Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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(ISRAEL21c) - Remember when pollution was our worst respiratory worry? Now, scientists say airborne virus particles may be the main cause of Covid-19 infections. In the face of new evidence, the World Health Organization has changed its tune about the virus not being transmitted through air. "WHO, together with the scientific community, has been actively discussing and evaluating whether SARS-CoV-2 may also spread through aerosols ... particularly in indoor settings with poor ventilation," the...
(ISRAEL21c) - Sitting at the crossroads of the ancient world, Israel is an archeologist's dream. Peeling back the layers of history here is a never-ending pursuit. Excavations by the Israel Antiquities Authority with local and international experts are constantly turning up new clues to ancient civilizations. And it's quite common for casual hikers to contact the IAA about valuable antiquities they've stumbled across. Israel has invested heavily in enabling safe access to dozens of archeology...
(ISRAEL21c) - The story probably didn't end happily for the bound and naked captive depicted on a 3,500-year-old clay tablet recently found in Israel. Things have turned out much better for the six-year-old boy who stumbled across this rare find a couple of months ago. Imri Elya from Kibbutz Nirim near the Gaza Strip spotted the 2.8-square-centimeter (1.1-square-inch) tablet while walking with his parents at the Tel Jemmeh archaeological site near Kibbutz Re'im. The curious boy picked up the...
(ISRAEL21c) — Research groups across the world are using a variety of approaches to formulating vaccines that could protect people from COVID-19. Big money and urgent demand are accelerating the normally lengthy process of vaccine development. Vaccine candidates from the U.S., U.K., China, Japan and Germany are on the fast track, and Israel has at least six projects on the go. This international effort may lead to multiple products. “We expect more than one could make it to market,” says Ronald Ellis, an Israel-based consultant to the indus...
(Israel21c via JNS) — About 120 research groups from various countries are racing to develop vaccines for the SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19). Several formulations have already advanced to human safety trials. Although the frontrunners in this race are American, British, Chinese, Japanese and German, Israel also has a few contenders. However, vaccine development, like drug development, is a long and complicated process. And it doesn’t always succeed, explains industry expert Ron Ellis, editor in chief of “Human Vaccines & Immuno...
(Israel21c via JNS) — An immune system run amok may be responsible for some COVID-19 patients faring worse than others, suggests a new international study led by immunology researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science. In the study, published in the journal Cell on May 7 under the title, “Host-viral infection maps reveal signatures of severe COVID-19 patients,” researchers in the lab of professor Ido Amit introduce Viral-Track, a computational method they have validated to systematically detect viruses from multiple models of infecti...
(ISRAEL21c)-The constantly intensifying battle against viruses and antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" isn't only about finding stronger drugs against infection. The focus is moving to preventing infections in the first place. That's why large companies such as Carrefour and a Far East luxury hotel chain are looking at unique germ-vanquishing textiles invented by Jerusalem's Argaman Technologies and manufactured inside its custom-built factory. Carrefour Group, a French-based superstore chain with...
The coronavirus crisis is first and foremost about people. People stuck at home, people out of work. People sick with the virus, people caring for them. People canceling dream weddings and vacations, people deciding public-health policies. Technology is also about people. Here in Israel, a powerhouse of innovative technology, people are busy inventing and adapting technologies to ease the corona burden. “Technology has a great role to play in solving and helping us get through this crisis, from diagnosis, mitigation, patient tracking, c...
(ISRAEL21c)—The global Israeli company Teva Pharmaceutical Industries is donating more than 6 million doses of hydroxychloroquine sulfate tablets to hospitals across the United States to meet the urgent demand for the medicine as an investigational target to treat COVID-19. Hydroxychloroquine sulfate is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of malaria, lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis. The Teva-manufactured drug is not approved for use in treating COVID-19. However, it is under investigation for e...
(ISRAEL21c)-Fifteen years after he filched a 2,000-year-old ballista stone from a Jerusalem archaeological site, an anonymous Israeli arranged to return it to the Israel Antiquities Authority. The man explained that the coronavirus crisis makes him feel "the end of the world is near" and he wanted to clear his conscience. Moshe Manies, the person who agreed to bring the pilfered stone to the state without divulging the identity of the thief, wrote a post about it on Facebook. He explained that...
(ISRAEL21c)—The Jerusalem Biblical Zoo is collecting donations to help the Animal Rescue Collective purchase veterinary supplies for animals affected by wildfires in Victoria, Australia. “The Jerusalem Biblical Zoo and its staff are distressed by the horrific fires in Australia and the widespread devastation to its unique wildlife,” the zoological park announced Jan. 5. The bushfires began in New South Wales in September, where about 130 fires continue to burn, and have spread to Victoria, where some 31 blazes are burning. University of Sydne...
A Kurdish refugee toddler-we'll call him Ajwan, for security reasons-is the latest of 44 Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish children who've had emergency medical treatment at Israel's Sheba Medical Center in 2019 alone. Ajwan, three and a half, had lifesaving open-heart surgery that wasn't available in Iraqi Kurdistan, where his family has been living for a few years due to the dangers the community faces in northern Syria. "I was not afraid to come to Israel, even though I was warned I could lose my...
(ISRAEL21c)-Michal Bar, head of emergency operations for Israeli humanitarian NGOIsraAID, doesn't mince her words. "The level of destruction is shocking," she says. "Since we arrived in the Bahamas last week, we have visited communities in both affected regions-the Abaco Islands and Grand Bahama Islands," Bar told ISRAEL21c. "In Abaco there are about 17,000 affected people and in Grand Bahama there are about 50,000. People here are waiting for information and for relief." Bar is leading a...
