Videos

In 2012, scientists found interesting bacteria in the mud of the North Sea. Further investigation showed that these bacteria conduct electricity, just like power cables. But how exactly do these bacteria do this? And does this offer potential for more clean electronics? This is what Koen Wouters (UHasselt) and his colleagues are investigating.

Of the 100 potential drugs that companies develop, only a small fraction make it to your medicine cabinet. The majority are rejected after disappointing cell and animal tests. Stijn Dilissen (Uhasselt) is working on a method to find out more quickly and cheaply whether a drug will work or not.

In a heart attack, certain heart cells are damaged and they will never recover. So a patient is forever left with a scar on his heart, which will reduce the heart's pumping power. Could stem cells be the solution? Lize Evens (Hasselt University) explains it to you in this video.

What if you could help someone with dementia by giving them a big, old hug? Might sound crazy, but neuroscientist Philippos Koulousakis (UHasselt) explains why he looks at oxytocin, aka 'the hugging hormone', to boost the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease.

Cancer patients often become heart patients. This is because chemotherapy affects not only cancer cells but also healthy cells, such as the heart muscle cells. In order to prevent heart damage after chemotherapy, we first need to know what factors increase the risk of heart damage. And that is what Sibren Haesen (Uhasselt) has made his mission. With his Ph.D., he wants to help ensure that today's cancer patients do not become tomorrow's heart patients.

An unborn child is exposed to air pollution even before he or she breathes for the first time. This is shown by the research of Eva Bongaerts (UHasselt). She found soot particles in the placenta of women who were only 12 weeks into their pregnancy. Watch the video.

Did you ever enjoy a nicely packed fruit salad with an easy-peel lid? It's a beautiful display of packaging technology: the packaging is strong enough to protect your food, yet at the same time very easy for you to open once you want to dive in. Bram Bamps (UHasselt) explains how he optimizes heat-sealing packaging to keep our food safe and to ensure long shelf life.

Millions of people worldwide suffer from 'invisible' diseases such as chronic widespread pain and chronic fatigue syndrome, which makes patients feel ill for days or even weeks after a small effort, such as washing their hair. Jolien Hendrix (VUB - KU Leuven) tries to understand these diseases by looking at epigenetics. Epi what?! Well, you can see this as DNA paperclips as Jolien explains vividly in this video!

Imagine not being able to feel a hug anymore. This is what happens to some patients with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT1A). They get weaker muscles, their muscles die and sometimes they even lose the sense of touch. In order to research the disease more quickly and efficiently, Karen Libberecht (UHasselt - VIB - FWO) studies her patients ... in a petri dish. She explains how that works exactly in this video.

All the elements we find here on earth were created long ago in the universe, floating around space in the form of stardust, coming from massive stars. "If we want to understand earth and where we came from, we need to understand these massive stars", says astronomer Abigail Frost (KU Leuven). That's why, using a technique called interferometry, she observes these rare and very distant stars.

5 million Flemings do not live in a city centre, but in villages or city outskirts. This fragmentation creates a major challenge: how do you connect all these houses to the sewerage network and how do you ensure smooth and sustainable mobility? Does everyone have to move to the city? No, as architect and urban designer Sophie Leemans (KU Leuven) explains in this video.

Family parties are a nightmare for those who wear hearing aids. With all those people talking at the same time, they find it difficult to hold a conversation. Engineer Simon Geirnaert is working on a solution. With his brain-controlled hearing aids, he also wants to help people with a hearing aid to communicate with each other.