Flanders today FEBRUARY 20 2008
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N°17
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I N D E P E N D E N T N E W S W ee k l y
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Nedda El-Asmar, p.9
www . f l anderst o day . E U Erkenningsnummer P708816
Hot science Six young Flemish scientists have won a share in the EU’s €3 billion bonanza
Saffina Rana an Cools is a scientist at the Flanders’ Institute of Biotechnology who specialises in studying bone marrow cancers, commonly known as leukemias. His research ideas have just won him €1.36 million in a competition against 8,794 of the best young scientists in Europe. He will use the funding to study TCell Leukemia, a rare form of cancer that develops predominantly in children between the age of two and four. It affects around 700 children in Belgium a year before they reach their 14th birthdays. “I didn’t expect to win, I thought the judges would think the cancer is too rare,” he says as we walk single file to his office at Leuven University Hospital Faculty of Medicine. The long corridors are made narrow by neat double rows of small fridges numbered and stacked alongside the wall, one on top of the other. This is the face of modern science, storing the mainstay of medical research. “To get T-Cell Leukemias, you need to accumulate at least four different cell mutations,” explains Jan. “But we don’t understand why you need those four types or how they work together. Because we don’t understand this, it’s not used for therapy and we don’t have targeted therapy,” adds Jan. His five-year project aims to understand what is happening, then use the information to improve the treatments for these cancers. “It would also give an insight into leukemias in general,” says Jan.
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Jan Cools wins e1.36 million
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Major trench warfare network discovered near Ypres Tunnels from 1918 are “perfectly preserved” Alan Hope rchaeologists have succeeded in uncovering one of the best-preserved underground networks of tunnels used by British forces during the Battle of Passchendaele in 1918. The Vampire Dugout lies 13 metres under fields in the West Flanders village of Zonnebeke near Ieper, or Ypres as the British soldiers knew it (pronounced “wipers”). It was constructed in 1918 by the Royal Engineers, and was intended to shelter senior officers and up to 50 men. However, just as the four-monthlong winter construction project neared
A Business
Arts
Active
As China’s economy booms, Antwerp port authority has launched a campaign to persuade Chinese shippers that the Scheldt estuary is the place to unload their cargos.
The Design Centre in Brussels hosts an exhibition of vases shaped by the flower of Flemish craftsmen. We take a look at the Flemish art of arranging flowers.
The Dead Rat Ball has been rocking the coastal town of Ostend for more than a century. We find out what makes it the social event of the year.
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Feature 1, 3
News 5-6
Business 7-8
Arts 9-10
Active 11-12
Agenda 14-15
completion, Allied forces were driven back, and the tunnels fell into German hands. They were retaken at the end of the war, but were shut up and flooded without being used. The discovery is an important one, said Dr Iain Banks, executive director of the Centre for Battlefield Archaeology at Glasgow University, which supervised the project, because the network is in such good condition. “Normally we find these things when they start to collapse and become visible,” he said. Continued on page 5 Living 16
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