BranchOut explores how tree forks—usually treated as waste—can become valuable construction elements by leveraging their strong, continuous wood grain. Because their irregular shapes don’t fit standard building and CNC processes, the project developed new methods for harvesting, drying, and preparing …

This thesis examines how oil palm plantation characteristics affect the presence and biomass of earthworms in Malaysia. The research was carried out across 228 plots in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan. Results show that industrial plantations host more earthworms, while smallholder plantations support heavier …

An energy harvesting device for obtaining energy from drops without needing of moving the drops along the device, in a reduced scale and combinable with other types of harvesting devices, the energy harvesting device comprising one or more triboelectric generators comprising a bottom electrode, a friction …

Creating a crawling service and bypassing captchas

Cut, cooled, packed, transported and traded all over the world, flowers represent a showcase of a worldwide integrated trade-logistics system. As one of the most perishable, vulnerable and time-critical products, speed is everything in harvesting, moving and trading of flowers. In the international trade …

Decomposition is an ecosystem process, mainly important in the carbon and nitrogen cycles. When looking at what drives decomposition, there are three major drivers. These are plant litter quality, microbes and soil animals (detritivores). A large problem in understanding the decomposition process is …

Internet of Things (IoT) is tagging low power devices, miniaturized, with machine-readable identification tags, which are integrated with sensors to collect information and wireless technology to connect them with the Internet. These devices have a very low energy usage. Powering these devices with battery …

This project started with a fascination by the concept of ‘feeling at home’. How does that work for homeless who don’t have a physical space to call home? To me, my role as an architect is to put social issues on the agenda and investigate spatial circular solutions. Even in our modern society, homelessness …

Caenorhabditis elegans is an invertebrate model organism used in many areas of biology including developmental biology and the identification of molecular mechanisms and pathways. However, several experimental approaches require large quantities of worms, which is limiting and time-consuming. We present …

Anaerobic digestion (AD) can play an important role in achieving the renewable energy goals set within the European Union. Within this article the focus is placed on reaching the Dutch local renewable production goal set for the year 2020 with locally available biomass waste flows, avoiding intensive …