Israel is set to head to the voting booth after the new year, and the news has sent media speculation into a frenzy.

With pundits already making predictions over how the new Knesset will shape up, it's nice to feel like there is a reputable source to look to for straight talk and real facts.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has put together its own informative video to help shed some light on issues influencing the March 2015 election. You can watch for yourself above.

The video includes expert opinions from some of the university's leading political science minds, including Dr. Gayil Talshir, Prof. Reuven Hazan (chair of the school's department of political science), and Prof. Gideon Rahat.

Constant fear can be a major contributor to spikes in one’s resting heart rate.

Chronic exposure to terrorism can raise the resting heart rates and increase the risk of natural death, according to a Hebrew University study of more than 17,000 Israelis just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It was the first statistics- based study – and the largest of its kind – indicating that fear induced by consistent exposure to the threat of terrorism can lead to negative health consequences and increase the risk of mortality.

It is well-documented that international terrorism outbreaks involve mass psychological trauma, leading to long-term mental health risks to the exposed population.

Previous studies have also shown that in the short term, sudden stressful situations, such as earthquakes can increase people’s heart rates and their risk of having a heart attack. However, whether long-term exposure to the threat of terrorism can lead to physical health risks in the exposed population has until now remained unknown.

Molecular neuroscientist Prof. Hermona Soreq (a member of Israel’s National I-Core Center of Excellence for Mass Trauma Research) and postdoctoral fellow Dr. Shani Shenhar-Tsarfaty aimed at a better understanding of the health risks associated with the fear of terrorism. They examined the factors affecting basal (resting) heart rates and how these rates changed over the years during annual checkups of healthy subjects.

Together with Prof. Yaacov Ritov at HU’s department of statistics and center for rationality, they studied 17,300 healthy subjects who underwent an annual general medical exam including blood tests, heart rate and stress tests at the Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center each year. The 10,972 men and 6,408 women in the study were apparently healthy employees attending periodic routine health examinations during the years 2002 to 2013.

The questionnaire covered a wide range of occupational, psychological and physical factors, including body mass index, blood pressure, fitness, smoking, psychological well-being, anxiety and fear of terrorism.

“We wanted to test whether fear of terrorism can predict an increase in pulse rate and increased risk of death,” said Soreq. By combining the medical exam data with the questionnaire responses, the researchers found that basal heart rate was affected by physiological characteristics, such as level of physical fitness and inflammation index reflecting the activity of the immune system.

In contrast, an ongoing increase in heart rate was also influenced by psychological characteristics such as fear of terrorism. Through a statistical analysis of 325 different parameters, the researchers found that fear of terrorism was a major contributor to annual increases in resting heart rate, with 4.1 percent of study participants suffering from an elevated fear of terrorism that predicted an increase in their resting heart rates.

While a heartbeat of 60 beats per minute is normal, an increase of up to 70 to 80 beats per minute was observed in subjects who exhibited an increased fear of terrorism. In other words, for people with an elevated fear of terrorism, the heart beats faster and the associated risk of heart disease is higher.

Elevated resting heart rate is a predictor of death from cardiovascular disease and death across all causes.

As people age, the resting heart rate typically decreases from year to year, and people whose heart rate actually increases annually are more susceptible than others to heart attacks and strokes.

The researchers also examined how the brain alerts the body to the expectation of danger. They administered a blood test to examine the function of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter involved in responses to stress and which acts as a brake to the inflammatory response. The results showed that the fear of terrorism leads to a decline in the function of acetylcholine and thus reduces the body’s ability to defend itself from a heart attack, leading to a greater chance of dying.

“We found that fear of terrorism and existential anxiety may disrupt the control processes using acetylcholine, causing a chronic accelerated heart rate. Together with inflammation, these changes are associated with increased risk of heart attack and stroke,” Soreq said. The researchers also found that levels of C-reactive protein, a biomarker for inflammation, were elevated in those volunteers who fear terrorism and show escalated pulse.

This finding further suggests that long-term exposure to terrorism threats may combine with inflammation to elevate resting heart rates and thus increase the risk of mortality.

The researchers suggest that since information on heart rate and its time-related changes is easy to follow, the findings may be useful in identifying asymptomatic people who could benefit from primary prevention measures designed to limit increases in cardiovascular mortality risk. These could include stimulation of the vagal nerve, anti-inflammatory or anti-cholinesterase medications or physical activity.

You may have never heard of them, but there are more than a hundred biotechnology startup companies active in Jerusalem. It all started in 1988, when the Israeli government established the Jerusalem Development Authority, a statutory corporation committed to promoting the economic development of Jerusalem. Among the most thriving economic engines in the Israeli capital, the JDA has been attracted to the growing biomedical industry – a result of a consolidated bridging system between the Hebrew University, Hadassah and Shaarei Tzedek hospitals. On those bridges were founded the aforementioned start-ups, which work daily to discover and create new drugs, as well as on producing new medical devices for the diagnosis and cure of several diseases.

“There is no other city in Israel that boasts all these advantages in one place; this strong link between the academia and the medical field is unique,” said Shai Melcer, executive director of BioJerusalem, a JDA initiative established in 2008.

BioJerusalem aims at developing the strong life sciences cluster and supporting new companies that operate in Jerusalem.

We are sitting at Café Haivrit, on the Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A short walk from here is the High-Tech Village, a facility within the university campus where at least 30 high-tech and biomedical start-ups operate. Many other companies operate at the Bio Park in the Ein Kerem campus, next to Hadassah University Hospital.

MEDICAL DEVICE production is one of the most thriving fields. For instance, Brainsway, a company established in 2003, produces a magnetic stimulator for the treatment of brain disorders, such as depression, compulsion and addiction. “We invented different electromagnetic coils that excite and ultimately alter networks of neurons,” explained Dr. Abraham Zangen, neurobiological consultant of the company. “This procedure usually leads to problematic side effects, such as loss of memory and the need to use total anesthesia, but we solved them by applying a more subtle and delicate stimulation.”

