“Professor Vainstein and his graduate student Moran Farhi have developed genetically engineered tobacco plants carrying genes encoding the entire biochemical pathway necessary for producing artemisinin. In light of tobacco’s high biomass and rapid growth, this invention will enable a cheap production of large quantities of the drug, paving the way for the development of a sustainable plant-based platform for the commercial production of an anti-malarial drug.”
Artemisinin is the main active ingredient in current malaria treatments and drugs.
ϟ Israel saving the world again: An Artificial pancreas
MD-Logic mimics the workings of the pancreas, monitoring blood sugar levels and delivering insulin automatically, even at night.
Prof. Moshe Phillip, director of the Institute of Endocrinology and Diabetes at Schneider Children’s Medical Center, demonstrates MD-Logic on a young patient.
In people with diabetes, the pancreas doesn’t produce or release insulin as it should, so the body can’t metabolize sugars properly. That means blood sugar levels have to be monitored continuously, even (and especially) at night, when diabetics’ blood sugar can get dangerously out of control.
But nighttime monitoring and dosing is a sleep-stealing activity, particularly for parents of diabetic children.
A new artificial pancreas developed in Israel may allow them sweeter dreams. The MD-Logic was recently tested on Israeli children at an overnight diabetes summer camp, to resounding success.
The key is that the device’s software “thinks” like a physician, says one of its developers, Eran Atlas of the Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Tel Aviv.
Using existing insulin pump technology, MD-Logic closes the loop between a continuous glucose monitor and insulin pump, allowing patients to self-regulate their glucose levels and deliver the exact amount of insulin needed, when needed — even at 3 o’clock in the morning.
ϟ A true light among nations
While doom and gloom dominate the headlines and it appears as if Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas are all poised to strike tomorrow in a massive simultaneous attack, or it appears that nearly the entire world is against us, or that the country’s social fabric is quickly ripping at the seam, it becomes necessary to see the larger picture by looking at what we are really about. Many of Israel’s problems are created from without but our successes come from within.
So for some perspective – and optimism – we need to look inward. As a country, we are defined by our collective successes and what follows is but a small sampling of that:
• Ten Israelis have won the Nobel Prize so far.
• Israel is a leader in quality of life. In a comparison conducted by the UN regarding quality of life in 182 countries, Israel ranked 27th, only slightly lower than the UK.
• Israel’s healthcare system is one of the most advanced in the world.
• Israel is a leader in biotechnology development.
• Israeli medical developments are used in the best operating rooms across the world.
• Israeli cows produce the largest amount and highest quality of milk in the world.
• Israel is the only country that entered the 21st century with a net gain in its number of trees.
• Israel is one of the world’s top leaders in agricultural development and fruit cloning.
• A quarter of the population holds a degree – ranking third in the world.
• Israel produces more scientific papers and more patents per capita than any other country.
• Relative to its population, Israel is the largest immigrant- absorbing nation, has more museums per capita and receives more media coverage than any other country in the world.
• Israel has sent emergency delegations around the world to assist foreign governments in times of major disaster including but not limited to Cambodia, Rwanda, Turkey, Argentina, Armenia, Russia, Kenya, New Orleans, Haiti, Japan, Indonesia and Thailand.
• The IDF was the first major medical team to set up camp immediately following the devastating earthquake in Haiti.
• The World Economic Forum has recognized Israel as one of the leading countries in the world in technological innovation.
• The cell phone, disk on key, instant messenger chat, voicemail technology and PillCam were all developed here. The Pentium4 processor was designed and developed here as well.
• Microsoft and Cisco built their largest R&D centers here.
• Apple chose Israel as its first and only R&D center outside the US.
• Israel has the world’s highest percentage of engineers and scientists.
• Israel is a leader in genetics and preventive medicine.
• Israel sends hundreds of missions to developing countries worldwide.
• Israeli agricultural experts introduced drip-irrigation technology, saving water in arid regions.
• An Israeli company recently discovered a way to eradicate the use of pesticides for pest control by using edible oil instead.
• A simple, inexpensive Israeli solution for storing staples is helping Africans, South Americans and Asians survive food shortages.
• Except for the US and Canada, Israel has the most traded companies on Wall Street than any other country.
