Videos

Despite recent advances in breast cancer treatment, too many women still die once this cancer has spread throughout their body. That's why Matteo Rossi is looking to find weaknesses of breast cancer cells, in order to defeat them.

Did you know that Belgium has the dubious honour of being a leader in the use of sleep and sedative medication worldwide? Kristien Coteur is investigating how she can support patients and their doctors in phasing out sleep medication.

Extremely premature babies often need to be resuscitated at birth. While this might help them to survive, they will sometimes live on with severe disabilities. Is resuscitation therefore always in the best interest of the babies? Alice Cavolo wants to help parents and physicians in making this extremely difficult decision.

When do you sexually desire your partner? That's what Sofia Prekatsounaki (KU Leuven) is looking into for her doctoral research.

Did you know that 80 million people worldwide have epilepsy? Thanks to genetically engineered zebrafish such as Didy, Annelii Ny (KU Leuven) hopes to find new drugs to treat these patients.

"5", "five" and "*****" are just the same, aren't they? Well, not exactly: while these symbolic and non-symbolic notations refer to the same magnitude, our brain processes the digit "5", the word "five" and the dot configuration differently. Mila Marinova looks into the psychology behind number processing. Such knowledge can help to make learning mathematics easier for children.

A cochlear implant makes it possible for the deaf and hearing impaired to hear well. This is a wonderful invention, but it requires some work to properly set up and keep the device up to date. But Ben Somers has a solution for that!

Too often, companies take too little account of the environmental impact of these inventions when developing new products. Gwenny Thomassen wants to change this: she developed a model to calculate both the cost price and the impact on the environment for products based on micro-algae.

Alexandre Chevalier studies plants from the past. He is convinced that this knowledge can help us to grow food in a more sustainable way.

Nowadays, 98 million tons of chicken are consumed every year, making it the second most consumed meat in the world, after pork. BUt what about the past? Well, Quentin Goffette tries to find out which place birds occupied in the daily life (or menu) of our ancestors. 

"The study of a simple fishbone, provides us with a lot of insights on economic, ecologic and social level." Needless to say Wim Wouters is a fan of fish bones. He investigates fish remains from numerous archeological sites in order to reconstruct the history of fishing. 

Gontran Sonet explains why it is important for the Museum of Natural Sciences to have large collections of specimens. They are paramount to gain better understanding of our fascinating planet.