The technology is now being sold around the world, from the United States to the Philippines.

HIL Applied Medical produces a medical device for cancer radiation therapy. Despite the positive effects of the treatment, only three percent of cancer patients receive it in the United States, due to the high cost and large size of the technology. “It takes a billion dollars to build one of these facilities,” said Sagi Brink-Danan, general manager. “With our technology, we aim at breaking this barrier and shrinking the sizes of the devices, making it widely accessible.”

Regarding diagnostics companies, Sight Diagnostics has developed a new tool for malaria diagnosis.

The product, called Parasight, takes two minutes to diagnose the disease from one blood sample.

“Only this year, between five and 10 new biomedical startups were established in Jerusalem,” said Melcer. Despite the fact that the term “start-up” usually refers to new companies, in the medical field companies can keep such status for over 10 years. “It’s a long-term investment, especially in the pharmaceutical field,” said Melcer.

If the industry is so vibrant and thriving, why is it so silent? The answer is very simple. Unlike companies in other fields, most biotechnology start-ups are not active on social media. According to Itzik Yarkoni, founder and director of Bomah, a branding company based in Jerusalem, only a third of these companies run a social media account. “We’re not on social media,” said Brink-Danan of HIL Applied Medical.

“We should do it, but we haven’t done it yet.”

Most biomedical companies consider themselves to be part of a business-to-business industry, explained Melcer.

“Pharmaceutical companies, for instance, have the long-term goal of reaching other big pharmaceutical companies that put their products on the market.”

Yarkoni, however, pointed out that companies can use social media to reach other pharmaceutical companies. Also within the medical device arena, companies could take advantage of social media to market their products and reach the public.

Brainsway is one of the very few examples of Israeli biotech companies systematically active on social media.

“Our technology could benefit anybody around the world, so we aim at a global market,” said company COO Ronen Segal. “We target physicians, but also the patients, because today physicians are not the only decision-makers anymore. Then we target fellow neuroscience researchers.” Brainsway also has a Facebook page directed specifically at the Philippines market.

The right message for the right audience is often the key for a successful social media campaign. “Today social media allow companies to track the people that are interested in a specific disease or cure,” said Yarkoni. “Mapping the audience can save a lot of time and energy. Social media can be useful for branding and crowdfunding; they have a huge potential for biotechnological companies, too.” According to Melcer, moreover, the future of biotechnology includes the new field of digital health, which is more associated with social media than pharma or medical devices.

Find the right tools, test them, added Yarkoni. “It’s easy, fun, and mostly free.”

The writer was born and raised in Italy, he studied in the States for one year and is currently living in Tel Aviv, where he studies at Bar-Ilan University and works as a freelance writer. His works, both in English and Italian, have been published in The Times of Israel, Corriere della Sera and Pagine Ebraiche.

Following the war in Gaza, mutual threat perceptions are very high, while Palestinian and Israeli support for the two-state solution and willingness to compromise go down

Jerusalem, December 24, 2014 — These are the results of the most recent poll conducted jointly by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah. This joint survey was conducted with the support of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in Ramallah and Jerusalem.

• Following the war in Gaza in the summer of 2014, 50% of Israelis and 38% of Palestinians support a permanent settlement package along the Clinton parameters and the Geneva Initiative. These results are lower than the figures in December 2013 when 54% of the Israelis and 46% of the Palestinians supported the package.
   
• Given the Gaza war and the increasing tensions in Jerusalem and the West Bank, 47% of Israelis and 36% of Palestinians think that the two sides will not return to negotiations: 39% of the Israelis and 26% of the Palestinians think that the two sides will not return to negotiations and some armed attacks will take place; 8% of the Israelis and 10% of the Palestinians think that the two sides will not return to negotiations and there will be no armed attacks. By contrast, in June 2014, 28% of the Israelis and 16% of the Palestinians thought that the two sides will not return to negotiations and some armed attacks will take place and 7% of the Israelis and 13% of the Palestinians thought that the two sides will not return to negotiations and there will be no armed attacks.
   
• At the same time—consistent with previous results—each side perceives the other side as constituting a threat to its very existence. 58% of Palestinians think that Israel’s goals in the long run are to extend its borders to cover all the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and expel its Arab citizens. 24% think the goals are to annex the West Bank while denying political rights to the Palestinians. 37% of the Israelis think that the Palestinian aspirations in the long run are to conquer the State of Israel and destroy much of the Jewish population in Israel; 18% think the goals of the Palestinians are to conquer the State of Israel.

— See in-depth findings at http://bit.ly/isrpal1dec14.
— See survey data at http://bit.ly/isrpal2dec14.

The Palestinian sample size was 1270 adults interviewed face-to-face in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in 127 randomly selected locations between December 3 and 6, 2014. The margin of error is 3%. The Israeli sample includes 616 adult Israelis interviewed in Hebrew, Arabic or Russian between December 7 and 12, 2014. The margin of error is 4.5%.

The poll was planned and supervised by Prof. Ifat Maoz, the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, and the Department of Communication, and Director of the Swiss Center for Conflict Research, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Prof. Khalil Shikaki, Director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR).

For further details on the Palestinian survey, contact PSR director, Prof. Khalil Shikaki, at pcpsr@pcpsr.org. On the Israeli survey, contact Prof Ifat Maoz at email msifat@mscc.huji.ac.il.

A technology hailing from the Hebrew University’s chemistry laboratories aims to tackle hydrocarbon contaminants at their chemical core, providing an efficient and affordable solution for cleanups like the country’s December oil spill.

After some 5 million liters of crude oil surged into the Arava Desert sands last month, the Environmental Protection Ministry-led rehabilitation venture is in the process of determining which technologies will be implemented in the newly approved NIS 17 million cleanup budget.

But the brainchild of Prof. Yoel Sasson and Dr. Uri Stoin from Hebrew University’s Casali Institute of Applied Chemistry recently underwent a pilot trial at the Nimra Landfill site in the desert, where the contaminated soils are being stored.

