Videos

Wouldn't it be great if you could have your own virus detection facility at home, or even in your pocket? That's what Boshen Liang & his colleagues at imec & Ku Leuven are working on via so-called lab-on-chip technology.

A dog's nose is one of the most powerful sensors we have. Trained dogs are even able to detect early signs of certain diseases by sniffing our breath. As this would not be very practical, Alex Cruz is looking to integrate a doglike 'nose' in our smartphones to do the trick.

Imagine a city where street lighting only functions when there are cars nearby and where waste bins alarm garbage trucks when they're full and need to be emptied... This might soon become reality, but only if we manage to process the huge amount of data that these smart devices will produce. That's what José Santos is trying to accomplish in order to turn our cities into smart cities.

Every year 300,000 people - as many as the number of inhabitants of Antwerp - contract the tropical disease Leishmaniasis. Still, chances are that you have never heard of the Leishmania parasite, because this deadly disease gets little attention. So Lieselotte Van Bockstal decided to devote her entire doctorate to it.

What do zebrafish have to do with sudden cardiac death? Ewa Sieliwonczyk (UAntwerpen) explains that to you in this video.

Jade Pattyn (UAntwerp) wants to make cervical cancer extremely rare. She is working on an alternative to detect cervical cancer more easy: via a simple urine sample instead of a smear. As she states: "many women will agree with me: there are nicer places to lay down than in your doctor's chair"

Ever had a ringing in your ears after a festival or party? If this is persistent, you suffer from tinnitus: a constant -and very annoying- peeping. Unfortunately, tinnitus cannot be cured, but brain stimulation can help to reduce the burden of the tinnitus. That is what Laure Jacquemin (UAntwerp) is working on.

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.

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.

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