Basic Research
Category archives for Basic Research
Touching on Physics
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on January 28, 2013 What happens when a former physics-student-turned-documentary-director is invited to create a video clip for the first ever physics reunion? The answer is below. You may not learn anything new about physics by watching it, but you will note that Weizmann President Prof. Daniel Zajfman and VP Prof. Israel Bar-Joseph are featured, along with others.…
DiGeorge Syndrome Demystifed
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on January 17, 2013 Does your face reveal what’s in your heart? It might – even more than you know. Take, for instance, a common group of birth defects – forms of a disorder called DiGeorge syndrome. Around one in 4000 is born with this syndrome, which arises from a deletion of a short segment of chromosome 22. Among…
It’s a Quasicrystal! It’s a Topological Insulator! In 1-D!
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on December 10, 2012 Is anyone old enough to remember the ad in which two people walking down the street while snacking accidently bump into each other and discover peanut butter on a chocolate bar? Well, it turns out that when physics students run into each other on the street, the result is a quasicrystal with topological properties. The…
A Computer That Learns to See Like a Baby
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on November 18, 2012 The idea of “seeing the world through the eyes of a child” takes on new meaning when the observer is a computer. Institute scientists in the Lab for Vision and Robotics Research took their computer right back to babyhood and used it to ask how infants first learn to identify objects in their visual field.…
Not Just the Carbon Cycle
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on July 24, 2012 You’ve heard of the carbon cycle, maybe even the nitrogen cycle. But have you given much thought lately to the sulfur cycle? New research in last week’s Science suggests that we should be paying a bit more attention to the way this element moves through the atmosphere, biosphere, oceans and land. Over the last 500…
The Surprising Viruses in Our Gut
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on July 17, 2012 We were just getting used to the idea of our digestive tract as an ecosystem. There are 10 times as many bacteria in our gut as there are cells in our bodies, and the ecological balance between the different types might affect everything from our tendency to gain weight to our general health and susceptibility…
Assaf Vardi on Scientific American Expeditions
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on July 12, 2012 Rose Eveleth talks to Assaf Vardi today on the Scientific American Expeditions blog: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/expeditions/2012/07/11/you-wanted-to-know-who-are-these-scientists-introducing-assaf-vard
Scientists at Sea
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on June 20, 2012 One of our scientists, Dr. Assaf Vardi, is off on a month-long cruise. He is on the Knorr, a research vessel operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, with a team from the Weizmann Institute and another four research teams on a route that will take them from the Azores to Iceland. On the way,…
Game Changers
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on June 11, 2012 Geneticist Dr. Maya Schuldiner has a lab full of the latest, shiniest robotic equipment. So why is she showing us pictures of socks? What she and her lab group mean to illustrate is that they have trained their research robots to find pairs – not of socks, alas, but of proteins. The team and their…
Cancer Breakthrough 20 Years in the Making
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on September 12, 2011 Last month, Penn Medicine put out a press release heralding a “cancer treatment breakthrough 20 years in the making.” In a small clinical trial, three patients with advanced chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) were treated with genetically engineered versions of their own T cells. Just a few weeks after treatment the tumors had disappeared, and the…