Rehovot Teacher Admits to Sexually Harassing Students

"A teacher who works at a Rehovot school has admitted over the weekend to sexually harassing a female student, and said that he harasses all his pretty students.

The 55-year-old man was arrested after a student from his school complained to the police on Friday that he sexually harassed her and performed an indecent act on her.

According to the 16-year-old student, the teacher entered her class during a national security drill, stroked her face and complimented her on her looks. She said that the teacher told her "I'm lucky I'm not your teacher, otherwise I wouldn't be able to concentrate during class."

The man was arrested by Rehovot police youth investigators and admitted to sexually harassing the girl and other students. At the end of his interrogation, police decided to release him but to prevent him for getting near the school, and recommended that he be indicted."

Source: Yuval Azulai. Teacher admits to sexually harassing 'pretty' students. Haaretz.com (27 November 2005) [FullText]

A bit of History: How green was my Rehovot

"Somewhere along the fress'n'dress strip of Herzl Street in Rehovot, a rotund, bearded jeweler named Aharon Meir talks obsessively, passionately, about a color. Not gold or silver. Green.

Not as in emeralds. As in grass.

"The municipality is promoting what it calls 'New Rehovot,' and it has the chutzpah to put up posters of beautiful green parkland. Problem is, there isn't any: they had to go to the Weizmann Institute and take pictures of grass over there."

Meir was perfectly happy with Old Rehovot, the way it used to be, when it was known as the Garden City. Now, it reflects its real name in its most literal sense: Roads. It's not that bad, really: any time Meir gets the urge to see foliage, he can walk a block and gape through the window of the florist.

"Ach, it used to be beautiful here. Trees and grass, little parks all over the center of town. And on the outer perimeters, farmlands, orchards." A consortium of locals, the Rehovoti'im, has banded together to do something about it; and says one group activist, Yehuda Efroni, it has the sympathies of two city councilors, Yisrael Azrieli and Rabbi Moshe Buxboim.

According to studies done in American urban centers, "an area the size of central Rehovot must have 300-400 dunam of greenland," says Efroni. "All we have left now is one [34-dunam] plot."

And that's about to vanish too: the city has decided to build on this last refuge: five 15-story apartment blocks. That galvanized a dozen outraged residents to act. Responding directly to the municipality's hunger for green -- as in money, that is -- the Rehovoti'im came up with an alternative.

"We offered a solution: that public money could purchase the plot to keep the park intact," Efroni says. The municipality did not think much of the idea. "The mayor said, 'OK, for $25 million you can have it.'" Meir snorts derisively. "Twenty-five million!"

"Maybe we should ask the UN to debate the matter," injects a man browsing in his shop. Efroni, a former city councilor, explains that half the plot was leased to the city in 1948 by Agudat Maccabi. That 49-year lease is set to expire in July. Both Efroni and Meir stress the volte face of councilors Azrieli and Buxboim, who now admit it was hasty to give the green light to build there. "They now want the issue reexamined," says Efroni. Kobi Bookay, spokesman for Mayor Ya'acov Sandler, sees red when the subject of green comes up.

"It's not green! It's a garbage dump, a haven for hookers and drug addicts. We're clearing a dump and building homes, sports fields, a cultural center, a garden, cafes. It's going to be lovely. But these Rehovoti'im are opposed. They were opposed to the mall, which I think is the nicest in Israel. They're opposed to all development in Rehovot. They want to see Rehovot as a village.

"This is a matter of progress versus stagnation." Bookay admits the center is overdeveloped, but that's the fault of former mayor Shmuel Rechtman -- whose dealings with developers in the 1970s landed him in jail for three years. "Twenty-two gardens were built in the center in the last two years," says Bookay, "but this isn't enough for them, they say the gardens are too small."

This matter has been in the courts for 10 years, he says. "If we wanted to build a park there, we'd have to give Maccabi $8 million, and a park would cost another $3 million. We don't have that kind of money. "Everybody approved the plans, everybody but two of 21 councilors and these Rehovoti'im. I don't see them doing anything positive for the city, all they do is sit around and get passersby to sign petitions." Even in the unlikely event of a victory, the activists have already lost a lot of ground. No building will be torn down to put up a tree. Over where the old bus station used to be, resident Edythe Friedlander casts a forlorn look at a new building. "There was a bit of grass here, and some park benches. It was a nice, quiet spot where the old men used to come and sit, get some sun, talk politics. For some of them, this was a precious spot, their only reason for getting up in the morning and getting out of the house. You don't see those old people anymore, anywhere. They have nowhere to go."

Care to guess what was built in its place? You got it: Mc-you-know-who. "

Source: Sam Orbaum. How green was my Rehovot. Jerusalem Post (1 June 1997) [Search FullText]

Monument Desecrated near Rehovot: Metal thieves strike again

"Dozens of iron plaques carrying names of fallen soldiers removed from IDF monument by metal thieves. IDF source calls incident 'disgraceful, appalling.' Meanwhile police, army seek ways to tackle problem. Metal thieves removed plaques carrying the names of fallen soldiers from a paratroop corps monument near the town of Rehovot on Thursday night. Police and forensics unit forces were dispatched to the scene Friday, after the act of vandalism was revealed, in a bid to trace any evidence that may lead to the perpetrators.

No Limits?

IDF monument vandalized during holiday, plaques, letters removed, apparently by iron dealers who deal in the material. This is a painful, criminal act, IDF official say. "This is another severe incident in a line of metal theft incidences across Israel we have seen recently," Chief Superintendent Alon Levavi said. The paratroop memorial commemorates the names of all the corps' soldiers who were killed in Israel's wars. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, himself a former paratrooper, has visited the monument many times.

Dozens of plaques removed

However, it appears that the thieves who operated in the place remained indifferent to the memorial's heritage. On Thursday night the offenders arrived at the place, apparently driving a van or a truck. The men cunningly cut off power at the monument, consequently shutting off the lights, to prevent being spotted from the nearby highway. Using a screwdriver they dismantled dozens of metal plaques, and later fled the scene, leaving a barren-walled monument behind. Police sources estimated that the thieves were iron dealers who trade in the metal and export it to China and other places in the Far East, where the material is in great demand. Immediately following the discovery of the incident, the police launched an investigation into the matter.

"We have collected all evidence from the scene. The investigation will now be conducted at the intelligence level, in order to apprehend the thieves," Levavi said.

Tackling a wide-spread problem

Notably, similar incidences, where military monuments were violated by metal dealers, were uncovered in recent weeks. This is a disgraceful and appalling act, a source at the paratroop division told Ynet. "Luckily enough, we held our annual ceremony to commemorate the dead a month ago, before this act of hooliganism took place," the source added. In light of the increasing number of incidences where monuments were damaged by metal thieves, police and the IDF intend to cooperate with local authorities across Israel on providing solutions for safeguarding the memorials. One of the proposed tactics to tackle the problem is by placing hidden cameras in these locations. Meanwhile, the IDF announced it will work to restore the desecrated monuments, and replace the metal plaques with marble plates, which are harder to remove and less attractive to thieves.

Source: Hanan Greenberg. Iron dealers vandalize IDF monument. YNetnews.com (11 November 2005) [FullText]

News Archive: Rehovot residents fail to fly the flag

"Friday, December 28, 2001 -- Rehovot residents fail to fly the flag
Rehovot Municipality's campaign to boost public morale by calling upon residents to hang flags on their balconies has met with little success. "We must keep up out morale. They will not break us. Show that Israel is united by flying the Israeli flag on all buildings as a mark of pride in our country," the municipality urged in leaflets distributed to residents..."

Source: Rosalyn Harari. Rehovot is changing. Jerusalem Post: City Lights: Focus on Rehovot and Rishon Lezion (28 December 2001) [Search FullText]

Rehovot - Rishon LeZiyyon: Tiv Ta'am Gastronomic Adventureland

by Erin Rehovot

"Last Friday, we rounded up a handful of friends and had an honest-to-goodness party, complete with a table full of snacks, drinks, and conversation. Thanks to beginners' luck, the three and a half hours of music we programmed ran out about ten seconds after the last guest left; on the other hand, we've been eating leftover cheese, ever since. Blue cheese, in particular, looks a little gnarly on the fourth day.

Two of our friends had just returned from a trip to Belgrade (which is home to one of them). The visitor got a wistful look in his eye, when I asked how he enjoyed it. "The cooking," he began. "I never knew what a tomato tasted like! And the bread! And the butter!" He shook his head with the memory of the Serbian tomatoes.

Another friend talked about seeing a kingfisher near a pond, on campus.

Another friend could not stop talking about one of the slabs o' cheese. "It's Brie! Where did you find it?" He gazed at the Brie, which had been dutifully relaxing at room temperature for two hours before the party. By mid-party, it looked as though it would have liked to slide off the table and slither over to the couch with a glass of wine.

I told him about the Russian market. But I forgot to mention the tiny bakery across the street, Patisserie, brightly lit, with its red-lettered sign. (We bought delicate almond cookies there For the Party, and ended up devouring them long before the party.)

Despite discovering all that Rehovot can equip one with in terms of wine and cheese, I wanted to venture to Tiv Ta'am, yesterday, the store rumored to be the non-kosher equivalent of Whole Foods.

Amy, the other Hollins alumna in town (as far as we know), came along for the mini-adventure. We flagged down a sherut heading to Rishon LeZiyyon.

"Le Tiv Ta'am?" I asked, before getting on. "To Tiv Ta'am?"

"Be Rishon?" the driver said. "In Rishon?"

I nodded. He nodded. We got on, and handed over NIS 7 for the ride.

Sheruts follow the same routes as buses, but make more frequent and off-route stops; they're essentially shared taxis that seat about a dozen people. Like taxi drivers, sherut drivers approach the road with the same gleam in their eyes as Evil Knievel did the Grand Canyon. My experience with sherutim, or maxi-taxis, as Amy called them, was previously limited to one experimental ride from Rehovot to Tel Aviv with J., this summer; the only good thing that can be said about that trip is that it eventually ended. The benefit of sheruts is that they're not buses: the main drawback is that riding in one feels like you're on a giant drunken burro.

