Archaeologists’ evidence of Israelite settlement in the Land of Canaan and the foundation of a magnificent biblical Kingdom of David is being called into question. According to a new Cornell University study of radiocarbon testing in the southern Levant, what little organic material researchers have unearthed that was believed by scientists to have originated at the dawn of the Israelite settlement, may not have been dated properly. Blame it on the weather: The recently published paper, which takes into account Israel’s notably long summers, casts doubt on methods of dating ancient organic materials in Israel, southern Jordan and Egypt.
June 07, 2018
The Center for World University Rankings, initiated in Saudi Arabia and headquartered in the United Arab Emirates, has ranked the Weizmann Institute of Science among the top 50 degree-granting institutions in the world. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University were also ranked in the top 100, placing at 61 and 85, respectively. The Technion-Israeli Institute of Technology ranked 147th, while Ben-Gurion University of the Negev ranked 394th. Bar-Ilan University and the University of Haifa rounded out the list of Israeli universities, ranking at 492 and 620, respectively.
May 29, 2018
Humankind is revealed as simultaneously insignificant and utterly dominant in the grand scheme of life on Earth by a groundbreaking new assessment of all life on the planet. The world’s 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living things, according to the study. Yet since the dawn of civilisation, humanity has caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of plants, while livestock kept by humans abounds.
May 21, 2018
The 6,000 miles between them made no difference when 200 students in Israel and in the Boston area jointly created evolution in test tubes. The 10-day science experiment helped them understand how antibiotic-resistant bacterial “superbugs” evolve. The teens designed their experiments on Google Sheets, and these instructions were automatically carried out by a robot in a lab at the University of Massachusetts.
May 14, 2018
Squeeze through or go around? Phys.org covers research from the lab of Dr. Ofer Feinerman that provides insight into how ants collaborate to bring food home to the nest.
May 10, 2018
The Washington Post’s article about Jupiter’s reaching opposition talks to Weizmann’s Prof. Yohai Kaspi, who is part of NASA missions to study the Jovian planet.
May 08, 2018
Immuno therapy was once the black sheep of cancer research. Originally conceived over a century ago, it aims to stimulate a patient’s own immune system to fight cancer. That’s a very different approach than chemotherapy, which essentially poisons tumors.
May 08, 2018
Psychology Today reports on the symptoms of “secret anxiety,” citing Weizmann Institute research showing that stressed people perceive the world differently.
May 04, 2018
Weizmann’s Prof. Irit Dinur is one of four cutting-edge theoretical computer scientists who are “within striking distance of one of the great conjectures of their discipline”
April 24, 2018
