69 Years Young

Despite its phenomenal success, the Modern Jewish State is still in its relative infancy.  Its prospects depend largely on whether the next generation of Israelis can emulate and build upon the achievements of its predecessors. Based on what our youngsters have accomplished during the last 12 months, however, the future is very bright.

Israeli high school students regularly win International awards.  This year, two Israelis won medals at the annual International Chemistry Olympiad in Tbilisi, Georgia. Israeli children won four medals at the Physics Olympiad in Zurich and six medals at the Mathematical Olympiad in Hong Kong.

An initiative by Israel’s Education Ministry has resulted in the addition of robotics into the curricula of some 300 Israeli elementary schools.  This should allow more Israeli schools to continue the success of Israel’s Rothschild-HaShomron High School in Binyamina, which won through to the International finals of the FIRST Robotics Competition in Shanghai and finished second of the 57 competing countries.

Israel’s leadership in the hi-tech revolution is being sustained by several programs. First Israel is producing educational curricula in science and technology, with a special emphasis on cyber-security.  Meanwhile, ORT’s Israel Sci-Tech Schools are receiving international recognition for their network of institutions that focus on the education of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).  Finally, Israeli technical skills are being introduced very early, as Sagy Bar of the Rashi Foundation (a philanthropic group managing Israel’s new cyber education center) said, “… first grade they learn the letters, then how to read and how to write. We are building the next level of knowledge – how to code”.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/K8gdtrBkwSM?rel=0

Educational opportunities for Israeli schoolchildren are literally “out of this world”.  Israeli pupils were the only high school students to build a satellite for the European Union’s QB50 Thermosphere research program.  Their Cubesat (nano-satellite) Duchifat-2 is currently on board the International Space Station and will be placed into orbit in June.  Israeli kids can soar to great educational heights at an even younger age. For example, pupils from Yigal Alon elementary school sent a meteorological balloon up 15 miles and used two GoPro type cameras, flight data recorder, locator and radio transmitter to collect images and complete flight data.  Finally, last year, the Ramon Space Lab program ran as a pilot in 12 Israeli middle schools and this year it has been launched in 100 more.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/kodHJqN0uNk?rel=0

Educational success in Israel is not limited to its Jewish population.  For the second year in a row, the Galilee Druze town of Beit Jann achieved the highest rate (99%) of students passing the high school matriculation exam. The Arab village of Abu al-Hija, outside Karmiel, came in second.  Meanwhile, three students from the Israeli-Arab Bustan El-Marj Sci-Tech High School (part of the ORT Sci-Tech network mentioned above) won 3rd prize at Israel’s Young Engineers’ Conference.  But top of the class (and Israel’s highest achieving pupil) is Mohammed Zeidan, from the Arab community of Kafr Manda in northern Israel. He scored 800 on Israeli’s Psychometric Entrance Test, the maximum possible score, and now plans to study electrical engineering at Israel’s prestige Technion Institute.

For those kids that are not so lucky, Israel recently allocated half a billion shekels ($130 million) to the budget for after-school informal education for children from lower socio-economic backgrounds. And Israeli children of Ethiopian origin graduating from high school are narrowing the educational gap with 89% taking the matriculation tests compared with the national average of 94%.  The disadvantaged are also supported by charities such as Colel Chabad which recently awarded 100 orphans with academic scholarships to pay for tutoring, music lessons, summer camps and therapies to help them succeed both in school and socially.  But there are many children with special needs, and Israel is there for them too.  Take Ilanot for example - a Jerusalem school attended daily by 70 children aged six to twenty-one with physical and cognitive disabilities.  The school provides students with knowledge to improve motor function and help independence to increase their quality of life.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/46Ah9NKNcmo?rel=0

Israel’s children will grow up to continue the task of improving relations between all of Israel’s inhabitants and seeking peace with Israel’s neighbors. They will hopefully include some of those currently studying at the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic Tabeetha school in Jaffa.  They will also include many of the 2,300 Jewish, Muslim, Bedouin and Druze children from 152 Israeli schools who come together regularly through their love of soccer.