Getting from Rehovot to Tiv Ta'am via sherut is delightfully easy, in theory. You just find a sherut heading north through Rishon and hop on. We did this. And then we waited, as the sherut clattered through one town, and then onto a long stretch of road, and then through another town.

"Do you know where we are?" Amy asked.

"No, not really." I said, turning around on the bench I was sitting on. "But we passed Tiv Ta'am on the way back from the airport, so it has to be on this road."

Amy gave me a dubious look. "This isn't the way you get to the airport."

"Oh." I looked out the window. The shop fronts and street all looked familiar. I was a little concerned that my friend, who has been everywhere from Romania to Tunisia, was worried about our trip. I had also forgotten that Rishon LeZiyyon is not the first town north of Rehovot; you pass through Nes Ziyona, first. Somehow, these have just blurred into one town in my brain, probably because we usually only pass through them at night, at high speed, going to or from Ben-Gurion.

As we neared the end of Rishon, the driver called out something that I interpreted to be, "Last stop in Rishon LeZiyyon!" Amy and I both let out a yelp and clambered to the front of the bus.

"Is this the last stop in Rishon?" I asked.

"No," the driver snorted in disdain. "Don't worry, I will tell you when it's time!"

We stumbled back to our seats, and the sherut bumped forward. Most of the riders were riveted to the flat tv screen attached to the back of the driver's seat, which was broadcasting a local sports channel. Personally, I would have invested in better shocks, instead of live tv, but at least the tv distracted you from the jarring ride.

Amy spoke to a Russian man next to her, who was sitting with his knees around his ears. (Minivans are designed for mini-people.) He pointed to the last bus stop before a stretch of dry, dusty highway.

"The driver will stop there. Then you just walk through the fence," he said.

This sounds worse than it really was: there was a gate in the fence. "Tiv Ta'am!" the driver barked. We hopped off, and walked into the giant Tiv Ta'am store.

"Oh, my," we both said as we walked briskly past the pastry section. As in Disneyland, you can't stop at the very first ride; one must pace oneself. But we couldn't help coming to a pause under six shelves of plum wine, a moment later. Amy gasped.

"This stuff is fantastic!" she said, taking down a frosted-glass bottle. "Seventy-six shekels!" The bottle promptly went back up.

There were rows of sushi implements--mats, seaweed, rice, noodles, wooden teapots. Wooden teapots?

"What is that?" Amy pointed at a lower shelf.

"Wow, a huge bag of pickled ginger!" I exclaimed.

Amy looked surprised. "You know you're from the South, when you automatically assume something is pigs' feet," she said.

Among the Japanese, Chinese, and Thai sauces section was the salsa aisle, though without a tortilla chip in sight. Beyond the sauces lay the spice section.

"If I can't find chili powder here," I said, taking a tentative step in, "I won't find it anywhere in the country."

Bulk spices like cumin and za'atar were piled on long tables in tapered cones, like the tops of tagines.

Beyond the bulk spices were three walls of bottled spices.

"Here's 'Redness'," I held up a jar of dusty maroon specks that looked like raspberry powder. Amy read the Hebrew, and the spice turned out to be sumac.

A small cardboard stand at the edge of the spice section held an assortment of McCormick's spices, including chili powder. Mission accomplished.

But we had only seen about a sixth of the store. We wandered over to the cheese section, where small boxes of cheese proclaimed "PACKED UNDER GOVERNMENT CONTROL" in English, but were produced in France and labelled in Russian. "18% whole milk cheese" read one side of the label. Boxed cheese? Are things that bad in France?

We inspected the NIS-165 bourbon in the spirits department, right next to the bar. French wine! Limoncello! Amaretto! Credit limit-o!

The bar is one of about six places to sit and eat (or drink) inside the store; the barrier between it and the seafood section was an aquarium. Next to the aquarium was a four-foot-tall pink plastic lobster with claws akimbo that begged to be photographed.

In the chocolate section, Amy picked up chocolate bars with exotic flavors that you would never find in town, like sahlev (a drink). The beer section, next to it, was twice as large as the juice section, but the most interesting thing about this side of the store was its cafe, named "Street Food", with a chain-link-fence motif (which, while appropriately themed, didn't exactly welcome customers). There were only a couple of people inside (since it was late afternoon), slurping noodles.

After about half an hour of roaming the aisles, we called it a day, almost. As we walked toward a checkout stand, Amy stopped short.

"Marshmallow Fluff?" She happily took a jar.

It was an E Ticket trip!"

Source: Erin Rehovot. "ya-VOH!" "Come in!". Rehovot.blogspot.com (16 November 2005) [FullText]

Workers of the World United to Benefit Israeli New Home Buyers

or Israeli New Residential Complexes Are United Nations Made

Not to miss: Rehovot writer perspective below

"Nikolai the Bulgarian, Su the Chinese, Sergei the Ukrainian and Vincenzo the Romanian enter the construction site. They make coffee and swap work experiences - in Hebrew. No, these are not the opening lines of a joke. This is the reality of construction sites in Israel. It is six in the morning and construction workers are already making their way to the sites, cloaked in a range of outer garments, for it is freezing cold outside. By 6:30 they have all made it to their work places at Merom Ganim in Petah Tikva, a construction project of the America Israel real estate firm being built by the Tidhar company. The morning's black coffee is already brewing.

Last year, the issue of foreign workers was on the public agenda a number of times. Contractors argued that the number of workers approved for construction was too small, and demanded the quotas be raised. At the same time, the state sought to reduce as much as possible the number of foreign workers employed in construction, to open up jobs for Israelis. In addition, reforms in employment of foreign workers were launched in June 2005, intended to bring order to the practices in the construction industry. The reforms prompted steep cost hikes in employing foreign labor in construction.

Spending a single day at a building site demonstrates that the "foreign" workers are not all that foreign. They speak Hebrew and are well acquainted with Israeli culture, although they have their reservations about it. Spending time with them demonstrates the hard work and tough terms of employment. For example, contractors maintain they offer fair employment, citing wages of $7 per hour in construction work. Workers, however, tell of being paid NIS 19.50 per hour [just over $4], if they adhered to terms specified by the contractor.

After the coffee, it's time for the safety briefing. Foreman Avi Mizrachi must get the new workers to sign off on the briefing. One of the workers is kind enough to explain that the purpose of this is "to cover one's ass," as he slaps his behind for emphasis. As a new Israeli worker I receive a briefing in Hebrew. Mizrachi proudly shows me a binder of signed safety briefings in Chinese, Romanian, Bulgarian, Russian and other languages.

Shades of Hebrew

"Okay, y'allah, let's get to work. Today we're going to tear you apart," Mizrachi informs me, along with Nikolai Vasilev the amiable Bulgarian, Mizrachi's right-hand man at the site and his representative to the rest of the workers. We go down to the storage shed to get a hat and gloves that are full of mold. "What needs we do now," Nikolai explains in his brand of Hebrew. "This prepares material for Chinese. Not telephone Avi. Confuses when there is no material, no work. There is material, there is quiet." Freely translated: "Prior to the arrival of the flooring, plumbing, electrical, plastering and other contractors, material must be prepared for them, such that they will be available on the specific floor of the building that is currently under construction" - as Mizrachi explains, "so that they can do the work on the double, and won't jerk us around saying they have no materials, delaying all the work for me."

We begin hefting, grouting, plaster and sand from one room to another and from the first floor to the fourth. Just as I am hoping it's about to be over, Nikolai shows me the next room. Afterwards, clean-up time begins, an activity the workers take seriously. "This is important," Nikolai says. He answers my question "Why is this important?" while muttering a few curses at Sergei for taking his broom. "If not cleaning, plaster black." Mizrachi translates: "If dirt and too many grains of sand remain next to the plaster, this adheres to the wall, preventing the preparation of the wall from being smooth and clean."

The distribution of labor at the site is geographic in nature. The Romanians are the experts in plaster, the Chinese are responsible for plastering ceilings and installing floors, and Sergei the Ukrainian and Nikolai the Bulgarian are in charge of preparing the materials and keeping the site clean.

The hands of the clock have yet to hit 10 A.M., when Mizrachi begins his supervision rounds of the work site, to check everyone is working as they should. The first visit takes place on the seventh floor, with Vincenzo, Ural and Valentin the Romanian plaster "artists," as Mizrachi describes them.

First room: Ural plasters with Romanian pop music and the fragrance of strong black coffee in the background. Mizrachi calls him Casanova, because "that's the name that stuck to him. They tell me he comes on to all the girls." From the Romanian Casanova we went to Vincenzo, a smiling, personable fellow whose plastering is a work of art.

"As far as he's concerned, every wall is music," Mizrachi says. "They [the Romanians] are the best plasterers."

I decided to try the work for myself. When the wall wound up bereft of plaster, while the floor was piled high with the gray stuff, Mizrachi elected to forgo my training as a plasterer, lest it result in further damage to his project.

Chinese whispers

Two flights above, the Chinese are working on plastering the ceilings and installing flooring. Mizrachi walks about, examining the work, then calls out to one of the workers, who is called Sagur. Mizrachi shows Sagur the floor tiles, telling him to replace all the flooring near the walls, because "it's not close enough to the wall."

Sagur argues a bit, finally gives in and starts to replace the tiles. "They're always testing your limits," Mizrachi says. "If you compromise, they try to stretch the limits more and more. Therefore, you have to be firm from the start."

Asked the source of the name Sagur [which in Hebrew means closed], Mizrachi says, "His eyes are always closed, so the last foreman called him Sagur. Since then, everyone on the site calls him Sagur, and no one has any idea what his real name is. But he's okay with that, we're okay with that, and everybody's happy."

It appears the Chinese enjoy, in fact, love entertaining themselves, laughing among themselves at everyone, in Chinese.

When asked what they think about when they are working, they murmur something in Chinese. I ask if they miss their homes, they simply straighten their glance and hint that I should leave them in peace.