The technology, which was patented and commercialized by Hebrew University’s technology transfer company Yissum, was sold to the Swiss firm Man Oil Group about a year ago. Dr. Alex Mojon, head of Man Oil’s research and development team, oversaw the desert pilot on December 11.

The decontamination of the soil occurs by means of an agent called NHS+, which Mojon describes in a video of the pilot as a “hydrocarbon destructor” – or a chemical intermediate that is capable of completely destroying the hydrocarbons polluting the soil.

In the pilot experiment, the company made use of a 3-by-3-meter plot, containing about half a cubic meter of contaminated soil.

Within two hours, workers applied the NHS+ to the soil in three shifts, allowing the hydrocarbon destruction and chemical oxidation to proceed efficiently.

Afterward, the before and after soil samples were transferred to Sasson’s laboratory at the Casali Institute for examination.

“The first results show that at least 80-90 percent of the oil is fully decomposed,” Sasson said. “This means that it was converted from the hydrocarbons of the original oil, which are toxic of course and disastrous to the environment, to totally benign material – carbon dioxide and water.”

Backtracking slightly to acknowledge that carbon dioxide is not “total benign material,” as it causes global warming, Sasson explained that any carbon dioxide released is no more harmful than what would have been released had the oil been burned for fuel. In at least some part, the carbon dioxide is also converted to benign sodium carbonate.

“So it doesn’t change the balance,” Sasson said.

Using the NHS+ reagent to clean up oil spills provides particular advantages over traditional technologies that typically involve biological process, according to Sasson. In those cases, bacteria are essentially tasked with decomposing the oil, a procedure that can take many months or even years, he said. Such biological processes also require the removal of soil from the pollution site for treatment elsewhere.

His lab’s technology, on the other hand, allows for in-situ cleanup, at the site of the contamination, Sasson explained.

“They can simply inject it on the surface or underground, and do it on site,” he said. “This saves a lot of cost.”

NHS+ works not only on oil spills but on messes caused by any organic compound, Sasson added. For example, the reagent could be useful on the polluted soil at the former air force compounds in Ramat Hasharon or in Beit Hakerem in Jerusalem – both impacted by industrial solvents, he said.

The reagent also does not cause any further harm to the flora and fauna in the affected region, and instead allows after several months for the regrowth of populations destroyed by the oil spill, he added.

“Once you decompose the oil with the reagent, with time you convert the soil back to its original virgin state,” Sasson continued. “With time, after the first rain, it will start to flourish again.”

If the NHS+ reagent is applied to clean soil, it could potentially kill plants growing there. However, when an oil spill occurs, the chemical causes absolutely no further damage to the plants, and instead allows for their rejuvenation.

The reagent works toward “removing the oil and giving the soil the potential to revive again,” Sasson said.

While Sasson said he hopes that his and Stoin’s technology “will get at least part of the job” of cleaning up the Arava, he stressed that moving forward will be up to the Man Oil Group and the government.

Meanwhile, he and his laboratory colleagues are working on several other new innovations, including a self-cleaning wall coating that combines with cement and becomes photocatalytically active – active under radiation from light. A wall coated in this chemical will be able to decompose stains like mold on itself, as well as purify surrounding air polluted by nitrous oxides and other contaminants, Sasson explained.

Another technology that originated in Sasson’s lab is about to be the basis for a start-up that will begin operations in the next few months, with the help of the chief scientist in the Economy Ministry.

The scientists have developed a scrubber that can remove the mercury in flue gas emanating from coal-fired power stations, he explained.

“It’s a very serious global issue,” Sasson said.

If it’s January 12, it must be Hebrew Language Day, organized by the dedicated linguists at Hebrew University’s Academy of the Hebrew Language

The day — which is stretched out for the entire week — is an opportunity to think about the Hebrew language, its vocabulary, idioms and turns of phrase.

“It’s a real event for us,” said Tzipi Senderov, who handles press relations for the academy.

Besides a four-day conference on language — which is not organized by the academy — being held in Rishon Lezion, in which the academy’s scientific secretary Ronit Gadish will receive the Prime Minister’s Award for the Fostering and Preservation of the Hebrew Language, the academy wants to engage the public, and get them thinking about Hebrew.

To that end, they set up a questionnaire for people to send in their favorite Hebrew words; a stamp in honor of the Hebrew language; and the opportunity for Hebrew speakers to ask questions, via their website, about the etymology and history of any Hebrew term.

“We always have people sending in words and stories about Hebrew words,” said Senderov. “We just expanded on that.”

Prior to Hebrew Language Day, some 60 government ministries, nonprofit organizations and private companies asked the academy to guide them in finding new terms for foreign words commonly used in Hebrew, explained Senderov.

Tech blog Geektime got “chevrat heznek” as an alternative to saying “start-up” with an Israeli accent, while Shatil, the New Israel Fund’s Initiative for Social Change, asked for a term for “wellness,” and was told to use “shlomut” and “zulatanut” for altruism.

The academy offered “tamli,” with the letter “aleph” on the end, for a pastry chef who wanted another word for “pie,” those pastry shells filled with fruit or vegetables. And a landscape artist received the words “deshonet” for compost and “madshan” for composter.

Senderov made it clear that the academy isn’t always trying to get rid of foreign terminology in the Hebrew language. “But it’s good to have local terms,” she added.

That said, the academy does like to emphasize use of proper terms for school-age children, as shown in a series of YouTube videos made at the start of the school year.

In one of the 34-second videos, viewers were reminded of the word “mehikon,” or “white-out,” for the gluey, white correction fluid used to cover an incorrect word written on paper. The term generally used is “Tipp-ex,” for one of the brands commonly available in local stores.

Never mind that most kids, accustomed to the backspace or delete keys on their computers, won’t even be using much white-out in the future. For now, they’re still carrying it in their “kalmar,” or pencil case, from the Greek “kalamarion,” which once meant “reed” or “reed pen,” a word used in the Talmud.

