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All Articles
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Studies show pomegranate supplement slows neurodegenerative diseases
Read Full ArticleEverybody knows that the pomegranate is a superfood. One of the seven native fruits of Israel, pomegranates are packed with health-promoting and healing antioxidants and vitamins.
Now, an Israeli supplement derived from pomegranate seed oil has proven helpful in improving cognitive function in multiple sclerosis patients experiencing cognitive difficulties associated with the disease.
Prof. Dimitrios Karussis, the internationally renowned director of the Multiple Sclerosis Center at Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem, found significant improvement in learning ability and text comprehension, word recall and categorization in 30 patients involved in a groundbreaking study of the patented GranaGard supplement.
This is ...
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Yissum Spinouts Raise $79 million in H1 2020 Despite Coronavirus Uncertainty - PRNewswire
Read Full ArticleStartups from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem raised $79 million in the first half of 2020, Yissum, the technology transfer company of the Hebrew University announced today. Despite the continuing global uncertainty caused by the coronavirus and ongoing lockdowns around the world, 14 Yissum spinouts raised tens of millions of dollars in early-stage funding rounds.
Investments were made in companies in the cleantech, agriculture, and foodtech sectors as well as in life science, AI, and education. Despite the fact that VC investments in the US and Europe were down, the number of VC deals in Israel reached an all-time record ...
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Nano-engineered pomegranate oil holds hope for brain disease, study shows
Read Full ArticleA Israeli study has found that multiple sclerosis patients taking a nano-engineered nutritional supplement made out of pomegranate oil showed “significant cognitive improvement” after just three months.
The small-scale study of 30 patients was conducted at the Multiple Sclerosis Center at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem by Prof. Dimitrios Karussis, director of the center and a senior neurologist. Results showed that patients taking the supplement witnessed an average 12 percent improvement in learning ability and text comprehension, word recall and categorization, in the three months of treatment.
The researchers are now writing up the findings to submit them to ...
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Ancient scepter found in south may have been part of life-sized 'divine statue' - The Times of Israel
Read Full ArticleAn approximately 3,200-year-old scepter found at a biblical site in southern Israel may be the first physical evidence of life-sized “divine statues” used in Canaanite rituals, according to a new report.
Yosef Garfinkel, an archaeology professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote in the academic journal Antiquity that the scepter, which was made from bronze and coated in silver, was discovered inside the cellar of a Canaanite temple at Lachish.
He linked the scepter, which looks like a spatula, to a scepter found at Hatzor in the north, as well as to a small figurine found at the site ...
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Special vessels show Jewish continuity in Israel after Roman destruction
Read Full ArticleNew research offers insights on how Jewish life continued in the Land of Israel after the destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans.
The use of chalkstones vessels, very common among the Jewish population during the Second Temple Period, did not stop with the destruction of city in the second century CE as previously thought, but continued in the Galilee, the new center of Jewish life, for at least another two centuries, a paper published in the May issue of the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) documented.
Several types and ...
Mentions: Humanities -
Why dance? From prehistory to the Bible, scholar offers answers
Read Full ArticleIn the 1990s, leading Israeli scholar Yosef Garfinkel, head of the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, led several seasons of excavations at the Neolithic site of Sha’ar Hagolan in northern Israel. Among other things, the researchers uncovered several clay figurines depicting the deity Mother goddess presenting unnaturally elongated heads. For their artistic qualities, the figurines were exhibited in the most important museums around the world. For Garfinkel, they represented the spark which prompted him to investigate a new field of research, the history of human dance.
“While I was trying to understand more about their ...
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The Israeli method that could teach China to speak English
Read Full Article“How did you do on your Gaokao exams?”
That phrase might not trip off the tongues of most Western students, but for high schoolers in China, it’s their key to acceptance into university – and to future success.
What tips the balance? Proficiency in English. And for most Chinese students, that’s a tough bar to meet.
“While 22% of the Gaokao is English itself, up to 50% of it is dependent on your ability to understand the language,” explains Howard Cooper, CEO of MagniLEARN, an Israeli startup applying artificial intelligence to teaching English online.
MagniLEARN grew out of the ...