From the incomprehensible jokes of the Chinese I am delivered straight into the hands of Nikolai, who tells me he is a ceramicist from the Bulgarian city of Botevgrad, some 50 kilometers from the capital Sofia, that he is divorced, 46 years old, the father of a 16-year-old girl and that he is proud of his Czech girlfriend, who is 26. Nikolai, who has been in Israel for five years, lives in Rosh Ha'ayin. He has worked with Mizrachi since Mizrachi was foreman at the Denia Sibus construction company. Nikolai misses his home, especially his daughter. He has no warm words for his ex-wife. "She is floor-tile cold," he says.

The notion that people adjust to any situation and any place finds precise expression here.

According to Mizrachi and Nikolai, at the start of their path together, they communicated with a blend of sign language, English and a smattering of Hebrew words. Mizrachi confides "It was a little tough then, but the work got done regardless. Today, our communication is entirely in Hebrew, with me throwing in a word of English every now and then."

NIS 19.50 an hour

The foreign workers earn NIS 19.50 an hour, provided they meet the work goals set for plastering, flooring etc. per hour. The object of the contractor is to complete the work as quickly as possible within the "indices," the work goals or quotas that represent an incentive to faster workers, who can thus earn the same wage in fewer hours of work.

Today, Mizrachi's workers are meeting the indices and then some. But Mizrachi still has a problem. Nikolai and the Romanians are coming to the end of their legal stays in Israel. With this in mind, Mizrachi has begun training his Chinese workers to plaster walls. However, Mizrachi says, "It's not the same as with the Romanians. The Chinese aren't as good. But that's all there is."

Mizrachi adds that he would very much like to work with Israelis. "It's easier to communicate with them," he says. As a result of the imminent departure of Nikolai and the Romanians, Mizrachi has readied a crew of Israeli Arabs from Nazareth with whom he worked on his last job.

Most obvious on the building site was the fact that all the workers, Chinese, Romanian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian, speak to each other in Hebrew. The most prominent Hebrew words are: "Tazuz po [Move here], "Cakha lo" [Not like that] and "Tasim kan" [Put it here]. To the outside observer, the atmosphere on the site seems very good - everyone laughs, they enjoy themselves, they are in fine spirits and joke with each other, at times in a kind of Hebrew, at times in a kind of English. The curses, however, are spoken in Russian, which in the mouths of the Chinese sound like a type of hot soup."

Source: Tzally Grinberg. Workers of the world unite. Haaretz.com (21 November 2005) [FullText]

...and yet another opinion. by Rehovot writer:

"Lomedet o ovedet?""Do you work or study?"Down the block, next to the Tenure Tower (much to the residents' chagrin), three new apartment towers are going up [at the cross of Rehov Herzog and Hanassi Harishon Street]. The noise of the work begins each morning around six o'clock, and doesn't finish until after dark. Most of the workers are from southeast Asia; occasionally, as they sit on the curb, waiting for the van to pick them up after their shift, they give exhausted glances to passerby. Ha'aretz has an interesting look [see above] at a day in the life of one such group of workers... From the looks on their faces and the white construction dust on their clothes, I suspect that this is a far less cheery existence than the article paints it."

Source: Erin Israel. "Lomedet o ovedet?""Do you work or study?" Rehovot.blogspot.com (22 November 2005) [FullText]

Gazit Buildings to build 160 apartments near the Faculty of Agriculture, Rehovot branch of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Gazit Buildings has acquired land in the northern part of the city of Rehovot to construct 160 apartments. This building project is near the Faculty of Agronomy, Campus of the Hebrew University, which is located in Rehovot. Amire Rehovot will consist of two high rise buildings with apartments of 4.5 and 5 rooms as well as penthouses.

Source: Amirei Rehovot By Gazit Buildings. www.Nadlan.com (last viewed 14 November 2005)

Rehovot Resident Must Know: Exercise At Any Age Benefits Brain

"The “use it or lose it” mantra most often employed to fight the effects of mental aging now has a new twist. In animal studies, scientists are discovering the benefits of physical exercise on memory function. New studies show that exercise throughout life stimulates spatial memory, and that the benefits can be obtained even if the exercise begins at middle age. And for the first time, researchers have found that exercise may reduce harmful effects of sleep apnea, a common breathing condition.

Research by Karyn M. Frick, PhD, of Yale University, and her colleagues supports the idea that a lack of cognitive and physical stimulation may contribute to age-related memory loss and that physical activity reverses the effects. The study is significant to the field of neuroscience because it provides a more complete understanding of how environmental factors influence cognition in aging, according to Frick. “Approximately 80 percent of adults will experience some degree of memory loss as they age,” she says. “It is important to understand why and how different types of memory are affected by the aging process.”

The results also provide clinically important insights that may lead to the development of behavioral approaches to treat age-related memory decline, she says. “The value of such behavioral treatments over drug treatments is underscored by rising medication costs and the risk of drug interactions with the many medications taken by the elderly.”

The study examined young (3 months), middle-aged (15 months), and aged (21 months) female mice to identify the types of memory that are improved by different forms of environmental enrichment and to establish whether these improvements vary by age. Mice received 24-hour exposure to cognitively stimulating toys alone, running wheels alone, or both toys and running wheels for four weeks prior to behavioral testing and then throughout testing.

These mice were compared to non-enriched animals. Spatial memory was tested in the Morris water maze. In this task, a mouse was placed in a large circular tank of water and made to swim until it found an invisible escape platform submerged just underneath the surface of the water. Without visual cues from the platform, the mice must navigate using a spatial map of the room that they create using landmark cues in the maze room in order to locate the escape platform.

Results indicate that spatial memory in the Morris water maze became progressively worse with age. In general, all enrichment treatments improved spatial memory, although the wheels alone and wheels-and-toys conditions were the most effective, especially in middle-aged mice. In aged mice, the wheels-and-toys treatment most consistently improved spatial memory. In the object recognition task, all treatments improved memory in young mice but did not affect memory in older mice.

As a next step, researchers plan to determine how the chemistry and structure of the brain is affected by different forms of environmental enrichment. “Our ultimate goal in this line of research,” says Frick, “is to determine the effects of enrichment on brain and behavior. If enrichment is shown to maintain cognitive and brain functions, it will serve as a successful alternative to drug treatments for the growing aging population.”

Another study by David S. Albeck, PhD, of the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, and his colleague found that rats that were allowed access to a running wheel for a six-month period performed significantly better when solving a maze than rats the same age that had no access to a running wheel but lived in standard rat laboratory housing conditions before testing.

“These findings are new and interesting,” says Albeck, “because they confirm what has been suggested in other studies on humans: that increased voluntary physical activity, compared to a sedentary lifestyle, has beneficial effects on cognition.”

To investigate whether or not long-term voluntary running, without other aspects of an enriched environment can improve Morris maze performance, the rats in Albeck’s study were allowed access to a running wheel starting at middle age and then continuously allowed access until they became elderly, at which time their memory was then tested. The rats were tested in four trials a day for 10 consecutive days. On the second and fourth days, the exercised rats reached the hidden platform significantly faster than the controls. Performance on days 1, 3, and 5–10 were not statistically different between the two groups. Swim speed did not significantly differ between the groups, except for the first day, in which the sedentary controls swam faster than the exercise group.

These findings suggest that long-term voluntary exercise produces beneficial effects on memory and that the exercise program does not have to begin while the animal is young,” says Albeck.

Other studies by Barry W. Row, PhD, of the University of Louisville, and his colleagues suggest that exercise may also benefit people suffering from sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is an increasingly common breathing disorder characterized by brief periods of interrupted breathing during sleep that induces significant cognitive and cardiovascular consequences in people. “Our studies represent the first evidence that mild physical activity reduces the oxidative stress associated with intermittent hypoxia (brief periods of low oxygen in the blood) from sleep apnea,” says Row.

Row’s laboratory has used a recently developed animal model to investigate the effects of exposure intermittent hypoxia on cognitive function by replicating the breathing patterns seen during sleep in patients. Studies have shown that exposure to intermittent hypoxia is associated with learning deficits in rodents and that these deficits are associated with injury in regions of the brain such as the hippocampus, which are important for learning and memory. Additionally, reports in the literature, as well as work by Row and other investigators at the University of Louisville, have indicated that chronic exposure to such brief periods of low oxygen are associated with substantial oxidative stress, inflammation, and neurodegeneration in the brains of rodents and that the increased oxidative stress and inflammation, at least in part, underlie much of the adverse consequences linked to intermittent hypoxia.

Although specific surgical therapies are often used to treat sleep apnea, says Row, his latest study shows that non-specific behavioral therapies can also be an important part of a treatment regimen, especially in mild to moderate cases. He points to weight loss, which has been shown to decrease the number of breathing pauses in obese patients with sleep apnea, and to increased physical activity, which has been shown to enhance levels of growth factors and is protective in models of neuronal injury and degeneration which are thought to share similar mechanisms with Row’s model.

“In the study,” says Row, “we found that moderate daily physical activity significantly attenuates the learning deficits and increased oxidative stress associated with exposure to brief repeated periods of low oxygen during sleep in rodents.”

Row and his colleagues plan to look next at the mechanisms whereby physical activity reduces the oxidative stress associated with intermittent hypoxia, such as through increased activity of natural anti-oxidant mechanisms, as well as the effect of physical activity on functional recovery after exposure to such brief periods of low oxygen concentrations."

Source: STUDIES REVEAL EXERCISE, EVEN STARTED IN MIDDLE AGE, BENEFITS THE BRAIN. Society for Neuroscience Annual meeting 2005, Washington, DC. NR-11-05 (14 November 2005) [FullText]

Rehovot Culture: Weizmann Wix Broadway Musical Show

By Erin israel

"One should not go to a concert featuring Beethoven and come back humming "Copacabana."

Or, at least, one should not admit it. But in a program featuring the world premiere of a modern piece sandwiched in between works by Stravinsky and Beethoven, all bets are off. Why must modern music sound like someone tuning a radio at high speed, or like rush hour? It plays havoc with the musical parts of my brain.

