Videos

"With games you can motivate young people for school", according to Liese Missinne and her colleagues at the Artevelde University of Applied Sciences. They developed such a game together with young people. This is necessary because more than 1 in 8 Flemish youngsters drop out of school. She explains in this video exactly what the game entails.

For children with autism or attention or motor disorders, it is quite a challenge to participate in activities such as playing tag, taking a test, or staying over at a friend's house. Marieke Coussens and her colleagues mapped the barriers that such young children experience. This knowledge is important to be able to break down those barriers and really allow these children to participate.

"Muy exclusivo: las fotos del horror" is written on the cover of this Argentine newspaper. That headline refers to the photos of the dead body of a young woman that the journalists shamelessly published. "Fortunately, there are also writers in Latin America who describe gender violence in a more ethical way, in so-called chronicles", says Eva Van Hoey (UGent). She investigates how gender violence is represented in the literary genre of the chronicle.

In Belgium, around 10,000 dogs suffer from epilepsy 🐕 This makes it the most common neurological disorder. Unfortunately, the seizures are often difficult to explain and thus to treat. Fien Verdoodt (UGent) explains why the cause might lie in intestinal bacteria...

Every three seconds, someone in the world is diagnosed with dementia. But what causes it? Dementia can be caused by diseases such as Alzheimer's & Parkinson's. The only way to find out the exact cause is by studying the brain tissue of a patient after his death 🧠  Yaël Hirschberg hopes to develop a method of identifying this earlier so that a patient can receive targeted care even before the first symptoms of dementia appear. Watch her explain how  

Did you know that besides basic physical needs, such as sleeping and eating, you also have basic psychological needs? You will not die immediately if these psychological needs are not fulfilled, but it can make you very unhappy. Daphne van den Boogaard explains what these needs are and how you can train to manage your own happiness.

"As researchers, we are not lucky enough to have the budget to crash hundreds of vehicles to test a new technology." So how can researchers test whether a new tiny semiconductor is safe to use in electric vehicles? For this, Sajib Chakraborty (VUB) developed a digital twin. A what? Watch the video to find out more.

Did you know that cancer cells are not so different from our healthy cells? This makes it difficult for T-cells, important immune cells in our body, to recognise and fight cancer cells. Cancer researcher Heleen Hanssens (VUB-FWO) wants to give T-cells a helping hand by equipping them with more sensitive receptors, or antennae, that are pre-programmed to unmask cancer cells. In the lab, she is looking for the perfect form for these CAR antennae, so that they become more stable and better at detecting cancer cells. 

Ever wondered why your smartphone seems to know everything about you? You talk to a friend on Whatsapp about getting a new coffee machine and suddenly you see online ads about coffee machines everywhere. What is happening and what can we do about this? Laura Drechsler (VUB - FWO) tells you more about data & data protection law in this video.

Did you know that some bacteria can be used to produce a kind of bioplastic? This biodegradable plastic could become a sustainable alternative for the current petroleum-based plastics, but at the moment the cost of the production of this bacterial bioplastic is still too high. Microbiologist Radwa Moanis (VUB) explains why turning to heat-loving bacteria might solve this problem 🦠 🌡

Getting out of bed in the morning is quite a feat, and not just on Monday mornings. It requires a series of complex motor actions, which we perform without thinking, on automatic pilot. In patients with Parkinson's disease, these automatic actions are disturbed. Something goes wrong in the brain so that they suddenly have to think about every action. Mahyar Firouzi (VUB) is investigating whether brain stimulation can help to improve automatic action in Parkinson's patients.

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!