Is minimum sink on a paraglider with brakes at 30% or hands-up? Advances in paraglider design mean things have changed - and that means updating teaching and flying techniques.

Just announced as the new race director of the Red Bull X-Alps we talk to Ferdinand Vogel. “I’m going to watch and learn in 2023,” he says.

Bastienne Wentzel joined a beginner's XC course organised by Parafly and guided by Ferdinand Vogel. Here is what we learnt.

Bastienne Wentzel took Skywalk’s new reversible harness for a spin during a week of XC flying in Bassano.

Is it a speed glider, paraglider or kite? It’s a Moustache! Seb Ospina and Luke Nicol flew one of the first production wings. Bastienne Wentzel finds out more. (Photo: Miriam Joanna)

Specialists in single cell dynamics of research institute AMOLF together with CRISPR-Cas researchers of TU Delft were able to measure for the first time how quickly a single cell can build new memory and remove invading DNA using the CRISPR Cas system. Remarkably, they noted a large variability between individual cells in different populations. The results were published on April 25, 2022 in the open access scientific journal Molecular Systems Biology.

"I am a former competition pilot from Feltre, Italy. I started flying in 1987 in Feltre on a Brindazur 24K. The K is for kevlar, it was one of the first paragliders with lines of kevlar. I was lucky because it was one of the best gliders at that time. To launch it you had to pull hard with your hands over your head and you had to yell 'Banzai!'"

“I pull to the right and instantly know I shouldn’t have. Too late. The lines go slack.” Bastienne Wentzel joins an all-women SIV / Acro course with Rise Paragliding in Oludeniz, Turkey.

An acro wing suitable to learn your first tricks and have fun, says Erwin Voogt.

"I am the first woman from Qatar to register and own a microlight aircraft. I am a sports coach from Doha, Qatar. Flying is my passion. I fly a weightshift microlight aircraft, a paramotor and a paraglider. I am learning to fly a fixed wing ultralight aircraft and I plan to obtain my gyrocopter licence."

Following a single protein inside the cavity of a GroEL chaperone for the first time, researchers at AMOLF led by professor Sander Tans discovered how protein folding can be accelerated. Amino acid chains are pulled inside the open cavity of the chaperone, where they collapse on top of themselves and fold. The findings have implications for our understanding of cellular protein control and folding diseases. The research was published in Science Advances on March 4th.

Women's World Champion Yael Margelisch on chasing records, doing the X-Alps and winning the Worlds,

"I am a retired Airforce fighter pilot from Cologne. You sign up with the Airforce for twenty years and when you turn 41 you stop flying. I did a tour in Afghanistan which was really hard. Four of my friends didn't make it. So it was time to leave."

Acro World Champion Victor 'Bicho' Carrera about his dreams, the mental game, fast air and new tricks.

How much do you know about paragliding? Bastienne Wentzel, Erwin Voogt and Cross Country developed a quiz to find out. There is a quiz for everyone: newbies, beginners and experienced pilots.

Find the quizzes at beginnersguidetoparagliding.com/quiz

The web engine behind the quiz (developed by Erwin Voogt) is fully functional examination software used in schools. Send us an email (info@bmedia.nl) to find out more.

"I grew up in a mountain village in Switzerland, it was paradise. We went hiking, skiing, climbing and motorbiking. But ever since I was young I dreamt of flying. At 17 I started to fly a sailplane, that was my biggest passion. I was on the air field all the time but the summer flying season was short."

When the wind is strong even the lowest dunes offer the potential for some fantastic days out. Bastienne Wentzel heads to the coast to power up the mini wing and finesse her high-wind skills.

It sounds like a do-it-yourself project: take a tube light and convert it into a chemical reactor. Yet DIFFER researcher Edwin Devid received an NWO-XS grant for a project proposal to do just that. Within a year, Devid wants to build a device that can efficiently convert CO2 into green chemicals and fuels with renewable electricity.

"I've been flying all my life. I grew up in Graz, Austria, where my dad, Willi Friedrich, ran the Flugschule Steiermark. I'm 19 years old now and I still live in the house where I grew up."

"I grew up in Bucaramanga, Colombia where we taught ourselves to fly paragliders in 1994. The first foreign pilots only arrived here two years earlier. There were no instructors or schools. I remember my first flight where my friend said: “Just run and when your down there, put your hands down!”