Concert in honor of Maestro Riccardo Muti Prize for Young Conductors
Established by the late Lord Weinstock and the Weizmann Institute of Science
Thursday, November 17 - 20:00, Wix Auditorium, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot
The Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance Chamber OrchestraConductor and prize winner: Roy OppenheimProgram:I. Stravinsky – Suites 1 & 2 for chamber orchestraN. Vikinsky – Concerto for accordion and string OrchestraWorld premiere dedicated to Sascha ArgovIntervalL.V. Beethoven – 4th SymphonyAll WIS personnel invited – Entrance free

(Source: Weizmann Institute Calendar of Events)

Thursday night's free concert featured a young orchestra from Jerusalem. Before the modern piece commenced, a girl with an accordion walked onstage, and sat down in the prestigious soloist seat to the conductor's left. As someone with a soft spot for accordions, I waited for an Italian melody or a tango.

It never arrived. The girl with the accordion had been drafted into a modern (?) or postmodern (?) display of noise. J. and I would have gnashed our teeth, along with a majority of the audience, perhaps, except for the fact that Israelis have impeccable Concert Manners. No one ever accidentally applauds between movements. No one's cell phone goes off. Everyone who is not a teenager is dressed to the nines. And most audiences give standing ovations--not once, but twice.

So the thought of even grimacing at the whirl of discordant noises (which made Schoenberg sound like Bach) was out of the question. Like the others, we watched and listened, and then applauded wildly. Then we went home and turned on an Astor Piazzola tango album as an antidote.

However, I am not entirely against music that leaps out of the mainstream. Walking down the alley between Ahad Ha'am and Herzl Street on Thursday afternoon, I heard something I've never heard, here. It sounded like wind chimes, but then I saw people gathered around a man wearing sunglasses, who appeared to be playing a Weber barbeque lid. He was sitting on the edge of a concrete planter, and in front of him were his wares: cds and brochures identifying him as the "PANTAMAN."

Despite the ideas for a new comic-book hero that his name inspired, Pantaman was playing some seriously good music.

Pantaman's instrument really did look like two Weber lids fused together, though, creating two concave surfaces with a ring of dimples (without the wooden Weber handles). The instrument sat in Pantaman's lap, and he played it like a drum, with his hands. It sounded like a softer version of steel drums.

Pantaman, as far as I can tell, represents a new face in Rehovot's street music, which is usually limited to Friday morning's street-corner musicians: two pairs of elderly gentlemen who play the accordion and violin, and the trumpet and the accordion, respectively. These musicians anchor Herzl Street with a variety of all traditional tunes from Eastern Europe; Pantaman, with his vaguely Carribean sound, is off in a breezy sidestreet."

Source: Erin Israel. "Ka-MAH ze o-LEH ma-KOM bah-oo-LAM?" "How much is an orchestra seat?" Rehovot.Blogspot.com [FullText]

New Method To Pay for Parking In Rehovot To Be Implemented Soon

Cellupark offers mobile phone-based parking service: The service covers Hadera, Eilat, Rehovot, Bat Yam, Givat Shmuel, Tiberias, Nazareth, and other cities.

Cellupark Technologies will market its new Cellu-Park city parking service through the Israel Postal Authority.
Cellu-Park uses advanced voice recognition software over mobile telephone to pay for parking. Payment for the service is carried out via the subscriber’s credit card. Subscriber’s can monitor payments and parking on Cellupark’s website.

The new service began a year ago as a pilot in Hadera, and was recently expanded to Eilat, Rehovot, Bat Yam, Givat Shmuel, Tiberias, Nazareth, and other cities. The company plans to operate the service in other major Israeli cities. Cellu-Park has about 2,000 subscribers."

Source: www.Globes.co.il (10 November 2005) [FullText]

Real Estate of Rehovot Region: Apartments Sold and Rented

Second-hand apartments sold

Rishon LeZion: A 230-sq.m. six-room house on a 300-sq.m. lot on Hazaz St. was sold for $386,000, compared with an asking price of $425,000. A 160-sq.m. six-room house on a 250-sq.m. lot on Brit Yosef St. was sold for $275,000, compared with an asking price of $295,000. A 100-sq.m. four-room apartment on Hanagid St. was sold for $175,000. An 85-sq.m. three-room apartment on Harav Goren St. was sold for $185,000 (Realty Executives).

Ramat Gan: A 115-sq.m. rooftop apartment in the Nahalat Ganim neighborhood was sold for $270,000 (Anglo-Saxon).

Nes Ziona: A three-room apartment in need of renovation on Hahistadrut St. was sold for $82,000 (Anglo-Saxon)...

Rehovot: A 100-sq.m. four-room apartment in need of renovation in the town center was sold for $131,000 (Diur Plus).

Rentals

Rishon LeZion: A four-room apartment on Sde Nahum St. was leased for $750 a month (Realty Executives).

Nes Ziona: A four-room apartment in Lev Hamoshava was leased for $640 a month. A 175-sq.m. four-and-a-half-room house with a basement and two parking spaces on Savion St. was leased for $965 a month (Anglo-Saxon)...

Rehovot: A four-room apartment on Hacarmel St. was leased for $675 a month. A 160-sq.m. five-room penthouse on Habustan St. was leased for $600 a month (Diur Plus)..."

Source: Guy Yamin. Apartments sold and rented. www.Globes.co.il (13 November 2005) [FullText]

To submit your Rehovot Real Estate Note, click here .

Researchers from Rehovot to Present Los Angeles Stem Cell Symposium

"Experts in stem cell research and technology from Israel and Southern California will present a symposium on advances in stem cell biology and therapeutics Nov. 16 and 17 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Wednesday’s sessions are devoted to academic topics while Thursday’s program focuses on corporate participation and investment opportunities that seek to translate research findings into new therapies.

Researchers and investors in Israel are at the forefront of stem cell science, in part because Jewish traditions related to the beginning of life differ from beliefs held by some Christians and others, permitting work with embryonic stem cells that has been the subject of ongoing debate in the United States and elsewhere.

Three of Israel’s prominent stem cell scientists will open Wednesday’s sessions. Joseph Itskovitz-Eldor, M.D., of Rambam Medical Center at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, will present “The Promise of Human Embryonic Stem Cells,” beginning at 9 a.m. He was among the team that first isolated stem cells from human embryos in 1998. He will be followed by his Technion colleague Lior Gepstein, M.D., Ph.D., who will describe the use of stem cells in the regeneration of heart muscle cells. Gepstein and Itskovitz-Eldor were the first to grow the precursors of heart cells from embryonic stem cells.

Developmental geneticist Nissim Benvenisty, M.D., Ph.D., of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, credited with making a number of discoveries and innovations in the development and modification of stem cells, will present a session on human embryonic stem cells in medical and genetic research. Benvenisty was one of the symposium’s organizers, along with David Meyer, Ph.D., vice president of Research and Scientific Affairs at Cedars-Sinai.

Wednesday’s academic sessions also include:

? “Embryonic Stem Cell Research: Exploring the Controversy,” presented by Laurie Zoloth, Ph.D., professor of Medical Ethics and Humanities, and of Religion, at Northwestern University in Chicago. Director of Bioethics for Northwestern’s Center for Genetic Medicine, Zoloth is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Society for Stem Cell Research and is Chair of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Bioethics Advisory Board.

? “Funding Stem Cell Research in the United States,” presented by Arlene Chiu, Ph.D., director of Scientific Programs and Review of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). A developmental neurobiologist, Chiu is associate director of the Office of Research Administration of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). CIRM was established in 2004 with the passage of Proposition 71, the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, responsible for disbursing funds to California universities and research institutions.

? “Adult Stem Cell Transplantation for Treatment of Malignant and Non-malignant Disorders and for Tissue Repair,” presented by Shimon Slavin, M.D., a specialist in internal medicine, immunology/rheumatology, immunology/allergy, and bone marrow transplantation at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem. Slavin conducts extensive research in immune system regulation, bone marrow transplantation, gene therapy, and bone marrow stem cells.

? “Stem Cells and Prostate Cancer,” presented by Owen N. Witte, M.D., professor of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has received awards for his contributions in basic cancer research. Among his research interests are the development of the immune response and growth regulation mechanisms related to leukemias and metastasis of certain cancers to the bone marrow.

? “Rarely Pure and Never Simple: Paradigms from the Bone Marrow,” presented by Gay M. Crooks, M.D., a member of the Gene, Immunology and Stem Cell Therapy Research Program at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and an associate professor of pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. For more than 10 years, Crooks has led a team studying stem cells in bone marrow and cord blood. In the past few years, the researchers have studied the unexpected potential of bone marrow to form the tissues of the pancreas – research that may impact such diseases as diabetes and cystic fibrosis.

? “Immune Cells and Adult Stem Cells Interact Synergistically to Renew Brain Cells and Rehabilitate Cognitive Functions in Dementias and Other Neurodegenerative Conditions,” presented by Michal Schwartz, Ph.D., professor of Neuroimmunology at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel [and the founder of based in Rehovot BioTech firm]. Among subjects being studied in Schwartz’s research laboratory are vaccination for glaucoma, peptides to be used in post-traumatic vaccination for spinal cord injury, the mechanism of protective autoimmunity at the immunological, molecular and cellular levels, and the therapeutic approach of protective autoimmunity to neurological disorders.

? “The Two Faces of Neural Stem Cells: Cancer Cause or Cancer Cure?” presented by neurosurgeon John S. Yu, M.D. co-director of the Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program at Cedars-Sinai’s Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute. Yu leads research of immune and gene therapies as well as bone marrow-derived neural stem cells in the treatment of malignant brain tumors. Yu and his colleagues have isolated “cancer stem cells” from tumors. These stem cells share the multi-potent and self-renewing properties of normal stem cells but instead of producing healthy cells, they propagate cancer cells in their own image.

