These days, you can hear the word zoonosis everywhere: in thousands of news articles, podcasts, television shows, and often to describe the recent coronavirus that changed our lives. Like many pandemics from the past, this one started as an infectious disease in wild animals that jumped to humans. Thus, should we be afraid of wild…

We now know that eating (too much) meat is bad for the environment. Various political parties, including GroenLinks, D66 and the ChristenUnie, discussed during the parliamentary elections in March 2021 that in order to achieve the government’s climate goals by 2030, our meat consumption must be reduced. Some parties even talked about a “meat tax”,…

In September 2020, the United Nations reported that NONE of the 20 targets for saving biodiversity have been achieved. Why did we fail? And what can we do for the future?  Why is biodiversity important? It’s because nature is beautiful. – True. Because I like animals. – Of course, right. Everyone has their own reasons….

Perhaps you have already eaten them without knowing it: vegetables that are not grown in the ground, but in a flat. So far there are three large “vertical farms” in the Netherlands. Not somewhere in the countryside, no, they are all in the big cities. A handy invention when you consider that in the future…

Written by: Jolijn Jansen After a boring corona winter, we are ready to party. But we humans are not the only ones with an urge to dance. The insects in our garden are also coming back to life now that the sun is out. A real party animal is the bee. They dance to their…

Written by Monicah W. Kirathi  At the end of 2019,  a new illness, COVID-19 began affecting people on a worldwide scale. On February  27, 2020, the first confirmed case was reported in the Netherlands.  As the world changed to adhere to new restrictions, the use of  digital technology  became one of many cornerstones,  providing structure to…

You probably recognize the situation: a photo is blurred because your phone was out of focus, or because you zoomed in too much. Scientists struggle with a similar problem. If they use a microscope to zoom in on something very small and make a picture, the image is always blurry. Even with the best microscope…

In 2020, researchers from Utrecht University determined that people living in a radius of 2 kilometres around a goat farm have an up to 55% higher chance of developing pneumonia. The cause of the relationship between goat farms and the increased risk of pneumonia is as of yet unknown. But other animals that we keep…

While the world is struggling with the invisible Covid-19 virus, nature is dealing with invisible nitrogen gases as well. Nitrogen gases, such as nitrogen oxides and ammonia, are very harmful to the environment and cause various plant species to disappear. Can you imagine that in a few decades we might be walking in a forest…

The term zoonoses is used diseases that are caused by pathogens like bacteria and viruses that have jumped from vertebrate animals to humans. In recent years, zoonoses have become more common, of which the COVID-19 outbreak is a good example.  The subject of zoonoses is thus very relevant, especially because it now also influences our…