Videos

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.

"The cemetery was the place where Jewish life was concentrated at the end. It was the place where people went to sunbathe, children had to play, ..." Literature scholar Annelies Augustyns (VUB - UAntwerp - FWO) studied German-Jewish diaries from WWII for her PhD. These offer a glimpse into the "everyday" life of Jews in the Third Reich.

Hard sciences, such as physics, understand very well how the material world works and have contributed to enormous technological progress. But the social sciences, such as economics or sociology, do not seem to understand as well how the social world - human society - works. Thus, we apparently do not know how to build a peaceful and prosperous society worldwide. Michael Bauwens (UAntwerpen) tries to find out which fundamental assumptions researchers should use to do social science.

Radiation can save the lives of people with head and neck cancer. Unfortunately, many patients develop swallowing disorders as a result of the treatment, which makes it impossible for them to eat solid food. Leen Van den Steen (UAntwerpen - UZA) wants to help them. How? With tongue strength training.

Biologist Sébastjen Schoenaers (UAntwerpen) watches his son Ferre grow rapidly. Yet Ferre grows 150 times slower than an ordinary corn leaf 🌱 We still don't understand how plants do this. Sébastjen zooms in on the plant up to molecular level to figure out how it really grows 🔬 This can help us grow plants better and faster.

Heart failure patients have a lot of trouble with physical exertion. They can barely even walk the dog. To improve their condition, they can follow training programs in the hospital. But more than half of the patients hardly benefit from them. Cardiologist in training Isabel Witvrouwen (UAntwerpen - University Hospital Antwerp) is trying to find out why.

In Belgium and the Netherlands, more than 1,000 people suffer from DFNA9, a condition that causes hereditary hearing loss and balance disorders. DFNA9 is due to an error in the DNA of the ear. Dorien Verdoodt (UAntwerp) is conducting research into a new therapy based on the revolutionary Crispr genetic technique. In this way, she hopes to be able to cure hereditary hearing loss in the future with a syringe in the ear.

Imagine constantly hearing a ringing bell, a jackhammer, or that awful beep of the old television test screen in your head. That's what people with tinnitus experience. At the UZA they want to treat people with tinnitus better. For too long the cause was sought in the ear, without looking at the crucial motor that controls all our perceptions: the brain. Emilie Cardon (UAntwerpen) explains why we have to look for tinnitus there.

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.