? “Using Gene Therapy to Manipulate the Fate of Stem Cells,” presented by Pedro Lowenstein, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Board of Governors Gene Therapeutics Research Institute at Cedars-Sinai. Internationally recognized for breakthroughs in experimental gene therapeutics, Lowenstein is a member of the education committee of the European Society of Gene Therapy and the Neurological Diseases Gene Therapy Committee of the American Society of Gene Therapy. He also serves in a study section of the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke.

Thursday’s Corporate Sessions will begin at 8:30 a.m. with a keynote address by Alan Colman of ES Cell International titled “Stem Cells: From Bench to Bedside to Bank.” ES Cell International Pte. Ltd. of Singapore and Melbourne, Australia, holds the rights to the embryonic stem cell lines that have been approved for research in the United States. Scientists in this country have access to the cell lines through an arrangement between ES Cell International and the National Institutes of Health.

Representatives from biotechnology laboratories in Israel will speak on these topics:

* Neuronal Differentiation from Cultured Embryonic and Adult Stem Cells
* Immune-based Therapies for Spinal Cord Injury and Stroke
* Autologous Transplantation of Bone Marrow Stem Cells for Parkinson’s Disease Therapy
* Restoring Joint Function with Growth Factor Directed Stem Cells
* Cell Grafts Expressing Ion Channels for the Treatment of Cardiac Arrhythmias & Neurological Disorders
* From Embryonic Stem Cells to Cell Therapy and Beyond
* Towards a Human Embryonic Stem Cell-Based Cure for Parkinson’s Disease

Although the symposium is open to the public, the highly scientific nature of the presentations makes it more suitable for the scientific community and those who may be interested in funding stem cell research..."

Source: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Newswise (14 November 2005) [FullText]

"They are spending millions of dollars to make people closer to Christianity," says Kook, Rehovot Chief Rabbi and Member of a Rabbinical Dynasty

"Prominent Israeli rabbis are for the first time speaking out against Israel's profitable alliance with evangelical Christians in the United States who have funneled tens of millions of dollars to the Jewish state.

The rabbis fear the Christians' real intent is to convert Jews, their aides said Monday. Others are concerned about the evangelicals' support for Israel's extreme right-wing, opposing any compromise with the Palestinians.

The dispute touches on an increasingly sensitive issue in Israel: the country's dependence, both economically and politically, on conservative American Christians.

Besides contributing tidy sums to projects in Israel, some evangelical Christians have lobbied in support of the Israeli government in Washington.

Troubling to Israelis is the fact that one influential group of evangelicals believes in a final, apocalyptic battle between good and evil in which Jesus returns and Jews either accept him or perish a vision that causes obvious discomfort among Jews.

``I'm worried as a Jew,'' said Mina Fenton, a Jerusalem City Council member from an Orthodox Jewish party, who has led opposition to the evangelical groups. ``I don't want my people to be assassinated, sacrificed, killed or slaughtered because of their beliefs.''

Concern has been bubbling under the surface for some time, and although leading rabbis had stayed in the background, their worries emerged Monday in the Israeli media.

The focus of the latest criticism has been the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, a Chicago-based group that has raised tens of millions of dollars from Christian supporters of Israel.

Two former chief rabbis of Israel, Avraham Shapira and Mordechai Eliahu, recently approved a religious ruling urging followers not to accept money from the group.

The ruling, issued by Shapira in March and later signed by Eliahu, accused the fellowship of accepting money from groups involved in ``missionary activity.''

``I don't see any permission to receive funds that aid in the infiltration of the work of strangers under the false impression of aid to the needy,'' the letter said.

Rabbi Simcha Hacohen Kook, another critic of the fellowship, said he fears the donors are trying to exploit Israel's most vulnerable people. ``Those who don't have money don't ask questions,'' he said.

``They are spending millions of dollars to make people closer to Christianity,'' said Kook, chief rabbi of the city of Rehovot and member of a rabbinical dynasty. ``The situation is very serious.''

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, brushed off the criticism as complaints by a tiny minority.

He said the group has raised $100 million, including $20 million last year alone, to assist Israel's poor, elderly and new immigrants, as well as impoverished Jewish communities in the former Soviet Union. The group sponsors projects in 85 Israeli towns and cities, he said.

Eckstein, an Orthodox rabbi, also noted that he has served as an adviser to Israeli prime ministers and sits on the boards of the Jewish Agency and Joint Distribution Committee, influential groups that serve Jewish communities abroad.

Although many of the thousands of donors to his group may hope to convert Jews, Eckstein said, ``we just don't allow any kind of missionary activity.''

He said his donors are motivated by other factors, including the Jews' connection to the biblical Land of Israel and feelings of guilt over anti-Semitism.

``Judaism does not focus so much on motivations as much as deeds,'' he said. ``In Judaism, the actions speak louder than words, and certainly louder than motivations.''

He also claimed that Eliahu has received funding from the fellowship in the past and has signaled in recent days that he would continue to allow his supporters to accept the funds.

People close to Eliahu said the rabbi remains opposed to the group. Eliahu's spokesman did not return repeated messages left Monday.

Maintaining good relations with American evangelicals is important to Israel's government. Evangelicals make up a powerful base of support for President Bush and enjoy close ties with the White House.

But many evangelical groups have shown a growing interest in Israeli politics, adopting views considered extreme in Israel.

The groups opposed the U.S.-backed ``road map'' peace plan when it was launched last year, because it would lead to Israeli concessions, and they opposed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's attempts to uproot Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank.

Hundreds of evangelical churches offer regular donations to Jewish settlements for school equipment, playgrounds, medical supplies and bulletproof buses.

Rabbi David Rosen, international director of inter-religious affairs in the American Jewish Committee's Jerusalem office, said this political activity is a larger concern than charitable work.

``There's support for some of the most extreme political positions in Israeli society,'' Rosen said. ``That I find far more disturbing than any suggestion that there could be missionary activity.'"

Source: Josef Federman. Rabbis express unprecedented criticism of American evangelical support for Israel. Yurica Report, AP (10 May 2004) [FullText]

The Taste of Shopping At Rehovot's Center Supersol Supermarket

By Erin Israel

"Since the recent increase in rhetoric between the good guys and the bad guys, I decided to stop shopping in the giant market in "American City" (MyRehovot, 18 Oct 2005), the Hebrew name for the mall about a forty-minute walk away on Derech Yavne. It just seems too...obvious.

So I trudged back to the supermarket on Herzl where customer service is a fantasy, long lines are standard, and, happily--at the moment--the walls are plastered with "MADE IN THE U.S.A.!" posters sporting beaming, diverse Americans wrapped in the flag. Ever since we returned, this chain has been running a red, white, and blue campaign touting all sorts of specials on "American" items such as: Oreos...(and the generic Israeli equivalent, Neros), "Gourmet Chef" tv dinners, and candy bars.

Whenever I resort to using English in the store to ask for something, I get a sour look. So I was delighted to see the wholehearted embrace of American culture, and I practically danced around the store. Sadly, the embrace is limited to a discount on goods, and does not constitute perestroika on behalf of the deli employees.

After bagging my stuff in the checkout lane, the cashier handed me a receipt and a form. "Ma ze?" "What's this?" I asked (although I really wanted to say, You overcharged me by twelve shekels for almonds because I can't speak enough Hebrew to put up a fight about it.)

"Ze tacharut," the cashier replied, and waved at me to go away.

At the manager's desk, someone was paging God. "Ala, bevakasha, le coupa," droned the manager into the microphone. "Ala, please, to the front."

"I think he's busy," I said.

The manager turned her gaze on me.

"Be anglit?" I asked. She shrugged. "A little," she replied.

I handed her the form. "What is this for, please?"

"This is a contest," the manager explained. "You can win a trip." She reached over the counter and pointed to a red, white, and blue striped box--the upright kind you drop sweepstakes forms into--sitting just below the manager's lookout.

"Oh!" I said. "Be autsod habrit?" To the U.S.?

"Ken," Yes, the manager replied wearily, sensing where this was heading.

"Why, I would LOVE to go to the U.S.!" I cried. "After all, I'm American!" I think she rolled her eyes, here. "Where do I sign?"

I jotted down my name and telephone number, much to the manager's chagrin, but there were other categories, which I couldn't read. The manager beckoned over another shopper, a woman with bobbed hair who looked familiar. She nodded as the manager explained my delirium.

"Yes," she turned to me and said in a lilting British accent. "This is for a contest, to anywhere abroad. They just need your address and other information--" She broke off, here, and indignantly adjusted her glasses, which hung on a thin beaded cord, and spoke to the manager.

"Rak le America?" the British woman said, outraged. "But it's only to America!" she told me. "Why would I want to go to America?!" She gathered up her bags and huffed out of the store. Dear me. Hadn't she heard about the royal visit?

The manager crossed her arms and stood on her podium, above me, waiting.

I finished the form, folded it, and stuffed it in the box with a grin. "Of course," I confided to her, "they're not going to let me win, ANYWAY, so don't worry."

Next time I went in, I was handed another form. In keeping with its subject, this sweepstakes operated on a fundamental red, white, and blue value: vote early and vote often"

Source: Erin Israel. "Ma-TIE taf-LEEG ha-o-nee-YAH ha-ba-AH?" "When does the next boat leave?" (13 November 2005) [FullText]

Rehovot High Tech: D-Pharm Announces the Recommendation of an Independent Board to Continue drug Study in Acute Stroke Patients

"REHOVOT, Israel (8 November 2005) D-Pharm announced today encouraging interim results from the ongoing Phase II study of its neuroprotective agent DP-b99 in acute stroke patients. DP-b99 is a unique neuroprotective drug that addresses the array of damaging processes occurring in the brains of stroke patients.

The Safety Monitoring Board, which includes experts in neurology, cardiology and clinical pharmacology, reviewed the safety data of the first 62 subjects enrolled into the study, and has recommended the study continue in its present design.

"Careful safety monitoring is of vital importance in the development of new stroke medications. The decision of the Board is an encouraging step in the advancement of this study" said Dr Gilad Rosenberg, D-Pharm's VP, Research and Clinical Development.

