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/blog/the-exquisite-precision-of-you/
Dec 01, 2017... You know that you have a circadian clock, or rhythm, that keeps you in time with the Earth’s 24-hour day-night cycle. Well, roughly in time, anyway; some of us are early birds, some are night owls, most are in between – and it’s very difficult for us night owls to change and go get that worm. Now we know why: studies in fruit flies show that these traits aren’t proof of superior moral fibre or laziness, but innate. That’s the way our circadian clocks are naturally set.
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.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/blog/anxious-who-isn-t-scientists-study-stress-in-the-brain/
Jan 24, 2020... “According to Gallup, in 2018, more Americans were stressed, worried and angry than at any point in the last 12 years. That is extraordinary when you consider that the past dozen years includes the 2008 financial crisis and multiple terrorist attacks. Furthermore, American stress levels are among the highest in the world. Seriously, Americans were as stressed as Iranians and more stressed than citizens of Rwanda, Turkey, and Venezuela,” reports The Washington Post, adding the technically accurate diagnosis: “That’s nuts.”
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.
Oct 19, 2017...
A researcher works with stem cells in a laboratory. (photo credit: Reuters)
Tel Aviv University and Weizmann Institute of Science researchers have shown it is possible to turn mature cells from the heart, brain and other organs in mice models into skin cells.
Their findings, just published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications, proves for the first time that it is possible to repurpose the function of different mature cells across the body and harvest new tissue and organs from these cells.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/science-tips-november-2007/
Nov 26, 2007...
Some people are oblivious to the odor in the locker room after a game, while others wrinkle their noses at the slightest whiff of sweat. Research by Prof. Doron Lancet and research student Idan Menashe of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Molecular Genetics Department, which appeared recently in PLoS Biology, has now shown that this difference is at least partly genetic.
Our sense of smell often takes a back seat to our other senses, but humans can perceive up to 10,000 different odors. Like mice, which boast a highly developed sense of smell, we have about 1,000 different genes for the smell-detecting receptors in our olfactory 'retinas.' In humans, however, over half of these genes have, in the last few million years, become defunct — some in all people, while others in just parts of the population.
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.
Feb 13, 2017...
A cross-section of a mouse liver lobule under a fluorescence microscope. The middle layer reveals an abundance of messenger RNA molecules (white dots) for the gene encoding hepcidin, the iron-regulating hormone
If you get up in the morning feeling energetic and clearheaded, you can thank your liver for manufacturing glucose before breakfast time. Among a host of other vital functions, it also clears our body of toxins and produces most of the carrier proteins in our blood. In a study reported recently in Nature, Weizmann Institute of Science researchers showed that the liver’s amazing multitasking capacity is due at least in part to a clever division of labor among its cells.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/science-tips-october-2014/
Oct 21, 2014... When we talk about global carbon fixation – pumping carbon out of the atmosphere and “fixing” it into organic molecules by photosynthesis – proper measurement is key to understanding the process. By some estimates, almost half of the world’s organic carbon is fixed by marine organisms called phytoplankton – single-celled photosynthetic organisms that account for less than one percent of the total photosynthetic biomass on Earth.
Nov 30, 2014...
Graduate students Eyal Karzbrun and Alexandra Tayar with Prof. Roy Bar-Ziv. Photo courtesy of Weizmann Institute
Years of intense lab work in Israel have led to the world’s first artificial cell-on-a-chip, an exciting development with many potential applications.
“The idea to mimic a living cell is a longstanding dream shared by many,” Weizmann Institute of Science Prof. Roy Bar-Ziv tells ISRAEL21c. “If we can build a primitive model of something so complex, we can possibly understand the dynamics of protein synthesis better.”
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