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ISRAELI PROFESSOR WORKS TO REGENERATE LOST LIMBS
An Israeli researcher’s breakthrough provides a major boost to the regeneration of human tissue.
By Benjamin Joffe-Walt, Media Line, November 30, 2009
A 3D scaffold that can replace missing bone while helping it regenerate, a biodegradable stent that releases drugs while keeping a weak artery open, a wound dressing that releases antibiotics and then magically disappears when the job is done… all this has been made possible by Meital Zilberman, an Israeli researcher at Tel Aviv University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering who has invented a series of drug-releasing fibers that dissolve over time.
Zilberman’s most notable invention involves soluble fibers that can be used to form a biologically active and flexible ’scaffolding’ to encourage tissue and bone regeneration in humans.
The flexible scaffolding, shaped so that regenerating bone will take the proper form, can release drugs in a controlled fashion and then completely dissolve into non-toxic material.
“The main idea here is that we succeeded in developing a scaffold that is not only biodegradable but that also releases very sensitive bioactive agents in a controlled manner,” Professor Zilberman told The Media Line. “So for example if a segment of a bone is missing then we could use such a scaffold to promote cell growth and regeneration of damaged tissue.”
Zilberman said the challenge she faced was to develop a fiber that allowed for the release of drugs that break down easily.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Middle East Report, Recent Posts, Science and Technology on November 30, 2009 - י"ג כסלו תש"ע at 12:40 pm
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by Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, Arutz Sheva, November 25, 2009
The dreams of our national youth, the visions of our Biblical heroes, and of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, can only be achieved in the Land of Israel. The dreams of the Diaspora are apt to be mundane, shortsighted and a bit selfish. The dreams of the Land of Israel are noble dreams, exalted dreams, and dreams which ultimately connect us to Heaven.
(Israelnationalnews.com) How do you define “maturity”? The dictionary definition asserts that it is a state of being full-grown, ripe, or fully developed. But I think that the common man gives a subjective definition to maturity in one of two other ways.
Maturity, depending upon whether one tends to be idealistic or leans toward cynicism, seems to carry one of the following meanings.
Either one takes the position that maturity is associated with the wisdom gained from experience over time. From this point of view, the mature person is one who has learned from all that has happened to him and has developed, if not an infallible system that answers all questions, then at least an approach to life which is practical, informed and wise.
Or one takes the position that maturity is the state reached when one realizes that his childhood dreams were just that: dreams, and no more. One who is mature has learned to abandon youthful ideals, surrender impractical hopes and plans, and settle for reality and its limitations.
Which definition of maturity is yours, dear reader? Is maturity associated with wisdom? Or is the mature person the one who has learned to live a practical and cautious life, without ideals and utopian dreams? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Judaism, Monotheistic Religions, Opinion, Recent Posts on November 26, 2009 - ט' כסלו תש"ע at 9:12 am
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Rabbi Levi Brackman, YNet News, November 25, 2009
It is indisputable that a disproportionate amount of secular Jews self identify as atheist or agnostics. The celebrated atheist Christopher Hitchens has suggested that this is because Jews carry an atheist gene. This is an interesting and arguably racist conclusion that I wholeheartedly disagree with. Though it does make me think that Hitchens the atheist with Jewish lineage and many of the great Jewish theists have much in common.
Now, it is undeniable, and Hitchens agrees, that Jews have traditionally been deeply analytical questioners. One has only to study the Talmud (the magnum opus on Jewish law canonized in the fifth century) to recognize this. In fact the entire genre of rabbinic literature is full of questions, arguments and intellectual query.
For thousands of years Jews have been taught to question and delve deeper to uncover the truth inherent in any discussion. This tradition lives on in the Jewish community despite the fact that many Jews do not study classical Jewish texts as intensely as they used to.
One might argue that the entire literature of Jewish mysticism, otherwise known as the Kabbalah, is based on a single existential question pertaining to the meaning of the famous biblical phrase, “Hear O’ Israel the Lord our God the Lord in One” (Deuteronomy 6:4). The Jewish mystics wanted to understand what the Bible meant when it said that God is one. They question how one unified God was able to create a universe so fragmented. The question of why a God would care what humans do (or don’t do) is a question that Jewish mystics prominently ask.
