In a world premiere last week, Israel launches open kitchen workshops, giving insiders and everyday folk a fly-on-the-wall experience in some of Tel Aviv’s best restaurants.
Treating snail fever and swollen bellies with prawns
Amit Savaia (left), went to Africa for three months to volunteer after finishing his first degree in science. With four other Israeli students from Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, he helped build a computer platform to connect African farmers with their neighbors.
What tugged at his heartstrings, though, was the problem of schistosomiasis, the “snail fever” caused by ingesting parasites. This disease causes the characteristic swollen bellies in African children.
While mortality rates are low from snail fever, it is the second most socioeconomically devastating disease in Africa, after malaria. The chronic illness can damage internal organs and can lead to slowed growth and cognitive development. In adults, it carries an increased risk of bladder cancer.
Savaia vowed to help Africa beat this problem. Today, earning a master’s degree, he is working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded organization Project Crevette to develop a natural way to stop schistosomiasis in Senegal — using cultured prawns based on research from Ben-Gurion University.
He is concentrating his efforts on the local watering hole in the Lampsar Village in Senegal. Savaia says that it’s next to impossible to get the villagers to stop swimming and urinating in the water, which keeps the parasitic cycle going.
Prawn release in Africa
This watering hole in Senegal is a breeding ground for snail fever. Says an impassioned Savaia, now looking for funding to take his research to the final stages: “Schistosomiasis, also known as bilharzia, has no sustainable cure or treatment. The only drug used today to heal the people is an old drug called Praziquantal (PZQ), which kills the mature worms inside the body. There is no vaccine, even though a lot of companies are trying to make one.”
Sustainable solution to disease in Africa
The back story is that a river in Senegal was dammed, and consequently female prawns – natural predators of snails — were blocked from laying their eggs. The parasite-carrying snail population in the watering hole skyrocketed, and the snail-fever parasite grew with it.
Working on the project since 2012, Savaia proposes using advanced breeding methods to reintroduce prawns to the river. The catch is, these prawns are particularly delicate and hard to grow, especially in captivity. “Not many people have done it before and we had only one reference on how to do it,” he says.
But he has much hope for the approach. It is innovative, sustainable, and creates a triple winning situation for the farmers, villagers and fisherman, he says.
When he is able to prove the concept, “it could be applied in many more countries. These prawns are distributed almost all over the west coast of Africa. Senegal isn’t the only place where a dam started such a problem.”
Savaia’s academic supervisor, Prof. Amir Sagi, has done decades of research on prawns and crustaceans. Savaia also works with Prof. Dina Zilberg, Ben-Gurion’s expert on aquatic animal health.
They have learned that the larvae of this prawn species need to be reared in saline water for two months. After that, the crustacean goes through 14 cycles, or 15 molts, to become post-larvae of a small adult prawn.
Up until this point, “The animals are very delicate,” he says.
When they are reintroduced in the dammed river, they successfully eat the snails that harbor the parasite. A negative cycle is stopped. The question is how to turn this basic research into a project that Africa can do for itself.
Savaia has been strongly affected by seeing, first hand, the damage that the parasites do.
“I must say when we go to the villages you don’t see those awful pictures of children with big stomachs, and extremely sick people, because they stay at home or in hospitals,” he says.
“But when you take their urine and you filter it in order to know how sick they are [by counting how many eggs are in the sample], we find urine as red as blood. This comes from the eggs sitting on their kidneys and intestines.”
Savaia’s dream is big, but he’s unstoppable. “We want to make farms to teach farmers how to produce the prawns so they can sell some for the markets as a crop, because they are delicious, and the rest will be released in the river with an agreement of the health ministry.
“This way, everyone will be happy,” concludes Savaia.
Enzootic makes male prawn fish farming a greener business
There are evolutionary reasons why Tarzan is bigger than Jane. Most males of any species –– birds, bugs and prawns included –– grow bigger than their female counterparts. The phenomenon is called sexual dimorphism.
A new Israeli-American company, Enzootic, is taking sexual dimorphism and the ability to control it to the dinner table.
