More than 400 years after Galileo turned his telescope toward the planet Jupiter, the clouds and mist covering this giant of our Solar System are beginning to disperse. Since 1973, no fewer than six spacecraft have flown by Jupiter. But the Juno probe, launched in 2011 and in orbit around the planet since July 2016, is the first one equipped with systems that are able to reveal the secrets of Jupiter’s inner structure beneath the thick clouds.
June 2017
Bread occupies a unique place in our diet: it accounts for about one-tenth of the calories many people in the West consume and up to 40 percent of the caloric consumption in some non-Western countries – more than any other food product. In the past few decades, since white bread has acquired a bad name, bakeries have been going out of their way to produce high-quality whole grain breads. But a new study conducted at the Weizmann Institute of Science and published recently in Cell Metabolism reveals that these “wholesome” choices are not necessarily the healthiest for everyone.
June 2017
The tiny cone-shaped “skimmers” used in experiments looking for exotic chemical-quantum phenomena resemble the intake mechanisms of aircraft engines, and they perform similar functions: each directs the flow of gas – the engine intake controls the supply of air for burning fuel, and the “skimmer” creates beams of cold flying atoms or molecules. While skimmers have been a necessary component in atomic and molecular-beam experiments for decades, they were also known to impose a fundamental limit on the number of particles one could pack into the beam.
June 2017
Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative disease manifested by various neuronal pathological processes and a significant decline in brain function. Aggregates of beta-amyloid protein (“plaques”) accumulate within and between brain cells. Due to both structural changes and the weakening of chemical communication pathways, the junctions of neuronal networks (synapses) are lost. In addition, the cytoskeletal proteins of the axons lose their normal structure, impairing their function and causing massive neuronal death.
June 08, 2017
Heart disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide, yet the few available treatments are still mostly unsuccessful once the heart tissue has suffered damage. Mammalian hearts are actually able to regenerate themselves and repair damage – but only up to around the time of birth. Afterward, that ability disappears, seemingly forever.
June 05, 2017
Stress affects the body and can trigger illness – from psychiatric disorders to heart disease. Humans are exposed to stress at different intensities throughout life: as children, in adolescence, and in old age. But when is the impact of stress on our systems most powerful? Many researchers maintain that the critical effect occurs prenatally, inside the womb. This hypothesis was, until recently, based mainly on statistical data indicating a correlation between stress during pregnancy and susceptibility to disease.
June 01, 2017
Separation technology is at the heart of water purification, sewage treatment, and materials reclamation, as well as numerous basic industrial processes. Membranes are used to separate out the smallest nanoscale particles, and even molecules and metal ions. Prof. Boris Rybtchinski and his group of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Department of Organic Chemistry have developed a new type of membrane that could extend the life of a separation system, lower its cost and, in some cases, increase its efficiency as well.
May 18, 2017
The path to understanding what goes wrong in cancer could benefit from a detour through studies of rare childhood diseases. Dr. Ayelet Erez explains that cancer generally involves dozens – if not hundreds – of mutations, and sorting out the various functions and malfunctions of each may be nearly impossible. Rare childhood diseases, in contrast, generally involve mutations to a single gene.
May 18, 2017
Dr. Valery Krizhanovsky of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Department of Molecular Cell Biology is revealing just how senescent cells are tied to disorders of aging and why they refuse to go away. His work is not only opening new windows onto the aging process, but is pointing to new directions in treatments for many of these disorders and diseases.
May 18, 2017
