Projects

The recent macroeconomic crisis (the Great Recession) has rendered traditional macroeconomic policy largely powerless. Central banks around the world have dramatically reduced their policy interest rates to the bare minimum. Fiscal authorities have been reluctant to pursue overly expansive policies, for a range of reasons. In response, central banks have turned towards an alternative means to achieve higher growth and inflation closer to ...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a devastating disorder that affects around 5% of the world population and there is no disease-modifying treatment capable of stopping the progression of the disease.The two main pathological hallmarks of AD are the appearance of senile plaques composed by extracellular β-amyloid (Aβ) aggregates and the presence of intracellular phospho Tau aggregates in the form of neurofibrillary tangles. During AD progression, Aβ ...

Besides the influence of the individual sex steroid levels we want to investigate the influence of the estrogen/androgen ratio in determining the tempo of bone mineralization and maturation, growth spurt and body composition. We therefore will investigate those parameters during (pre)puberty, in males presenting conditions with suppressed aromatization (ideopatic osteoprosis) as well as in males with increased aromatization (obesity).

The diversity and composition of the tree community influence the biotic and abiotic soil
properties. Here we will study how these effects are carried over to future forest generations,
affecting tree establishment, vitality, and species composition. First, we will analyse soil samples
from stands varying in tree diversity and composition, both in recently established young forest
and in mature forest. This allows ...

Currently there is a strong interest in barrel-ageing of conventionally fermented craft beers as a tool to add supplementary flavours to the beer, including sourness and/or wood-derived flavours. However, to date only very little is known about the underlying mechanisms of the maturation process, including the role of the occurring microorganisms and their succession patterns, as well as how beer chemistry evolves during the process, and how ...

The prevalent occurrence of sand, makes it often forget that sand is a natural resource, occurring in highly varying quantities, with highly varying properties. In all its different aspects, sand is an important commodity for the current, and certainly future, societies. However, high quality sand, having industrial applications is rather exceptional as a number of strictly defined, both physical and chemical, properties must be fulfilled. ...

Synapses, the highly organized cellular junctions between pre-and postsynaptic neurons, are essential for information transfer and processing in the nervous system. While we have made considerable progress in identifying the cell-surface receptors that are important for the organization and maturation of synapses, the downstream signalling mechanisms remain essentially unknown. Elucidating these intracellular signal transduction pathways is ...

The Belgian horticultural sector faces a major challenge to reduce the use of environmental unfriendly products in the sector, including peat in horticultural substrates as well as chemical plant protection products (PPPs). Due to changing regulations, the public opinion, and Flemish and European policies, there is an urgent need to find alternatives for peat and chemical PPPs in the horticultural sector.

To reduce the use of peat and ...

In the agro-food industry, there is an increasing demand for non-destructive, fast and cost-efficient methods for the objective determination of product quality. Several parameters influence the quality of a product, while the importance of each of these parameters may vary amongst people. Optical measurement techniques are often used because of their non-destructive nature. However, the robust determination of both chemical and physical ...

The last decades, it has become clear that most (pathogenic) bacteria, such as the target microorganisms of this PhD research (i.e., Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella Typhimurium), grow predominantly as biofilms on abiotic (food) contact surfaces. Biofilms are functional consortia of cells protected by a self-produced matrix of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS). The EPS matrix mainly contains polysaccharides, ...