Videos

Did you know that new parents can learn something from the lesser black-backed gull? A lesson of these caring birds can get them off to a flying start, as explained by behavioral ecologist Marwa Kavelaars.

A cancer patient's blood contains valuable information about the cancer tumor, which can help determine the best treatment. However, in order to extract that information properly from the blood in the laboratory, the blood samples need to be treated carefully. Laure Sorber developed a manual for this.

Mice that follow a low-calorie diet appear to be protected against the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Charysse Vandendriessche is investigating why this is the case to gather more insight in the underlying disease mechanism. This information could into the future contribute to the development of a treatment against this devastating disease.

Did you know that your smartphone contains, among many other precious metals, about 20 milligrams of gold? That may not seem like much, but it's 200 times as much gold as in a small piece of gold ore. Nick Gys (UAntwerpen - VITO) is working on a technique to easily recycle these precious metals from smartphones.

Meat is an important source of protein. But did you know that these proteins can also be obtained from microbes and bacteria? Janne Spanooghe wants to introduce a new source of protein on our plate: purple bacteria.

Fertilization is crucial in agriculture, but over-fertilization causes environmental pollution and all-rich algae growth in our watercourses. Wouldn't it be great if plants and crops could grow well with less fertilizer? That's what Astrid Gadeyne wants to achieve in her PhD.

What if we could generate energy through our numerous toilet visits? Michiel Van Tendeloo wants to make this work through water purification 2.0.

Is the battery of your smartphone draining quickly? Charlotte Vets wants to ensure that our smartphone battery lasts longer. How? By focusing on new, tiny components that are up to 1,000 times smaller than a hair: carbon nanotubes.

Rahel Park has a dilemma for you: what to do if a bunch of flies land on the cake you were just about to eat? Should you eat it anyway or should you throw it away? Watch the video for the -scientifically substantiated- answer!

Imagine if you could influence Parkinson's disease by altering the intestinal bacteria of patients? That sounds strange at first glance, but Arnout Bruggeman explains why it might work.

What happens when you as thousands of Flemish people to send samples of their stools for scientific research? Well, you get this huge pile of... right, data. Sebastian Proost makes this data readily available to doctors and scientists so that they can acquire new insights from this data in an efficient manner.

Like humans, plants are constantly attacked by diseases. Joren De Ryck (VIB - UGent) does research on a bacterium called Ralstonia, which can infect and kill all these crops in a few weeks time.