These are questions that atheists also ask. It is fair to say that most Jewish metaphysicians were skeptics at heart. They doubted the simplistic way of understanding the Bible. But their motives for asking these existential questions were different than those of the atheist. For the mystic intellectual inquiry brings a deeper appreciation and understanding of the truth inherent in the words of the Bible. The atheist, conversely, questions in order to disprove. The fundamental quest for truth, however, remains similar. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Judaism, Monotheistic Religions, Recent Posts on November 26, 2009 - ט' כסלו תש"ע at 8:53 am
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Why Is Israel So Afraid of Iranian Nukes?
Ariel Ilan Roth, Foreign Affairs
ARIEL ILAN ROTH is the Associate Director of National Security Studies at the Johns Hopkins University’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.
The special relationship between Israel and the United States is about to enter perhaps its rockiest patch ever. Israel is growing exasperated with the Obama administration’s effort to use diplomacy to roll back Iran’s growing uranium-enrichment program. Israelis know better than anyone else that the trick to developing a nuclear weapon as a small power is to drag out the process of diplomacy and inspections long enough to produce sufficient quantities of fissionable material. Israel should know: in the 1960s, it deliberately misled U.S. inspectors and repeatedly delayed site visits, providing the time to construct its Dimona reactor and reprocess enough plutonium to build a bomb. North Korea has followed a similar path, with similar results. And now, Israel suspects, Iran is doing the same, only with highly enriched uranium instead of plutonium.
Most observers believe that Israel’s preoccupation with Iran’s nuclear program stems from the fear that Iran would either use a nuclear weapon against Israel or give the bomb to one of its direct proxies, most likely Hezbollah. Given Tehran’s open hostility toward Jerusalem, such foreboding makes sense. But such a scenario is highly improbable.
Tehran’s profound dislike of the Jewish state notwithstanding, it is unlikely to attack Israel with a nuclear weapon because Israel’s atomic arsenal is orders of magnitude larger than whatever infant capability Iran could muster in the foreseeable future. Moreover, Israel is believed to possess a secure submarine-based second-strike capability that could devastate Iran.
Nor would Iran readily supply Hezbollah with atomic weapons. No nuclear state has ever turned over its most prized military asset to a subsidiary actor or surrendered its exclusive control over a weapon that it worked so hard to obtain. More important, if Hezbollah were to acquire and use a nuclear weapon against Israel, there would be no doubt about the weapon’s provenance and Iran would immediately face devastating retaliation. An attack on Israel, in other words, would mean the end of Iran.
Although many analysts question the rationality of the Iranian regime, it is in fact fairly conservative in its foreign policy. Iran has two long-range goals, achieving regional hegemony and spreading fundamentalist Islam, neither of which will be achieved if Iran initiates a nuclear exchange with Israel. Tehran’s expanding influence in Iraq and the fear that it inspires in the Persian Gulf states are already advancing the first goal. Iran needs only to possess nuclear weapons, not to use them, in order to further enhance its international prestige and force adversaries to take it seriously. Likewise, the deterrent power of an unused nuclear capability would allow the regime to spread its ideology without the constant worry of regime change imposed from abroad.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on November 24, 2009 - ז' כסלו תש"ע at 11:22 am
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If you sit down with Itamar Marcus, you had better brace yourself for a jarring refresher course on Mideast reality. That’s especially true if you tend to think like the current administrationif you believe, for example, that the Israeli-Palestinian impasse is all about borders and settlements and that the construction of 900 housing units in southern Jerusalem “could end up being very dangerous,” as President Barack Obama said last week. If it’s “very dangerous” to construct Jewish housing in a city that Israel will never, ever relinquish, what should we call the effort to brainwash children into believing that Israel itself doesn’t exist? How should we describe the claim that not only East Jerusalem — captured by Israel in the 1967 war — belongs to the Palestinians, but that every other Israeli city, from Haifa to Ashkelon, belongs to them, too? “In the world inhabited by Palestinian children,” Marcus tells me, “there is no Israel.” And if you give him time, the director of Palestinian Media Watch (palwatch.org) in Jerusalem will subject you to a barrage of depressing evidence for his contention. He’ll show you snippets from TV quiz shows for Palestinian kids predicated on the non-existence of Israel. Host: “Which mountain is the tallest in Palestine? …” Child contestant: “Mount Meron (in Israel).” On another show, a host asks, “Which Palestinian city is called ‘the flower of Galilee’?” and then names three Israeli cities! Then Marcus will show you school geography lessons that use maps on which Israel is missing.
