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/a-world-without-coral-damages-us-all/
Jun 20, 2018...
This is not a hoax: climate change is real, and it is killing coral. These Great Barrier Reef before-and-after photos show the degree of devastation that can take place in just a few months. Credit: XL Catlin Seaview Survey
The Curiosity Review remembers when we heard a distressing report last year: over nine months in 2016, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef – one of the world’s largest living entities, so tremendous that it’s visible from space – underwent the largest coral bleaching event in its history. And in April of this year, we heard such a report again when shocked scientists reported that a second huge event took place in 2017.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/blog/day-zero-what-happens-when-the-tap-goes-dry/
Mar 29, 2018...
Cape Town, South Africa, may very well become the first city in modern times to run out of water. The day they expect the taps to run dry is called Day Zero, the scarily named first day of an unwanted new era.
Most of us modern sapiens have never had to truly manage our water; we take daily showers, leave it running while we brush our teeth, we dump gallons of it down the drain without a second thought.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/first-oceans-may-have-been-acidic/
Mar 15, 2017...
Drs. Itay Halevy and Aviv Bachan reveal the earliest effects of atmosphere and weathering on the ocean
One way to understand how ocean acidity can change – for example, in response to rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels – is to look to the history of seawater acidity. Dr. Itay Halevy of the Weizmann Institute of Science has looked to the distant past – all the way back to Earth’s earliest oceans, in fact. The model he developed, together with Dr. Aviv Bachan of Stanford University, suggests that the early oceans, right around the time that life originated, were somewhat acidic, and that they gradually became alkaline. The study, published in Science, sheds light on how levels of ocean acidity in the past were controlled by CO2 in the atmosphere, an important process for understanding the effects of climate change.
May 18, 2017...
Prof. Rybtchinski’s self-assembling membrane for water purification
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.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/making-spines-from-sea-water/
Nov 30, 2016... Some sea creatures cover themselves with hard shells and spines, while vertebrates build skeletons out of the same minerals. How do these animals get the calcium they need to build these strong mineral structures? Profs. Lia Addadi and Steve Weiner of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Department of Structural Biology asked this question about sea urchins, which need to extract quite a few calcium ions from sea water in order to build their spines. The answer surprised the two – and it could change the way scientists think about the process of biomineralization.
Apr 06, 2009... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—April 6, 2009—The design of efficient systems, driven by sunlight, for splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen is among the most important challenges facing science today, underpinning the long-term potential of hydrogen as a clean, sustainable fuel. But manmade systems that exist today are very inefficient and often require additional use of sacrificial chemical agents. In this context, it is important to establish new mechanisms by which water splitting can take place.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/the-active-life-of-coral-visualized/
Jul 04, 2014...
Particle paths are shown in gold and green; coral polyps are pink and purple Vicente Fernandez
You are looking at a sea of small-scale activity surrounding a reef-building coral. The intricate, swirling patterns in the water are made by cilia: hair-like appendages which move in unison as the corals breathe, feed and clean themselves. To understand how corals engineer their environment, researchers from MIT's Environmental Microfluidics Group and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel examined the cilia-filled valley between two 3mm-wide cauliflower coral polyps under a microscope; they then added powdered food to the water to see how the cilia affect its flow. “This project helps us understand how corals might respond to changes in their environment,” says engineer Vicente Fernandez, a postdoctoral associate at the MIT lab. "It demonstrates that these vortices are not ephemeral and can substantially affect the coral environment."
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/coral-on-a-chip-cracks-coral-mysteries/
Mar 16, 2016...
The mouth of a coral polyp (center): Symbiotic algae are labeled in red; pathogenic bacteria that enter through this region are labeled in blue
We know that human-induced environmental changes are responsible for coral bleaching, disease, and infertility. Loss of the world’s stony coral reefs – up to 30% in the next 30 years, according to some estimates – will mean loss of their services, including sequestering some 70–90 million tons of carbon each year and supporting enormous marine biodiversity. Yet despite many advances, we are still far from understanding the causes and processes contributing to the corals’ demise. Weizmann Institute of Science researchers have developed a new experimental platform for studying coral biology at microscale resolutions, which is already providing new insights into this complex problem. The work was published in Nature Communications.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/recipe-unearthed-for-mystery-clouds/
Jul 18, 2017...
‘Mystery clouds’ of the type studied at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Photograph: Ilan Koren
The weather forecast had predicted a cloudless day, but when Ilan Koren, an atmospheric scientist, looked up he saw small “cotton wool” clouds dotted across the bright blue sky over Israel.“Mystery” clouds like these are common on hot sunny days along humid sub-tropical shores, like those along the Mediterranean. Yet classical physics suggests these clouds shouldn’t exist. Now scientists think they might have finally solved the puzzle of how mystery clouds are made.Convection is the usual process that creates clouds on a hot sunny day. Warm air rises above warm regions of land (such as macadamed car parks, ploughed fields and coniferous forests). As the parcel of air rises it cools and its ability to hold moisture decreases. Eventually, if it rises high enough, it cannot hold any more water so droplets form and a fluffy cloud appears.But the clouds that Koren saw were a puzzle because they occurred below the predicted 100% humidity level. To understand these mystery clouds, Koren, based at the Weizmann Institute of Science, with his colleagues observed clouds and made regular measurements of changes in temperature and humidity at different altitudes. This was done over a 92-day period in the summer of 2011.Using these measurements they simulated the likely atmospheric mixing, and discovered that the mystery clouds were caused by variations in humidity not at ground surface but a few hundred metres up, perhaps where moist ocean air was mixing with dry land air. Normally cumulus clouds are caused by temperature variations on the ground surface.Writing in the journal Environmental Research Letters the scientists estimated that these previously misunderstood clouds could be responsible for reflecting up to 4 watts per square metre – equivalent to the local warming effect from greenhouse gases.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/water-protection-modeling-and-management/
Jun 01, 2008... Looking at the blue expanses wrapping the globe, one can hardly imagine that a planet covered mostly by water could experience water shortages. Yet 97 percent of Earth’s water is too salty for drinking or irrigation, and much of the rest is locked up deep underground or in ice caps. Meanwhile, a burgeoning world population leads to increasing water consumption. By 2025 at least 40 percent of Earth’s population may face serious health and economic problems if it relies solely on natural freshwater resources. In a survey conducted by the International Council for Science in more than 50 countries, environmental experts ranked freshwater scarcity as a 21st-century issue second only to global warming. Water experts believe that to meet the soaring demand, humankind must find smarter ways of using its water supply. Weizmann Institute researchers are developing scientific approaches to efficient and sophisticated water management.
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