ten seperate building blocks, containing 1002 housingunits. Before, building a housing estate on university grounds hadbeen absolutely out of the question. Today, celebrations are inorder: both builders and students are very happy with the finalresults.

Hacker

A Spanish hacker managed to access the server of the UtrechtEgyptology Centre. For at least six months the hacker has been ableto snoop around; he copied CD-rom files on Egyptian treasures inEuropean museums. Part I of this CD-rom series has been on sale fora few days now. It took the Utrecht Police Department and Interpolabout a month to investigate the case and arrest the hacker. Ahouse search in Madrid produced CD-roms containing large sectionsof the collection which, according to Professor Dirk van der Plas,has a market value of around 12 million guilders.

Housing trouble

Over the last few years it does not seem to have been much of aproblem for Dutch students to find rooms. As long as they were notliving in Amsterdam or Utrecht, it did not take them long to findan acceptable place to live. Foreign students are not so fortunate.In the Leyden University paper 'Mare', a German student comments onher lodgings, an empty room with a folding bed at a rate of 560guilders per month: "You'd think this was a refugee centre". InLeyden special barracks were planned for foreign students, but theactual building was delayed indefinitely. The university is tryingto make amends by offering flowers to the 173 students who were letdown.

Septicaemia

Septicaemia is an affliction caused by bacteria in thebloodstream. Its victims are usually people whose immune system isweakened. In The Netherlands, each year, it affects a few thousandpeople, half of whom do not survive. At the moment the standard,not very successful, treatment is a combination of antibiotics andsteroids. After extensive lab research and tests on mice, CarlaGosselaar-de Haas found that small amounts of protein particlesnaturally occurring in the bloodstream are capable of preventinglethal septicaemia. She will bedefending her PhD thesis in Utrechtlater on this week.