While Parkinson’s Disease is one of the most common neurological disorders, physicians still lack a validated lab-based methodology, or biomarker, for diagnosing it definitively. That means it’s hard to diagnose it early and conclusively. One study we reported on says Parkinson’s might come through in your handwriting, but who is writing by hand these days? 

Some scientists already figure that the high incidence of Parkinson’s in some Middle East communities is due to pesticides, and that artificial sweeteners may hold promise for a treatment. But earlier diagnoses for earlier intervention?

So how is it diagnosed today?  Neurologists primarily rely on a clinical diagnosis that is based on the appearance of specific motor symptoms that indicate a patient is already suffering from the disease. What gives rise to the motor symptoms is a loss of dopamine cells in the brain.

Unfortunately, by the time the disease is diagnosed, too many dopamine cells are lost, limiting the prospects for recovery. Instead, the available treatments target the symptoms of Parkinson’s but cannot reverse the progression of the disease. (Some early research suggests a keto diet may help the brain).

But a recent discovery by a team from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem led by Professor Joshua Goldberg has successfully identified a chain of cellular and physiological events that have the potential to provide some help in diagnosing the disease years earlier. 

Specifically, the research conducted in collaboration with Professor Jochen Roeper of the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany and published in the journal Science Advances, hypothesizes that one possible key for diagnosing Parkinson’s disease earlier is to better understand the physiological process underlying constipation, which is a common – while not usually discussed – non-motor symptom of Parkinson’s. Importantly, constipation can predate diagnosis by up to 20 years. (A quick fix for constipation might be aloe vera if you are wondering).

Observations on Lewy Bodies

The path to this latest discovery goes all the way back to 1912 when Dr. Friedrich Lewy first published the existence of a buildup of tiny deposits of protein waste within brain cells called Lewy bodies. 

Twenty years ago researchers elaborated on this finding and described how these Lewy bodies spread throughout the brain of Parkinson’s patients. But while this finding was viewed as a potentially groundbreaking, the Lewy bodies remain clinically inaccessible preventing the ability to determine whether a person has them, even though they may be lurking in the brain for many years before diagnosis.

The science thus focused on trying to link the Lewy body buildup with specific known non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s.  These included anxiety, sleep disorder, loss of the sense of smell and notably constipation. Scientists proposed that the Lewy bodies were building up in specific areas of the brain and killing the brain cells that control the healthy functioning of relevant parts of the body.

Interestingly, one of the first locations where Lewy bodies are found in the brain is an area that affects gastrointestinal motility, providing a potential explanation for constipation in Parkinson’s patients. The problem with this proposition is that Lewy bodies do not necessarily kill brain cells, and may instead represent the cells’ coping mechanism. Therefore, Professor Goldberg’s team, searched for a mechanistic explanation tying Lewy bodies to constipation that does not depend on them killing brain cells.

To this end, Professor Goldberg’s team over-expressed a specific protein, alpha-synuclein – that was already known to aggregate as the main constituent of Lewy bodies – in mouse brain cells that control gastrointestinal motility.  The result was that the over-expression of the protein caused these brain cells to shrink and their electrical activity to slow down- directly affecting the physiological properties that led to the constipation.  It is thus likely that this is the process that also occurs in humans in the early stages of Parkinson’s Disease.

According to Professor Goldberg, “As far as we know, this is the first time that anyone has described a causal chain of events connecting between how alpha-synuclein protein impacts brain cells and the early symptoms that we have long known predate this disease.”

On a diagnostic level he says that this finding may help physicians detect the disease earlier in the future. “Consider a 55 to 60-year-old patient suffering from constipation. We may someday design a test based on the neural changes we discovered to determine whether there is a neural factor at play which could hint to Parkinson’s.”  While he admits that this is still hypothetical, “one day in the future we are confident that we will be able to identify a variety of biomarkers – including physiological ones, like the one we propose – that will allow us to definitively diagnose the disease far earlier than we are currently able.”

