From tourist attraction to monkey infestation
To lure tourists, the Chinese village of Xianfeng wanted to get monkeys to the village. When the monkeys came, it all seemed to go well. However, the project got completely out of hand when the investor died. There were no more financial resources to manage the plan and maintain the monkeys.
Useless solar cell machine may start improving batteries
Using a device, the ECN research center wanted to produce solar cells. The device could vaporize silicon onto solar cells, but unfortunately not with a density of the silicon that was high enough. As a result, the device lay gathering dust, until Christian Rood came across it and saw how useful the device could be for producing batteries.
Technological progress overtakes research
The aim of the COSMIC study is to determine the appropriate treatment in patients with central cord syndrome without evidence of spinal injury. To investigate this, a multi-centre randomised study was chosen. After one and a half years, only one patient was eligible for this study, whereas it was hoped that around twenty patients would be included.