Israel reaches out to Jewish children everywhere. The Naale/Elite Academy brings Jewish teenage girls from around the world for a free high school matriculation program in top Israeli religious educational institutions all over Israel.  Naale is fully subsidized and supervised by the Israeli Ministry of Education.

Finally, InterNations’ Family Life Index in 2016 reported that of the world’s 41 best countries to raise a family, Israel was 4th on the list, behind Austria, Finland and Sweden. The 2017 list has recently been published and Israel has risen to third.  Good childcare and education options were major factors.

Israel’s children – our future builders.

Michael Ordman writes a free weekly newsletter containing positive news stories about Israel.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com and a searchable archive www.IsraelActive.com

For a free subscription, email a request to michael.goodnewsisrael@gmail.com

Israeli Remedies for a Longer Life

Israelis have the 8th longest life-expectancy in world according to the latest World Health Organization figures.  Israeli medical treatments and devices are extending lives all over the world.  Here are some of the recent Israeli news items relating just to the areas of cancer, cardiology, neuroscience and diabetes.

I am confident that most readers in their lifetimes will see an end to the deadly effect of the majority of today’s cancers and can be proud that Israeli scientists will be major contributors to this achievement. For example, the UK’s National Health Service just has approved the funding of patients receiving the pioneering melanoma (skin cancer) treatment developed by Professor Jacob Schachter of the Sheba hospital in Tel Hashomer.   Meanwhile in the States, surgeons at Mercy Medical Center at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, have reported that MarginProbe from Israel’s Dune Medical has reduced the number of repeat breast-cancer operations by 75%.  And many aggressive brain tumors can now be cured using Novocure’s electrode treatment, invented by Israeli Professor Yoram Palti.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL-3JkQOsPg

Leukemia’s days are numbered thanks to pipeline treatments such as Astarabine from Israel’s BioSight.and BL-8040 from Israel’s Bioline Rx.  And Israel’s Gamida Cell reported good results from US trials of its NiCord blood cancer treatment.  Finally, Weizmann Institute’s groundbreaking prostate cancer treatment has now been approved by Israel’s Ministry of Health and is being administered to patients at Beilinson Hospital.

But prevention is better than cure, so I was pleased to read that researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Israel’s Technion Institute have developed enhanced micro-emulsion liquids that produce a powerful antioxidant anti-cancer protection protein called Nrf2.

It warms my heart to read that so many cardiology treatments and innovations have been developed by Israelis. UK medical journal The Lancet reported the first one-hour implants of the interatrial shunts from Israel’s V-Wave administered into 10 Canadian patients suffering poor left ventricular function, who were then discharged home next morning.  Surgeons performing a multicenter clinical trial of the laser system and unique catheters from Israel’s Eximo successfully unblocked the arteries of 20 patients with peripheral artery disease (PAD) -  some of whom otherwise required bypass surgery or leg amputation.

Scientists at Israel’s Technion Institute have even trained cardiac cells to beat, using mechanical stimuli that do not come into contact with the cells, which could lead to development of more effective pacemakers.  At Tel Aviv University, Professor Tal Dvir unveiled his remote-controlled, bionic heart patch, which researchers say could become a revolutionary alternative to heart transplants for patients whose hearts have been damaged by heart attacks or cardiac disease. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ0bz-r8lEE 

Again, prevention of heart disease would avoid the need for the above treatments and devices, so let’s wish good luck to Israel’s Lycored for its award-winning supplement Cardiomato that lowers oxidized LDL cholesterol and reduces systolic blood pressure.  And perhaps the best news is that new Israeli Education Ministry guidelines prohibit selling or serving of sweets, snacks, and sugary or fatty foods to Israeli school and kindergarten students.  They must now be offered healthier substitutes such as low-fat spreadable cheeses, avocado, whole-wheat pasta and bread, fruit and vegetables.

