Autumn is the season for mushrooms – they are everywhere, and certainly growing in abundance in forests. But did you know that the mushrooms you see are just a very small part of a vast, gigantic, mainly subterranean network? And that without this network, other plants simply wouldn’t be able to survive?
The summer months are reading months for many people. But what makes a good book? Is there a formula for success? We ask a literary expert.
Imke Kissel researches unilateral vocal cord paralysis and wants to develop therapies tailored to the needs of patients.
We all worry from time to time. It can even be good to clear the head, says professor Ernst Koster (department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology). However, it can also get out of hand.
Artificial reproduction methods, such as IVF and ICSI, have already been successfully applied in humans. But this has not been the case for many domestic animals. In horses, for instance, it has seemed to be an impossible task for a long time to fertilise the eggs outside the body. Until Ann Van Soom and her team started focusing on it.
Do you suffer from hay fever? You are not alone: no less than 1 in 3 people worldwide have an allergy, particularly to pollen or dust mites. For people aged between 20 and 45 this amount is as much as 40%. “In fact, we expect this number to keep growing in the future”, predicts professor Philippe Gevaert (department of Head and Skin), clinical head of the Ear, Nose and Throat department at Ghent University Hospital. “But, don’t worry: a solution is on the way.”
Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia and ALS are devastating neurodegenerative diseases with no prospect of recovery. Clinical geneticist, physician and Ghent University professor Bart Dermaut is making a breakthrough with his scientific research that could push future therapies in a new direction. This is partly thanks to donations and legacies from patients.
Our homes need to become a lot more sustainable. Besides insulation, the heat pump is the latest ‘big’ thing when it comes to new construction and renovation projects. But is the heat pump worth the hype?
Eline Pottie is addicted to drugs, well to researching them anyway. As a postdoc, she is investigating how psychedelics work and where the effects come from. “I find it fascinating that we still don’t know why these drugs make us hallucinate,” she says.
The advent of spring also means the return of many migratory birds after a winter in warmer countries. But in journeys that are often thousands of kilometres long, how do these birds find their way? Not with Waze or Google Maps, but thanks to the sun, a kind of built-in compass and highways.
Ensuring that every child learns how to code, that is the common goal of several UGent researchers and the educational platform CodeCosmos. They developed a digital co-teacher together for the popular programming language Scratch. A world-first because this is the first tool that can automatically evaluate Scratch exercises. “Coach CoDi goes light years beyond all other feedback tools”, says UGent professor Christophe Scholliers.
Deep in the Congolese rainforest stands a tower 57 metres high that is helping in the fight against climate change. Since October 2020, the Ghent University climate tower has been measuring both the amount of CO2 captured and stored by the tropical rainforest and the levels of water exchange between the forest and the atmosphere.
