news 2022

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded its Consolidator Grants. Four KU Leuven researchers are among this year's recipients: bioscience engineer Rob Ameloot, theologist Christina Kreinecker, pediatric nephrologist Elena Levtchenko, and astronomer Jon Sundqvist.

VUB research shows that blockchain technology can strengthen democratic values Ledger technology or Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), of which blockchain is one system, offers new ways to bring government services to citizens and businesses. Governments have therefore started experimenting and investing in blockchain and DLT solutions for the public sector.

Researchers use new techniques to determine when limestone layers and fossils were formed during dinosaur age, 66 to 73 million years ago Wednesday, March 30, 2022 — Geologists from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and KU Leuven, in collaboration with Maastricht Natural History Museum and Dutch conservation organisation Natuurmonumenten, have mapped the million-year-old rocks in the quarries near Maastricht.

An interdisciplinary manuscript reporting on a collaboration between physicists and computational engineers from the University of Luxembourg and Padova (Italy) has been published in Physical Review Letters. This work reveals that interactions between many electrons in materials can induce a colossal enhancement of atomic forces at the nanoscale and in large engineering-scale systems.

Researchers from the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) at the University of Luxembourg, in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, investigated the different cell types present in the human midbrain to better understand their respective role in Parkinson's disease.

For many young people, conforming to gender norms seems a more attractive option than deviating from them, according to the thesis of Dr Laora Mastari, with which she obtained her doctorate at VUB. She conducted her research among Flemish children and young people aged between 10 and 25. Men and women are legally equal in Belgium, but there remains structural gender inequality.

Couples unable to get pregnant naturally often resort to In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) to fulfil their desire to have children. To obtain mature eggs for IVF, women typically undergo ovarian stimulation with hormones which can be very burdensome. A team of scientists of the Follicle Biology (FOBI) Research Laboratory at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in collaboration with the UZ Brussel fertility clinic has succeeded in developing a novel method for In Vitro Maturation (IVM) of oocytes, called CAPA-IVM.

Researchers from the Human Physiology and Sports Physiotherapy research group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel have shown that physical fatigue affects an athlete's brain when performing a functional balance test. The accuracy with which a representative group of recreational athletes responded to a novel reactive balance test was measured, alongside their response time.

VUB professor Ann Massie and her research group Neuro-Aging & Viro-Immunotherapy have published a surprising finding in an article in the leading journal Molecular Psychiatry. They have discovered a strategy that results in prolonged life expectancy and counteracts memory loss during the aging process.

In 2020 a team led by European Southern Observatory (ESO) astronomers reported the closest black hole to Earth, located just 1000 light-years away in the HR 6819 system. But the results of their study were contested by other researchers, including by an international team based at KU Leuven. In a paper published today, these two teams have united to report that there is in fact no black hole in HR 6819, which is instead a "vampire" two-star system in a rare and short-lived stage of its evolution.

VUB, Sciensano, Flanders and Brussels call on scientists to share expertise on alternative testing methods via RE-Place platform A few years ago, the Flemish and Brussels Regions launched RE-Place , a platform for researchers to share their expertise on alternatives to animal testing.

No coding skills are needed to build and test software prototypes with weave.ly The Vrije Universiteit Brussel has a new spin-off.

A large-scale study conducted by KU Leuven and The Francis Crick Institute shows that 21% of tumours have double mutations, in which the exact same letter is mutated in both the maternal and paternal copy of your DNA. This is an observation that was not previously taken into account when analysing tumours but is important for future cancer research into the origin of mutations and their biological significance in the development of cancer.

World Cancer Day, 4 February: Ex-cancer patients have to get used to life again Cancer patients who have survived serious treatment and are free of the disease often suffer an enormous psychological blow afterwards and find it difficult to pick up the thread of life again.

VUB research suggests pain education and lifestyle are important components of a multimodal approach to treat persistent pain Friday, February 4, 2022 — 4 February is #WorldCancerDay After cancer treatment, many patients continue to suffer from pain. About four out of ten cancer survivors have chronic pain complaints.

World Cancer Day, 4 February: Award-winning research on incurable blood cancer Researchers at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, led by Eline Menu, have investigated how changes in metabolism contribute to cancer resistance and relapse.

Planets are usually not much older than the stars around which they revolve. Take the Sun: it was born 4.6 billion years ago, and not long after that, Earth came into the world. But KU Leuven astronomers have discovered that a completely different scenario is also possible. Even if they are near death, some types of stars can possibly still form planets.

AI system can predict risk of heart attack based on retinal scan An international team of researchers have developed an AI system that can identify patients who are likely to have a heart attack over the next year. The system reads retinal scans that are already commonly used in eye clinics. Doctors have recognised that changes to the tiny blood vessels in the retina are indicators of broader vascular disease, including problems with the heart.

Two research groups from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel have established a collaboration in which they predict the response to the standard treatment for rectal cancer based on medical images (e.g.

In cancer research, it has long been known that lactic acid, or lactate, is produced in large quantities by cancer cells and that this lactic acid disrupts our defence against tumours.