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What to do with migrants that committed a crime, but are threatened in their country of origin? This question is difficult to answer, Julia Zomignani Barboza, a researcher at the Fundamental Rights Research Center at Vrije Universiteit Brussel found. Her extensive research delves into the complexities of regulating the situation of migrants who are at risk of human rights violations in their home countries but who have also committed crimes or are suspected of being dangerous to their host communities.

The Horizon2020 programme Group Care for the First 1000 Days is coming to an end. Researchers in seven countries, including three from the VUB, have worked with colleagues in the US to investigate the provision of antenatal care in participating countries. The study looked at group sessions rather than traditional monitoring through individual consultations, as is standard in Belgium.

The voice is the most important sound for human beings, providing information about the identity, gender, age and emotional state of the speaker, as well as being the basis of our communication through language and other non-linguistic cues. Adults have a specific brain area that responds preferentially to voice among all other sounds.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are increasingly being used in various aspects of our society. However, we do not always know how the algorithms work and whether the choices they make are fair.

According to a series of reports published by WHO and the partner study Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC), adolescents who are most likely to have suffered from negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are female, older, from less affluent families, faced prolonged school closures or lacked social support.

Researchers at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel suspect there is a link between stuttering and the quality and quantity of sleep in children aged four to 13. Previous research has shown that sleep problems can cause drowsiness, fatigue attention disorders, anxiety and depression symptoms and, the VUB researchers believe, the intensity of stutters.

The Department of Social Sciences contributed to a large-scale replication study that aimed to understand the role of decisions scientists make during the research process. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study highlights the importance of Open Science and collaboration among scientists.

As a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, many scholars and scientists have left the country. More than 30 Ukrainian researchers displaced by the war have temporarily joined the University of Luxembourg mainly as research fellows and in some cases under temporary contracts funded by the FNR. In this series of interviews, we briefly present the researchers and their work.

Sports fitness apps, such as Strava, are gaining popularity year after year. They have also often become true social networks. You share very personal data there, and sometimes unknowingly also your home or work location as the starting point of your sports activities. The apps usually allow you to hide those locations, but researchers from the imec-DistriNet research group at KU Leuven discovered that in many cases that option gives a false sense of security.

Successful and unsuccessful approaches to the pandemic by Western governments Tuesday, May 17, 2022 — Since 2020, the world has been experiencing the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. The cause is obviously a virus, but the degree of its spread, and the associated number of infections and deaths, is largely dependent on socio-economic factors.

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.

VUB research shows that living close to wetlands increases risk of diseases such as malaria or pulmonary infections such as possible Tuberculosis Wednesday, January 12, 2022 — For her PhD at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the University of Sheffield, Dr. Marit Van Cant studied medieval to early modern skeletal populations from six archaeological sites in Flanders.

In recent years, a lot of attention has been paid to loneliness in old age. Recent international studies show that 25% to 62% of elderly people experience occasional feelings of loneliness. However, the issue does not suddenly appear when one is old. Lise Switsers' doctoral research at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel showed the importance of looking at loneliness from a life-course perspective: "It's one of the many stereotypes that only older adults are lonely.

KU Leuven presents 7 reports that scrutinise various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic What are the socio-economic and psychological consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures to control it?

On Thursday, the long-awaited court case against Deliveroo starts in Brussels. The central question is whether the e-commerce company allows its couriers to work as self-employed workers unjustly, which means they have hardly any access to social rights. Research by VUB researcher Elief Vandevenne has shown that in many cases, working conditions are precarious and uncertain.

VUB-researchers identify for the first time interglobular dentine in cremated human teeth The cremation process destroys a lot of information that can usually be obtained from the human skeleton. Especially diseases are difficult to observe. This has caused a paucity in our knowledge of the disease load in populations that practiced cremation as their main funerary ritual.

Better student jobs bring more satisfaction and less negative effects on academic results Students are increasingly taking on jobs while they are at university, including many VUB students. Since a relaxation of the regulations on student work in 2017, the number of hours of student work and the number of students with one or more jobs has steadily increased.

In recent years, more and more inter-country adoptees have been raising questions about their history and the adoption procedure. A damning report in the Netherlands has called for the practice to be discontinued. Commissioned by the Flemish government, VUB scientists and researchers from UGent and UAntwerp conducted research on errors, injustices and malpractices in inter-country adoption and have now presented their final findings in seven reports.

Successful pilot project to tackle discrimination 13 June is International Albinism Awareness Day One in 1,400 people in Tanzania has albinism. These people are often socially excluded, heavily discriminated against and sometimes even have to fear for their lives. Dr Tjitske de Groot of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel set up a pilot project for her doctoral research and investigated what actions and means could be used to reduce the stigma of albinism - as well as other stigma - and actively contributed to this on site.

Monday, May 3, 2021 — During the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, Belgium experienced significant excess mortality. The federal statistics office Statbel recorded 30,014 deaths between 9 March and 17 May 2020. That was 8,808 more than the average for the three previous years in the same weeks.