Israël au 4ème rang mondial des publications scientifiques

Israël classé au 4ème rang mondial pour ses publications d’articles scientifiques selon les renseignements rassemblés par le Haut Conseil de l’Education. Les données, datant de 2005, placent Israël derrière la Suisse, la Suède et le Danemark en termes de nombre de publications scientifiques par million d’habitants. Le rapport a été communiqué lors d’une conférence à l’Université Bar Ilan le 16 novembre dernier. En 2005, les scientifiques israéliens ont publié 6309 articles dans des journaux scientifiques étrangers devant la Finlande, les Pays-Bas et le Canada. Les Etats-Unis occupent la 12ème place et l’Allemagne la 15ème. 0.89 % des articles scientifiques publiés en 2005 ont été écrits par des scientifiques israéliens. En 1997, 1.83% des articles mondiaux l’étaient par des Israéliens.

Le scientifique le plus productif et le plus cité est le Professeur Avraham Hershko du Technion, Prix Nobel de Chimie en 2004, selon le rapport. Il a publié 148 articles et fut cité plus de 16000 fois.

Le Docteur Meïr Zadok, directeur de l’Académie des Sciences et Humanités en Israël dit que "le succès scientifique d’Israël est dû aux critères stricts qui évaluent les scientifiques ici ". "La compétition pour les postes monte en Israël et le processus de promotion est très rigoureux, donc les personnes publient beaucoup pour réussir", dit il. "De plus, il y a des traditions très fortes de qualité dans l’académie israélienne."
Source: Ambassade d'Israël

Dix gadgets fabuleux développés en Israël - des "must"

Israel's top ten must-have gadgets
They keep your legs smooth, back up your files, upload your photos from wherever you may be. ISRAEL21c presents 10 top, developed-in-Israel gadgets.

Israelis love technology. They are early adapters, and relentless innovators, always looking for ways to improve their lives in every possible area.

With the country's talent for development, it's so surprise that some of the world's top gadgets were designed and developed in Israel. We've put together 10 of the best.

1. DiskOnKey [photo]
Dov Moran, founder of Modu, previously hit the big time with his company M-Systems, which developed the very first DiskOnKey (or DiskOnChip as M-Systems originally dubbed it). The concept is simple enough: Jam up to 64 gigabytes of data onto a tiny gadget no larger than a house key. The latest versions actually look like a key and can hook onto your keychain. DiskOnKeys were part of the "one-two sucker punch" that killed the venerable floppy disk (the other being cheap recordable CD-ROMs and later DVDs). Aside from being a reliable way to transfer data from computer to computer, disk-on-keys are now finding new life, expanding the storage space of the latest portable craze, the NetBook.

In 2005, PC World named the DiskOnKey one of the world's top 10 gadgets in the last 50 years. In 2006, international powerhouse SanDisk purchased M-Systems for $1.6 billion.
Lire l'intégralité de l'article » (article de Brian Blum @ ISRAEL21c)

Israel No. 4 in scientific activity worldwide

Israel's in fourth in global scientific activity, ranking just behind Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark for the number of scientific publications per citizen, according to a report presented at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan on Monday.

Based on figures from 2005, the report, which was compiled by the Council for Higher Education, also shows that in that year alone, Israeli scientists and researchers published 6,309 essays and articles in foreign scientific journals. According to those figures, nearly 1 percent (.089%) of all scientific publications in 2005 came from Israel. [...] Additionally, citations of Israeli publications by other scientists were extremely high. According to the report, Israel Institute of Technology-Technion professor Avram Hershko, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2004, published 148 articles and was cited more than 16,000 times.

Finland, the Netherlands and Canada followed Israel in the report, while the United States placed 12th, and Germany placed 15th. Japan, Britain and Russia also fell behind Israel.

Israel's role in global scientific activity is nearly 10 times the size of its percentage of the world's population, the report shows.
Lire l'intégralité de l'article » (article de Abe Selig @ The Jerusalem Post)

Israel : Moving towards a treatment for Alzheimer's

Ongoing research at an Israeli university may lead to vaccines that can teach our immune systems to better fight Alzheimer's disease. An Israeli researcher who is working on a vaccine for Alzheimer's has discovered that it is possible to test and measure specific immune responses in mice carrying human genes and to anticipate the immune response in Alzheimer's patients.

The research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) could lead one day to specific Alzheimer's vaccines that reduce plaque, neuronal damage and inflammation associated with the disease. Today around 5.3 million people in the US alone suffer from Alzheimer's, a debilitating and progressive disease that destroys the brain cells causing memory loss, according to the Alzheimer's Association. It is a fatal disease, and is the seventh leading cause of death in the US.