If you’re looking for the ultimate guide to learning to paraglide, this is it! Published in October 2020, Paragliding: The Beginner’s Guide is the essential training guide to learning to fly safely and quickly – from your first flight to becoming a qualified pilot and beyond.

"I'm a 29 year old pilot living near Stuttgart. In daily life I am an orthopedic technician, I build prosthetics. But in the evenings, weekends and vacations, everything is about flying activities."

If you are looking for a top quality glider, Skywalk has always been the go-to brand. Skywalk say an important part of their market demands durable gliders, because of the rough and rocky take-offs and landings for example in Turkey, Iran, Spain and Brazil. But somehow, they've managed to outperform themselves with their new sports class glider, the Cayenne 6.

Imagine converting CO₂ into useful molecules, only by heating it to a plasma with a microwave. Researchers at DIFFER can, but nobody really understands the processes that take place in the plasma. Let alone be able to make the process efficient. DIFFER researcher Luca Vialetto can calculate what is going on.

“I like to think out-of-the-box. So when my TU/e supervisor Niek Lopes Cardozo asked me if we could use 3D-printing to fix a long standing problem in fusion reactors, that's what I did. I designed a divertor using liquid metal contained by 3D-printed tungsten."
Peter Rindt, postdoctoral researcher at DIFFER, about his recent research.

The trademark BGD colors radiate rather boldly while I'm preparing the Cure 2 for my first flight. It seems as if all available shades of cloth are present in the 'Alkaline' colored review glider. More than the in-your-face colors, the sheer number of parts dazzles me. It looks like great skill is needed to sow all these parts together flawlessly.

"I always knew I wanted to fly. My parents are both hang glider and paraglider pilots. We lived in Frankfurt in Germany and all our holidays were flying holidays. I first flew when I was six but my mother did not really want me to fly. She told me if I wanted to fly I would have to make my own money, so I delivered newspapers until I had enough. At 13 years old I did my first course in Wildschönau in Austria."

All Swing paragliders are now equipped with a RAST partition, which causes parts of the glider to inflate or deflate slower or quicker depending on the situation. This gives for example remarkably easy launching behaviour and dampens the adverse effects of collapses. But such a complex internal structure would surely result in a heavier glider, right? Swing now proves that it doesn't have to be with the new lightweight hike&fly performance glider Helios RS.

A little over a decade ago, U-Turn launched the Morpheus, an acro glider which was developed together with Mike Küng. He wanted a dynamic glider capable of all manoeuvres but with a safety margin for performing shows. After many customers' requests, U-Turn now launches the Morpheus Next Generation based on this popular 'legend' as they call it. Just as the old Morpheus was a mild version of their professional acro wing G-Force, the Morpheus NG is the little brother of the very popular Blackout+ and Joker. It will replace the freestyler RedOut.

"My name, Peter Renner, means Peter the runner. I was born Oberholzner but I adopted my wife's last name. People say it is an appropriate name for a hike&fly sportsman. I live in the German Alps near the Berchtesgaden nature reserve."
Photocredit: Agata Antonowicz.

”For the first time, I feel I am doing research that has an impact. It is very rewarding. I am confident that we are developing materials that can be used in industry.” Sonia Castellanos, group leader of the EUV Photoresists group of ARCNL, unravels the working mechanisms of new classes of photoresists and developes new materials that will make future chips for phones and computers much smaller. Recently, she published results from this research in the Journal of Materials Chemistry C.

"My name is Luke de Weert, I'm 19 years old from the Netherlands and one of the youngest acro pilots on the acro competition scene."

"I am a nuclear engineer originally from Izmir, Turkey. During my study in Ankara there was a paragliding club where I learned to fly in 1999. It started as a hobby next to my study but soon I was addicted. I got my license and became an instructor. In 2007 I started as a professional tandem pilot at Sky Sports in Ölüdeniz. I also moved to Fethiye."

Cross Country magazine published a report on the 2018 Stubai Cup in Austria in issue 189, May 2018. BMedia contributed many of the 'weekend pilot reports' in this article as well as a number of photographs.

Herma Cuppen was recently appointed professor in the field of Computational Chemistry at IMM. She studies how individual molecules and atoms behave inside a solid such as a crystal, by calculating how they move and stack. The knowledge she creates has extremely diverse implications, ranging from the formation of the building blocks of life in space, to the properties of medicines.

An extensive worldwide cooperation for the development of advanced lignocellulosic biofuels will kick off on June 27th. The cooperation is between two consortia, the BioVALUE consortium based in Brazil and the BECOOL consortium which is funded and based in the EU. ECN is a partner in BECOOL, offering expertise in gasification of biomass for biofuels.

