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 future of humanity.
https://weizmann-usa.org/blog/cone-snail-venom-can-kill-or-heal/
Nov 13, 2019...
Pretty, deadly: toxins from the marine cone snail can kill … and be used for lifesaving medicines. Photo credit: Volker Steger. Photograph taken at the Woods Hole Marine Biology Laboratory, 2002
Armed and ready, the hunter senses that prey is approaching. Once the victim is within striking range, the hunter lets its poisonous harpoon fly, spearing and tethering its victim and pulling it ever closer as the toxins do their paralyzing work. The prey, immobilized, is eaten alive.
https://weizmann-usa.org/blog/medical-marijuana-born-at-weizmann/
Nov 03, 2022...
Raphael Mechoulam’s research has driven the current medical marijuana boom – and is helping people suffering from a host of conditions.
Following the wave of marijuana legalization across America, THC and CBD products are now everywhere: gummy bears, energy drinks, chocolate, even skincare products. Before laws were changed, scientists in the U.S. were handicapped in their ability to research marijuana, thus giving a decades-long edge to scientists elsewhere. Scientists like Prof. Raphael Mechoulam at Israel’s Weizmann Institute. As a young academic, Mechoulam was able to convince the police to give him hashish for his research (one of his many fascinating stories.) This led to a relationship that continued for over 40 years.
https://weizmann-usa.org/blog/medications-good-for-you-bad-for-the-rest-of-the-world/
Feb 25, 2019...
Everything is connected: pharmaceuticals can be found throughout the environment. Fish seem particularly susceptible. Plus, we eat them – and, thus, consume whatever drugs are in their bodies.
Billions of us take medications on a regular basis, and while they help manage common conditions like viruses, depression, pain, menopause, thyroid disease, and the like, they are not so good for the environment.
Oct 20, 2015...
Steel is ubiquitous in our daily lives. We cook in stainless steel skillets, ride steel subway cars over steel rails to our offices in steel-framed building. Steel screws hold together broken bones, steel braces straighten crooked teeth, steel scalpels remove tumors. Most of the goods we consume are delivered by ships and trucks mostly built of steel.
While various grades of steel have been developed over the past 50 years, steel surfaces have remained largely unchanged – and unimproved. The steel of today is as prone as ever to the corrosive effects of water and salt and abrasive materials such as sand. Steel surgical tools can still carry microorganisms that cause deadly infections.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/plant-power-algae-as-alternative-energy/
Jan 04, 2011... Prof. Avihai Danon of the Weizmann Institute of Science's Department of Plant Sciences has been working with algae—simple, photosynthetic life forms that can be found all over the world—for more than 20 years. Algae are diverse, having many thousands of species, and adaptive, thriving in a variety of conditions; these attributes can teach scientists a lot and make algae, as Prof. Danon says, "a great model system to study." For example, in his research focusing on how they adapt to sunlight, Prof. Danon found that there is a very sophisticated level of regulation inside algae. "On the one hand, the plant utilizes sunlight for energy production through photosynthesis," a process that, while beneficial, must be very carefully calibrated because "on the other hand, it can kill the plant in seconds," he says. He likes to compare a plant's ability to perform photosynthesis to having an atomic reactor in your stomach: the reactor can provide you with free energy, but if it's not tightly controlled, then it can explode.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/are-you-a-handshake-sniffer/
Apr 07, 2015...
Do you sniff your hand after shaking someone else's?
This isn't a question I ever thought I'd ask myself, or you, but here we go, because, well...science.
The incredible Dr. Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute of Science ended up not only in a science journal this week, but in The Economist, with his findings. After handshakes, people are more likely to sniff their hands. But WHY? The piece ponders:
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/the-breaking-point/
Aug 24, 2017...
The trajectory of a crack tip, showing one cycle of oscillation. The horizontal wavy line shows the trajectory of the tip of the crack.
It is said that a weak link determines the strength of the entire chain. Likewise, defects or small cracks in a solid material may ultimately determine the strength of that material – how well it will withstand various forces. For example, if force is exerted on a material containing a crack, large internal stresses will concentrate on a small region near the crack’s edge. When this happens, a failure process is initiated, and the material might begin to fail around the edge of the crack, which could then propagate, leading to the ultimate failure of the material.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/in-pursuit-of-female-chemists/
Aug 11, 2011...
Chemistry needs new female role models and a less macho culture to appeal more to the next generation of young women, says Carol V. Robinson.
Women and chemistry do mix: Carol V. Robinson (centre) with members of her research lab at the University of Oxford, UK.
As the first female chemistry professor at both the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford, which have a combined history in chemistry of about 800 years, I am often asked to comment on the poor retention of women chemists by UK universities. The decline from chemistry PhDs (46% women) to professorships (just 6%) is steeper than in other disciplines, including physics and engineering1. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. Here I offer personal reflections from my career in chemistry about why women leave science.
Jan 28, 2013...
Chaim Weizmann. He foresaw the energy crisis and proposed an economical way of making fuel. Photo by Weizmann Institute of Science
Chaim Weizmann is primarily known as a leader of the Zionist movement and the first president of the State of Israel. However, before his success in statesmanship and politics, Weizmann became famous during World War II for inventing a new method of producing acetone, which was needed for manufacturing explosives.
Oct 11, 2012...
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—October 11, 2012—The experimental system: two supersonic valves followed by two skimmers. The blue beam passes through a curved magnetic quadrupole guide, and the merged beam (purple) enters a quadrupole mass spectrometer. B is a front view of the quadrupole guide.
At very low temperatures, close to absolute zero, chemical reactions may proceed at a much higher rate than classical chemistry says they should — because in this extreme chill, quantum effects enter the picture. A Weizmann Institute of Science team has now confirmed this experimentally; their results will not only provide insight into processes in the intriguing quantum world in which particles act as waves, but they might explain how chemical reactions occur in the vast frigid regions of interstellar space.
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