Research and society

If you have a sweet tooth, you’ll know how difficult it is to keep chocolate cool during the summer months. So where should you store it? In a cupboard or in your fridge?

While we humans tend to enjoy the hot summer days, it can often be hell for our dogs and cats. What’s the best way to keep those furry friends nice and cool? Common sense will get you a long way, says professor Sylvie Daminet, chair of the Department of Small Pets. 

What does steel production have to do with fish-food production? Everything! If you ask Myrsini Sakarika and Nele Ameloot from Ghent University. After all, they are helping to convert CO2 from the steel manufacturer ArcelorMittal Belgium into proteins, which can then be used for fish food. Pioneering research, although some finetuning is still necessary: “Fish are pretty demanding when it comes to their diet.”

Chicken feathers are full of valuable substances. Working with STAMAGRO, the start-up in East Flanders, researchers at Ghent University have helped to find a way to turn these substances into a product that benefits the growth of plants. That also means less nitrogen and CO2, because the plants require less fertilizer. And it reuses the feathers, which would otherwise end up in the rubbish. Win-win!

A new sugar replacement, call it Stevia 3.0, tastes just like sugar and is much healthier. It’s been developed by an American company, but conceived with input from Ghent-University professor Marjan De Mey. A partnership that will clearly stick around in the future.

The darker a bird’s wing, the better it can fly. That’s the conclusion reached by Michaël Nicolaï, as a biologist and researcher at Ghent University. “Pigment seems not only to give colour, it also helps in flying for longer.”

Do you change your underwear every day? The chances are that you do. Did you know that this is actually unnecessary? Less laundry but more targeted, that’s the message from Ghent University researcher Chris Callewaert.

A particularly valuable discovery has turned our knowledge of Stonehenge upside down. On the most researched site in the world, a research group including a few Ghent University students has found traces that are much older than anything that has been excavated so far. We know that there are still secrets to be uncovered from bio-engineer Philippe De Smedt, among other things thanks to soil scans.

Most students at university, at least at Ghent university, are female, but higher up the ladder men still dominate the academic world. The glass ceiling is still very real, but the cracks are starting to show. What obstacles do we need to tackle to create equal chances for everybody? We gather four women around the table to share their views: vice-rector Mieke Van Herreweghe, dean Gita Deneckere (Faculty of Arts and Philosophy), professor Lieve Van Hoof (Department of History) and Ghent University honorary doctor Dame Mary Beard, professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge.

It has created inhuman situations and brought appalling scenes of destruction and barbarity, but the war in Ukraine has also had an unexpected effect that even the Russian president himself could not have predicted. “Putin has always considered Ukraine to be an artificial country. But with this war, he has singlehandedly succeeded in giving Ukrainians a new and very strong sense of national identity. And it’s a sense of identity that is decidedly anti-Russian”, explains Ghent University professor Aleksey Yudin, who himself has Ukrainian roots.

Is the way you perceive the war in Ukraine determined by the government? Does the press shape your opinion about the conflict or is it the other way around? Or is something else going on? Two professors of Communication Sciences at Ghent University examine the press coverage of the war in Ukraine and shed light on the way the West perceives war.

Urban companies are struggling to deal with their plastic waste. The PlastiCity project, which spans four countries, is looking for practical solutions to send their recycling percentage sky high. Ghent University engineer Gianni Vyncke is involved. “The aim is to recycle plastic into sustainable products for the city.”