Making Israel disappear
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education, Islam, Middle East, News Articles, Recent Posts on November 23, 2009 - ו' כסלו תש"ע at 2:26 pm
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The international brouhaha generated by the decision to build 900 houses in the Gilo suburb of Jerusalem points to the imperative need to reach a common definition of the word “settlement” in relation to Israel. The anger expressed by the White House and echoed by the EU and even China, obviously stems from the impulsive conclusion that Gilo is a settlement, no different from the outposts in remote areas of the West Bank. To quote the bard, therein lies the rub.
The $64,000 question then, is whether Gilo is in fact a settlement and if so, what type of settlement it is. To all who prefer to analyze a situation before arriving at a conclusion it is important to look at the facts in context.
The Oxford English dictionary defines a settlement as “newly settled tract of country, or a colony,” but according to the BBC, a settlement is merely a place where people live; as small as an individual house or as large as a city. Since a settlement also refers in law, to reaching agreement by parties to a dispute, one may hope that agreeing on a commonly acceptable definition of this inflammatory word may possibly contribute to “settlement” of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
THE REALITY is that Gilo is very different than the outposts in the West Bank. It is not in east Jerusalem as widely reported. It is a Jerusalem neighborhood with a population of around 40,000. The ground was bought by Jews before WWII and settled in 1971 in south west Jerusalem opposite Mount Gilo within the municipal borders. There is no inference whatsoever that it rests on Arab land. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on November 23, 2009 - ו' כסלו תש"ע at 7:09 am
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For Israelis, Gilo is part of Jerusalem, for Palestinians, it’s their land
The disputed Gilo neighborhood in Jerusalem
Israel’s recent decision to build more homes in Gilo, which Israel says is part of Jerusalem, has ignited more anger among Palestinians who say it’s a settlement on land captured by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and then annexed. The issue is explosive because both Israelis and Palestinians consider Jerusalem their capital.
On the surface, it’s a quiet suburb. For decades, however, this neighborhood has been on the firing line in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
Sara Walter came to Israel 29 years ago from Argentina. This is where the Israeli ministry of housing and absorption put her. Zionist ideology, she says, is not the reason she lives in Gilo. “We came here because here we received an apartment. But it could have been in another place.”
Gilo sits across a ravine from the West Bank town of Beit Jala. It was from here in the last Palestinian uprising, known as the Second Intifada, that militants fired bullets and rockets at Gilo, aiming to kill Jews.
Sara, like other residents, lined her apartment windows with bullet-proof glass.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, News Articles, Opinion, Recent Posts on November 23, 2009 - ו' כסלו תש"ע at 6:56 am
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No Room in Obama’s Jerusalem for the Jew
By Sultan Knish (pseudonym)
Right Side News, November 22, 2009
The same media which can’t be bothered to notice that there is a proxy war going on between Iran and Saudi Arabia in Yemen, with Saudi jets bombing civilian targets. Who have paid no attention whatsoever to a week of violence between Algerians and Egyptians that included stonings and death threats, are up in arms over the building of 900 housing units in the Gilo neighborhood in Jerusalem.
The Obama Administration and the media are naturally not upset by the Jerusalem municipality’s decision to build 500 housing units for Arabs in Jerusalem. No they’re upset by a private Jewish housing project built on privately owned land. And that double standard aptly conveys their premise that a Jewish house in Jerusalem is a “settlement”, while an Arab house in Jerusalem is just a house. A Jewish home violates the “status quo” and is “unhelpful for peace”, while an Arab home is just a home. There is of course a name for that sort of policy, it’s one that Jimmy Carter who is still continuing his tour on behalf of Hamas knows quite well, Apartheid.
