https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/life-sciences/how-stem-cells-stay-young
November 29, 2012
Hiding deep inside the bone marrow, special cells wait patiently for the hour of need – infection, for example – at which point these blood-forming stem cells can proliferate and differentiate into billions of mature blood immune cells. But the body always maintains a reserv...
https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/space-physics/materials-edge
December 11, 2012
The story begins in two separate locations in the Institute’s physics buildings. In one of those – the lab of Prof. Yaron Silberberg – research students Yoav Lahini and Mor Verbin were experi...
https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/life-sciences/fat-blood-connection
December 11, 2012
Blocked or constricted blood vessels lead to high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke – some of the most common causes of death in the Western world. Blood vessels become blocked when fat is deposited on artery walls, building up until the flow of blood...
https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/math-computer-science/fragile-equilibrium
December 16, 2012
A baby with dangerously low levels of certain white blood cells recovers, while an adult with nearly twice the levels succumbs to bacterial infection. A new mathematical m...
https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/math-computer-science/cancer-breaking-point
December 16, 2012
Like police detectives using DNA fingerprinting in their effort to eradicate crime, cancer researchers are building a DNA profile of malignancy in an attempt to eradicat...
https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/space-physics/circular-reasoning
January 9, 2013
Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words. Polonius: What is the matter, my lord? Hamlet: Between who? Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord. ~ Hamlet, act II, scene 2 Humans, according to the language theoret...
https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/life-sciences/when-network-defective
January 9, 2013
About one in 4000 babies is born with DiGeorge syndrome, a congenital condition that causes various abnormalities, most often in the face and heart. This syndrome usually arises from the deletion of a small portion of chromosome 22, but strangely enough, th...
https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/life-sciences/learning-new-sense-0
January 9, 2013
Rats use a sense that humans don’t: whisking. They move their facial whiskers back and forth about eight times a second to locate objects in their environment. At the Weizmann Institute, researchers had blindfolded volunteers learn to sense using artificial...
https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/life-sciences/smell-white-0
January 9, 2013
You can see the color white; you can hear white noise. Now, Weizmann Institute researchers have shown that you can also smell a white odor. Their research findings appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The white we see...
https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/math-computer-sciencemade-institute/making-sense-complex-situation
February 24, 2013
“The world of biology is incredibly complex,” says Dr. Jasmin Fisher, who holds appointments at Microsoft Research, in Cambridge, UK, and Cambridge University. “The hand-drawn diagrams of biological processes I first learned to produce are static ill...