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 future of humanity.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/blog/weizmann-scientist-s-paper-makes-year-end-top-10-list/
Jan 03, 2019...
It’s that time of year: the roundup. The best movies! Music! Books! And, yes – scientific papers.
2018 was perhaps not the happiest year in a number of ways, and the good and bad news is that many of our major problems are reflected in the research. It’s bad because reading about these issues is not uplifting, to say the least. It’s good because science – and the knowledge, clarity, and facts it provides – is what will guide us through.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/blog/learning-is-powered-by-inspiration-but-not-the-kind-you-think/
Mar 27, 2019...
Get inspired! Breathing in helps us solve problems more quickly, says Prof. Noam Sobel and his team. The group also found that our olfactory system can help us learn (including to quit smoking) while sleeping, and even shaped the evolution of our other senses.
It doesn’t matter if we’re in school, from pre-K to postdoc; working; or pursuing hobbies after retiring, we are always learning – and of course we want to learn smarter.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/blog/night-owls-are-wired-that-way/
Jun 18, 2019...
Working when your brain does: Dr. Matthew Walker says that night owls, about 30% of the population, “are bound to a delayed schedule by unavoidable DNA hardwiring. It is not their conscious fault, but rather their genetic fate.” Prof. Gad Asher shines a light on why.
Our culture celebrates early risers, valuing them as harder workers more worthy of success. But scientists like Gad Asher are now proving that night owls don’t choose their fates; it’s in their genes. Will research help owls gain respect?
Dec 18, 2017...
Just three of the scallop’s 200 marvelous eyes. Credit: Dan-Eric Nilsson, Lund University
Sure, your eyes are lovely. But you only have two. The scallop has up to two hundred. And they’re of an incandescent blue with purple and gold centers; like so much of ocean life, they’re so otherworldly as to seem truly alien.
But as if it weren’t interesting enough that scallops have upper and lower rows of these poppy-seed-sized peepers circling their bodies, recent Weizmann Institute (Israel) and Lund University (Sweden) findings, published in Science, show that the eyes are a “master class in precision engineering,” as The Atlantic put it.
Jul 16, 2008...
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—July 16, 2008—In two complementary studies, Weizmann Institute scientists have developed a new method for reconstructing a cell’s “family tree,” and have applied this technique to trace the history of the development of cancer.
The quest to understand a cell’s path of descent, called a cell lineage tree, is shared by many branches of biology and medicine as gleaning such knowledge is key to answering many fundamental questions, such as whether neurons in our brain can regenerate, or whether new eggs are created in adult females.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/smell-that-sadness-female-tears-turn-off-men/
Jan 07, 2011...
Click here to listen to the NPR report.
A team of Israeli scientists is reporting that when your date at the movies starts crying, it may have an effect on you even if you can’t see the tears.
Seeing tears clearly has an effect on people — it tends to turn anger into compassion. But scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science wondered if the effect was strictly visual. Might there be some chemical in human tears that was responsible for the urge to care for someone? So they advertised for people willing to donate tears.
Jan 25, 2018...
Phi3T bacteriophages attacking Bacillus subtilis, ROTEM SOREK
Bacteria have been defending themselves from phages—viruses that attack bacterial cells—for billions of years, and unlocking the immune mechanisms they use to protect themselves has led to the development of powerful molecular biology tools such as restriction enzymes and CRISPR-Cas9. Now, researchers report in Science today (January 25) that they have discovered 10 more immune systems that bacteria use to protect themselves against phages and plasmids, opening up the possibility to add new tools to the molecular biology toolbox.
Apr 06, 2010... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—April 6, 2010—Darwin's finches—some 14 related species of songbirds found on the Galapagos and Cocos Islands—will forever be enshrined in history for having planted the seeds of the theory of evolution through natural selection. Today, 150 years after Darwin's famous book, finches can still teach us a lesson about evolution. A large, international group of researchers, among them Prof. Doron Lancet and Dr. Tsviya Olender of the Department of Molecular Genetics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, recently produced the full genome of the zebra finch and analyzed it in detail. The report on the zebra finch genome, which appeared April 6 in Nature, is especially significant for what it reveals about learning processes for language and speech. For Prof. Lancet and Dr. Olender, however, the findings have provided an interesting twist on the evolution of the sense of smell.
Feb 04, 2019...
We treasure our hearts: we fill them with love, soothe them when they ache, and keep them powerful with diet and exercise. But sometimes, no matter what, our hearts are affected by illness and disease – and that’s where science can help.
It’s American Heart Month, the perfect time to share with you some of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s remarkable research on the heart. After all, this affects all of us: as the Centers for Disease Control says, heart problems are both common and varied, affect people of all ages, and strike equally across gender and economic borders.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/all-too-human/
Jan 22, 2019...
The tradeoff shown in human brains (top) and monkey brains (bottom). The more evolutionarily advanced, the more efficient and the less robust each area proved to be.
Prof. Rony Paz of the Weizmann Institute of Science suggests that our brains are like modern washing machines – evolved to have the latest sophisticated programming, but more vulnerable to breakdown and prone to develop costly disorders. He and a group of researchers recently conducted experiments comparing the efficiency of the neural code in non-human and human primates and found that, as the neural code gets more efficient, the robustness that prevents errors is reduced. Their findings, which appeared in Cell, may help to explain why disorders as ADHD, anxiety, depression, PTSD, and even autism are common in humans.
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