The potential behind such an early diagnosis is enormous because at present there are no therapies capable of stopping the progression of the disease.  The hope is that with early intervention certain therapies that are unsuccessful at a later stage may actually be able to halt the progression of Parkinson’s disease. Some say a keto diet may help. Read this link for more. 

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In diagnostic medicine, biopsies, where a sample of tissue is extracted for analysis, is a common tool for the detection of many conditions.  It’s good news when the cancer is benign but often bad news if malignant because cancer tumors have shells. When ruptured tiny fragments of cancer can spill out and reinfect other parts of the body through the blood, spreading the cancer faster than ever.

There are other drawbacks – it can be painful, doesn’t always extract the diseased tissue, and can only be used in a sufficiently advanced disease stage, making it, in some cases, too late for intervention.  These concerns have encouraged researchers to find less invasive and more accurate options for diagnosing diseases like cancer.

Professor Nir Friedman (who developed a rapid test for Covid) and Dr. Ronen Sadeh from Hebrew University in Jerusalem have published a study in Nature Biotechnology that shows how a wide range of diseases can be detected through a simple blood test.  The test allows lab technicians to identify and determine the state of the dead cells throughout the body and thus diagnose various diseases including cancers and diseases of the heart and liver. 

The test is even able to identify specific markers that may differ between patients suffering from the same types of tumorous growths, a feature that has the potential to help physicians develop personalized treatments for individual patients.

The test relies on a natural process whereby every day millions of cells in our body die and are replaced by new cells. When cells die, their DNA is fragmented and some of these DNA fragments reach the blood and can be detected by DNA sequencing methods. However, all our cells have the same DNA sequence, and thus simply sequencing the DNA cannot identify from which cells it originated.

While the DNA sequence is identical between cells, the way the DNA is organized in the cell is substantially different.   The DNA is packaged into nucleosomes, small repeating structures that contain specialized proteins called histones. On the histone proteins, the cells write a unique chemical code that can tell us the identity of the cell and even the biological and pathological processes that are going on within it. In recent years, numerous studies have successfully developed a process where this information can  be identified and thus reveal abnormal cell activity.   

A new approach advanced by Hebrew University researchers, Professor Friedman and Dr. Ronen Sadeh is able to precisely read this information from DNA in the blood and use it to determine the nature of the disease or tumor, exactly where in the body it’s found and even how far developed it is. 

The approach relies on analysis of epigenetic information within the cell, a method which has been increasingly fine-tuned in recent years.  “As a result of these scientific advancements, we understood that if this information is maintained within the DNA structure in the blood, we could use that data to determine the tissue source of dead cells and the genes that were active in those very cells. Based on those findings, we can uncover key details about the patient’s health,” Professor Friedman explains.  “We are able to better understand why the cells died, whether it’s an infection or cancer and based on that be better positioned to determine how the disease is developing.”

Along with the clear diagnostic benefits of this process, the test is also non-invasive and far less expensive than traditional biopsies.  Dr. Ronen Sadeh said, “We hope that this approach will allow for earlier diagnosis of disease and help physicians to treat patients more effectively. 

Recognizing the potential of this approach and how this technology can be so beneficial for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes, we set up the company Senseera which will be involved with clinical testing in partnership with major pharmaceutical companies with the goal of making this innovative approach available to patients.”

The post When biopsies were so 2021 appeared first on Green Prophet.

Could a simple cholesterol drug, that has been on the market for decades, be used to treat COVID-19?  A research team led by Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU)’s Professor Yaakov Nahmias says that early research looks promising; their findings appear in this week’s Cell Press’ Sneak Peak. 

Over the last three-months, Nahmias and Dr. Benjamin tenOever at New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center have focused on the ways in which the SARS-CoV-2 (aka, the coronavirus that’s causing our current pandemic) changes patients’ lungs in order to reproduce itself.