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Hebrew University receives $1m from US couple for coronavirus lab - The Jerusalem Post
Read Full ArticleA Virginia couple has donated $1 million to assist the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in its new program designated to fight the coronavirus.The $1 million made by Brad and Sheryl Schwartz through American Friends of Hebrew University (AFHU) will assist in building a top-level bio-safety lab, the first of its kind dedicated to non-governmental research. The donation is a major first step toward funding a biocontainment level 3 national laboratory, which will enable direct-contact research with the live virus, rather than virus components used in current labs.Mentions: Medicine/Health -
DNA from the Bible's Canaanites lives on in modern Arabs and Jews
Read Full ArticleTHEY ARE BEST known as the people who lived “in a land flowing with milk and honey” until they were vanquished by the ancient Israelites and disappeared from history. But a scientific report published today reveals that the genetic heritage of the Canaanites survives in many modern-day Jews and Arabs.
The study in Cell also shows that migrants from the distant Caucasus Mountains combined with the indigenous population to forge the unique Canaanite culture that dominated the area between Egypt and Mesopotamia during the Bronze Age, lasting from approximately 3500 B.C. until 1200 B.C.
The team extracted ancient ...
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Prof. David Kazhdan becomes first Israeli to win the Shaw Prize
Read Full ArticleProf. David Kazhdan of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has received the distinguished Shaw Prize on his contributions to the field of mathematics, the first Israeli to ever win the prize.Kazhdan is one of two recipients to win the prize; he shared the Shaw Prize of $1.2 million with another researcher from the University of Chicago, Alexander Beilinson. They won the prize for their “huge influence on and profound contributions to representation theory, as well as many other areas of mathematics.”The Shaw Prize honors individuals who have recently achieved distinguished and significant advances in the fields of ...Mentions: Science/Technology -
'I'm optimistic that coronavirus will soon be behind us,' says top Israeli medical expert - Haaretz
Read Full ArticleAs Israel stampedes for normalcy, with schools stutteringly opening, shops and salons working overtime and restaurants and bars slated to reopen next week, talking with Prof. Dina Ben-Yehuda is heartening.
“I’m optimistic that this will soon be behind us,” says Ben-Yehuda, head of the hematology department at the Hadassah Medical Center and dean of the Hebrew University medical school. “I see how the best brains around the world have come together to study this disease. None of the researchers at the Faculty of Medicine at the Hebrew University had previously studied the coronavirus [which had been unknown to science ...
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Coronavirus Lockdown in Israel Was Unnecessary, Say Three Hebrew U Professors - CTech
Read Full ArticleAs the number of recoveries from coronavirus (Covid-19) continues to exceed the number of new diagnoses in Israel, three local professors are claiming that the lockdown measures implemented by the government over recent months were unnecessary and should be canceled immediately.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Israel now stands at 15,398, according to data released by the Ministry of Health on Sunday. The number of people who have died from complications related to the virus hit 200 on Sunday. Some 132 patients are in serious condition, including 100 in need of ventilator support. The number of Israelis ...
Mentions: Medicine/Health -
Research predicts Israel could see 1,000 serious COVID-19 cases by Passover
Read Full ArticleIsrael will have 500 seriously ill coronavirus patients by the first day of Passover, April 9, and five days later the number will stand at 1,000, an influential Hebrew University research team has predicted.
“We will be surprised if we end up with less than low thousands of dead,” said Nadav Katz of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Racah Institute of Physics. “That’s already looking like an optimistic scenario.”
If Israel doesn’t take further strong steps, he said, “we could end up like Spain and Italy and other countries that missed out on opportunities.”
Israel saw ...
Mentions: Medicine/Health -
New immunotherapy to target blood cancers, solid tumors
Read Full ArticleA new joint project will develop precision medicines for blood cancers and solid tumors by utilizing immunotherapies targeting natural killer (NK) cells.
In collaboration between Yissum, the technology-transfer company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, biopharmaceutical company Cytovia Therapeutics will sponsor a research program to develop multi-specific antibodies targeting both NK cells and the tumor antigen.
The research will be led by Hebrew University Prof. Ofer Mandelboim.
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Seven Israeli university programs named among top 100 worldwide
Read Full ArticleSeven of Israel’s university departments have been ranked among the world’s top 100 in their respective disciplines, according to the latest QS World University Rankings by Subject published on Wednesday.
The 10th annual edition of the QS ranking, which assessed the performance of 86 programs at eight Israeli higher education institutions, showed an overall regression for Israel’s higher education system, compared to global competitors.
Four key metrics were used to compile the rankings, evaluating programs according to academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per paper and the h-index – a tool to measure the productivity of an institution’s ...