Want more? Linguists and linguist wannabes can hear more about the Hebrew language — and language in general — at Lashon Rishon 8, the Prime Minister’s Conference on Hebrew Language, being held this week in Rishon Lezion.

The conference is in honor of the 157th birthday of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, considered the father of the modern Hebrew language, who taught in Rishon Lezion, the second settlement established in Palestine in the 19th century.

Besides sessions about the connections between Hebrew and Arabic, or the challenges in finding a feminist footing in the Hebrew language, there will be writers and poets speaking about Hebrew, as well as exhibits — on Hebrew and its development — in local galleries and museums.

For more information, go to the Rishon Lezion website.

To mark the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s earth-shattering Theory of Relativity, a new website called the ‘Digital Einstein Papers’ was launched, showcasing virtual copies of thousands of his very own transcripts, scientific and personal papers.

Einstein’s theory of relativity is largely believed to have transformed our understanding of physics and astronomy, superseding the physical theories forged by Sir Isaac Newton some 200 years prior. Notably, the theory of relativity helped clarify the relationship between elementary particles and was the basis for nuclear theory, black hole theories and the understanding of other astrophysical phenomena.

In order to commemorate Einstein’s genius, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, an institution that Einstein himself helped establish, and the Princeton University Press spent no less than several decades studying over 80,000 original documents penned by Einstein. Now the universities, together with the California Institute of Technology and the Tizra publishing platform, will put all of Einstein’s transcripts online, giving billions of people access to the postcards, letters, papers and diaries composed by one of history’s greatest minds.

The Digital Einstein Papers contain text transcripts that link to a number of digital images that are part of the Hebrew University’s Einstein Archive Online, a complete catalogue of over 80,000 documents and high-quality digital images under the Hebrew University’s possession. As one of the most loyal supporters of the Hebrew University, together with other notable names like Sigmund Freud, Martin Buber and Israeli President Chaim Weizmann, when it was established in 1925, Einstein bequeathed his writings and intellectual heritage to the university, as well as the rights to use his image.

“Together with the Hebrew University’s Einstein Archive Online, the Digital Einstein Papers will serve as a primary resource for researchers and historians, scientists and students to learn more about Albert Einstein,” says Dr. Roni Grosz, curator of the Hebrew University’s archives.

Some of the documents that appear in the online database include a French essay penned by 17-year-old Einstein entitled, ‘My Plans for the Future,’ in which he profoundly states, “young people especially like to contemplate bold projects.” Another entitled “Letter to Mileva Marić” (Einstein’s first wife) reveals that Einstein fathered a daughter out of wedlock named Lieserl. Also included on the database is Einstein’s first notice of employment, the telegram and letter he received notifying him of his Nobel Prize win, as well as a diary of his travels to America, Spain, the Far East and Israel.

At the launch of the Archive only 5,000 documents will be made available, but the remainder of the materials is set to be uploaded eighteen months following the release of the print publication of his works entitled ‘The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein,’ published by the Princeton University Press.

Research provides evidence of neutrophil subtypes with conflicting functions and neutrophil plasticity

Jerusalem, January 22, 2014 - New research from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem shows that the most common form of white blood cells, called neutrophils, contain many different subtypes, of which some fight the development of cancer and others promote its progression. The research could help pave the way to new therapies that fight cancer by increasing anti-tumor neutrophils while limiting pro-tumor neutrophils.

Traditionally, cancer research has focused on trying to identify aspects of cancer development that can be exploited therapeutically through treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation. In the last decade new approaches to cancer have involved activating the immune system against cancer cells without harming healthy tissue, which has proven effective in a limited range of patients.

However, in recent years it became apparent that in addition to the cancer cells themselves, there are healthy cells surrounding a tumor that play a critical role in promoting cancer development. These cells, which provide a supportive environment that promotes tumor growth and allows it to spread, are potential targets for new cancer therapies.

In this context the role of neutrophils, which comprise between 50%-70% of all white blood cells, remains controversial. While neutrophils are traditionally associated with inflammation and fighting infections, accumulating data suggest they also play an important role in tumor biology.

In a new study published today in the journal Cell Reports, scientists working with mouse tumors and human blood samples challenge the concept that mature neutrophils are limited in their ability to change and take on new characteristics. They also show that in contrast to current perceptions, neutrophils are not a homogeneous population of cells but rather consist of multiple subtypes.

The research was led by Dr. Zvika Granot, at the Hebrew University’s Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada (IMRIC) in the Faculty of Medicine, and Dr. Zvi Fridlender, at the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center’s Institute of Pulmonary Medicine.

Importantly, the researchers found that while some neutrophils have anti-tumor properties, others in fact promote tumor progression. They also showed that in early stages of the disease, tumor-limiting neutrophils prevail. However, as cancer progresses the tumor-promoting neutrophil subpopulation that promotes tumors growth outcompete the tumor-limiting neutrophil subpopulation and the overall neutrophil contribution becomes tumor-promoting.

According to Dr. Granot, “The novel distinction between harmful and beneficial neutrophils opens up new diagnostic and therapeutic opportunities. We are currently evaluating the effects of boosting the helpful anti-tumor neutrophil population, while limiting the tumor-promoting neutrophil population, on progression of the disease. If successful, this therapeutic strategy may take us closer to developing effective new therapies for cancer.”

The research appears in the journal Cell Reports under the title "Phenotypic diversity and plasticity in circulating neutrophil subpopulations in cancer."

Dr. Granot is supported by grants Israel’s I-CORE (Israeli Centers for Research Excellence) Gene Regulation in Complex Human Disease, the Abisch-Frenkel Foundation, the Rosetrees Trust, the Israel Cancer Research Foundation RCDA grant, and the CONCERN foundation. Dr. Fridlender is supported by grants from the Israel Cancer Research Foundation RCDA grant, Chief Scientist of the Israel Ministry of Health, and the Israel Lung Association.