The interim analysis trial data was blinded and the patients were split into groups A or B without disclosure of active drug or placebo designation. Thirty-one subjects were in each group. Both groups were comparable for most baseline characteristics, including gender, age, body mass index and mean NIH Stroke Scale score. The Board evaluated clinical, laboratory and electrocardiographic data. The rate, nature and distribution of adverse events were similar in both groups.

This favorable judgment confirms the results of D-Pharm's previous DP-b99 Phase IIa study in stroke, in which the safety profile of DP-b99 did not significantly differ from that of placebo.

Alex Kozak, Chief Executive of D-Pharm, said: "In the last two decades a very high proportion of failures in stroke trials have been due to safety issues. Our goal is to develop an effective drug to protect brain cells after stroke that causes no further harm to patients. With today's decision, DP-b99 has passed an important juncture of its clinical development."

The current Phase II study aims to recruit 150 acute stroke patients in more than 20 centers in Germany and Israel. The study results are expected to be available in the summer of 2006.

DP-b99 is administered intravenously over 4 days with the first administration up to 9 hours following stroke onset. The patient group is stratified into those treated within six hours and within nine hours following stroke onset. D-Pharm expects this study to clearly define the optimal therapeutic window for DP-b99.

Stroke is the leading cause of neurological disability worldwide and reflects a considerable unmet need in effective acute stroke therapy, which DP-b99 aims to address.

DP-b99

DP-b99 is a discovery product, rationally designed using D-Pharm's proprietary technology, Membrane Active Chelators (MAC). Considerable evidence suggests that redistribution of metal ions and disturbances in metal ion homeostasis are key components in the cascade of events underlying cell damage in stroke. In the first hours post-stroke ion disturbances cause excitatory cell damage and in the days and weeks following they contribute to edema, inflammation and cell death. D-Pharm is developing a novel approach to neuroprotection based on selective modulation of calcium, zinc, copper and iron homeostasis in the vicinity of cell membranes.

In earlier Phase I and II clinical trials DP-b99 was proven to be safe both in healthy young and elderly volunteers and in stroke patients. Efficacy evaluation in Phase IIa demonstrated noteworthy improvements in clinical stroke outcome assessed with the NIH Stroke Scale (NIHSS) 2, 7 and 30 days after stroke in patients treated with DP-b99 within 12 hours of the onset of stroke symptoms.

About D-Pharm Ltd.

D-Pharm (www.dpharm.com) is a biopharmaceutical company pioneering the development of lipid-like therapeutics and has generated a rich product pipeline from its drug targeting and discovery technologies, Regulated Activation of Prodrugs (D-RAPTM) and Membrane Active Chelators (MAC). These technologies control drug activity via built-in 'switch-on/switch-off' mechanisms. Currently, the company's business strategy is to continue to develop DP-b99 through to completion of Phase II. In addition to DP-b99 D-Pharm's pipeline includes DP-VPA, a new chemical entity that is a targeted modification of valproic acid for epilepsy, bipolar disorder treatment and migraine prophylaxis. DP-VPA is currently in an advanced stage of a clinical Phase II program. In preclinical development is DP-109, an oral, disease-modifying therapy for Alzheimer's disease. DP-109 has demonstrated impressive efficacy in a transgenic mice model of Alzheimer's disease. At an earlier developmental stage is DP-388 for pancreatic cancer. D-Pharm is currently seeking development partners for DP-VPA and its other pipeline products. For further information visit our web site: www.dpharm.com

For further information please contact: Mary Clark, Capital MS&L, mary.clark@capitalmsl.com ; Andrea Klainer, Corporate Secretary, D-Pharm Ltd. (972-8) 938-5100, fax: (972-8) 930-0795, aklainer@dpharm.com ; Tami Horovitz, PhD. (972-8) 938-5100, tami@dpharm.com .

Source: D-Pharm Announces the Recommendation of an Independent Safety Monitoring Board to Continue the Phase II Study of DP-b99 in Acute Stroke Patients. PRNewswire (8 November 2005) [FullText]

Is Weizmann Institute the Best International Placeto Work for Academics?

According to the US-based The Scientist magazine, "The Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, comes out on top of our annual survey for the best academic institutions to work outside of the United States. The strength of the institution, says president Ilan Chet, is collaboration between Weizmann's five main faculties: mathematics and computer science, biology, biochemistry, chemistry, and physics.

The systems biology and biological physics programs, for example, combine many of these fields, as does the DNA-based nanocomputers recently developed there. And the Institute gives researchers the freedom to explore these options, in part by minimizing teaching obligations. "We have only graduate students, so we teach only several hours a year," Rony Seger, a professor in the biological regulation department, writes in an E-mail.

The Institute also encourages its members to collaborate outside its bounds, according to Seger. "We receive each year a very generous traveling fund," he writes. "So we (and our students) have no problem staying in touch with laboratories in the US or in Europe, and to attend conferences."

When they are not abroad, says Chet, the campus setting is a major factor in making Weizmann a great place to work for many of its 2,100 scientists. "It's a very quite and peaceful environment," he says. Seger agrees, calling the campus "one of the nicest gardens in Israel." The Institute provides members with housing for six years until tenure, then three more following tenure. In their off time, they can attend the student theater or visit the recreation center, which according to Seger has a nice swimmingpool and is cheap to join.

One area in which the Institute could improve is the number of lab personnel, says Seger. "We need more lab technicians or research assistant professors that can help in the maintenance and day to day management of the laboratories," he writes. But according to Chet, what is most important is the quality of the people at Weizmann..."

"...The respondents to The Scientist's third annual Best Places to Work in Academia survey conveyed a clear message: The people that they work with, the resources at their disposal, and their opportunities for career advancement are the leading factors in determining their satisfaction with their work environment. Researchers from across the United States and abroad ­ more than 2,600 in all ­ rated survey questions relating to peers, research resources, and tenure as the most important, and the institutions that earned high marks in those categories came out on top in this year's rankings."

The survey clearly could not envision many of the issues of specific Weizmann relevance, such as the Institute non-efficiency in bed distribution for visitors (see MyRehovot 10 Nov. 2005), administrative prohibition to apply for certain grants and many other instances of corruption (see MyRehovot/ru of 25 May 2005 and 4 June 2005). These questions could well delete Rehovot major academic center from the 2005 list of Best International Places to Work in Academia.

Source: Maria W. Anderson, Ishani Ganguli. Biobusiness: Best Places to Work in Academia, 2005. Find out whether your institution ranked among the best in The Scientist's annual survey. The Scientist Vol.19(21): 39 (7 November 2005) [FullText].

Rehovot Researchers Work to Slow Cognition Loss Among Seniors

"Research being conducted at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot may lead to a therapeutic vaccine to stop degeneration of aging or diseased brains, says Michal Schwartz, professor of neuroimmunology at the facility.

Schwartz presented the results of her research to the national annual meeting of the Canadian Society for the Weizmann Institute of Science, held last month at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Toronto.

She said that when she began her study on slowing down the loss of cognition and memory that can occur in aging, “I was told to forget about it – that it would ruin my reputation.”

Gradually, however, her work has become recognized as groundbreaking, she said. The key lies in the functioning of the immune and auto-immune systems, Schwartz said. The immune system, she explained, protects the body against potential dangers such as bacteria, viruses, and microorganisms, while the autoimmune system, if it’s working properly, recognizes the body’s own tissues and ensures that they are not compromised. If things are not working properly, the immune system will attack the body’s own elements, leading to such diseases as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes.

The thinking used to be, Schwartz said, that autoimmune cells were part of the pathology of illness, and therefore must be destroyed wherever they were found. Through her research into spinal cord injury and brain trauma, however, she discovered that autoimmune cells are needed to fight injury.

For instance, there are 10 million nerves in the spine, and not all of them are usually injured at the same time. Without the appropriate measures, Schwartz said, the non-injured cells will degenerate along with the damaged ones. But if it’s made possible, healthy cells will attach themselves to neighbouring nerve fibres and, by doing so, stop the process of degeneration.

It also used to be believed that there are a fixed number of nerve cells and that some are lost as a person ages. If some of the remaining cells are injured, it was thought, there was no way to make new ones. Schwartz and her team at Weizmann have found, however, that by activating the autoimmune system, rather than destroying it, they can stop the progression of diseases.

The idea, she said, is to enlist the aid of stem cells in the brain that can be utilized for this purpose. Researchers are still working on finding a drug that will help do this. and current studies are focusing on Copaxone, a drug usually used for multiple sclerosis, Schwartz said. She stressed that the vaccine she is working on won’t prevent a disease from occurring, but will only prevent further damage. The annual meeting was dedicated to the memory of Arthur Konviser, a past president of the Canadian Society for the Weizmann Institute who died recently."

Source: Leila Speisman. Researcher works to slow cognition loss among seniors. Canadian Jewish News (10 November 2005) [FullText]

Rehovot Bed Saga: Weizmann Wonder Wander

By Erin Israel

"Picture, if you will, your mattress. In fact, go take a good look at it. Does it have springs? Is it pleasantly squishy when you sit on it? Does it have (sniffle) a quilted top layer? Would flipping it require the better part of a morning (and a stiff drink)?

Then I envy you.

One morning in May, the phone rang shortly after breakfast with a call from the Housing Officer.

"How old are your beds?" she asked.

"I beg your pardon?" I said.

"Your beds. What numbers are they?"

"Our beds are numbered?" I asked, gazing into my empty coffee cup. It was not yet nine o'clock in the morning. "How fascinating."

I thought I heard her groan. "Well, go look, please," Olga demanded.

A brief search revealed that our beds were not numbered, but that we had enough dust under there to land Martha in therapy for years. I dutifully returned to the phone to report some, but not all, of this.

"They aren't numbered," I said.

"Ohhh..." said Olga with a ruminative sigh. "That means you have old beds."

"Really?" Our beds were older than numbers. How about that. "And?"

"We will replace them. Soon." Then Olga hung up. I went into the bedroom to glare at the beds.

"You're not long for this world," I told them. They lay there stiffly and ignored me.