• Israel is a leader in coexistence programs that bring together Arabs and Jews.
• Israel has an incredible array of institutions that focus on charitable outreach and offering help to the needy.
• Israel is unique in terms of its size, location and diversity of climate and wildlife.
• Jerusalem’s Biblical Zoo is involved in worldwide breeding efforts and to reintroduce animals to their natural habitats.
• Israel is the only place where biblical history really comes alive.
• While far from perfect, the Knesset is an anomaly in the Middle East. Its makeup of Arabs and Jews, secular and Orthodox and men and women makes Israel a unique liberal democracy – in fact the only one in the Middle East.
• Israel’s military prowess and might is worldrenowned.
It is a leading force in battlefield technology, counterterrorism, combat skills, intelligence gathering and air superiority. The Mossad is likely the world’s top intelligence agency, unsurpassed in its ability to gather information from around the globe.
For all these reasons and more, it is important to recognize and appreciate that with all its problems, Israel is a great country.
ϟ Israeli brotherhood through soup
When an old friend of my wife’s who was visiting Israel recommended getting together at a Jerusalem soup kitchen where she and her children were volunteering on Friday, we immediately said yes.
With all our good intentions – and despite spending the good part of a year picking up leftover food late at night from weddings and bar mitzvahs for theLeket/Table to Table organization – I hadn’t done much volunteering of late.
On Thursday night, I looked up the address of the soup kitchen and learned that it was in Mekor Baruch, a poor neighborhood not too far from Mea Shearim. I expressed my reservations to my wife later about going the next day.
“I’m not sure I want to volunteer helping haredim, poor or not,” I said, already feeling like a heartless racist as I was saying it. But the last few days had evidently gotten to me. And the whole separation / spitting on eight year old girls issue was just part of the cumulative effect. Having had two daughters serve in very active units during their military service, I’ve grown increasingly bitter about the segments of Israeli society who don’t serve – not to mention the husbands who don’t work and whose families need to live off of welfare which my taxes help subsidize. Did I really need to be serving them lunch on Friday?
My wife listened to my apprehension, and in her wisdom said we should go anyway, see what it was like and reserve judgment. I’m glad I married her.
The Hazon Yeshaya soup kitchen wasn’t anything like I thought it would be. There were haredim there, like Aviad, the chief chef who when not standing over a huge vat of cholent, was welcoming volunteers like us from all over the world. Standing next to us chopping hundreds of vegetables into giant tubs of salads were Christians from Amsterdam, Jews on a bar mitzvah trip from Mexico, Israeli teens who show up every Friday to help, and everyone in between.
On the other side of the kitchen, over a hundred older, mostly Russian speaking Israelis were queuing up to enter the sparse dining room for a lunch, that besides the cholent, included chicken, rice, salad and an orange. According to Aviad, most of the clientele who arrived daily – but more so on Friday – were Holocaust survivors who received their main meal of the day from the soup kitchen.
After about an hour of kitchen detail, we were asked if we wanted to get out of the kitchen and help serve the meals – an offer we accepted immediately. As we took a coffee break before the serving commenced, Aviad motioned to me to come over.
“You have to try my cholent, everyone says it’s the best,” he said, ladeling a small amount into a plastic bowl.
I demurred, saying I couldn’t take away food from the people that needed it, but looking at the gigantic pot it came from, and others like it, I realized that wasn’t a valid argument. And, anyway, it smelled delicious. So I accepted the bowl and within a minute, crowned Aviad the cholent king.
“You know, people get the wrong idea about haredim from the papers. Most of us aren’t like that,” he said.
I looked across the room at women and men standing together, preparing food, cooperating, laughing and schmoozing, and realized how right he was. I know that I’ll be returning to Hazon Yeshaya soon, and bringing my children with me.
Children With Special Needs Visit Israeli Troops
Today, Israeli children with special needs visited soldiers for a day of fun at a Home Front Command base. The children are campers from the Israeli Nachshon Samaria camp, which runs a special program for children with autism and mental disabilities
First Baby Delivered at IDF Field Hospital in Haiti, Jan 2010
Picture of the first baby delivered at the Israel Defense Forces Field Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The mother arrived at the hospital eight months pregnant escorted by a relative, and shortly thereafter, she gave birth to a healthy boy whom she named Israel.
