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After a night on the town, staggering drunk through the old townand stopping for an al fresco leak on the way home? Not if theUtrecht police have anything to do with it. They hope such goingson will be consigned to the past after February 2001. From thatdate on the old town will be littered with suspended surveillancecameras, to give the residents as well as people on a night out agreater sense of security.

Prime Minister

In Utrecht on October 2 Prime Minister Wim Kok will present hisviews on the relationship between the Netherlands and Africa. Inparticular, he will deal with the question of how much, and howeffectively, the Netherlands can contribute to improving things onthat continent. Can Dutch African policy claim any modestsuccesses? Wim Kok will address these questions, then discuss themwith students. The Prime Minister was invited to speak by theStudent Society for International Relations, the Studium Generaledepartment and the Dutch Labor Party's Evert Vermeer Foundation forDevelopment Cooperation (Venue: Academiegebouw auditorium. Time:8:00 p.m.).

Research

Scientific research is to receive an additional 25 millionguilders every year, as agreed by the Lower House of Parliament andthe government last week. Education Minister Loek Hermans hadalready allocated thirty million extra to research, destined for afoundation called Renewal Incentives, which will subsidizepromising young researchers. However, it emerged from last week'sparliamentary discussions on the proposed national budget that theDutch Labor Party, in particular, did not consider the originalallocation sufficient. The parliamentary Labor Party successfullydemanded another 25 million from the government. The extra money isto go to "fundamental scientific research".

A clean room

The Went building in the university's biomedical cluster is tobe equipped with a dustfree clean room for protein research. TheUniversity Regents have made half a million guilders available forthis purpose. Two mass spectrometers will be installed in thedustfree space. These valuable and hypersensitive pieces ofequipment will allow researchers from the Pharmacological Facultyto study the composition of proteins. One problem with this type ofresearch has always been that air dust may affect measurementresults. Also, proteins which are accidentally present in the airmay end up in the equipment. This can lead to inexplicablemeasurement results. In order to prevent this kind of interference,the room will be equipped with filters capable of removing morethan 98 per cent of air dust.