Picture, if you will, a hard futon. Now imagine it sliced horizontally in half and lopped into four feet by six and a half feet dimensions. Two of these "mattresses" comprise our bed. When we moved here, for weeks, I dreamed that I was camping. That's how hard they are.

In essence, the "mattresses" are no more than Very Ancient Foam, with a thin layer of harder, sturdier foam on either side. They may indeed be older than most things on the planet, and certainly most things known to mankind. However, it could be worse: one professor told us that, when he stayed in our apartment complex in the 70's, he slept on a straw mattress.

For the last five months, I've asked the Housing Officer when the beds would be replaced. First, it appeared that the looming Disengagement was too intense a subject of discussion for anyone to merit reflecting on such mundane matters as new beds. "When all that dies down," she told me, "come back."

After Disengagement, I went back (not wearing orange, the anti-disengagement color, of course). Now the complex was beginning to build a fence, and, on that day, workers were pouring concrete near the Housing Officer's office. She shook her head sadly. "What can I do? Come back when this mess is over."

This week, I went back, on a routine laundry-token run. I inquired hopefully about the beds, since there was no evidence of any concrete pouring or socio-political upheaval taking place near the office.

Olga leaned back in her chair. "Well, you know about the problem with the management... We will deal with the beds after that dies down." She looked at me intently. "You know, it's a complex process: we must find an empty apartment that we can switch the new beds out of, and switch yours into."

"You mean there are empty apartments with new beds in them?" I asked. "Right now?"

"Yes," she sighed. "And it's a matter of rearranging, and reorganizing, and... Very difficult. In a week, after everything dies down, come back, and we'll see."

I gritted my teeth, picked up my bag, and headed home, where I shut the bedroom door so I couldn't see the beds.

Then it occurred to me that perhaps I have been going about this the wrong way, all along. In a country where a cartel runs the banks and the Prime Minister's son has been convicted in a graft scheme, bribery is an obvious solution; indeed, a lifestyle! But a tiny bottle of Austrian liqueur for Olga, when we returned from Europe in July, was clearly insufficient, and -- given without cynicism -- ineffective. Surely, if I'd baked a cake for Olga way back in May, we would have new beds by now.

Is this how bribes work? All I have to do is bake something? I shall commence the Betty Crocker for Beds campaign next week, then.

In the meantime, send me your best cake recipe."

Source: Erin Israel. "A-va-KAYSH luh-da-BAYR eem ha-muh-na-HAYL." "I want to speak to the manager." (7 November 2005) [FullText]

Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz: A Story of Rehovot Boy, The Son of Holocaust Survivors

"WINNIPEG — What a week Sam Katz was having. A few days after the Winnipeg Free Press published a story suggesting the city’s mayor may have been involved in a conflict of interest, a local polling company reported Katz’s popularity was at near record levels.

Granted, the polling preceded news of the alleged conflict, but at 76 per cent, His Worship’s approval rating would have to drop mightily to affect his chances of re-election next year.

Since assuming the mayor’s mantle in a byelection in June 2004, Katz has rankled his left-leaning opponents on city council and perturbed those who oppose his pro-development agenda.

But the people of River City, where the Red and Assiniboine rivers meet, seem to have embraced Katz and his platform wholeheartedly.

Prior to release of the polling results, Katz had embarked on a cost-cutting, pro-business program of privatizing garbage collection in parts of the city (saving $2.7 million per year), establishing a red tape commission to study ways of reducing bureaucracy, modifying an expensive plan for rapid transit and lobbying for federal gas tax money to be spent on improving roads – a position that polls show is popular among Winnipeggers.

On other issues, the mayor has elicited vocal opposition. His controversial plan to lease a parking lot in a city park so developers can build condominiums has split the electorate. Some agree the move would generate tax revenues to upgrade the park, while others fear the move favours the rich to the detriment of others.

But it was his vote (as part of a unanimous council decision) to grant a restaurant permit to a company associated with friends, who also have a business relationship with Katz’s Winnipeg Goldeyes baseball team, that prompted the Free Press story.

For his part, Katz maintains he sought legal advice and was told his vote would not offend conflict of interest guidelines.

Proving naysayers wrong is nothing new for the 54-year-old mayor. Prior to embarking on a career in public service, he made a name for himself in, let’s say, serving the public.

One of his first business ventures was in running a social hall in a former racquet club. He also operated a music production company and booked into Winnipeg A-list rock acts such as the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney and Tina Turner. In addition, he was involved in basketball and baseball exhibitions, planning the Sunfest festival in Gimli, a 60-kilometre drive north of Winnipeg, and in bringing a Northern League baseball franchise, the Goldeyes, to Winnipeg.

All along the way, he said, many doubted his ability to follow through on his ambitious plans. When he first began booking major performers, people in Los Angeles would say “‘Winnipeg where? and Sam who?’” he recalled.

He remained undeterred: “There’s no question I like challenges, and I like to prove that something can be done when people say it can’t be done.”

A pitcher and shortstop as a youth, Katz said that running a baseball club is something he particularly enjoys. “I tell people, I don’t work… I really enjoy what I’m doing.”

It was while promoting construction of a baseball park near the Forks of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers that Katz really got a bad taste of municipal politics.

When pushing for his vision of the park, he ran into roadblocks at city hall and felt he was not treated “equally.” As mayor, he intends to make sure “we’ll treat everyone fairly at city hall.”

Though Katz’s name had been mentioned as a possible candidate in previous campaigns, he had resisted the call. He said he changed his mind when he concluded that you can “be part of the problem or the solution, and if you don’t do anything, you’re part of the problem.”

Another factor was the short 21/2-year term. His predecessor, Glen Murray, left the office to run for Parliament in 2004 (he lost).

Katz’s candidacy was announced only two hours before the nominations deadline, and he ran a two-week campaign against candidates who had been campaigning for months.

Of the nine candidates, Katz was the only “non-politician” running. “I was the true independent. I was not affiliated with any party.”

He promised to “do some housecleaning” at city hall and pare down expenses – such as contracting out garbage collection at $40 a house versus city workers’ cost of $70 a house.

Katz’s candidacy sparked the second largest turnout ever for a mayoralty race and he won the race handily with 42.5 per cent of the vote, becoming the city’s first-ever Jewish mayor.

He credits his victory to the unexpected involvement of voters between the ages of 18 and 30, who he said appreciate his can-do attitude and his private sector accomplishments that have made Winnipeg a better city to live.

His support was not limited to the business community, he said. “Blue-collar people support me as working for the little guy.”

The son of Holocaust survivors, Katz was born in Rehovot, Israel. The family moved to Canada when he was less than six months old. His father, Chaim, who survived Buchenwald, worked as a baker, and his mother, Zena, a survivor of Stutthof and Buchenwald, worked in a baker shop.

Katz grew up in Winnipeg’s north end, studied economics in university (his mother wanted him to be a dentist) and soon after started his first business, a clothing store in the western Manitoba city of Brandon.

His agenda as mayor is clearly pro-private enterprise: “I simply want to make Winnipeg a better place to live. I want people to know Winnipeg is open for business, that business is not the enemy and profit is not a dirty word.”

So far, Katz’s message seems to be what Winnipeggers want to hear. Despite all the criticism, he’s gratified that so many voters approve of his performance.

Although he hasn’t made up his mind about the next election – rumours are he will run again – he said he’s not concerned if voters one day change their minds about him.

“I have the luxury that if I’m not elected, I have something wonderful waiting for me,” he said. “We’ll do what we think is right, not necessarily what will get me votes.”"

Source: Paul Lungen. Community: Winnipeg’s Jewish mayor remains popular. The Canadian Jewish News (3 November 2005) [FullText]

UniTV Technology by Rehovot based R&D facility of US firm Integra5 to offer Advanced TV-based Telephony and Messaging Services to Kentucky Customers

"Triple-Play Provider Leveraging Fiber-to-the-Home Network to Provide Subscribers with True Converged Services -- TV Caller ID and TV Voicemail Message Waiting

BURLINGTON, Mass. Integra5 Communications, the pioneer in converged quadruple play messaging and communications technology, today announced that Foothills Telephone Cooperative, a progressive memberowned service provider based in Staffordsville, Kentucky, will deploy Integra5's TV Caller ID and TV Voicemail Message Waiting applications to increase competitive differentiation, build customer loyalty and drive uptake of digital services.

Foothills provides a range of services, including local and long-distance telephony, high-speed data and cable TV, to over 15,000 residential and business customers throughout Johnson, Lawrence and Magoffin Counties in Kentucky. Foothills will deploy Integra5's TV Caller ID and TV Voicemail Message Waiting applications over their converged, triple-play Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network. Foothills plans to make the advanced telephony and messaging services, part of Integra5's UniTV Visual Telephony and UniTV Visual Messaging product suites, available to subscribers of our digital cable services beginning in January 2006.

"Our FTTH was the first step in a strategy to provide our subscribers with the most advanced voice, data and video services, and Integra5's UniTV platform represents the next step in our vision to make converged services a reality," said Tom Preston, general manager, for Foothills. "Building upon our FTTH rollout, UniTV gives us unique, differentiated triple-play services and allows us to compete based on value-added services rather than price. This is really just the beginning of the potential to roll out additional enhanced services enabled by UniTV like Picture Caller ID and SMS Text Messaging."

Integra5's UniTV platform is network based, requiring no new customer equipment for TV Caller ID or TV Voicemail Message Waiting. TV Caller ID automatically displays the name and telephone number of the person calling on a subscriber's TV before the phone even rings. TV Voicemail Message Waiting notifies subscribers of the number of voicemail messages waiting. Subscribers can also access various menu options for these services via their TV remote control, including a Call History feature to view a list of incoming calls detailing the caller's name, number and time and date of call, and a Telephony Control Panel so subscribers can modify the duration of the TV Caller ID display on their screen.

"Progressive operators like Foothills realize that to thrive in this competitive marketplace, competitive differentiation and revenue growth will be driven by service innovation," said Dr. Eyal Bartfeld, president and CEO of Integra5. "Triple-play or quad-play networks are simply the foundation for the delivery of enhanced applications that blend features of voice, video, data and wireless services."