Their major finding? This virus prevents the routine burning of carbohydrates. As a result, large amounts of fat accumulate inside lung cells, a condition the virus needs in order to reproduce.  This new understanding of SARS CoV-2 may help explain why patients with high blood sugar and cholesterol levels are often at a particularly high risk to develop COVID-19.

Viruses are parasites that lack the ability to replicate on their own, so they take control of our cells to help accomplish that task. “By understanding how the SARS-CoV-2 controls our metabolism, we can wrestle back control from the virus and deprive it from the very resources it needs to survive,” Nahmias explained.

With this information in hand, Nahmias and tenOever began to screen FDA-approved medications that interfere with the virus’ ability to reproduce. In lab studies, the cholesterol-lowering drug Fenofibrate (Tricor) showed extremely promising results.  By allowing lung cells to burn more fat, fenofibrate breaks the virus’ grip on these cells, and prevents SARS CoV-2’s ability to reproduce.  In fact, within only five days of treatment, the virus almost completely disappeared. A research team in Wuhan found similar results and reported them two weeks ago.

“With second-wave infections spiking in countries across the globe, these findings couldn’t come at a better time,” shared Nahmias, and global cooperation may provide the cure.  “The collaboration between the Nahmias and tenOever labs demonstrates the power of adopting a multi-disciplinary approach to study SARS-CoV-2 and that our findings could truly make a significant different in reducing the global burden of COVID-19,” tenOever added.

 While there are many international efforts currently underway to develop a coronavirus vaccine, studies suggest that vaccines may only protect patients for a few months.  Therefore, blocking the virus’ ability to function, rather than neutralizing its ability to strike in the first place, may be the key to turning the tables on COVID-19.  “If our findings are borne out by clinical studies, this course of treatment could potentially downgrade COVID-19’s severity into nothing worse than a common cold,” Nahmias concluded.

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Is it just us or do we seem to get sicker and sicker every winter? This last few months we have been at home sick more than we have been without. Indeed superbugs like the bird and swine flu virus H1N1 are reported to be going around, suggesting why everyone is getting a vaccine to try and beat it. But that’s a virus. When it comes to bacterial infections antibiotics are the only relief. 

Every year in the United States, more than 35,000 people die and 2.8 million get sick from antibiotic-resistant infections.  The medicine we have isn’t good enough.

Israeli tech to tackle bacteria resistant to antibiotics

But new research may prevent some unwanted deaths due to infections like pneumonia. It is published in the prestigious journal Scient. The team led by Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU)’s Professor Nathalie Balaban and Shaarei Zedek Medical Center’s Dr. Maskit Bar-Meir describe their approach. 

Like all living organisms, germs like bacteria develop defenses against hostile elements in their environment.  One common tactic is “tolerance”, that is, lying dormant during antibiotic treatment.  In this way, bacteria evade antibiotic treatment because antibiotics can only spot and kill growing targets.  However, this intermediary stage called “antibiotic tolerance” lasts only a few days and cannot be detected in standard medical labs.  Therefore, doctors miss the tolerance window and with it the opportunity to treat a serious infection before it becomes altogether resistant.  This short window does not affect most healthy adults but for those patients fighting off a blood infection with a weakened immune system, this window is critical and could mean the difference between life and death.

Math tests if antibiotics will be effective

In a previous study, Balaban and student Irit Levin-Reisman studied lab-controlled bacteria.  They developed a mathematical model that successfully described, measured and predicted when bacteria would develop tolerance to a particular antibiotic. 

Further, they observed that when bacteria developed tolerance to one antibiotic, they were more likely to develop tolerance to other antibiotics in the cocktail.  “We observed that bacteria acquired tolerance within a few days. These tolerance mutations then acted as a stepping stone to acquire resistance and, ultimately, treatment failure,” described Balaban.