In the field of Neuroscience, nearly 660,000 people have viewed the video that showed Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center surgeons curing an Israeli woman of Parkinson’s using the focused ultrasound brain surgery of Israel’s Insightec.  And the communication device for ALS and other "Locked in" patients from Israel’s EyeControl won its inventors £32,000 of funding thanks to public votes in the International on-line competition "The Venture".  Israelis should certainly have no problem sleeping thanks to Israeli startup 2breathe Technologies, which has developed a sensor and smartphone app to induce users to breathe slower, relax and fall asleep.  And Israel’s Itamar Medical has reported that 60 international hospitals have now adopted its Total Sleep Solution which treats Sleep Apnea – a known cause of heart attacks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WkmqMUIEJ8 

Diabetics will be interested to know that researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have discovered that the gene p16 enhances insulin production and have partly reversed diabetes in lab tests.  Further down the treatment pipeline, Israeli biotech Oramed had success in the Phase IIb study of its oral insulin capsule, designed to replace injected delayed-release insulin.  Meanwhile, Israel’s Frutarom – developers of Portusana, an extract of the herb purslane - have confirmed its positive effects on blood sugar levels in adults with Type 2 Diabetes.  Finally, type 2 diabetes may be preventable, thanks to a behavioral analytics engine and risk meter developed by Israel’s Sweetch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KENZRUpeAds 

What is really astounding is that these Israeli developments (and many more) all occurred during the last 3 months.  I haven’t even got room to include the areas of fighting infections, autoimmune diseases and life-saving medical devices.  I’ll report on those on another occasion.

Wishing you good health from Israel.

Michael Ordman writes a free weekly newsletter containing positive news stories about Israel.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com and a searchable archive www.IsraelActive.com

For a free subscription, email a request to michael.goodnewsisrael@gmail.com

Time is on Our Side

After 2000 years of exile, the citizens of the modern State of Israel can be proud of their phenomenal technological achievements in just 67 years.  It’s as if the gift of Time itself has been bestowed on the Jewish State for the benefit of humanity.

Israel is at the forefront of the age-old fight against cancer.  In 2004 Professor Aaron Ciechanover of Israel’s Technion won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry by identifying the ubiquitin pathway that controls the timing of cell death.  11 years later, scientists working in Professor Ciechanover’s laboratory, have identified the chemicals in the body that suppress malignant growth and protect healthy cells.  In another line of research, scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have identified that tumors can be triggered by information-overload at the cell level.  They have also found a molecule that can block inter-cell messages, allowing the cell nucleus more time to behave correctly.  Meanwhile, up to 20 Nobel Prize laureates are giving up their time this summer, in order to attend the World Science Conference in Jerusalem.  The five-day event will be the largest such event of its kind ever to be held, attracting scientists and thinkers from 60 countries.

There is no time like the present for dispelling the long-held view that we cannot reverse the effects of time on our bodies.  Now you can rejuvenate your arteries by consuming pomegranate juice and dates together - according to researchers at Israel’s Technion and Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center.  And following research by scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute, it won’t be too long before heart tissue can be re-grown to replace that damaged by heart disease or heart attack.

Imagine how much medical research and diagnostic time can be saved in the future once Israeli startup Zebra Medical Vision has built up its database of anonymous medical images (X-rays, CT scans and MRI scans).   Due to privacy laws, such data was unavailable previously.  And surgeons in the USA can now take their time planning hip replacements following FDA approval of the TraumaCad iPhone / iPad mobile app developed by Israeli health-tech firm Voyant.  It allows doctors to download a digital image of the patient’s hip, simultaneously with that of the new implant, in order to simulate the operation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpttEihkm5A