Amyloid beta-peptide accumulates in the brain of Alzheimer's patients where it appears to promote neuronal damage. In an article, recently published in the Journal of Immunology, BGU researcher Dr. Alon Monsonego [photo] determined that introducing A-beta into the brain triggers a natural immune response that can be detected in humans.
Lire l'intégralité de l'article » (Israel21c)

Israël :le Technion a inauguré un laboratoire proposant un traitement du cancer novateur (particules d'or et rayons laser)

Le Technion a inauguré un laboratoire proposant un traitement du cancer tout à fait novateur, utilisant des particules d’or et des rayons laser. Ce traitement n’est pas agressif, n’entraîne aucun effet secondaire et n’attaque que les cellules cancéreuses, épargnant les cellules saines voisines. Le laboratoire lui-même se trouve au Centre interdisciplinaire pour les sciences naturelles et l’ingénierie Laurie I. Lokey, construit en 2006 avec le soutien non négligeable de 30 millions de dollars du philanthrope Laurie Lokey. Ce projet à la pointe de la recherche scientifique a éveillé l’intérêt de la communauté médicale sur le plan tant local qu’international, gagnant ainsi plusieurs prix permettant l’intensification de la recherche. L’Union européenne a octroyé deux millions d’euros et la Fondation israélienne des sciences un million de dollars à ce projet novateur.

Dans la lutte contre le cancer, l’argent est en effet le nerf de la guerre : d’après un communiqué publié par le centre dirigé par le Professeur Aaron Ciechanover, lauréat du prix Nobel, des millions de dollars ont été investis pour équiper le nouveau laboratoire inauguré la semaine dernière. Dans le laboratoire multidisciplinaire sont effectuées des recherches dans les domaines de la physique, l’optique, la biologie, l’ingénierie et la nanotechnologie biomédicale. Le laboratoire est actuellement engagé dans plusieurs projets novateurs, tous liés aux diagnostics avancés et aux traitements médicaux.

« Nous illuminons la tumeur grâce à une fibre optique laser miniature endoscopique », explique le Dr Dvir Yelin, un chercheur du centre. Et d’ajouter : « Le laser a deux avantages. Premièrement, il est constitué de très courtes pulsions, de millions de milliardièmes de secondes pouvant briser la cellule sans chaleur. Et deuxièmement, le laser a une longueur d’onde correspondant précisément à la fréquence sonore des nanoparticules, ce qui permet d’augmenter fortement son efficacité. »
Lire l'intégralité de l'article » (article de Yael Ancri @ Israel Valley et Arouts 7)

New Haifa lab studies laser beams to treat cancer

Gold nanoparticles and laser beams will be researched as a new non-invasive treatment for cancer at a Technion-Israel Institute for Technology lab financed with €2 million from the European Union and a large previous donation from philanthropist Lorry Lokey of San Francisco. The potential treatment is meant to have minimal side effects and low toxicity to healthy cells near the tumor.

The Technion's faculty of biomedicine in Haifa opened the lab last week. Thanks to Lokey's $30m. donation in 2006, the Technion established the Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering, headed by Nobel Prize laureate Prof. Aaron Ciechanover. This multidisciplinary lab includes researchers from physics, optics, biology, biomedicine and nanotechnology. This innovative treatment is arousing great interest here and around the world, and now the research has been awarded two significant grants - €2m. from the EU and $1m. from the Israel Science Foundation. Dr. Dvir Yelin from the biomedicine faculty is developing technology that makes it possible to wipe out cancer cells in a very selective, non-toxic manner. Gold nanoparticles with very low toxicity reach the tumor.
Lire l'intégralité de l'article » (article de Judy Siegel-Itzkovich @ The Jerusalem Post)

Bone repair 'breakthrough' at Hadassah

A team at Jerusalem's Hadassah University Medical Center has managed for the first time in the world to separate platelets and adult stem cells from the blood and bone marrow of patients with fractures and inject them - causing the bones to meld in a quarter to third of the time it usually takes to repair bones, and repairing some breaks that without the therapy would fail to heal at all.

Prof. Meir Liebergall, chairman of the orthopedics department on the Ein Kerem campus, gene therapy expert Prof. Eithan Galun and colleagues worked for years on the technique, which he said involves a "breakthrough in concept and overcomes major scientific and logistical problems." All seven of those who received the experimental cell-based therapy have seen the broken tibias in their legs heal, even though the fractured bone in at least one control group patient who received only conventional treatment of screws or bone grafts failed to meld. Instead of taking six to nine months to heal, the fractures treated with adult stem cells and platelets healed in two months.
Lire l'intégralité de l'article » (article de Judy Siegel-Itzkovich @ The Jerusalem Post)