Now, as published in the latest edition of Science, HU’s Balaban lab and Dr. Jiafeng Liu teamed up with Bar-Meir and repeated their study and tolerance test technique.  Only this time, they analyzed daily bacterial samples from hospitalized patients with life-threatening, persistent MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) infections.  The pattern that they found was strikingly similar to their lab findings: First, the patients’ bacteria developed tolerance, then resistance, and ultimately antibiotic treatment failed. 

Applications for testing in cancer treatment

Looking ahead, Balaban believes that the same evolutionary processes involved in the development of antibiotic tolerance and resistance are likely at play in cancer and might be used to inform treatment.  For example, tumor cells might first become tolerant of chemotherapy, develop resistance to it, and then develop resistance to other cancer drugs, as well.

In the short term, Balaban and Bar-Meir would like to give new hope for patients with life-threatening infections by encouraging medical centers to adopt the laboratory test they developed which gauges antibiotic tolerance. 

This readout would enable doctors to quickly and easily detect whether a patient’s bacteria are tolerant of a planned antibiotic treatment before it’s administered.  Further, based on the patient’s bacteria profile, doctors could handpick antibiotics with a greater chance of success that, as is currently done, blindly choose antibiotics for which the patient may have already developed a tolerance.

“Using the right combination of available antibiotic drugs at the outset could dramatically increase a patients’ survival rate before their infection becomes tolerant to all the antibiotics in our arsenal,” Balaban concluded.

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In 2014, biologists rescued Inky from a crayfish pot where he had become entangled, suffering injuries to his arms and body. Kerry Hewitt, curator of aquarium exhibits, said at the time that the creature was adapting to life in his new tank, but added that staff had to work to keep him amused as he had tendencies towards boredom. Obviously he used his idle time to do some thinking.

Three months ago, the octopus secretly slipped out through a gap left by maintenance workers at the top of his tank, crawled across the floor, and escaped down a six-inch wide drain pipe that led to the Pacific ocean. Staffers said they pieced together the mystery via telltale suction cup prints that recorded his escape route. The story just went public this week, casting Inky as a global celebrity with animal lovers cheering on his victorious return to nature.

Octopuses are not fish, although they breathe through gills. There are over 300 species which inhabit the world’s tropical seas. Classified as mollusks, they are cousins of other slimy, muscular sea life such as squid, slugs, snails, and shellfish. Aquarium manager Rob Yarrall told the New Zealand website Stuff that octopuses as very malleable, pointing out that Inky had to squeeze his soccer-ball sized torso through the small opening to get free.

But are they “smart’? They can famously change colors, squirt out an inky poison, and exert a force greater than their own body weight. Although they lack backbones, cephalods do have inordinately large “brains”. Tests show
that the animals can navigate mazes, quickly solve problems (and remember the solutions!). Other experiments show that octopuses lack exact knowledge about the position of their arms, raising an intriguing question: how do octopuses avoid tying themselves up in knots? (See how scientists at Hebrew University answered this – link here).

[youtube]https://youtu.be/PSUZi_6oQOc[/youtube]

This isn’t the first time a captive octopus made a jailbreak. In 2009 at California’s Santa Monica Pier Aquarium a pair of octopuses deconstructed a water recycling valve and redirected a hose which shot water overnight from their tank, causing a massive flood, and concealing their absence from frantic aquarium workers.

“[Octopuses] are very strong, and it is practically impossible to keep an octopus in a tank unless you are very lucky. … Octopuses simply take things apart,” octopus expert Jennifer Maher told The Washington Post, “I recall reading about someone who had built a robot submarine to putter around in a large aquarium tank. The octopus got a hold of it and took it apart piece by piece.”

She added, “There’s a famous story from the Brighton Aquarium in England 100 years ago that an octopus there got out of its tank at night when no one was watching, went to the tank next door and ate one of the lumpfish and went back to his own tank and was sitting there the next morning.”

