Wild waving and shouting as their head bobs in and out of the water. Is that how to see that someone is drowning? Well, it is in the movies. Sadly, it’s much harder to spot someone drowning in real life. Why’s that? And what can we do about it?
No, it’s not futuristic fiction: a contact lens with technology that imitates the effect of the human iris. It’s a hi-tech accomplishment that Ghent University and imec will now market: the spin-off Azalea Vision will continue developing and commercialising the contact lens.
These days it is mainly a tourist attraction, but Bruges was once an international world city, like London or Shanghai. The reason? Its many outer ports in the Zwin channel. New archaeological, historical and geological research has now made it possible to reconstruct that past in an unprecedented manner.
RNA, or ribonucleic acid, was long seen as a mere messenger between DNA and proteins. Today, however, we know RNA does far more than that. It is an exceptionally useful instrument and the target of new treatments in the pipeline. OncoRNALab researchers have now compiled the most comprehensive ‘RNA encyclopaedia’ in the world.
Summer schools help children and young people with learning disadvantages. But because of the corona crisis, pupils are struggling with more intense learning problems, and on top of that their mental resilience has been weakened. How can summer schools respond to this?
In the simplest terms, health is the sum total of the effect of genes, behaviour, and surroundings. But of course we can’t just change our genes. So, if we want to avoid getting ill, it’s more productive to consider our behaviour and our surroundings as they are the things we can influence. Ghent University, KU Leuven, the University of Antwerp and Hasselt University are pooling their expertise in the first large scale ‘exposome’ research project in Flanders.
How to use waste water, CO2 and plastics as a source of energy or a raw material? This is one of the key questions that keeps professor Korneel Rabaey occupied on a daily basis. A question to which he is now seeing an answer emerge, thanks to the new research platform CAPTURE, which he helped to conceive. The opening of a physical research centre will accelerate progress in this area considerably, which has been his goal for years.
It is no longer profitable, yet the money keeps flowing into Belgian savings accounts. “In human terms it is understandable, but it’s a drama for our economy”, explains professor Gert Peersman. Are there alternatives? And what about saving for our old age?
A test that ‘weighs’ whether and how much corona you have, but can also recognize flu and perhaps even cancer. That’s what molecular biologist Maarten Dhaenens and PhD student Bart Van Puyvelde have been working on for the past year. “This way of testing offers so many possibilities for the future.”
As soon as the pandemic is over, the climate crisis will come back into focus. “We have to aim for zero CO2 emissions. Not ‘a bit less’, but zero”, says philosopher of science Maarten Boudry. And that requires a global debate, moving away from the oversimplified visions that currently dominate the debate.
Human rights should not only be seen as a legal issue. “They play a role in all disciplines”, says professor of human rights Eva Brems. With a multidisciplinary outlook on the theme, Ghent University is playing a pioneering role. And that is necessary, “because human rights are more than ever under pressure, also in Europe.”
What if we had one jab instead of two? Or what if we first vaccinated the active population, and only then those less mobile? Such questions cross everyone’s mind from time to time. At Ghent University, biostatisticians actually make models to see what these questions mean.