New research suggests unexpected brain connectivity can lead to fast brain specialization, allowing humans to adapt to the rapid technological and cultural innovation of our generation

Jerusalem, January 23, 2015 - Studying the brain activity of blind people, scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem are challenging the standard view of how the human brain specializes to perform different kinds of tasks, and shedding new light on how our brains can adapt to the rapid cultural and technological changes of the 21st Century.

Research Highlights:

1. Understanding the brain activity of the blind can help solve one of the oddest phenomena in the human brain: how can tasks such as reading and recognizing numerical symbols have their own brain regions if these concepts were only developed several thousand years ago (which is negligible on an evolutionary timescale)? What was the job of these regions before their invention?
2. New research published today in Nature Communications demonstrates that vision is not a prerequisite for “visual” cortical regions to develop these preferences.
3. This stands in contrast to the current main theory explaining this specialization, which suggests these regions were adapted from other visual tasks such as the angles of lines and their intersections.
4. These results show that the required condition is not sensory-based (vision) but rather connectivity- and processing-based. For example, blind people reading Braille using their fingers will still use the “visual” areas.
5. This research uses shows unique connectivity patterns between the visual-number-form-area (VNFA) to quantity-processing areas in the right hemisphere, and between the visual-word-form-area (VWFA) to language-processing areas in the left hemisphere.
6. This type of mechanism can help explain how our brain adapts quickly to the changes of our era of constant cultural and technological innovations.

The accepted view in previous decades was that the brain is divided into distinct regions mainly by the sensory input that activates them, such as the visual cortex for sight and the auditory cortex for sound. Within these large regions, sub-regions have been defined which are specialized for specific tasks such as the “visual word form area,” a functional brain region believed to identify words and letters from shape images even before they are associated with sounds or meanings. Similarly there is another area that specializes in number symbols.

Now, a series of studies at the Hebrew University’s Amedi Lab for Brain and Multisensory Research challenges this view using unique tools known as Sensory Substitution Devices (SSDs).

(The Amedi Lab is headed by Prof. Amir Amedi in the Department of Medical Neurobiology at the Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada at the Hebrew University's Faculty of Medicine. The Lab is also a founding member of the Hebrew University’s Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Brain Science.)

Sensory Substitution Devices take information from one sense and present it in another, for example enabling blind people to “see” by using other senses such as touching or hearing. By using a smartphone or webcam to translate a visual image into a distinct soundscape, SSDs enable blind users to create a mental image of objects, such as their physical dimensions and color. With intense training (now available online at www.amedilab.com), blind users can even “read” letters by identifying their distinct soundscape.

"These devices can help the blind in their everyday life," explains Prof. Amir Amedi, "but they also open unique research opportunities by letting us see what happens in brain regions normally associated with one sense, when the relevant information comes from another.”

Amedi’s team was interested in whether blind subjects using sensory substitution would, like sighted people, use the visual-word-form-area sub-region of the brain to identify shape images, or whether this area is specialized exclusively to visual reading with the eyes.

In a new paper published today in Nature Communications as “A number-form area in the blind,” Sami Abboud and colleagues in the Amedi Lab show that these same “visual” brain regions are used by blind subjects who are actually “seeing” through sound. According to lead researcher Sami Abboud, “These regions are preserved and functional even among the congenitally blind who have never experienced vision.”

The researchers used functional MRI imaging (fMRI) to study the brains of blind subjects in real-time while they used an SSD to identify objects by their sound. They found that when it comes to recognizing letters, body postures and more, specialized brain areas are activated by the task at hand, rather than by the sense (vision or hearing) being used.

The Amedi team examined a recently-identified area in the brain’s right hemisphere known as the 'Visual Number Form Area.' The very existence of such an area, as distinct from the visual-word-form-area, is surprising since symbols such as 'O' can be used either as the letter O or as the number Zero, despite being visually identical.

Previous attempts to explain why both the word and number areas exist, such as the 'Neural recycling theory' by Dehaene and Cohen (2007), suggest that in the far distant past these areas were specialized for other visual tasks such as recognizing small lines, their angles and intersections, and thus were best suited for them. However, this new work shows that congenitally blind users using the sensory substitution devices still have these exact same areas, suggesting that vision is not the key to their development.

"Beyond the implications for neuroscience theory, these results also offer us hope for visual rehabilitation," says Amedi. "They suggest that by using the right technology, even non-invasively, we can re-awaken the visually deprived brain to process tasks considered visual, even after many years of blindness."

But if the specific sensory input channel is not the key to developing these brain regions, why do these functions develop in their specific anatomical locations? The new research points to unique connectivity patterns between the visual-word-form-area and language-processing areas, and between the visual-number-form-area and quantity-processing areas.

Amedi suggests, "This means that the main criteria for a reading area to develop is not the letters’ visual symbols, but rather the area’s connectivity to the brain’s language-processing centers. Similarly a number area will develop in a region which already has connections to quantity-processing regions."

"If we take this one step further," adds Amedi, "this connectivity-based mechanism might explain how brain areas could have developed so quickly on an evolutionary timescale. We've only been reading and writing for several thousand years, but the connectivity between relevant areas allowed us to create unique new centers for these specialized tasks. This same 'cultural recycling' of brain circuits could also be true for how we will adapt to new technological and cultural innovations in the current era of rapid innovation, even approaching the potential of the Singularity."

The research was supported by a European Research Council grant; the Charitable Gatsby Foundation; the James S. McDonnell Foundation scholar award; the Israel Science Foundation; and the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (ELSC) Vision center grant.

About the Amedi Lab for Brain and Multisensory Research:

The Amedi Lab for Brain and Multisensory Research is headed by Prof. Amir Amedi in the Department of Medical Neurobiology at the Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada (IMRIC) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Faculty of Medicine. The Lab is also a founding member of the Hebrew University’s Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Brain Science (ELSC).