The New Zealan National Aquarium has no plans to replace Inky, but it will better secure the tank where his former roommate remains. “They are always exploring and they are great escape artists,” Yarrall told Hawke’s Bay Today. “We’ll be watching the other one.”

The post “Heavily-armed” octopus escapes from aquarium! appeared first on Green Prophet.

The remarkable and mysterious find happened last August at the Tel Hazor dig site in Galilee, kicking off speculation as to how the stone-carved statue traveled so far from its origins. It may be evidence of ancient war booty, or perhaps the mythical creature was gifted by Egypt. It’s the first time an Egyptian statue has been found in the ancient Levant region, now modern-day Israel, Lebanon and Syria.

Archeologists worked for nearly a year to restore the statue’s granite paws and forearms, in the process exposing hieroglyphic inscriptions that reveal the sphinx was dedicated to Egyptian ruler Mycerinus.  He ruled circa 2,500 BC and built the smallest of Giza’s three great pyramids.

Amnon Ben-Tor, archaeology professor at Hebrew University, suggests the sphinx was brought to Tel Hazor 3,000 years ago. Ben-Tor told AFP, “That it arrived in the days of Mycerinus himself is unlikely, since there were absolutely no relations between Egypt and this part of the world then.”

“Egypt maintained relations with Lebanon, especially via the ancient port of Byblos, to import cedar wood via the Mediterranean, they skipped past today’s northern Israel”, he said.  He believes the most likely way the sphinx reached Tel Hazor is as a gift sent by a later Egyptian ruler.

As to the deteriorated state of the statue, Ben-Dor said it was probably deliberately broken by later occupiers at Tel Hazor in an act of defiance to older rule.

Shlomit Blecher, who manages the Selz Foundation Hazor Excavations, was the archaeologist who unearthed the finding in August 2012.  The remarkable discovery occurred on “the last hour of the last day of the dig,” she told AFP.

Learn more in this short video clip by Dr. Sharon Zuckerman of Hebrew University’s Department of Archeology:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/AfTXTdhgUhQ[/youtube]

Image of Sphinx on Egyptian Stamp from Shutterstock

The post Why Were Egyptian Sphinx Feet Found in Northern Israel? appeared first on Green Prophet.

Wearing full body clothing might not be the thing for everyone in the Middle East: but cover up the very young – especially those with light skin. Middle East sun exposure in the young leads to higher rates of skin cancer later in life. 

The new study by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem looked at extensive medical records of over one million Israeli adolescents before military service. They reveal how how exposure to the intense Israeli sun of young, light-skinned children increases substantially the risk of cutaneous melanoma – a serious form of skin cancer.

The incidence of cutaneous melanoma is on the rise in all parts of the world where light-skinned people live. Rates have tripled over the last decades in the United States, and the rise was even steeper in Europe.

What about in Israel? What segments of the population are more at risk and at what stage? Dr. Hagai Levine and Prof. Jeremy Kark set out to find the answers, using records of young Jewish males who were examined between 1967 and 2005.

These men were followed up by data linkage for cancer incidence until the end of 2006. Females were not included because their baseline data were available only for a more recent period.

In their study, the researchers found – not surprisingly – a quadrupled higher risk of skin cancer among native-born Israelis of European origin (including the Americas, Australia and South Africa) and those immigrating from those countries over those of North African or Asian origin.

Israel’s subtropical latitude means residents are exposed to more solar radiation than in much of Europe, and therefore the findings implicate childhood sun exposure as a clear, preventable risk factor for melanoma.

But even for those who spent their childhood in Europe, the data showed that those who came to Israel before age 10 had almost double the risk of cutaneous melanoma compared to those who arrived from Europe later in childhood.

The study of melanoma susceptibility according to countries of origin is especially suited to Israel because of the massive immigration that has taken place since the establishment of the state, bringing Jews of varying skin hues from Europe, North Africa and Western Asia.

The study on Israel and cutaneous melanoma was published recently in the International Journal of Cancer. In addition to Levine and Kark, researchers from the Israel Defense Forces Medical Corps, the National Cancer Registry and other institutions participated in the work.