Israel’s success can partly be attributed to the many incubators and accelerators that give hundreds of startup companies time to grow their business.  Israel’s Office of the Chief Scientist is opening three new hi-tech incubators in Akko, Haifa and the Golan, each running for 8 years.  Then at Israel’s Startup Fusion 2015 on 22nd March, over a dozen startups, (including 3 Japanese and 3 Turkish) competed for a $100,000 seed investment to be provided by Samurai Incubate.  And when the time comes for these startups to make the decision whether to sell out to the big multinationals, many have now come to realize that they should stay the course and grow into big Israeli companies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChtClvbjCKk

Over 100 students from 11 European countries found their time well spent when they attended a free 4-day electron microscope workshop at Israel’s Technion.  And the engineers supervising the Delphi Automotive “Roadruner” driverless car had plenty of time to relax and enjoy the record-breaking 3,400-mile ride as the Advanced Drive Assistance System from Israel’s Mobileye guided them from San Francisco to Manhattan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3YV91UsiAo

We now come full circle, back to hospital, where Israeli doctors took their time in performing the complex surgery necessary to enable a Syrian boy to walk again after he was severely injured by a shell in Syria’s civil war.  During his recovery time during the festival of Passover, the boy even enjoyed the time-honored tradition of eating matza crackers.  In contrast, time was of the essence for 27-year-old Ran Azulai, who was born with a serious congenital defect.  After 3 previous heart operations, Ran had very little time to live when surgeons replaced his heart and two lungs in a rare, complex last-minute operation.  The donor’s other organs extended the lives of three more patients.

There is just time to mention two innovative Israeli medical devices.  Israel’s Teva has now received FDA approval for its ProAir RespiClick inhaler for asthmatics.  The device is the first of its kind that is breath-activated, which means the user doesn’t need to co-ordinate the timing of his/her breathing with manual activation of the inhaler.  The other device is the MD-Logic Artificial Pancreas developed by Israel’s DreaMed Diabetes. DreaMed has struck a deal with Medtronic, the world’s biggest medical device company, to use the algorithm of the Artificial Pancreas in Medtronic’s insulin pumps.  The algorithm ensures that the timing of the release of insulin is regulated exactly to the needs of the individual diabetic.

We go into extra time, to visit Jerusalem - Israel’s ancient and modern capital - to relive the time when gazelles grazed in the outskirts of the holy city.  On 30 March, Jerusalem’s Mayor Barkat formally opened the Gazelle Valley Nature Park to the public.  The 62-acre park cost NIS 90 million and is Israel’s first urban nature reserve. It even contains a female gazelle from the original wild herd that lived in the area, plus others from zoos and their offspring.

Finally, there is a new opportunity for world leaders to understand and appreciate the bond linking the Jewish people to the Land of Israel from time immemorial.  The exhibit entitled “People, Book, Land – The 3,500 Year Relationship of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel” has just opened at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York.  The words of that timeless folk song are:  “When will they ever learn?  When will they ever learn?”  Perhaps the answer is:

“In time”

Michael Ordman writes a free weekly newsletter containing positive news stories about Israel.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

For a free subscription, email a request to michael.goodnewsisrael@gmail.com

Just look at us Go

Just before the first Passover, over 3,500 years ago, Moses demanded of the Egyptian Pharaoh to “Let my People Go”. I’m sure that today Moses would be proud of the lengths to which the modern Jewish nation goes, in order to benefit humanity.

Israeli scientists are constantly going where no one has gone before.  Researchers at Israel’s Ben Gurion University have gone deep into the behavior of a mutant gene to discover a new molecular mechanism that governs how neuro-degenerative diseases such as ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) attacks motor neurons.  They have gone even further and identified that the protein MIF inhibits this mechanism.  Meanwhile, Israel’s BrainTech 2015 Conference has brought top international brain technologists to Tel Aviv to learn about the latest innovative ‘brain initiatives’ going on around the world.  And would you like to know what is going on in someone’s brain?  Well the winning project at this year’s Brainihack in Tel Aviv, Israeli-developed Emochat, used an Israeli Neurosteer Brain Computer Interface device to interpret another person’s emotions based on their brain activity.