Waterways helps water tech make “soft” landing in Africa
Energiya Global to solar power up 8% of Rwanda using clean energy
Yosef Abramowitz is always up to something good. The Israeli-American solar energy pioneer and cofounder of Arava Power Company in Israel, has begun making inroads into solar-powering Africa. I interviewed him about some new progress in Africa.
Catalyst Agtech can defuse persistent pesticides at the source
When I interviewed CEO Shalom Nachshon, he told me that in a perfect world, his new Israeli company would go out of business. But as the world’s population expands, with more hungry mouths to feed, Catalyst Agtech is trying to make the best out of an imperfect world.
Say hello to healthier fast food delivery in the Middle East?
We love grandmothers and we love what they do, especially when they know how to cook well using traditional recipes. While we like to support the food and lifestyle of yore, we do not think that not everything fast is bad for you.
Cuteness is a curse for the adorable Fennec Fox
With its oversized ears and soft brown eyes, the world’s smallest canid is also probably the cutest. But being adorable has turned out to be lethal for the Fennec Fox in Tunisia, where both locals and tourists are loving the species to death. 
AIDS cured with Egypt’s magical “kebab” machine, army claims
About 36 million people have died from AIDS around the world, with about the same number of people living with the disease. In a desperate attempt to regain the public’s confidence, the Egyptian military says it has invented a “kebab” like machine to cure AIDS/HIV and Hepatitis C.
Gen. Dr. Ibrahim Abdel-Atti, chief of the medical branch has announced on Youtube. “We defeated AIDS, and rest assured, we defeated AIDS,” he said at a press conference. “And indeed, I conquered AIDS with the blessings of my Lord, glory to him, with a rate of 100%.”
The “Complete Cure Device” draws blood from a patient, breaks down the disease and returns the purified blood back to the body, says Dr. Ihsan Hanfy Hussein, a member of Abdel-Atti’s research team.
She said it cures the ailments in as little as 16 hours.
“I will take the AIDS from the patient and I will nourish the patient on the AIDS treatment. I will give it to him like a skewer of Kofta to nourish him,” Abdel-Atti said, referring to a dish made of ground meat. “I will take it away from him as a disease and give it back to him in the form of a cure,” he said. “This is the greatest form of scientific breakthrough.”
The pioneering method extracts the disease and breaks it down into amino acids, killing the virus in 20 days, “so that the virus becomes nutrition for the body instead of disease. This is a miracle in scientific research.”
“And I conquered the ‘C’,” Abdel-Atti added, referring to the Hepatitis C disease. “You will never find a patient suffering from the Hepatitis C virus after today, God willing!”
Some 8 million people in Egypt are living with Hepatitis C.
“This is the first jump, God willing. Conquering AIDS worldwide, conquering AIDS worldwide, God willing.”
Most people would find a cure within the prescribed 20 days, but for others it would take up to six months. Presumably time enough for the military to gain better control of the country, and to attract those seeking medical tourism in the faltering economy.
In a CCTV Africa report Abdel-Atti telling a patient, “Your lab report says you had AIDS. And now you don’t. You are cured.”
“We thought that until today, there was no cure for the disease,” said Dr. Nadia Ragab at a press conference. “But the research was so strong that our medical consultants gave us the green light for the human trial. We precisely followed the patients every three months. The results were astonishing to the extent that we had to repeat the lab work in different locations just to be sure.”
The device is called The Complete Cure and it works like a dialysis machine.
Meanwhile the science community in the rest of the world haven’t been impressed by Egypt’s bold medical claims.
University of Glasgow infectious disease specialist Emma Thomson told the BBC: “I can find no evidence to support the claims that this device detects hepatitis C or any other viruses as mentioned in the patent, nor any clear theoretical rationale for how it would work.”
Casablanca’s ‘Gardens of Anfa’ are wrapped in bougainvilleas and jasmine
Maison Edouard François designed a colorful new mixed-used residential master plan for Casablanca, a cosmopolitan Moroccan city made famous by a movie with the same name.