Israel is one of the few western countries where military service is mandatory. All Israeli Jewish adolescents are obligated to present themselves at age 17 for a medical board examination before military service (even if exempted later from service).

Consequently, use of these data provides a generally representative sample of the young Jewish population, particularly of males.

These findings, say the researchers, provide solid support for the importance of stressing the issue of childhood sun exposure, particularly in light skinned people, as a preventable risk factor for cutaneous melanoma and can aid in directing public health and research efforts.

Here at Green Prophet we urge readers to use sunscreen, and if possible that without parabans. You can try your hand at home made organic sunscreen here. And while we are on the issue, read here why sun caught later in the day is more dangerous than early morning rays.

Image of mom and baby via Shutterstock

The post Why You Should Keep Young Children Out of the Middle East Sun (New Research) appeared first on Green Prophet.

Foster + Partners, the same UK architectural firm that created the zero-carbon city Masdar, is about to break ground on their first project in Israel – a solar-powered center for brain studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Working with local designers Baer, Shifman-Nathan Architects and Sherman Architecture & Programming Ltd, the firm has designed a mixed use, high tech building complete with metal and glass (largely thought to be an irresponsible material choice in sun-drenched Middle Eastern countries) that includes laboratories, classrooms, a lecture room and a research center for the Givat Ram campus. Construction is expected to be completed within three years.

The Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences will be built on a 10 dunam (roughly equivalent to an acre) plot of the campus, which is one of the main circulation zones. As such, the building, which is split in half by a large courtyard that will be covered by a transparent roof in winter, will become an exciting space for visitors to pass through en route to other parts of campus.

The lower level of the large rectangular structure will feature transparent walls that will permit plenty of natural light and winter time solar gain.

Clad in building-integrated photovoltaic panels and an aluminum skin that mimics the brain’s neural mapping, the center will also have a green roof that will not only regulate air quality and building temperature, but also prevent storm water runoff.

Speaking with Haaretz, Foster + Partner’s head of design and co-founder Spencer de Grey said that the firm intends to build not an iconic building, the term is overused he says, but a solid building that can harmonize with the area’s existing modernist narrative.

While we have disputed the genuine sustainability of Foster + Partners in the past (recall that this firm designed the first set of buildings for Masdar in Abu Dhabi, in addition to a bank in Morocco, Jordan’s Queen Alia International Airport and a host of other glittering structures), it is one of the only large corporate architecture firms that does make an effort to accommodate local climatic and cultural exigencies into their designs.

“But I think also we were very keen to build a building related to the overall sort of feel of the campus,” de Grey told the paper.

“And I think the campus has a strong integrity of buildings that relate to a landscape and raise the form of a green spine in the middle which is the high point of the site and the buildings are arranged on either side. I think we very much wanted to maintain that.”

(Visuals be Meshboom)

The post Foster + Partners Solar-Powered Brain Center is a First for Israel (PHOTOS) appeared first on Green Prophet.

The book begins with the 1934 Levant Fair, for which the flying camel logo (right) was developed to represent the growing Jewish community in Palestine – a camel representing the Middle East, the wings showing the Yishuv’s eye to progress.

The fair was Tel Aviv’s version of World’s Fairs going up at the time in Chicago, Paris and New York, and it showcased the Israeli adaptation of European-style Modernist buildings, adapted to give shade and shelter from the strong sun and wind in Palestine.

Contributor Zvi Efrat covers the different planning approaches used in establishing the 29 development towns along Israel’s northern and southern peripheries. These towns, planned on the most up-to-date European concepts, wound up being a terrible mismatch with the local environment, causing one architect to point out that “In Beer Sheva, where one searches longingly for traffic and commotion, for a bit of social gathering – there, in the middle of the desert, we solved the problems of London…but obviously, what is good for five or eight or ten million people – is catastrophic when you have a mere ten thousand in the desert.”