In other parts of the body, Israeli scientists have engineered tiny robots to enable cancer-killing drugs to go directly to a tumor.  And two Israeli companies, Vectorious Medical and SHL Telemedicine are going forward with their systems that go over wireless networks to perform remote monitoring of heart patients. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBav6iT62Sw

Israel’s humanitarian workers go to any lengths to save lives.  The surgeons of Israel’s Save A Child’s Heart (SACH) regularly go into action to treat sick children from Syria, Iraq, or Jordan. And every Tuesday Palestinian Arab children from Gaza and Judea & Samaria arrive at Israel’s Wolfson medical center in Holon for treatment and check-ups by SACH doctors.  Then, whenever a natural disaster strikes citizens of a far away country, the Israeli organization IsraAID is always one of the first to go to their aid.  Residents of the tiny islands of Vanuatu called the Israelis “a light unto the nations” as IsraAID distributed over 40 tons of rice, flour and drinking water to residents of the Tongoa and Mataso islands that were devastated by Cyclone Pam.

Israel is going from strength to strength as its next generation follows in the footsteps of its Nobel Prize-winning scientists.  Twelve Israeli teenagers won the top prizes in the Intel-Israel Young Scientists Competition in Jerusalem.  Their projects covered medicine, mathematics, linguistics, music, anthropology and satellite technology.  All twelve will go to the finals in Pittsburgh and Milan and receive academic scholarships.  And Israel’s Center for Educational Technology has been going into the classroom to enroll hundreds of Israeli middle and high schools in the biggest computer-programming contest in Israeli history.  Students can win a share of prizes totaling NIS 100,000 by writing computer code using CodeMonkey - an Israeli interactive computer game.

Israeli entrepreneurs and innovators have gone far and wide recently:

-         To Barcelona, where crowds flocked to the Israel pavilion at the Mobile World Congress to see the innovative Israeli products and apps on show.

-         To New York, where around 250 Israeli startups and leading investors are taking part in the Israel Dealmakers Summit, which this year focuses on digital media, cleantech, Web infrastructure, medical equipment, big data and cloud computing.

-         Into orbit, where Israel’s Intelescope Solutions is transforming the forestry industry, using drone and satellite imagery to produce an accurate inventory of forests in the US, Canada, Brazil, Australia, South Africa, Indonesia, India, and China.

-         Into kids educational games, where the 350 games developed by Israel’s TabTale have been downloaded 600 million times.

-         And into social enterprises, where Impact Investing Israel has organized Israel’s first Impact Investing Conference to motivate investors and startups to go and develop real tangible and measurable benefits to mankind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP4t3j4ZTAQ

 
  
Israelis go out of their way to help others.  On Good Deeds Day, which this year was on 24 March, a record number of Israeli volunteers joined in 10,000 projects, such as going in to neighborhoods to clean up nature parks and beaches, to distribute food to the needy and to go and help the handicapped and disadvantaged.  And as we go into the season of our Freedom, 110 Ukrainian Jews made their Exodus to Israel in a special refugee rescue flight sponsored by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

To finish, here is a video of Technion’s go-getting engineering students going speedily through a “moving” account of the Passover story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baQfqoZrEvI

 

Finally, please go and try out IsraelActive.com - my brand new on-line database of positive news stories from Israel.  Now anytime you wish you can go and search easily through 7000 news articles about the beneficial work that Israel is doing on almost every subject and in every part of the world.

Here in Israel, it’s all go!

Michael Ordman writes a free weekly newsletter containing positive news stories about Israel.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

For a free subscription, email a request to michael.goodnewsisrael@gmail.com

Israel Educates for Life

Having read so many recent stories of schoolchildren around the world being radicalized by Islamic extremists, here is a collection of contrasting education-related activities and news articles I’ve collected over the past few weeks concerning the Jewish State.

I will begin in the Israeli school system itself. Whereas 100 countries marked Feb 11 as Safer Internet Day, Israel’s Ministry of Education, on Feb 8, launched Annual National Week for Online Safety Education in Israel.  Throughout the entire state educational system, students engaged in classroom and online activities designed to increase awareness for Internet safety, reduce potential risks, and deal with any harmful online incidents. 