Mentions: Humanities -
Israel Prize awarded to Hebrew University Professor Dani Zamir for his agricultural research - Haaretz
Read Full ArticleThe Israel Prize for agricultural research and environmental science is being awarded to Prof. Dani Zamir, the Education Ministry announced Sunday. Zamir is professor emeritus in genetics at the Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment at Hebrew University.
Zamir’s fields of research deal with improving plants and developing innovative tools for genetic cultivation. For example, he developed a group of cultured tomatoes that contain a DNA string from species of wild tomatoes that make them resistant to dryness, salt and various diseases.
Twenty years ago he founded the company AB Seeds, which together with the university’s Yissum technology ...
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What red hot chile peppers might be able to do for cancer pain treatment
Read Full ArticleIt’s no secret that Israelis can do amazing things with spicy foods. Exhibit No. 1: zhug, the hot sauce derived from chile peppers that seems to be taking the world by storm.
But some of the greatest excitement today in Israel surrounding chile peppers is happening outside the kitchen — in laboratories, where scientists are experimenting with the pain-suppressing properties of hot peppers for uses as critical as the treatment of pain associated with cancer.
Few things in life hurt more than diseases like bone or uterine cancer, or the chemotherapy used to treat them, according to Israeli pharmacologist and ...
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Smoking may trigger diabetes in pregnant women, study finds
Read Full ArticleIsraeli and US researchers say that smoking during pregnancy may increase the risk of gestational diabetes, which increases the dangers of pregnancy and the chances of birth complications.
Gestational diabetes is a type of diabetes that can develop in pregnant women, including those who didn’t already have diabetes. Every year, 2% to 10% of pregnancies in the United States are affected by gestational diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The disease can raise the mother’s risk of high blood pressure during pregnancy, and higher than average-weight babies, which may trigger early and possibly complicated ...
Mentions: Medicine/Health -
EMET Prize to be awarded: ‘Israel’s Nobel Prize’ goes to 11 winners - Jerusalem Post
Read Full ArticleIsrael’s EMET prize, sponsored by the A.M.N. Foundation for the Advancement of Science, Art and Culture in Israel will be awarded by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, December 9, at the Jerusalem Theater.
The award, known as the “Israeli Nobel Prize,” has been awarded annually since 2002 to Israeli citizens, in recognition of “academic or professional excellence and achievements that have made a special contribution to society and have had a far-reaching impact in the field in which the award was given.” The award is given in five different areas: culture and art, exact sciences, life ...
Mentions: Humanities -
Men and women need different treatments for mental illness, expert says
Read Full ArticleWhy do men with schizophrenia tend to get addicted to smoking, and women schizophrenics don’t? The answer lies in understanding brain differences between men and women with mental diseases, according to a new resource article in the journal Cell Reports.
Mentions: genetics -
Bumble Bees Give up Sleep to Care for Young, Even When They're Not Their Own - Newsweek
Read Full ArticleA study has revealed that bumble bees appear to give up sleep in order to care for their hive's young, even if the offspring isn't their own.
Bumble bees studied by scientists in Israel slept less in order to tend to larvae, as well as pupae that don't need feeding.
Almost all animals sleep. Losing out on it is not only detrimental to how well daily tasks can be carried out, but also to health and survival, the researchers explained in the journal Current Biology. But sometimes skipping shut-eye can be beneficial if it frees up time ...
Mentions: Agriculture -
Israeli Chatbot Could Diagnose Early Alzheimer’s Disease
Read Full ArticleHundreds of drugs have been developed to address Alzheimer’s disease, says Dr. Shahar Arzy, director of the computational neuropsychiatry lab at Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem. “Do you know how many have been found effective? Zero.”
But if patients could be diagnosed in the preclinical stages of the disease, perhaps some of the new biological medications showing excellent results in other domains of neurology could be effective when applied early enough in the course of Alzheimer’s disease.
Arzy and his colleagues have developed a computer-based system to ferret out early signs of Alzheimer’s.
The system ...
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Were These 3,500-Year-Old Carvings of Nude Women Used As Ancient Fertility Drug? - Live Science
Read Full ArticleAn inscribed ancient Egyptian scarab and five clay tablets with carvings of naked women have been found in Rehob, a 3,500-year-old city in Israel.
The carvings likely depict ancient fertility goddesses, such as Asherah or Ashtarte, Amihai Mazar, an archaeology professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told Live Science. "[They] were used at home, as part of popular domestic religious practice in the domestic sphere, mainly related to fertility of women," Mazar said in an email, noting that similar carvings have been found at other archaeological sites in the region.
The excavation showed that Rehob (known today as ...
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