NewsNew Western insights into illness and health as something that affects the organism as a whole turn out to match non-Western (Chinese) ideas. This is what Prof. Jan van der Greef argues in an article that appeared in December in Nature.
Light and physical exercise are good candidates for use as non-pharmaceutical therapies in the regulation of the biological clock. Disturbances in the clock can arise as a result of age or neurological disorders. Floor van Oosterhout defended her thesis on this subject on 12 January.
How do you bring the results of scientific research to the people who immediately benefit from it? By making a film, thought the researchers of LUMC and AMC after completing their study of hearing problems among musicians. On 12 January, Unbelievably LOUD went in première.
A pregnancy resulting from egg cell donation is in fact a form of transplantation; after all, it also involves a foreign element. And yet the odds of it being rejected are far smaller than in the case of organ transplantation. Why? This is the question Marie-Louise van der Hoorn asked in her PhD defence.
Gul Ozatesler studied power relations and inequality between population groups. She based her research on a particular casus: the forced emigration of gypsies from the Turkish town of Bayramic in 1970. Why did this happen, and how?
Even years after a thrombosis, the mortality rate remains higher than average, according to an article by the Leiden University Medical Center in the scientific journal PloS Medicine. The cause is not a second thrombosis, but cancer, a heart attack or lung disease.
Promising young Leiden researchers Wouter van den Bos, Tim van Erven and Wouter Halfwerk are going to conduct research at foreign universities. A Rubicon grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research is making this possible. Two academics who completed their PhD degrees abroad are coming to Leiden.
The effectiveness of a medication is determined not only by its affinity with the target molecule in the body but also by the time the medication remains bound to the molecule. Leiden researchers have been awarded 15 million euro to head a European consortium to develop innovative medicines based on this new concept.
Making chemical substances solve biological problems: that is Wouter van der Linden’s concise summary of chemical biology. In this way he is making his contribution with chemical substances that can eventually help in the fight against cancer: 'It’s not so much a question of the medicines themselves, but of creating a chemical toolkit to develop those medicines.'
Kristiaan Lenos has investigated the working of the Hdmx protein, which is indirectly involved in the development of cancer. 'Thanks to this research, patients can receive a more specific treatment and a more reliable prognosis regarding their survival chances,’ says the young researcher.
Kim Jong Il, leader of North Korea, is dead. His youngest son Kim Jong Eun is expected to be his successor. Remco Breuker, Leiden Professor of Korea Studies, gives a profile of the new leader.
Willem Adelaar, Professor of Amerindian Languages and Cultures, is to receive European funding worth 2.6 million euro for research into the relations between Central and South American Amerindian languages. His aim is to structure the enormous language diversity in the region and shed light on the history of the American population.
The training for surgeons could be more realistic and more efficient if 'evidence-based' methods were used, according to surgeon and instructor Jaap Hamming. He is therefore working closely with cognitive psychologists Guido Band and Bernhard Hommel on improvements to the training. A custom-made training programme would take more account of the individual surgeons being trained.
How do you break the vicious cycle of urban poverty? By giving people more certainty regarding the land they live on. Tristam Moeliono and Gustaaf Reerink investigated how to strengthen certainty of land ownership in the kampongs of Indonesia. Both lawyers defend their thesis on 13 December.
Is attention from women different from attention from men? Leiden researchers and their colleagues in Toronto investigated the effects of the hormone oestrogen on spontaneous attention. They were hoping in this way to explain differences between the sexes. Women turned out to only be different from men when they had a high level of oestrogen in their menstruation cycle.
The Archaeology Faculty participates in an international research network, focusing on the slave trade of the 15th to the 19th century. The network, Eurotast, has been awarded a European subsidy of 4.3 million euro.
The only Dutch experiment that astronaut André Kuipers will be carrying out in space comes from the Neurology department of the LUMC. The researchers, Dr Alla Vein and the group of Professor Michel Ferrari, have been studying headaches in space for a number of years.
Stress at a very young age, caused for instance by neglect or social isolation, increases the risk of developing symptoms of schizophrenia in rats with a genetic predisposition. This is the conclusion of the research of Nikos Daskalakis of the Medical Pharmacology Department of the Leiden/Amsterdam Centre for Drug Research (LACDR).
The Maya calendar predicts that the world will end in 2012. It is a question of waiting to see whether this prediction will come true. What is certain is that the calendar had an important role in the old civilisations of Middle America. How big this role is nowadays is what Leiden archaeologist Maarten Jansen has received European funding to investigate this role.
In his inaugural lecture “Hitting the right buttons” on 2 December, Professor Ferry Ossendorp will speak about his research into how the immune system works against cancer.