100,000 Israeli kids attend a Sci-Tech school – that’s 10 percent of all Israeli high school students (including Muslims, Christians and Druze).  The Sci-Tech network builds curricula based on the demand for professionals in various Israeli industries, and it currently has 18 industrial vocational schools.  This Bloomberg report shows how Israeli-Arabs (especially women) continue to flourish educationally, at Technion Institute of Technology – one of Israel’s top class higher education establishments.

Technion’s President Peretz Lavie has been describing the importance of Technology and Education.  Technion graduates have either founded or are managing two-thirds of the Israeli companies on NASDAQ.  And the trend is bound to continue with initiatives such as the brand new development lab that the Technion and Microsoft have built together. It has facilities that allow students to develop innovative technologies to rival anything a hi-tech company can design.  They might even eliminate cancer, thanks to a recent multi-million dollar donation for educational research into the disease.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrS_0cYm7iE

Life-changing discoveries continue to be made at other Israeli establishments of higher education.  Researchers at Tel Aviv University have been receiving large numbers of small public donations (known as “crowdfunding”) to allow them to conduct DNA sequencing tests. These have identified the genetic mutations responsible for severe educational developmental delays in children.  Meanwhile, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot have embarked on a project with a group of Japanese scientists to discover how autistic spectrum disorder progresses in the brain.  Scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem are also studying the brain – this time those of blind people, in order to shed new light on how our brains can adapt to the rapid cultural and technological changes of the 21st Century.  This led to the discovery that reading Braille utilizes “visual” areas of the brain.  Finally, Ben-Gurion University hosted “Light and Blindness” - an exhibition of research-and-development activities in Israel designed to improve the quality of life for people with visual impairment.  It included a startup contest and the opening of a trail for the blind.

Two Israeli companies recently reported achievements with their medical “education” technologies. First, Israel’s Pluristem Therapeutics announced that its stem cells help to educate the body to build muscle after a hip replacement.  Then Israel’s Meditouch demonstrated its wearable movement biofeedback devices and dedicated rehabilitation software, which are used in hospitals, clinics and at home to motivate patients to exercise and improve movement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkrumdWCeps

Israel’s medical education programs are making a difference across the globe.  According to UK Prime Minister David Cameron, eight joint UK-Israeli stem cell research projects have “the potential to change the lives of hundreds of millions of people.”  In West Africa, Israeli humanitarian organization IsraAID has set-up a program entitled “Ebola Heroes” to provide psychosocial education and training to health workers, teachers, burial teams, policemen, social workers involved in treating Ebola cases. 

So before the Jewish State is delegitimized by billions of radicalized individuals, let’s use positive news like this to re-educate the world about Israel.  We are helped by the international education non-profit StandWithUs, which has launched its “Social Media Ambassadors” program. StandWithUs is educating university students in the use of multiple platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more.  In another initiative, Israel’s Technion (again) brought over 50 university and secondary students from Hong Kong to educate them about Israeli entrepreneurial success.

We also need to educate ourselves so that we champion those who safeguard the future of the Jewish State. We need to publicize the message of the non-Jewish student visitor who is “awed by pluralistic, diverse Israel” and who leaves determined to educate the world about the democratic Jewish State.  We need to fight alongside people like Irish Catholic Belinda “Don’t judge Israel before you’ve seen it” Hickey who counters uneducated bigotry in Ireland.

Finally, here is another piece of good news. You may have heard already about Israel’s educational bus stop libraries that are still expanding locally.  Well what do you know?  The concept has just been adopted in Istanbul.  And guess what? The Turkish media report proclaims that it was inspired by Israel!

We learn something new every day.

Michael Ordman writes a free weekly newsletter containing positive news stories about Israel.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

For a free subscription, email a request to michael.goodnewsisrael@gmail.com