Zvi Elyahu addresses the anti-urban bias in early Israeli construction. In the 1950s, the visiting Brazilian architect Oscar Neimeyer dreamed of creating a vertical kibbutz, which would mean the entire community living in a skyscraper.

He also imagined towers soaring up from Tel Aviv’s present-day Dizengoff Center, and a set of three skyscrapers to occupy the circular park at Kikar Hamedina (plans not so far from today’s debates in Tel Aviv).

Excepting a 31-story tower at Haifa University, the rest of Neimeyer’s plans were vehemently rejected by the Zionist establishment, which sought to mark the land with Jewish construction.

“Zionism, as a national revival movement, sought to distance itself from the historic image of the dense and decrepit European city, seeing agrarian life as the basis for the creation of a modern society in a new-old land.”

One essay focuses on the distinctly kitsch form of contemporary Israeli architecture, in which buildings are constructed to draw “ironic” attention, such as a Tel Aviv performing arts center where the dressing rooms were fitted with large windows facing the street, giving the public an intimate view of the actors inside.

Another investigates Arab attitudes to Jewish environmentalism in Israel, in particular when Jewish ideas of nature preserves entail depriving Arab villages of water, electricity or communications infrastructure.

Other pieces focus on security in Gilo, a neighborhood south of Jerusalem built over the Green Line; on public housing in Israel; on the history of Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus; and on Jaffa’s struggle for identity.

In mining the planning and architectural history of Israel, Yacobi has put forth a portrait of a young country that forged a new building style to match the New Jew emerging from the agricultural communes. There is plenty of criticism of Israel’s choices in building and planning and the effects of public policy on groups like Arabs and Jews of Oriental descent, which diminishes what Israeli architecture actually achieved. However, Yacobi offers an insightful look at the roots of local attitudes to the land, which should be required reading for planners trying to change what’s already here.

(Graphics: Flying Camel logo from Stanford)

The post Yacobi Plumbs Israel's Built Environment in 'Constructing a Sense of Place' appeared first on Green Prophet.

To examine the various scientific and economic aspects of harnessing bioenergy, the Otto Warburg Minerva Center for Agricultural Biotechnology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in cooperation with Yissum – the Technology Transfer Company of the Hebrew University, the Israel Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Development, CBD Technologies, Evogene Ltd. and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, will be sponsoring a symposium entitled “Bioenergy: Harnessing Plant Metabolism” from Tuesday and Wednesday, Feb. 24-25, on the campus of the Hebrew University’s Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment in Rehovot.

Prof. Shmuel Wolf, director the Otto Warburg Center, headed the organizing committee for the symposium.

Expert from Germany, the US, and Ireland will be participating in the symposium, in addition to those from Israel. The symposium, marking the 25th anniversary of the Otto Warburg Minerva Center, will be held in the Ariowitsch Auditorium at the Agriculture Faculty and will be conducted in English.

Addressing the opening session at 9:30 a.m. on Feb. 24 will be Avraham Arbib, deputy chief scientist and director of the division of research and development at the Ministry of National Infrastructure. He will give an overall picture of the present status of renewable energy in Israel and the possible uses of bioenergy.

Other talks during the course of the symposium will include presentations on the use of alternatives to food crops as efficient sources of biofuels, including poplar trees, desert crops and microalgae, as well as on the use of bioengineering to improve the use of new crops for biodiesel production.

A full schedule of the symposium and a selection of symposium abstracts is available via e-mail by contacting: Jerry Barach, Dept. of Media Relations, the Hebrew University, Tel: 02-588-2904, or Orit Sulitzeanu, Hebrew University spokesperson, Tel: 02-5882910 or 054-8820016.

Journalists wishing to obtain vehicle access to the Rehovot campus are asked to call the Agriculture Faculty’s Public Relations Department at 08-9489275 or 08-9489506.

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