ECN just launched an easy to use tool for the hazard classification of any waste material according to EU legislation. The free tool uses the elemental content of the material to assess possible hazards based on a worst case scenario.

ECN and partner Dahlman Renewable Technology (DRT) have launched a new joint venture to fast track the commercialisation of their gasification technology. MOJI technology efficiently converts a wide range of sustainable feedstocks to electricity, green gas, chemicals and even sustainable fuels. This is an exciting next step in enabling the transition to a sustainable energy system worldwide.

A Dutch-Chinese consortium has proven that commercial production of efficient IBC solar cells is feasible on short term, by completing a pilot production process in just three months.

ECN has developed an exceptionally stable membrane which can separate liquids, such as water or methanol from a solution rich in organic compounds. This separation can replace distillation in a range of industrial processes, saving up to half of the energy. This new membrane technology is now ready to go to the market.

ECN is leading a consortium of Dutch enterprises with a mission to develop sustainable solutions for Malaysian palmoil residues. The Palmares consortium was launched late December 2016.

Dutch energy research institute ECN has developed a new bifacial solar panel design with a white layer between and around the cells. These white bifacial solar panels show a 5% increase in energy yield with respect to bifacial panels with a glass back and show the same maximum power output as a monofacial module.

ECN has achieved a record cell efficiency of 23% for their silicon heterojunction solar cells. These cells were made using the Metal Wrap Through technology, which improves the conductivity and reduces cost.

Many IMM graduates pursue a career in academia. But just as many of them venture out into an industrial career to contribute to the valorization of scientific research. Silvie Meeuwissen is one of those scientists. After a successful but fundamental PhD project she preferred the more applied research at ChemConnection, a contract research and manufacturing company. From the state of the art laboratory of the company in Oss she tells us why.
This interview appeared in the 2015 annual report of the Nijmegen Institute of Molecules and Materials (IMM).

Many NPC projects are coming to an end. The PhD students involved are about to be released onto the career market. Many of them are not sure about what to do after their graduation, as became clear when the application was opened of the BioBusiness Summerschool 2012. The summerschool introduces the students to 'the business world of Life Sciences'. As many as 70 PhDs attended the week long summerschool in Amsterdam to hear about opportunities in large companies, the possibilities to start a business and to have opportunities to extend their network.

Jan Smeitink's purpose in life is finding a cure for mitochondrial diseases. Every year he sees hundreds of children with genetic mitochondrial defects in his clinic. The majority of the kids do not live to be adults. The energy factories of their cells, the mitochondria, fail to produce enough energy for other cellular processes. The result is a plethora of multisystem diseases. The IOP Genomics project has resulted in the development of a high-throughput screening platform for live cells using state-of-the-art imaging techniques. Hundreds of potential drugs for mitochondrial disorders can be tested using this platform. In the near future, this will lead to a cure for some of the mitochondrial diseases.
 

Predicting biological activity of compounds accurately is of great importance in the development of new drugs. Not only bioinformatics methods are used to predict for example receptor interaction with a drug, but also cheminformatics methods to predict the possible toxicity of a potential drug molecule. Jeroen Kazius constructed extensive databases and designed new data mining methods which can more accurately predict such activities.

Aspergillus niger, well known as the fungus that produces black mold on old bread, forms an extended network of interconnected hyphae. This mycelium has an enormous capacity to secrete proteins and other compounds. Its productivity has led the food and pharmaceutical industry to use A. niger  as the preferred biological production factories for, among others, enzymes. New information about genetic signalling in the fungus cells has urged Marc van der Maarel to study the dynamics of the A. niger mycelium in more detail.

Not all old people are equally old. That is, their chronological age - the number of years they have lived - is not the same as their biological age - their life expectancy and health. Some people appear to have a hereditary taint for longevity. By studying a large group of very old people, who are obviously protected from ageing and disease, researchers are trying to find these genetic variations and the biomarkers by which they are expressed.

Mitochondrial disorders are a group of serious, often fatal diseases. Due to a genetic defect, the powerhouses of our cells are unable to produce enough energy from food. The mechanisms are poorly understood, let alone a therapy being available for patients. Jan Smeitink works to understand the energy metabolism in mitochondria by setting up a screening platform. This platform should generate enough knowledge to influence the energy metabolism and eventually cure disorders associated with it.