ϟ Israel saving the world, again
From Israel 21C:
This is huge, as hospitals are breeding grounds for the most dangerous strains of bacteria. Tens of thousands of lives could be saved.Every patient, nurse, doctor and visitor to a hospital knows the drill: hands get a splash of antibacterial fluid found at every bedside, entrance and exit. Keeping hands clean can prevent some infections, but superbugs — those sometimes deadly bacterial strains resistant to antibiotics — can outwit the best hygiene practices.
Hospital-acquired infections are one of the leading causes of preventable death in the developed world today, with 100,000 people in the United States alone dying every year from bugs they catch as patients in the hospital, according to the World Health Organization. The old and very young are at an especially high risk of infection from resistant bacteria that can spread like wildfire.
But now superbugs may have met their match, thanks to a genetically engineered cleaning solution developed in Israeli laboratories.
Costing only a few dollars a quart, the solution is non-toxic to patients and can be spread on hospital surfaces to kill what conventional soaps and antibiotics can’t, report researchers Rotem Edgar from the Tel Aviv Sourasky (Ichilov) Medical Center and Udi Qimron from Tel Aviv University. They detailed their technology recently in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
The solution uses a laboratory-grown virus called a bacteriophage, which disrupts the DNA of resistant bacteria and renders them susceptible to antibiotics.
“We have genetically engineered the bacteriophages so that once they infect the bacteria, they transfer a dominant gene that confers renewed sensitivity to certain antibiotics,” says Qimron, who believes his solution will one day be part of every hospital’s anti-germ arsenal.
The researchers say that the new spray could be applied on any surface where there is a high concentration of germs, such as door handles, faucets, bedrails and handrails.
“Our novel approach relies on an effective delivery process and selection procedure, put on the same platform for the first time,” says Qimron, suggesting that it will knock out all kinds of bacteria, reducing the infection rate from even non-resistant bacteria.
This solution, the researchers note, should be part of a two-step process to neutralize bacteria in the hospital effectively. The second part of the process is a compound called Tullurite. This would be spread over the surfaces to kill any remaining bacteria not sensitized by the new advance. The two-step cleaning combination would first disarm the bacteria and then go on to kill those that are still dangerous, they say.
Like all medical products, the new spray needs to be tested in a clinical setting before being approved for sale.
(Source: elderofziyon.blogspot.com)
ϟ PA stops cancer patients from being treated in Israel
From PCHR:
The Ministry of Health in Ramallah issued a decision decreasing transfers of patients to Israeli hospitals starting from 02 November 2011, and the Department of External Treatment in Gaza has been committed to this decision. The decision is attributed, according to sources of the Ministry, to the high costs of treatment in Israeli hospitals. These sources pointed out that this decision had been studied and discussed in the Ministry of Health for years, but it was delayed due the need of some patients, especially those suffering from serious or incurable diseases in need of treatment in advanced health facilities, and because Israeli hospitals are closer to the Gaza Strip than Egypt and Jordan.The PA manages to find money to pay families of terrorist “martyrs” and prisoners, and for TV shows filled with incitement against Jews and Israel, but money for patients with life-threatening diseases just dries up.
This decision has led to stopping dozens of transfers of patients who suffer from serious diseases, 90% of them cancer patients, whose treatment is not available in the Gaza Strip. It has also endangered the lives of dozens of patients who are in critical conditions and whose transfer to Egyptian hospitals is not possible due to the long distance. Furthermore, not all medical treatment for their diseases is available in hospitals in Jerusalem or the West Bank. Two children died as they urgently needed advanced medical treatment, but the Ministry of Health transferred them to hospitals that cannot treat their diseases. Those hospitals apologized for not admitting them, and the Ministry of Health did not transfer them to Israeli Hospitals.
Although PCHR doesn’t say this, there is very possibly another reason why the Palestinian Authority doesn’t want patients in Israeli hospitals: because it provides good PR for Israel, and that is anathema.
Arab leaders - including the current PA leaders - have been treating Palestinian Arabs as stateless pawns for years just to make Israel look bad. Why would it surprise anyone that they might choose to let a few of their people die to avoid having their lives saved by the hated Zionists?
(Source: elderofziyon.blogspot.com)
