Israel Active

(Thanks to Israel21c) To mark World Alzheimer’s Month, here is a great summary of all the main brain science, medication and memory enhancement innovations that Israeli scientists have contributed to fighting this devastating and fatal condition.

Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers have discovered how the brain controls bone development. With previous research on protein interleukin-1 it explains why depression, Alzheimer’s disease and epilepsy often accompany osteoporosis and has huge potential for new therapies.

(Thanks to Israel21c) IsraAID, the Israel Forum for International Humanitarian Aid, has been training Japanese students from the Tohoku earthquake region. The leadership program empowers youth from Tohoku to take responsibility for their future as individuals and as a community.

The Tel Aviv branch of Citibank made the first day of school much easier for Ethiopian-Israeli students, by donating 200 backpacks and school supplies. They were distributed to the students by the organisation Ethiopian National Project (ENP).

Doctors at Beersheba’s Soroka hospital saved the life of a 50-year-old Russian with a ruptured aorta who was flown from Moscow for highly complex surgery. A day later he was disconnected from most of the devices except for his iPod on which he was watching films.

After seven years’ research, Israeli scientists have discovered a defective protein responsible for the rare condition known as SOFT that causes abnormal growth in some people. The discovery aids pre-natal testing and knowledge of how skin and bone develop and interact during tissue development.

Researchers at Israel’s Technion and Ben-Gurion University have engineered insulin-producing tissue, which lowers blood sugar levels when transplanted into animals.

This piece of news from May comes via a friend who just sent it to me. For the first time an Israeli child under 10 had a tumour successfully removed using “warm” chemotherapy infusion. The successful operation was performed at Schneider Children’s Medical Centre.

Three Israeli professors have published the results of their work to record neurone patterns during speech attempts and converting these into computer-generated synthesised speech. It could help “locked in” syndrome sufferers such as Stephen Hawking.

Vladislav Zaitsev was suffering from severe jaw infection causing loss of bone and inability to eat, drink or speak. Doctors decided to bring in engineers from Israeli company RAFAEL who used missile technology to construct a brand new titanium jaw. Ironically, before his Aliya in 1997, Vladislav was a missile engineer in the former Soviet Union.