To offer the TV Caller ID product, Foothills will deploy Integra5's UniTV application server platform in its head end where UniTV recognizes incoming calls, creates the display information and sends it to the appropriate customer's TV. The patented technology is standards-based, features a distributed architecture that can scale to support up to millions of subscribers, and has the processing performance required for real-time delivery of signals and information between data, telephone (public switched and IP), cable TV (traditional and IP) and cellular networks. It also supports multiple set-top boxes, PCs and phone lines per household.

Integra5's UniTV platform has been commercially deployed with telco and cable service providers since mid 2004. Integra5 will showcase the UniTV platform and services in a live demonstration in its booth at the TelcoTV Conference & Expo, November 8-10, at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, Calif.

About Integra5
Integra5 Communications is a pioneer in converged quad play messaging and communications technology for telco and cable service providers, utilities, and other broadband providers. The company was founded in January 2000 by experts in unified messaging and image processing and is backed by leading venture capitalists, including Benchmark Capital and Lauder Partners. The company's UniTV converged services platform features patented and patent-pending technology and has been commercially deployed in service provider networks since 2004. Integra5 is based in Burlington, Mass., USA, and has a research and development office in Rehovot, Israel. For more information, visit http://www.integra5.com.

Contact: Christi Dean SparkSource, Inc. (781) 418-2430 cdean@sparksource.com

Source: Integra5 Communications Web Site: http://www.integra5.com "

Source: Foothills Telephone Cooperative to Offer Advanced TV-based Telephony and Messaging Services to Kentucky Customers using UniTV Technology from Integra5. PRNewswire 9 Nov. 2005 [FullText]

Made in Rehovot PolyJet rapid prototyping systems. By Objet Geometries

Larger PolyJet System is Fast with Ultra-High Resolution

MINNEAPOLIS (1 November 2005) - (Nasdaq:SSYS) Stratasys today introduced a large-format PolyJet(TM) rapid prototyping system -- the Eden500V. It is the newest member of the Eden line of PolyJet systems, manufactured by Objet Geometries of Rehovot, Israel and distributed in North America by Stratasys.

Besides the PolyJet hallmarks of high speed, feature detail, and surface smoothness, the Eden500V has a larger build envelope. It measures 19.7 x 15.7 x 7.9 in. (500 x 400 x 200 mm), permitting the construction of bigger models than previous PolyJet systems. The large build envelope also allows multiple models to be produced simultaneously in a single run. The Eden500V uses four jumbo-size material cartridges, which support the larger builds, so the machine can operate longer unattended, improving productivity over existing PolyJet systems.

New speed and resolutions settings allow users to match these properties to specific projects. In high-speed mode, the speed effectively doubles that of previous PolyJet systems, which are already among the fastest in the industry. This is achieved by reducing horizontal resolution to 30-microns (0.0011 in.). The high-resolution setting of 16-micron (0.0006 in.) layers enables detail and surface finish smoothness that rivals any competitive process. Both settings offer excellent quality, with an X and Y resolution of up to 600 dpi.

Like previous PolyJet systems, the Eden500V employs a clean, safe modeling process. Sealed liquid resin cartridges are inserted into the machine, which then jets out only the amount needed to build the model. While each model layer is built, it is simultaneously cured with UV light. When models are removed, they are already fully cured, so no exposure to resin occurs throughout the entire process.

"I believe PolyJet is setting a new standard in rapid prototyping," says product manager Fred Fischer. "The Eden500V offers an unprecedented suite of benefits from high material capacity, to speed, to ultra-fine detail, and it's a safe, clean process. No other prototyping system offers all the benefits of The Eden500V. It's a tough competitor."

The Eden500V uses all available PolyJet materials, including the Translucent, Vero, and Tango material lines. These lines offer features ranging from general purpose, transparent resins to those with high strength and excellent visualization features, and materials with rubber-like flexibility, in addition to other benefits.

Stratasys Inc, Minneapolis, manufactures rapid prototyping systems and 3D printers, and it offers rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing services. Stratasys equipment is used by OEMs such as aerospace, automotive, defense, medical, and consumer product makers. In 2004, the company installed 36 percent of all systems sold worldwide, making it the unit market leader for the third consecutive year, according to Wohlers Report 2005. Stratasys patented the rapid prototyping process known as fused deposition modeling (FDM(R)). The process creates functional models directly from any 3D CAD program using ABS plastic, polycarbonate, PPSF or other materials. The company holds 175 granted or pending prototyping patents. Stratasys rapid prototyping systems are also used for rapid manufacturing and rapid tooling. In addition to manufacturing products, Stratasys is the exclusive North American distributor of PolyJet rapid prototyping systems, manufactured by Objet Geometries, Rehovot, Israel. On the Web: www.Stratasys.com

All statements herein that are not historical facts or that include such words as "expects", "anticipates", "projects", "estimates" or "believes" or similar words are forward-looking statements that we deem to be covered by and to qualify for the safe harbor protection covered by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Largest part-building service claim is based on number of dedicated machines. Except for the historical information herein, the matters discussed in this news release are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties; these include the continued market acceptance and growth of our Dimension BST(TM), Dimension SST(TM), Prodigy Plus, FDM Maxum(TM), FDM Vantage(TM), and Titan(TM) product lines; the size of the 3D printing market; our ability to penetrate the 3D printing market; our ability to maintain the growth rates experienced in this and preceding quarters; our ability to introduce and market new materials such as PC-ABS and the market acceptance of this and other materials; the impact of competitive products and pricing; the timely development and acceptance of new products and materials; our ability to effectively and profitably market and distribute the Eden PolyJet line; the success of our RedEye RPM service; and the other risks detailed from time to time in our SEC Reports, including the annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2004 and the quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed throughout 2005.

Objet Geometries, Eden500V, FullCure, Eden, TangoBlack, TangoGray and PolyJet are trademarks of Objet Geometries Ltd. and may be registered in certain jurisdictions.

Contact: Stratasys, Minneapolis Investor & Editorial Contacts:

Investor Contact: Shane Glenn, 952-294-3416 ; Joe Hiemenz, 952-906-2726

Source: BusinessWire (last viewed 7 October 2005) [FullText]

A Pair Of Israel Shoes

By Erin Israel

"Dear Lord,

In all Your infinite wisdom, You must have Your reasons for populating the Holy Land with ugly shoes. Far be it for me to question Your judgment. Perhaps it is meant as a test.

Ecclesiastes 3:1 teaches us that "To everything there is a season."

However, Lord, I humbly submit that there is no season for lime-green platforms. Yet Your servants willfully clomp around in these, and in thick-soled buckled shoes that are the footwear equivalent of nerdy eyeglasses.

Naot, the Israeli Birkenstock, delivers sensible, comfortable sandals. Caligula Shoes (a strange name for a store, when you consider that Caligula, the third Emperor of Rome, noted for his tyranny and cruelty, went nuts and died) offers fewer stylish choices and are currently touting a wickedly pointy series of boots. Gazit Shoes, however, offers the widest and most outrageous variety of pseudo-stylish Israeli women's footwear: shoes with four-inch thick rubber soles, tennis shoes with a ridiculous spike heel, shoes with spangles and splashes of neon, shoes with pointless straps and buckles and floppy little fake leather ties. Verily, they are a blight upon the land, not to mention the feet.

Your mysteries of the universe are truly numerous."

Source: Erin Israel. "Zoog nuh-a-LAH-yeem." A pair of shoes. (last viewed 6 November 2005) [FullText]

Rehovot Leads the Way in Seeking New Fuel

"Many of today’s scientists are trying to find an alternative, pollution-free fuel for the future and this research has been a priority for the staff at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. Hydrogen is seen as the most plentiful element in the universe and as such, is an attractive candidate for becoming this fuel of the future.

“After various experiments surrounding solar energy, the scientists realized that they needed to find a new kind of energy” said Michael Meyer, the national executive vice-president of Weizmann Canada. “We have solar and wind energy, now it’s time for hydrogen,” However, nearly all hydrogen used today is produced by means of expensive processes that require the combustion of polluting fossil fuels. In addition, it is extremely difficult to store and transport hydrogen.

New solar technology developed by the Weizmann Institute, with the help of funding from Weizmann Canada, tackles these problems by creating an easily storable intermediate energy source made from metal ore such as zinc oxide. With the help of concentrated sunlight, the ore is heated to about 1,200C in a solar reactor, in the presence of wood charcoal. The process splits the ore, releasing oxygen and creating gaseous zinc, which is then condensed to a powder.

Zinc powder can later be reacted with water, yielding hydrogen to be used as fuel, and zinc oxide, which is recycled back to zinc in the solar plant. In recent experiments, the 300-kilowatt installation produced 45 kilograms of zinc powder from zinc oxide in one hour, exceeding projected goals. The process generates no pollution, and the resultant zinc can be easily stored, transported and converted to hydrogen on demand. In addition, the zinc can be used directly, for example, in zinc-air batteries, which serve as efficient converters of chemical to electrical energy. Thus, the method offers a way of storing solar energy in chemical form and releasing it as needed.

“The success of our recent experiments brings the approach closer to industrial use,” according to engineer Michael Epstein, project leader at the Weizmann Institute. Results of the experiments were reported by Epstein and Weizmann scientist Jacob Karni in early August at the 2005 Solar World Congress of the International Solar Energy Society in Orlando, Fla. The concept of splitting metal ores with the help of sunlight has been under development for several years at the Weizmann Institute’s Canadian Institute for the Energies and Applied Research in Israel, one of the most sophisticated solar research facilities in the world, which has a solar tower, a field of 64 mirrors and unique beam-down optics.

Weizmann scientists are currently investigating metal ores other than zinc oxide, as well as additional materials that may be used for efficient conversion of sunlight into storable energy. "

Source: Lara Greenberg. Israel leads the way in seeking new fuel. Cabadian Jewish News (CJN) (27 October 2005) [FullText]