These guys think coffee can do a green roof good
We know that coffee can be both good and bad for our bodies, depending on who you ask. I know that ants are repelled by my used Turkish coffee grounds, and that the stuff makes a great fertilizer for mushrooms. But could used coffee grounds be good for your plants? University of Haifa scientists are planning to answer that question.
No Muslims on Mars, if this fatwa comes to pass
Muslims have signed up to travel to Mars on the outrageous one-way journey being proposed by Mars Ones. People of all faith from nations around the world have signed up, including Israelis, Turks, Egyptians, Iranians, Iraqis and those from Saudi, the UAE and Qatar. But a Muslim-issued fatwa may bar any Muslims from entering the red planet.
Mars One is aiming to send an initial four people to Mars by 2024, ten years from now. The first people will go there to start a colony. According to local press in the United Arab Emirates, the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment of the United Arab Emirates is publicly barring any Muslims from embarking on the mission to the red planet.
Because the trip will be one way and no doubt stressful, the fatwa says that any Muslim passengers who would go on the trip would be sacrificing their lives for no good reason. And that the punishment that awaits them in the afterlife will be akin to those who commit suicide.
Travellers to Mars will be expected to terraform, and undergo all sorts of manual labor to prepare a future colony for more humans.
The Netherlands-based Mars One replied and encouraged people of all faiths to apply. The organization said it would be a great service to humanity to set up a colony 39 million miles from earth. Prayer times as well as providing the direction to Mecca for those prayers will be provided for Muslims, it was asserted.
If making the commitment to Mars is too much, there is always Charles Branson’s Virgin Galactic offering flights to space on track for this year at a cost of about $250,000 a ride, with Branson and his family to be among the very first passengers. If it works, the flight could make the trip between Dubai and LA a mere 45 minutes, according to some estimates.
Aganetha Dyck works with bees to create incredible honeycomb art
Canadian artist Aganetha Dyck knows honeybees not just as pollinators that ensure the rest of the world has food on the table, but as architects and designers who build these incredible honeycomb sculptures.
Alvaro Siza makes it easier to visit the spectacular Alhambra palace in Spain
The Alhambra palace and fortress in Granada, with its mesmerizing series of courtyards, gardens and vistas that turn light and shadow into toys, may be the Moors’ crowning achievement. But the world heritage site has become so popular, visitors must wait hours just to get inside. Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza hopes to change that.
5 unusual and environmental places to stay in Dubai
It’s no trouble to find a place to stay overnight in Dubai. Hotels and luxury is begging and calling. But what if you are the green and eco persuasion? You’ve promised to replace your polluting air miles with a softer landing. Green Prophet gives you 5 earth friendly hotel alternatives in Dubai.
1. Surf couches in Dubai. Yes it’s possible. Not all Dubai couches are lined with gold. Well, maybe faux gold (not like the white gold Mercedes here). Read our backgrounder on couch surfing in the Middle East and surf away. Who knows maybe you’ll meet a Middle Eastern prince. Tafline shows you how it’s done.
2. Camp in Dubai. Pack your tent on the plane and get set to camp in Dubai. You might feel out of place running into the jet set with sand under your fingernails, but you will feel what it’s like to be a desert nomad, for a least a couple of days. For the spoiled ones, this list even suggests some place where you can do 5 star camping. Our fearless traveller Tafline has even spent nights out in her car, while travelling in the United Arab Emirates.
3. Rent a house, apartment, yacht, cave, caravan… you name it, on AirBnB. In the real world, most of the actual listings in Dubai are for rooms with views (like of Burj Dubai) in luxury buildings, but it’s certainly softer to tread on the planet this way.
4. Hostel it. Some of the rooms offered are at a school campus in Ajman for about $15 a night. Other rooms in small hostels are from $50 to about $100 a night. My experience with youth hostels in the Middle East is that they are not only used by youth but also by foreign workers and male travellers from other Middle East countries. If you are comfortable with the clash of cultures, go for it.
5. Like Green Prophet’s Tafline who has been on a sailing journey for months, it is possible to sail or boat into Dubai on a modest sailboat or a luxury cruise ship. We prefer the modest options, obviously, but we’d be okay with your ship if it were powered by renewable energy like this one.