The Lab deals with understanding the human brain, brain rehabilitation and plasticity, with emphasis on helping the blind and visually impaired. Several patented devices have been developed in the lab which can help people who are blind identify objects and navigate using a technique called "Sensory Substitution" (mainly 'seeing' by translating an image taken from a simple smartphone or webcam into sound with no need for special hardware).

EyeMusic is a tool that provides visual information through a musical auditory experience. Using a camera mounted on their glasses, patients can hear musical notes that create a mental image of the visual scene in front of them. Results include enabling blind users to find objects such as shoes in a cluttered room, choose a red apple out of a bowl of green ones, and more. For a clear explanation video in TEDx format see http://goo.gl/Lcb7QV. Mastering the EyeMusic requires intensive training (at least 20-30 hours for basic practical use). As part of trying to make this technology more available to the public, the team has recently created a new online training website (www.amedilab.com) and made EyeMusic freely available for download on iTunes and Google-Play.

Another device developed at the Amedi Lab is the EyeCane, which uses an algorithm to translate distance into sound and vibrations. The EyeCane aims to boost mobility and navigation for the visually-disabled, augmenting the traditional White-Cane with increased range (up to 5m), angles and unobtrusiveness. Within 5 minutes of training, users can successfully navigate, detect and avoid obstacles and estimate distance. Recently-published EyeCane research demonstrated that using the EyeCane distinctly improves users' mobility patterns. "Our users no longer cling to the walls," explains Shachar Maidenbaum, one of the researchers working on this project. "Usually the blind avoid large open spaces since they don't have 'anchors' in them, but the expanded sensory information from the EyeCane lets them easily walk down the center of a corridor or cut through the center of large rooms."

Jerusalem, January 20, 2015 — Researchers combing the ocean depths have made a surprising discovery about the frequency with which stars beyond our solar system produce special heavy elements such gold and uranium.

Stellar explosions such as supernovae or star collisions emit extremely bright light and vast amounts of energy and heavy matter. Half of the heavy elements in nature, including gold and uranium, are created during such events, yet their frequency and their very sites in the Galaxy  remain a mystery.

By analyzing samples from the deep-sea floor that accumulated over millions of years, an international team of researchers concluded that the frequency of such events is much lower than expected.

The researchers analyzed core samples collected from the Pacific Ocean floor at about 4500 m water depth. They measured Pu-244, a rare isotope of plutonium that accumulated in the deep sea from the deposition of interstellar particles.

According to study co-author Prof. Michael Paul at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Racah Institute of Physics, "Our analysis of galactic debris that fell to Earth and settled in our oceans shows about 100 times less plutonium than we originally expected."

According to Prof. Paul, "The stellar dust that collects in our oceans provides new information about the far reaches of space as well as our own planet. Our research challenges current theories about supernovae and compounds the mystery surrounding how our solar system received its share of heavy elements. However it could be consistent with a particular astrophysical scenario, namely collisions or mergers of two neutron stars in the Milky Way Galaxy."

The findings are published in the January 2015 edition of the prestigious journal Nature Communications, as "Abundance of live 244Pu in deep-sea reservoirs on Earth points to rarity of actinide nucleosynthesis."

Purple Kush and Lemon Haze may be items on a menu of an Amsterdam coffee shop that offers different kinds of ‘high,’ but different types of medical cannabis can now be used to treat diverse conditions. Thanks to Israeli researchers, who are working on a ‘menu’ of medical marijuana strains that will cater to various patients, this potent weed is now used to soothe anything from depression to epilepsy.

Nowadays, progressive legislation and new research allow modern science to delve into the various medical uses of cannabis, as well as to create new “designer” strains of marijuana. Israeli scientists, who have been at the forefront of marijuana’s genetic engineering for years, are now modifying marijuana to treat a range of diseases.

Nearly 5,000 years of medicinal history

Marijuana is gradually becoming a genetically modified organism (GMO), produced in greenhouse-laboratories to treat very specific conditions. By using genetic markers to control molecule counts, scientists modify the plant so it can better treat certain symptoms, thus helping millions of patients worldwide.

Medical marijuana was said to be used in China as early as 2,900 BC and was described as a medicinal power-flower throughout history. Israel pioneered marijuana research in 1964 when Dr. Raphael Mechoulam discovered “D9-tetrahydrocannabinol”, also known as THC, one of 70 cannabinoids (the active molecules in cannabis). Today, Israeli researchers lead the scientific world in cannabinoid research, inventing new methods of mapping the cannabis genome, while discovering new medical uses for the plant. In the last six years, with the help of the Israeli Health Ministry, the number of patients treated with cannabis grew from 100 to tens of thousands.

“A healthy kid, not a ‘high’ kid”

Agrobreeding, a computer-controlled breeding method that genetically modifies plants, creates a closely monitored, controlled environment in which scientists grow and farm marijuana strains. This selective breeding method uses big-data computers and analysis techniques that provide growers and researchers with insightful plant information, including the amounts of active THC and CBD in marijuana.

THC is responsible for the “high” feeling, while CBD is the non-psychoactive component that has been proven to have several health benefits. Cannabinoids are generally used to reduce pain, stress, as well as to increase appetite, among other uses; however, further research is necessary.“Out of 70 Cannabinoids, we have really only mapped and studied THC and CBD,” genetics researcher Yoav Giladi of the Hebrew University tells NoCamels. “The most interesting Cannabinoid is CBD, since it has proven to treat epilepsy very well. We are now able to identify the biosynthetic pathway leading to CBD formation and to create a cannabis strain with a high concentration of CBD. We want a healthy kid, not a ‘high’ kid.”

Israeli company BreedIT is combining the power of science and technology with the medical power of cannabis, helping growers breed biogenetically engineered marijuana. Collaborating with doctors and researchers from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, BreedIT manufactures agrobreeding systems for growers. These systems use big-data computers that measure molecules and DNA structures, providing tools for the genetic modeling of plants. The Intelligent Decision Support System (IDSS) that BreedIT uses speeds up the process of monitoring, analyzing and cross-referencing genetic information.