In response to the Nof Zion construction, Obama warned that, “additional settlement building does not contribute to Israel’s security“.But Nof Zion is not about security, as much as it is about an overcrowded Jewish population in Jerusalem looking for someplace to live. When the Arabs seized half of Jerusalem in Israel’s War of Independence, they forcibly expelled the Jewish population of Jerusalem in a brutal act of ethnic cleansing that goes ignored by the same leftists who focus on elderly Arab men waving keychains in the air. Homes belonging to Jewish families were replaced by Arab families, who in turn were not expelled when Israel liberated and reunited both halves of Jerusalem in 1967.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Judaism, Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on November 23, 2009 - ו' כסלו תש"ע at 6:44 am
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November 17, 2009 7:00 AM
by Khaled Abu Toameh
Journalist, Hudson Institute New York
What is striking is that many of these “pro-Palestinian” activists have never been to the Middle East, let alone the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. In most cases, they are not even Arabs or Muslims.
What makes them “pro-Palestinian”?
In their view, inciting against Israel on a university campus or publishing “anti-Zionist” material on the Internet is sufficient to earn them the title of “pro-Palestinian.” But what these folks have not realized is that their actions and words often do little to advance the interests of the Palestinians. In some instances, these actions and words are even counterproductive.
It is hard to see how organizing events such as “Israel Apartheid Week” on a university campus could help the cause of the Palestinians. Isn’t there already enough anti-Israel incitement that is being spewed out of Arab and Islamic media outlets?
If anyone is entitled to be called “pro-Palestinian,” it is those who are publicly campaigning against financial corruption and abuse of human rights by Fatah and Hamas. Those who are trying to change the system from within belong to the real “pro-Palestinian” camp.
These are the brave people who are standing up to both Fatah and Hamas and calling on them to stop killing each other and start doing something that would improve the living conditions of their constituents.
Instead of investing money and efforts in organizing Israel Apartheid Week, for example, the self-described “pro-Palestinians” could dispatch a delegation of teachers to Palestinian villages and refugee camps to teach young Palestinians English. Or they could send another delegation to the Gaza Strip to monitor human rights violations by the Hamas authorities and help Palestinian women confront Muslim fundamentalists who are trying to limit their role to cooking, raising children and looking after the needs of their husbands. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Islam, Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on November 18, 2009 - א' כסלו תש"ע at 12:15 pm
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Tiny insect brains can solve big problems
Insects may have tiny brains, but they can perform some seriously impressive feats of mental gymnastics.
According to a growing number of studies, some insects can count, categorize objects, even recognize human faces — all with brains the size of pinheads.
Despite many attempts to link the volume of an animal’s brain with the depth of its intelligence, scientists now propose that it’s the complexity of connections between brain cells that matters most. Studying those connections — a more manageable task in a little brain than in a big one — could help researchers understand how bigger brains, including those of humans, work.
Figuring out how a relatively small number of cells work together to process complex concepts could also lead to “smarter” computers that do some of the same tasks.
“The question is: If these insects can do these things with such little brains, what does anything need a big brain for?” said Lars Chittka, who presented his arguments along with colleague Jeremy Niven in the journal Current Biology. “Bigger isn’t necessarily better, and in some cases it could be quite the opposite.”
Because we are intelligent animals with big brains, people have long assumed that big brains are smarter brains. Yet, scientists have found scant evidence to support that view, Chittka said. Studies that have made those connections are fraught with problems. “If you try many measurements,” he said, “Eventually you will find one that shows a correlation.”
There’s a lot of evidence, on the other hand, that overall size is irrelevant when it comes to brain power. Among humans, individuals with larger noggins don’t have higher IQs. Whales, with brains that weigh up to 20 pounds and have more than 200 billion neurons, are no smarter than people, with our measly 3-pound brains that have just 85 billion neurons.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Evolutionary Biology, Recent Posts, Science on November 17, 2009 - ל' חשון תש"ע at 4:12 pm
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