(ISRAEL21c)—Guy Gardi, a founding member of 25-year-old urban Kibbutz Beit Yisrael in the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo Aleph, doesn’t consider himself a pioneer like the founders of the nearly 100-year-old Kibbutz Ein Harod in the Jezreel Valley, where he grew up. Those original egalitarian communes (kibbutz means “gathering” or “collective”) struggled to establish fertile farms in long-barren soil, while today’s urban kibbutz is an intentional community working to improve quality of life and education in underserved neighborhoods...
(ISRAEL21c)-Throughout her 25 years of life, Netta Barzilai was told over and over that she wasn't pretty enough or smart enough or skinny enough to accomplish what she wanted in life. Last night she proved them all wrong. Smart, sassy, zaftig Barzilai did Israel proud, winning the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest in Lisbon as the representative of her country. This was the first time Israel has won the competition in 20 years. "Mazal tov, Israel!" shouted Eurovision officials at the post-contest...
ISRAEL21c-Ten days after the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, experts from the Israel Trauma Coalition arrived at the community to guide teachers, clinicians, law enforcers, first responders, social workers, parents and clergy through a "day after" strategy for helping people face the future with resilience. The community, which had never dealt with a shooting on this scale, was in shock. "It was devastating," said Nancy Teitelbaum, senior director of marketing and...
(ISRAEL21c)-Could one drug effectively treat incurable inflammatory diseases such as Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis as well as neurodegenerative maladies such as Alzheimer's disease? Yes, says Prof. David Naor, speaking with ISRAEL21c at the Lautenberg Center for General and Tumor Immunology in Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem. All these diseases, he explains, are associated with pathological amyloid proteins that could be...
ISRAEL21c—That’s one of the findings of groundbreaking experiments performed at Israel’s Benjamin Triwaks Bee Research Center at Hebrew University’s Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture in Rehovot. The center also has discovered that, like humans, bees consuming an unhealthy ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids develop cognitive deficiencies. They cannot simply choose pollen from flowers high in omega-3 because increasing urbanization has decimated many kinds of wildflowers. The resulting nutritional imbalance is a major reason why hon...
ISRAEL21c—When Avram Hershko was a post-doc fellow at the University of California in San Francisco from 1969 to 1971, he made an unexpected discovery that led to his receiving the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The professor at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology tells ISRAEL21c that he was interested in examining the mechanism that causes protein degradation in living cells. He assumed it had to do with running out of energy. Surprisingly, his experiments revealed the opposite: Proteins need energy to fall apart. “It was ser...
ISRAEL21c-Doctors diagnose as many as 60,000 new cases of Parkinson's disease (PD) every year in the United States. Yet diagnosing PD with certainty can take years-long after early signs and symptoms have appeared. The Israeli startup BioShai has a game-changing product on the horizon: PDx, the world's first simple blood test for the early diagnosis of PD. The test results can be combined with clinical data, providing a more accurate diagnosis to help physicians decide on the best course of...
ISRAEL21c-Emoticons such as smiley faces are really helpful in expressing your tone in an email, post or text message. Emojis such as a thumbs-up are great for expressing ideas without even typing a word. Yet even with all the options loaded into your messaging apps, sometimes you can't find exactly the right icon to get across your mood or concept. That's why so many apps offer create-your-own emojis including some with the faces of pop stars. But why use their faces when you can use your own?...
ISRAEL21c-Celebrity endorsements are a big boon for brands. Just ask SodaStream, the Israeli company touted by Hollywood beauty Scarlett Johansson and "Game of Thrones" star Thor Bjornsson. Ask HOT, the Israeli telecom for which Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo filmed a funny TV commercial. But other stars support Israeli startups with their dollars rather than their faces, or sometimes with both. Today's celebs no longer look down on techies, explains Gil Eyal, founder of Tel Aviv- and...
ISRAEL21c—Think of marketing as a way of moving potential customers through a funnel: enticing them to enter at the top, to stay inside until making a purchase, and to go back inside for future purchases. Think of marketing technology (mar-tech) as smart automated solutions for every stage of that sales funnel, says Pini Yakuel, CEO of Optimove, one of the growing number of Israeli companies specializing in mar-tech software for B2B and B2C clients. “Mar-tech is a very hot field,” Yakuel tells ISRAEL21c. “In the old days, marketing was perceiv...
ISRAEL21c-Shafrir Levi's baby boy loves to slurp spoonsful of bananas, pears and apples mashed with pure sesame-seed paste, known as tahina in Israel and tahini most other places. The baby's affinity for ground sesame seeds is understandable, and not just because tahini is a staple of the Israeli diet (the word tahina comes from the Hebrew verb "to grind"). His ancestor in Morocco was a master of making the tahini-based treat called halva, and opened the Halva Kingdom in Jerusalem in 1947....
ISRAEL21c-Two guys walk into a New York City bar in 2003 and meet a couple of Brazilian women. "What do you miss most from home?" the men ask. "Agua de coco," the women answer. Coconut water. In 2004, the two men found Vita Coco, which takes off like wildfire as consumers everywhere seek alternatives to sugary soft drinks. Today, Vita Coco is the global market leader in coconut water, the clear nutritious liquid inside young green coconuts. The company has 10 manufacturing facilities in eight...
