Weizmann Institute
Tag archives for Weizmann Institute
Outdoors and In: Innovations in Education
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on June 4, 2013 The world – or at least a large swathe of Israel – was their classroom. An unusual international conference for science teaching experts started out at the Clore Garden of Science, on the Weizmann Institute campus. From there the “nomadic” conference made its way down to Eilat at the southern tip of the country, Jerusalem…
Taking the Prize for Advancing Women
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on March 7, 2013 Happy International Women’s Day. In the midst of today’s hand wringing about women in science, here’s some good news: The Weizmann Institute has just been awarded a prize by the City of Barcelona for its efforts to promote women in science. Above: Barcelona Civil Rights councilor Francina Vila i Valls presents the award to the…
Double Attack on Cancer
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on February 7, 2013 New research at the Institute may offer a sliver of hope for treating “triple-negative” breast cancer. “Triple-negative” refers to the fact that the breast cancer cells are missing the three different receptors targeted by the currently available drugs, for instance Herceptin and steroid hormone blockers. This type of cancer also tends to be fairly aggressive,…
What a Rat Feels
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on November 5, 2012 We have been told what it’s like to be a bat or a bird; now Prof. Ehud Ahissar and Dr. Avi Saig are getting people to experience what it’s like to be a rat. Specifically, they want the participants in their studies to learn what it’s like to locate things in the dark by twitching…
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…
An Israeli at IceCube
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on May 29, 2012 Not many Israelis make it all the way to the South Pole. (In fact, very few people go there, at all. Not only is it really, really cold, it is extremely difficult and expensive to transport people, gear and necessities to this remote and inhospitable corner of the earth.) So when we learned that Dr.…
Uncrossing the Wires
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on August 28, 2011 A recent study by Prof. Ernesto Joselevich and his team, published in Science, features perfectly aligned horizontal arrays of thin, millimeter-long nanowires. We spoke with Joselevich recently to find out why he and others in the field are excited by this advance: WSW: Your lab has produced a fair amount of innovative research in recent…
Two Ounces of Prevention
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on January 26, 2011 Two recent papers to come out of the Weizmann Institute have possible medical applications — one in preventing pregnancy, the other in preventing the deadly effects of nerve gas. The first might give pause to those among us who are “believers” in antioxidants. It seems that those “nasty” molecules they eliminate — reactive oxygen species…
Women’s Tears a Turn-Off
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on January 10, 2011 Did Israeli singer-songwriter Arik Einstein know something that scientists didn’t when he released the song “When You Cry You’re Not So Pretty” back in 1969? Prof. Noam Sobel and his team of the Weizmann Institute of Science have now shown that merely sniffing a woman’s tears – even when the crying woman is not present…
Beginning of the End
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on November 4, 2010 We are still frustrated in our efforts to get our new website up and running, so here’s something dated to contemplate. Going through the old articles that are in the process of being transferred over, here’s one that popped up from the second issue of Interface magazine (1992): Library without Walls. The article extols the…