About Us
Founded in 1944, the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science develops philanthropic support for the Weizmann Institute in Israel, and advances its mission of science for the benefit of humanity.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/a-sniff-test-for-coronavirus/
May 04, 2020... Prof. Noam Sobel, of the Department of Neurobiology, is a leading authority on how olfaction affects human behavior and health. Data emerging from the coronavirus pandemic show that many patients experience a temporary loss of their sense of smell. So dramatic is this loss that, in some countries, patients who report a sudden loss of olfactory acuity are declared to be coronavirus patients, even without further testing. The CDC recently added olfactory loss as a formal symptom of COVID-19.
Apr 20, 2020...
Humans touch their own faces often because they are subconsciously smelling themselves for a variety of reasons, scientists believe. The team also conducted a survey to see whether people subconsciously smell themselves and others, and found more than half of the participants had smelled a stranger.
The authors of the article titled Are humans constantly but subconsciously smelling themselves? published in the journal Royal Society journal Philosophical Transactions B reviewed existing studies to understand if and why humans smell themselves.
Apr 27, 2020...
COVID-19 has separated us from the world in surprising ways. Yes, we all miss our friends and loved ones, and we miss going to restaurants and stores and movies and concerts. But there’s another pastime that COVID-19 has deprived us of, even if we don’t realize it: the simple pleasure of subconsciously touching our own faces and sniffing our hands.
As COVID-19 spread, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned people against touching their faces — and for good reason: A 2006 study suggested that nearly 25 percent of respiratory disease transfer could be attributed to people touching their faces.
May 12, 2020...
For a single ant, the world can be an overwhelmingly big place. To safely navigate their environs, ants rely on collective cognition.
According to a new study, published Tuesday in the journal eLife, collective brainpower makes seemingly chaotic environs navigable.
“Cooperation is a common means by which animals can increase their cognitive capacity, and we were intrigued as to whether this cooperation allows ants to extend the range of environments in which they can efficiently collect food,” first study author Aviram Gelblum, a postdoctoral fellow at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, said in a news release.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/which-came-first/
Jun 22, 2020... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—June 22, 2020—What did the very first proteins – those that appeared on Earth around 3.7 billion years ago – look like? Prof. Dan Tawfik of the Weizmann Institute of Science and Prof. Norman Metanis of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have reconstructed protein sequences that may well resemble those ancestors of modern proteins, and their research suggests a way that these primitive proteins could have progressed to forming living cells. Their findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/the-magnetic-history-of-ice/
Jun 29, 2020... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—June 29, 2020—The history of our planet has been written, among other things, in the periodic reversal of its magnetic poles. Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science propose a new means of reading this historic record: in ice. Their findings, which were recently reported in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, could lead to a refined method of probing ice cores and, in the future, might be applied to understanding the magnetic history of other bodies in our solar system, including Mars and Jupiter’s moon Europa.
Jul 01, 2020...
Israeli researchers have discovered collaboration between trees deep in the ground, Weizmann Institute of Science (WIS) in central Israel said Wednesday.
In their study, WIS researchers found underground intricate networks of fungi connecting the roots of different tree species with one another.
These networks enable the trees to exchange of minerals, nutrients, water and carbon, while funneling carbon to the fungi in return.
Jun 25, 2020... The question as to how life began on Earth is one of the most fundamental to science, yet it remains one of humanity’s great mysteries. The first cells emerged relatively quickly after the Earth formed, meaning life wasted no time getting started once it had the right ingredients. Yet even the simplest cell is a complex bags of organelles, proteins, lipids and other molecular parts — and no one knows quite how such a complicated thing formed from random, inorganic processes.
Oct 05, 2020... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—October 5, 2020—Our ancestors not only knew how to use fire, they also developed sophisticated technologies for making tools. Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science recently employed cutting-edge technologies of their own to take a fresh look at a collection of stone tools. Their results suggest that the early humans who made the tools may have had a good understanding of the effects of heating the stone before flaking it into blades, and may even have used different temperatures to create different types of tools. The findings of this research were published in Nature Human Behaviour.
Oct 05, 2020...
Use of controlled fire was probably the most defining moment in the evolution of early humans. It was not just a mere technological advancement but was the starting point of everything we associate humans with—migration, civilisation, culture or language. But, when did we start controlling the fire? We may be getting closer to finding a definitive answer.
A new study, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, shows that human ancestors in the Levantine region—countries along the eastern Mediterranean shores—used fire at controlled temperatures to make tools around 300,000 years ago. Using the cutting edge technologies like the Raman spectroscopy and AI modelling, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science and Tel Aviv University in Israel found that early humans had a good understanding of the effects of heating the stone before flaking it into blades.
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