Videos

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.

Someone who suffers a stroke often has to learn to walk again. Unfortunately, such rehabilitation - walking for hours on a treadmill - is often very boring and therefore difficult to maintain. "Let's make this more challenging", says Emma De Keersmaecker (VUB - FWO). She has patients complete their rehabilitation in a virtual environment using VR glasses, for example on Mars among aliens. "Walking on a treadmill will never have to be boring again!"

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.

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.

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.

During a stroke, every second counts to save as many brain cells as possible. Intervention is only possible within a narrow time window of a few hours because late treatment can lead to serious complications. Is there nothing more we can do for these 'late' patients? There is, says neurologist trainee Lauranne Scheldeman!

"Each person is unique. So why do we still treat every woman with ovarian cancer the same way?" Liselore Loverix (KU Leuven - FWO) examines patient by patient and looks for errors in the DNA of their tumour cells. In this way, before treatment starts, she identifies which patient would benefit from a new, targeted therapy based on cancer drugs.

Dutch is full of loan words, such as "last minute" or "lunch". It seems as if it can borrow English words without any limit. But is that really the case? Linguist Marlieke Shaw (KU Leuven - FWO) looks into this by studying transcriptions of spoken texts. A real must-see for fans of the Dutch language.

Slim top models and muscled hunks are increasingly making way for realistic models in advertising campaigns. A good evolution, although it is not clear whether these campaigns actually result in a more positive body image. Orpha de Lenne studies realistic advertisements to find out how they can really make us feel better about our body.