From sleep disorders to epilepsy – medical cannabis soothes a range of conditions

BreedIT exports its systems worldwide mainly for the use of marijuana growers, who acknowledge that cannabis is a potent medicine – not just a drug. “After all, eating well, sleeping well and avoiding stress are all part of good health” and medical cannabis can help patients do all that, Giladi says.

BreedIt and Seach, another Israeli company, have formed a joint venture called KanaboSeed, which uses the agrobreeding method and scientific research to provide strains specifically requested by physicians. In other words, this joint venture creates designer strains, such as Avidekel, a non-psychoactive CBD strain for treatment of epilepsy.

Avidekel is one of the strains Tikun Olam is growing. Tikun Olam, which means “heal the world” in Hebrew, is one of the first Israeli companies to grow different strains of medical cannabis. Its facility in the northern Galilee region of Israel is considered one of the world’s most advanced in agrobreeding.

A $2.7 billion industry – and growing, literally

While medical marijuana is a growing industry, cannabis for recreational use is also gradually being legalized. In addition, hemp – which is refined into products such as hemp seed foods, hemp oil, wax, resin, rope, cloth, pulp, paper and fuel – is a multi-billion-dollar industry. In the United States, cannabis is now legal in 23 states and de-criminalized in most, which means you will not be arrested if marijuana is found in your possession in small amounts.

According to Chris Walsh, editor of the Marijuana Business Daily, the cannabis market tops $2.7 billion dollars in the US and patients who use medical marijuana spend an average $156 a month on cannabis, according to research. Medical marijuana is prescribed in the US for cancer, AIDS, asthma and glaucoma, as well as an antidepressant and an appetite stimulant. Cannabis is also used as an anti-convulsant and anti-spasmodic, with many clinical studies still ongoing.

In Israel, “cannabis treatment is prescribed by neurologists and trauma specialists for chronic pain, Parkinson’s disease, Neuropathias and many other conditions”, says Dr. Oshrat Kastel, owner of a private family clinic in Shoham, Israel.

In the US, Israel and elsewhere in the world, the use of medical marijuana is expected to expand in the next decade, thanks to new growing methods and increasing government support. And since there are many cannabinoids to study, researchers hope to reveal additional uses for marijuana in years to come.

Photos and videos courtesy of BreedIT, Tikun Olam, Seach
 

PhytoTech Medical went public on the Australian Securities Exchange raising AUS$5.9 million dollars

JERUSALEM, January 26, 2015 — Yissum Research Development Company Ltd., the technology transfer company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, announced today that it has signed an exclusive licensing and collaboration agreement with PhytoTech Medical Ltd. for the development, manufacturing and marketing of a novel delivery system to enhance the bioavailability of cannabidiol (CBD) and/or THC, the active ingredients in cannabis, for the treatment of a variety of medical indications. The novel formulations are based on oral and transbuccal delivery technologies developed by Professors Abraham Domb and Amnon Hoffman from the Institute of Drug Research, School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medicine, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

On January 22, 2015, PhytoTech Medical has become the first medical marijuana company on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). The company raised AUS$5.9 million dollars (approximately US$4.7 million) at a share price of $0.20 per share. The offer was significantly oversubscribed, demonstrating the high level of demand in the market to invest in MC stocks and the calibre of the offering by PhytoTech.

Cannabis based medications are currently in clinical use worldwide. The most known formulation is Sativex, a sublingual spray delivering CBD and THC. PhytoTech will develop an improved, oral capsule formulation and transbuccal delivery system that consists of a flexible, muco-adhesive patch that will release the active ingredients of cannabis in a controlled manner.

Yaacov Michlin, CEO of Yissum, stated: “We are very pleased to collaborate with PhytoTech in developing the inventions of Professors Domb and Hoffman for the purpose of delivering the active components in cannabis. Medical cannabis is increasingly being used for a variety of indications, such as reducing nausea during chemotherapy and relieving pain and muscle spasticity in MS patients. Development of state-of-the-art delivery systems for the active ingredients will undoubtedly pave the way for a wider variety of clinical indications for these types of drugs.”

“We are happy to collaborate with Yissum in developing this novel delivery platform for THC and CBD,” said Boaz Wachtel, Managing Director of PhytoTech Medical. “We believe that Yissum’s novel transbuccal delivery method is particularly appropriate for the delivery of these agents, and helps avoid problems such as lack of standardization of drug concentration, and health risks stemming from more traditional ways of absorbing cannabis, such as smoking.”

About Yissum

Yissum Research Development Company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Ltd. was founded in 1964 to protect and commercialize the Hebrew University’s intellectual property. Products based on Hebrew University technologies that have been commercialized by Yissum currently generate $2 Billion in annual sales. Ranked among the top technology transfer companies in the world, Yissum has registered over 8,500 patents covering 2,400 inventions; has licensed out 750 technologies and has spun out 90 companies. Yissum’s business partners span the globe and include companies such as Syngenta, Monsanto, Roche, Novartis, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Intel, Teva and many more. For further information please visit www.yissum.co.il.

About PhytoTech Medical

PhytoTech is a medical cannabis company focused on the research, development and commercialization of delivery systems for administering Medical Grade Cannabis (MGC), and on new treatments utilizing MGC for various medical conditions. Based on its proprietary technology, PhytoTech has the vision of delivering groundbreaking health benefits of cannabinoids in oral preparations, buccal muco-adhesive patch, and vapor form in safe and effective ways. The Company is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX: PLY), with research facilities located in Israel, a global leader in medical cannabis research. For additional information, please visit http://www.phytotechmed.com.

Jerusalem, January 27, 2015 - A delegation of 50 Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from across Europe held a private audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican. The delegation was led by the Chairman of the Hebrew University's Board of Governors Mr. Michael Federmann, and President of the Hebrew University Prof. Menahem Ben-Sasson.

