Videos

Did you know that every two minutes, enough ice melts on Earth to fill around 400 Olympic swimming pools with its meltwater? "The urgency is real – glaciers worldwide are disappearing at an alarming rate. In various corners of the globe, millions rely on these majestic glaciers for their drinking water and agricultural needs." Dive into the eye-opening short trip with glaciologist Lander Van Tricht as he takes you on a glacier expedition in Kyrgyzstan.

Did you know that 20% of all healthcare expenses are 'waste'? "We are spending large sums of money on things that don't really improve patients' health, such as overtreatment, administrative efficiencies, and so on", says Joke Borzee. To treat our financially ill healthcare sector, she is working on a scoring model to assess the overall value of treatments. Watch her explain how this would work.

Why do people get cancer, arthritis, or Alzheimer's? Essentially because a protein key in our body does not fit in its respective lock. This is why Alvaro Martin is looking at removing defective keys and designing new protein keys. Keys that fit and can open the necessary locks, so that for example, our immune cells target and kill cancerous cells. "Protein design can be the key to unlocking a future without diseases."

Have you ever heard of the mysterious "crazy root disease"? Sounds like something you'd rather not have in your garden or greenhouse, right? 🌱 Find out more about this bizarre plant disease and how the VIB and the KU Leuven are determined to get rid of it! 💡✨

Thanks to advanced proton therapy, doctors can precisely start irradiating brain tumours. Unfortunately, they do not yet dare to use this technique on tumours in the belly. Why? Because it's a bit like playing darts with a blindfold, while you have to hit a moving target, as Sophie Heymans explains in this video. She tells you about the technique she is working on to help doctors face this challenge.

What if we could predict whether a person with dementia is about to become agitated? That would help caregivers intervene in time and direct their attention to this person, so as to prevent agitation onset. That's what Hannah Davidoff (KU Leuven - Imec) hopes to achieve. Using wearables and other sensors, she builds algorithms to detect agitation.

In 2021, a major water bomb fell in Wallonia, and in recent summers we have constantly struggled with heat waves and periods of drought. But did you know that our gardens can help protect us from the effects of climate change? Valerie Dewaelheyns sheds some light on how to turn your garden into a climate garden, which will help protect you from the effects of climate change.

Have you ever seen wastewater from a factory? This usually looks very clean, thanks to wastewater treatment. Yet it may still contain many traces of drugs, pesticides, or cleaning agents. These so-called microcontaminants end up in rivers and cause damage to the environment. In the lab, Sara Feijoo Moreira and her colleagues developed a method that uses electrochemistry to remove these micropollutants from wastewater.

Rats are our best friends. Or at least Emilie Bartsoen's. She only has to listen to her rats to know how they feel. By observing the social behaviour of rats, she also wants to help people with autism. How? She explains that to you in this video!

Do you ever wake up feeling like you have been run over by a truck? You are not alone. As many as 1 in 5 adults suffer from a sleep disorder, ranging from sleep apnoea to insomnia. With a compact, wearable device and AI, Elisabeth Heremans wants to analyse sleep problems in patients from the comfort of their own bed, instead of having them spend the night in a sleep clinic attached to a bunch of wires.

We are facing a little green problem: the southern green stink bug, an insect from Ethiopia, is on the rise in our country. And that's bad news for our vegetable growers. Fortunately, Margot Geerinck is working on a solution. The protagonists: ichneumon wasps & fungi!

'Yow', 'Peace', 'Man'. Those English loanwords fly around joyfully when Melissa Schuring asks children for her research to briefly imitate a rapper. Very different, in fact, from when she has them play a farmer or a minister. Experiments like this teach her more about the development of linguistic stereotypes in children. In her video, she tells you more about her research.