news 2020

The production of ammonia - a very important chemical building block as part of synthetic fertilisers, among other things - is one of the main sources of CO2 emissions. By combining two different technologies, researchers from KU Leuven and the University of Antwerp have now discovered a CO2-free alternative.

UGent and the Portuguese maritime institute CCMAR receive a VLAIO Baekeland grant for research into the sustainable protection of vulnerable coastal areas. Ghent University receives a VLAIO Baekeland grant with support and cooperation from Jan De Nul Group, DEME Group, and the Portuguese marine institute CCMAR for its doctoral study 'PLANT ME'.

Can network theory help unravel the origin of cardiac arrhythmia? How do plants communicate internally about stress? Can we make thermometers with new nanomaterials that can also administer medication? And can traditional concepts of medical ethics keep up with rapidly succeeding innovations in medicine? These are some of the questions that six young Ghent University researchers will be working on in the coming years.

Researchers from the bio-economics department at the KU Leuven investigated the effects of trade on hunger in the world as a result of climate change. The conclusion is clear: international trade can relieve regional food shortages and reduce hunger, particularly where protectionist measures and other barriers to trade are eliminated.

The first-of-its-kind study by UCLouvain and Stanford researchers reveals that subsidies for the planting of commercially valuable tree plantations in Chile resulted in the loss of biologically valuable natural forests and little, if any, additional carbon sequestration Campaigns to plant huge numbers of trees could backfire, according to a new study by researchers at Stanford University, the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Concepción in Chile that is the first to rigorously analyze potential effects of subsidies in such schemes.

Caterpillars can consume plastics, but it is not a magic solution. Caterpillars can consume plastics! Back in 2017, the world was getting to know this extraordinary phenomenon by global news coverage of findings of Bombelli et al. Their claims were that larvae of the greater wax moth, Galleria mellonella, consume polyethylene at an extraordinary rate, and moreover produce ethylene glycol as a major metabolite.

Hydropower plants can support solar and wind power, rather unpredictable by nature, in a climate-friendly manner. A new study in the scientific journal  Nature Sustainability  has now mapped the potential for such "solar-wind-water" strategies for West Africa: an important region where the power sector is still under development, and where generation capacity and power grids will be greatly expanded in the coming years.

A new tool maps the threats to the tropical dry forests in Peru and Ecuador.

An interdisciplinary team of bio-engineers and economists from KU Leuven has mapped out how wood could replace petroleum in the chemical industry. They not only looked at the technological requirements, but also whether that scenario would be financially viable. A shift from petroleum to wood would lead to a reduction in CO2 emissions, the researchers state in Science .