The Friends of the Hebrew University, Jews and Christians alike, met with the Pope as the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was being commemorated, to share a message of hope and fraternity.

A video of the Monday, January 26 private audience can be viewed below:

Hebrew University’s President, Prof. Menahem Ben Sasson, presented Pope Francis with a special Hebrew University edition of the Hebrew Bible. “The gift we bring is the Hebrew University Bible, identical to the one we gave to Pope John Paul II during his visit to Jerusalem fifteen years ago. Based on extensive Hebrew University scholarship and the Aleppo Codex, this is the most accurate version of the Bible in existence,” said Prof. Ben-Sasson.

“We emphasize on this day that science should be the language of human creativity and the language of international discourse. Science does not know the boundaries of religion, nationality, race or gender. Scientific cooperation is fundamental to human activity, and on a day such as this we expect the world to be wary of all discrimination while creating an infrastructure for the foundations of research and collaboration. From this place and on this day, we call for the prevention of boycotts and exclusion in science,” said Prof. Ben-Sasson.

In May 2014, Prof. Ben-Sasson was one on the first people to greet Pope Francis during his historic visit to Israel, when he visited the Hebrew University's Mount Scopus campus.

Mr. Michael Federmann, Chairman of the Hebrew University's Board of Governors, remarked that this encounter represents a second-generation meeting with the Vatican. Federmann’s father had previously donated a statue commemorating Jewish-Christian relations to the Vatican, and an identical statue to the monastery at Tantur between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

The delegation marked Holocaust Memorial Day with a special Remembrance Day concert, “The Sound of Survival: The Miracle of the Music Composed in the Concentration Camps.” The concert took place in Rome before an audience of 2,500 people, including the President of the Italian Republic. The performers included prominent figures such as cabaret singer Uta Lemper of Germany, violinists Francesca Dego and Roby Latakos, and renowned klezmer singer Myriam Fuks. The concert concluded with the song Betzet Israel, sung by the Italian Jewish community's children's choir.

The delegation included such prominent Europeans as President of the French Friends of the Hebrew University Martine Dassault and her husband, Laurent Dassault; President of the Swiss Friends Gultin Ephrati; and Co-Chair of the Hebrew University's Brain Circle UK, Muriel Salem and her husband Freddy Salem.

Notably present at the gathering with the Pope was Viviana Kassam, President of Brain Circle Italia and organizer of the first-ever concert of music composed in the concentration camps, led by Francesco Lotoro, an Italian composer and musician, who dedicated the past 30 years to locate over 12,000 such compositions in quests around the European Continent.

Jerusalem, January 28, 2015 — The discovery of a 55,000-year-old partial skull in Northern Israel provides new insights into the migration of modern humans out of Africa. The rare find is reported in the journal Nature this week by an international team of Israeli, North American and European researchers.

A key event in human evolution was the expansion of modern humans of African origin across Eurasia, replacing all other forms of hominin (humans and their predecessors), around 40,000-60,000 years ago. However, due to the scarcity of human fossils from this period, these ancestors of all present-day non-African modern populations have largely remained a mystery.

Now, researchers describe a partial skull that dates to around 55,000, which was found at Manot Cave in Israel’s Western Galilee. The Manot Cave was discovered in 2008 during construction activities that damaged its roof. Rock falls and active stalagmites had apparently blocked the initial entrance to the cave for at least 15,000 years. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Cave Research Center conducted an initial survey of the cave and reported the findings of archaeological remains.

Prof. Israel Hershkovitz of Tel Aviv University led the anthropological study of the skull, and led the excavation together with archaeologists Dr. Ofer Marder of Ben-Gurion University, and Dr. Omry Barzilai of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The skull has a distinctive “bun”-shaped occipital region at the back. In this way its shape resembles modern African and European skulls, but differs from other anatomically modern humans from the Levant. This suggests that the Manot people could be closely related to the first modern humans that later colonized Europe.

The specimen also provides evidence that both modern humans and Neanderthals inhabited the southern Levant during the late Pleistocene, close in time to the likely interbreeding event between modern humans and Neanderthals.

Researchers from the Hebrew University played important roles in this discovery. Dating the skull at around 55,000 years is the graduate thesis work of Gal Yasur, a student at the Hebrew University’s Earth Sciences Institute in the Faculty of Sciences. The dating work was done at the Geological Survey of Israel under the supervision of GSI Senior Scientists Dr. Miryam Bar-Matthews and Dr. Avner Ayalon, together with Prof. Alan Matthews, the Raymond F. Kravis Professor of Geology at the Hebrew University’s Earth Sciences Institute. Prof. Amos Frumkin, Director of the Cave Research Center at the Hebrew University’s Geography Department, researched the geological context of the skull in the Manot Cave. Ms. Mae Goder-Goldberger, a doctoral candidate at Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology, is part of the archaeological team working in the cave.

This finding represents the first fossil evidence from the critical period when genetic and archaeological models predict that African modern humans successfully migrated out of Africa and colonized Eurasia. It also represents the first fossil evidence that during the late Middle Paleolithic, the Levant was occupied not only by Neanderthals but also by modern humans.

The researchers suggest that the population from which this skull is derived had recently migrated out of Africa and established itself in the Levantine corridor during a time span that was favorable for human migration, due to warmer and wetter climatic events over the Northern Sahara and the Mediterranean.

The research appears in the journal Nature under the title “Levantine cranium from Manot Cave (Israel) foreshadows the first European modern humans" (DOI 10.1038/nature14134).

The excavation at Manot Cave was initiated and supported throughout the years by the late Mr. Dan David, founder of the “Dan David Prize”, and his son Mr. Ariel David. The ongoing research is financially supported by the Dan David Foundation, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), the Leakey Foundation, the Irene Levi Sala CARE Archaeological Foundation, the Keren Kayemet L’Israel (JNF) and the Israel Science Foundation (ISF). Radiocarbon dating research has been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Exilarch's Foundation and the MPS-WI Center for Integrative Archaeology and Anthropology.