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 benefit of humanity.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/fire-and-ice-on-mars/
Dec 09, 2014... About 4.5 billion of years ago, in a small solar system with a rather weak sun, were two “Goldilocks” planets. That’s what scientists call planets that could harbor life: not so hot as to burn it up, not so cold as to be prohibitive, but temperate: just right. The two planets had similar conditions – comparable basic elements, age, geography – and yet life formed on one and not the other. One became oxygenated, and became our Earth; the other became desiccated, and we call it Mars.
Nov 17, 2014...
Research suggests that warmth and water flow on ancient Mars (illustration shown) were probably episodic. These temperature changes may have also been related to brief periods of volcanic activity that spewed tons of greenhouse-inducing sulphur dioxide gas into the atmosphere
Evidence of rivers, streams, and lakes suggests that Mars was, at some point, warm enough for liquid water to flow on its surface, according to a new study.
Nov 15, 2017...
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In Greek mythology, Zeus had dominion over the creation of lightning. Thousands of years later humans have begun to assume that role. Scientists have already linked aerosol emissions to increases in lightning over areas of the Amazon prone to forest fires (pdf) as well as regions of China with thick air pollution. The clearest example yet of humanity’s influence on atmospheric electrostatic discharges, however, surfaced recently when researchers discovered dense trails of lightning in the soot-filled skies over two of the world’s busiest shipping routes in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea.
Feb 13, 2017... Water is made of oxygen and hydrogen, and splitting water molecules to produce hydrogen for fuel is a promising path for alternative energy. One of the main obstacles to making hydrogen production a reality is that current methods of water splitting result in hydrogen peroxide also being formed, which affects both the efficiency of the reaction and the stability of the production process. Israeli and Dutch researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science and Eindhoven University of Technology, respectively, have succeeded in almost fully suppressing the production of hydrogen peroxide by controlling the spin of electrons in the reaction. The group recently published their findings in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The efficient production of hydrogen paves the way toward the use of solar energy to split water.
Mar 02, 2020...
Farmers in arid areas of India need no convincing that the climate is changing under their feet. Their income is drying up along with their groundwater wells, forcing many to give up farming.
As these kinds of situations become more common, help is coming from Tel Aviv University's Nitsan Sustainable Development Lab directed by Ram Fishman, an expert on smallholder farmers and climate change.
His team assesses agriculture, water and energy problems in rural Asia and Africa and finds Israeli technologies to solve them.
Nov 19, 2014...
An aerial photo of a coral reef. Researchers developed a new tool to quantify the effect of ocean acidification on calcifying organisms. Credit: Boaz Lazar, Hebrew University
Following a 5,000 km long ocean survey, research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences presents a new way to measure how the acidification of water is affecting marine ecosystems over an entire oceanic basin.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/science-tips-january-2015/
Jan 21, 2015...
Japanese and Israeli scientists at the Advances in Brain Sciences conference
Following the visit of Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, to Israel early in the week of January 18th, the end of the week held a visit by a group of leading Japanese scientists to Rehovot, Israel. The Advances in Brain Sciences conference the scientists attended was jointly hosted by the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot and the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan. The parallels were more than incidental: Abe and Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, discussed furthering business, research, and development contacts between the countries; Weizmann and RIKEN researchers are already working to advance scientific collaboration between the two institutes and the two countries.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/saving-reefs-one-polyp-at-a-time/
Jun 01, 2016...
CORAL HUG: Two polyps of the reef-building coral Pocillopora damicornis imaged with fluorescence microscopy, showing the coral’s GFP, the chlorophyll of its symbiotic algae (red) and cilia-driven motion of microscopic particles (blue)ORR SHAPIRO AND ASSAF VARDI, WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE
Crucial habitats in underwater ecosystems, and harbingers of the damage inflicted by global warming on the world’s oceans, coral reefs epitomize the beauty – and the fragility – of marine life. But they’re also notoriously difficult to study.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/a-3-water-purifer-that-could-save-lives/
Oct 10, 2006...
In very poor countries, the family that has to walk miles to fetch drinking water from a well or a stream may be the lucky one. In many villages, the water source is a filthy pond trod by animals and people, or a mud puddle out next to the yam field.
As a result, about 6,000 people a day — most of them children — die from water-borne diseases. Vestergaard Frandsen, a Danish textile company that supplies water filters to the Carter Center guinea worm eradication program and mosquito-killing plastic tarps to refugee camps, has come up with a new invention meant to render dangerous water drinkable.
Jan 05, 2017... Life in a Drop of Water: Prof. Assaf Vardi and Nivi Alroy on Oceanic Plants
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