Recharge overview
Refugee reception centres sensitive issue for merchant and priest
Due to a labour shortage, the Dutch economy is bursting at the seams. Migration experts Tesseltje de Lange and Ricky van Oers believe that it is economically and legally unsustainable that our country rarely employs asylum seekers.
Language implicitly plays a role after making a moral decision
Would you sacrifice one person to save five? In bilinguals, the answer depends on the language in which the question is asked. Psycholinguist Susanne Brouwer investigated what is called the Foreign Language Effect on moral decision-making by using an eye-tracking experiment.
Brain basics: How the brain controls your body so you don’t have to
We don’t have to do everything ourselves. Although true as a broad comment on life, this is particularly true about what parts of our body and mind we consciously control. Here is how it works!
How a good story can help children to grow emotionally
Children and adolescents love stories, like those that are told in films. Can these types of stories also be meaningful for them? Communication scientists from Radboud University have concluded that stories can certainly can be meaningful, and that there are even a variety of ways in which this can be.
‘New era calls for new political leadership’
The departure of a number of prominent political leaders has marked the end of an era. This claim was made by Ronald Kroeze, who is a Professor of Parliamentary History and the Director of the Centre for Parliamentary History (CPG). ‘A whole new playing field has now opened up.’
Brain signals transformed into speech through implants and AI
Researchers from Radboud University and the UMC Utrecht have succeeded in transforming brain signals into audible speech. By decoding signals from the brain through a combination of implants and AI, they were able to predict the words people wanted to say with an accuracy of 92 to 100%. Their findings are published in the Journal of Neural Engineering this month.
Adversities permanently change our brains
Neuroscientists at Radboudumc show that adversities permanently change the functioning of the brain. Furthermore, an aberrant reaction of the brain to adversities is related to anxiety symptoms. This may have predictive value for the development of psychiatric disorders.
Brain Basics: How the basic senses work in a nutshell
Our senses ensure that we are in contact with the world. The five basic senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch are the gateways through which we experience our environment. In this blog post, we explore how these senses work.
Anxious people use less suitable section of brain to control emotions
When choosing their behaviour in socially difficult situations, anxious people use a less suitable section of the forebrain than people who are not anxious. This can be seen in brain scans, as shown by the research of Bob Bramson and Sjoerd Meijer at the Donders Institute of Radboud University.
Expropriation expert increasingly important, but hardly enshrined in law
Since the Rutte 3 government considered expropriating farmers to reduce nitrogen emissions in 2021, the issue of expropriation has played a prominent role in current affairs. But what is involved in expropriation proceedings, and how is the amount of compensation determined? Sam Schuite studied the role of damages experts in expropriation procedures and related procedures such as planning damage and compensation for loss, and will be defending his PhD thesis on that research at Radboud University on 30 August.
UN Water Conference: 'Lively discussions - yet an awful lot needs to be done'
Usually, they attend scientific conferences. Yet this conference was to be a governmental one and only the second one on water organised by the United Nations (UN), following on from the influential Mar del Plata conference in 1977. Water governance scholars Sander Meijerink and Corinne Vitale attended the UN 2023 Water Conference in New York and obtained an impression of the current water policy debate.
Facial recognition aids diagnosis of hereditary developmental disorders
The hereditary cause of rare developmental disorders in children is often unknown. As a result, a diagnosis cannot be made. Researchers at Radboud university medical center have found a way to change that. They developed a computer model based on facial recognition. This allows doctors to make the correct diagnosis more often.
Brain basics: How the brain becomes adult
Most of the neurons in our brains are developed before we are even born, but our brains are constantly changing. From childhood and adolescence into adulthood our brains become more and more specialized, learning more complex skills and behaviors.
Appearance of medicines is important for proper use
Antibiotics are too often used incorrectly. This contributes to antibiotic resistance, a growing problem on a global scale. More attention should be devoted to the appearance of medicines. This creates clarity and can reduce misuse, argue researchers from Radboud university medical center in the Lancet Global Health.
Nijmegen mini libraries are popular and offer a surprisingly modern selection
They are popping up left and right in people's front gardens: mini libraries where you can take out books or add some of your own. But how popular are these public bookcases? And what kind of books do they contain? Sharon Hiep researched mini libraries in Nijmegen for her Master's thesis. “I actually found quite a few books by living writers.”
Protecting your wine harvest with essential oil
When Chris Pelzer saw his vines inundated in 2021 and then saw his entire harvest fail due to a disease, he decided to explore how he could prevent such disasters in future. He knocked on the door of Radboud University
Inhumane conditions surrounding migrant workers
Sleeping ten to a room, in danger of losing your income overnight, or struggling to get the care you need. These are examples of the degrading conditions migrant workers in the Netherlands face on a daily basis, say researchers Pascal Beckers and Tesseltje de Lange. For more than two and a half years, based on the university-wide network Radboud University Network on Migrant Inclusion (RUNOMI), they have led an interdisciplinary research study on the effects of COVID-19 measures on migrant workers in the Dutch-German border region. In the hope that after 30 years of abuses surrounding migrant workers, their findings would lead to structural improvements precisely in the midst of a health crisis.
Make the right decision? That is more complex than you think
Say you take part in an experiment where you’re given the choice between winning €5 for sure or having a 50% chance of winning €10 or nothing. Will you go for safety or take a risk? And would you still make the same choice if the €10 turned into €9? Sara Arts, PhD candidate in Financial Economics, studies how individuals make financial decisions in complex situations and what processes are involved.
ChatGPT put to the test: how did it do in its accounting exams?
Accounting lecturers Karen de Meyst and Muskan Achhpilia recently contributed to a unique piece of collaborative research, in which ChatGPT was fed thousands of accounting assessment questions to see how it would perform. Although the AI chatbot largely failed its exams, the results give rise to an urgent discussion about the future of accounting education. ‘It’s a force that can’t be ignored.’
'Open' alternatives to ChatGPT are on the rise, but how open is AI really?
OpenAI's ChatGPT seems ubiquitous, but open source versions of instruction-tuned text generators are gaining the upper hand. In just 6 months, at least 15 serious alternatives have emerged, all of which have at least one important advantage over ChatGPT: they are a lot more transparent. Insight into training data and algorithms is key for responsible use of generative AI, a team of linguists and language technology researchers at Radboud University claim.